$CELH Celsius

If you've been holding since 2021 it's been nothing but volatile, frustrating, and it probably feels like they’ve gone nowhere. The business is also in a very different place than it was during the original run. The brand is no longer just some emerging energy drink brand that people are discovering for the first time. It's a scaled player in the US energy drink market, with ~21% dollar share as of Q1.
The Alani Nu acquisition also changes the story as they're now building more of a portfolio, not just relying on one brand to carry the entire business. Alani gives them another high-growth brand with a different customer base, and the Pepsi relationship gives them distribution leverage that most emerging beverage companies simply do not have. Add in Rockstar, and you can see what they are trying to do which is build a broader energy platform across different consumer segments instead of being a one-product story.
Stock spent the better part of a decade building a massive base before eventually becoming one of the great consumer growth stories of the last cycle. Anyone who bought $CELH early and actually held it through the noise did extremely well. Usually how these long-term winners work. They're never obvious in real time. The chart looks broken, boring until the market finally figures out what the company is becoming.
What I do find constructive here is that, despite the drawdown and all the volatility, the broader structure still hasn’t really broken.
Since 2022, CELH has continued to put in a series of higher lows. Price has dipped into the trend at times, but on the monthly chart, it has not really lost the larger support structure. That’s important because this whole area also sits above the prior all-time-high / neckline zone from the earlier breakout. In other words, the stock is still trying to prove that the old ceiling has become the new floor.
That is usually what you want to see after a major long-term breakout. You get the huge move, expectations get too high, the stock has to reset, and then the market spends a few years deciding whether the company can grow into the next phase of the story.
Right now, CELH looks like it’s compressing inside a larger pennant / triangle structure. It’s not confirmed yet, but it’s definitely getting closer to a decision point. You have the 100-month EMA sitting near this area, the prior breakout zone underneath, and a tightening structure where price is running out of room. If this level holds, I think it can start to get interesting again.
The first area I’d want to see reclaimed is the mid-to-high $30s. That lines up roughly with the 0.382 retracement around $38 and the near-term resistance zone. Until it gets above that area, I would still view this as a base being formed. But, if it clears that zone and starts holding above it, then the next areas to watch are around the mid-$40s, mid-$50s, and eventually the low-$70s.
As far as earnings, Q1 looked pretty solid on the surface. Revenue was close to $800M, Alani Nu was a major contributor, international sales are still growing from a smaller base, and the company continues to expand its footprint. The part that deserves more scrutiny is the core Celsius brand only growing around 6%. If the original brand is slowing, then the next leg has to come from portfolio expansion, international growth, distribution, product innovation, and better execution across the platform.
Margins are also something to watch. When you add acquired brands like Alani and Rockstar, the headline revenue number can look great, but the market is going to care about whether that revenue actually turns into attractive earnings over time. Scale is great but investors will want see they can scale profitably.
Just keep in mind we don't have the same hypergrowth story Celsius was years ago. It’s more mature now, and the market is going to hold it to a higher standard. It looks like a former monster winner that has spent a few years digesting a huge move while the business has continued to become larger and more diversified.
If the stock loses the prior breakout zone and the 100m EMA, setup could weaken but if it holds this area, reclaims the mid-to-high $30s, and the company shows that Alani, Rockstar, Pepsi distribution, and international growth can offset the slowdown in the core brand, then this could end up looking like a second major base in a much longer consumer growth story.
I’m not saying it has to happen immediately. It may still chop around for a while. But the chart is compressing, the business has scale, and expectations are a lot more reasonable than they were at the highs.
@mikealfred you still in this one?