New Age Beverages Corp (OTCBB:NBEV) Is Today's Stock Focus

New Age Beverages Corp (OTCBB:NBEV) has been a favorite of ours at Insider Financial this year. The company, formerly known as Bucha Inc (OTCBB:ABRW) and before that American Brewing Company Inc, has been a tear all year. Shares have gone from $.25 back in March to as high as $2 in July. We believe that the bull run could be just getting started.First up a little background on the company. New Age Beverages Corporation was formed on June 30th 2016 when Búcha, Inc. acquired the assets and XingTea, AspenPure, and New Age Beverages LLC. Búcha, Inc., the public entity acquirer was formerly the American Brewing Company and traded under the symbol OTC: ABRW.

American Brewing was originally founded in 2010 in Edmonds, Washington and became an award winning Craft Brewer. The business continued to expand distribution primarily in the Northwest United States, and in April 2015 acquired the assets of B&R Liquid Adventure, which included the brand Búcha® Live Kombucha. Búcha® Live Kombucha was one of the leading brands in the burgeoning Kombucha segment, which in 2015 reached a scale of $529 million according to the Wall Street Journal. In November 2015, American Brewing sold their Brewery and assets to focus on the Kombucha opportunity, and changed its name to Búcha, Inc.

The sale of the brewery and craft beer operation ultimately completed in May 2016, coincided with the acquisition of the brands and assets of New Age, based in Denver, Colorado. At that time, the firm decided to integrate its California operations into the Colorado headquarters of New Age. The firm officially changed its name to the New Age Beverages Corporation, and was subsequently issued the ticker symbol "NBEV."

Today, the company competes in the fast growing healthy functional beverage segments including Ready to Drink (RTD) Tea, Kombucha, Energy Drinks and Functional Waters with the Brands XingTea®, Búcha® Live Kombucha, XingEnergy®, and Aspen Pure®. The brands are sold in 46 states within the US and in more than 10 countries internationally across all channels via direct and store door distribution systems. The company operates the websites www.mybucha.com, www.xingtea.com,www.aspenpure.com.

One of the major planned benefits of the acquisition was a range of cost and revenue synergies totaling more than $7.5 million. In cost synergies the group is targeting cost of goods sold, shipping, operating expense and other savings. In revenue synergies, the company is looking to leverage its existing customer relationships, and utilize existing distribution relationships with its own DSD operations and its network of DSD providers across the United States.

NBEV just announced that on a consolidated proforma basis, NBEV net revenues for the quarter ended June 30, 2016 were $15,015,620 on a gross sales basis and $13,950,735 in net revenues on a pro forma basis, a 2% increase versus the 2nd quarter in 2015. As previously reported, the consolidated company had its highest recorded month in history in June versus any comparative measure (prior quarter, prior year, or trailing twelve months). CEO Brent Willis said:

"Normally acquisition integrations run into snags or difficulties of some sort, but so far so good. Our primary focus has been on defining and rolling out a new performance-focused, metric-driven culture and capturing cost and revenue synergies. We have given ourselves 12-18 months to achieve these, so we will only start to see the benefit of these in Q3. We are pleased with the progress so far, and although we had plenty of one-time costs with the merger, our operating performance substantially improved in the quarter. We expect more progress in Q3 as our initial synergies begin to have impact, and Búcha benefits from the scale and resources of the new Company."

Currently trading with a market cap of $32 million, NBEV is one of the most exciting stories among small caps. We wouldn’t be surprised to see New Age Beverages Corp as a takeover target from the likes of Monster Beverage, Pepsi or Coca-Cola that need to diversify away from sugary drinks. We look forward to seeing the company's Q3 results and updating our subscribers.For the latest updates on NBEV, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in NBEV and have not been compensated for this article.