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Operator
Before we begin, I will paraphrase the Company's Safe Harbor language. Some of the discussion today may include the forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from what the Company projects today, so please refer to its most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of factors that could affect these projections. The Company does not undertake to publicly update forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date they are made.
Regarding any non-US GAAP measures that may be discussed during the call and from time to time by the Company's Executives in discussing the Company's performance, please visit the Company's website www.molsoncoors.com and click on the financial reporting tab on the investor relations page for a reconciliation of these measures to the nearest US GAAP results. Also unless otherwise indicated, all financial results the Company discusses are versus the comparable prior year period and in US dollars.
Now I would like to turn the call over to Dave Dunnewald, Vice President Investor Relations.
- VP, IR
Thanks, Tracy, appreciate that. Hello and welcome everybody, on behalf of Molson Coors Brewing Company thank you for joining us today for our second-quarter 2012 follow-up earnings conference call. Our goal on this call is to address as many additional earnings related questions as possible following our regular earnings conference call with Peter Swinburn, Gavin Hattersley and our business unit CEOs earlier today. We will use the standard question-and-answer format and we anticipate that the call will last less than an hour.
So let's get started. With me on the call are Heather Pollard, Investor Relations Manager; Greg Snider, Group Manager of Strategic Finance; Spencer Schurr, Finance Forecasting Manager; Rob Borland, Commercial VP for Molson Coors International; Mike Rumley, CFO of Molson Coors International; Zahir Ibrahim, Global Controller, Andy de Gortari, Group Manager of SEC reporting; Eric Mickelson, Manager of SEC Reporting; Melissa Menter, Senior Manager of Tax, and Mark Saks, Senior Director of Tax.
As Peter Swinburn mentioned on our regular earnings call earlier today, in the second quarter we completed an important acquisition that we expect to strengthen our Company, enhance our growth profile and increase shareholder value on a relatively short time frame, increased net sales and NSR per hectoliter on an apples-to-apples basis, on solid pricing and sustained moderate gross margin compression which we are addressing. We also continue to invest in our key brands and innovations across the business and most important, on an underlying basis we grew operating margins, earnings per share and free cash flow in the quarter. These are tough times in beer but we are taking and will continue to take aggressive steps to drive long-term shareholder value in our business and shareholder returns in our core business. With that, I'd like to open it up for questions, Tracy?
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Bryan Spillane with Banc of America.
- Analyst
Couple of questions related to StarBev. I guess the first one is, I think on the call you had provided an expectation for annual interest expense for this year for Molson Coors -- net interest expense -- of $150 million. Does that roughly imply about $85 million of annualized interest expense related to StarBev?
- VP, IR
Yes, if you do the 3% number that we gave for the average coupon, that times $2.8 billion gets you to about $85 million.
- Analyst
Okay. And that's inclusive of everything -- that's inclusive of the bank debt, the bonds, and also any costs related to the convert?
- VP, IR
Yes, that's related to the actual notes that we issued as well as the term debt that we issued. And then the convertible is zero coupon, but it does have an implied imputed interest rate, I guess you'd call it, under US GAAP and that's very low though, and that is also included.
- Analyst
Okay, great. And then I guess the second question was -- just trying to make sure I understand all the different puts and takes in terms of try to modeling it forward. And tell me, see if this logic works -- we have a 2011 operating income of $174.1 million and so that's what we're using, that's our 2011 base. And then if I just take a trailing four quarters -- so if I take the first half of 2012 and the final two quarters of 2011, my trailing four quarters is about $135 million. So the difference, the $40 million difference between what happened for calendar '11 versus the trailing four quarters, there's about $35 million of negative foreign exchange?
There's some increase in marketing budget, in marketing, which I guess would like to try to get some idea of how much the marketing is up in that time frame. And then also I think on the call you talked a little bit about there being some negative effect from packaging or some negative mix effect from packaging that occurred in StarBev's second half, which presumably would correct itself as we -- or will be part of an easier comparison, I guess, as we start modeling the next four quarters.
So I know there's a lot there, but I'm just trying to bridge from a calendar '11, where we had a run rate of about $174 million of operating profit, to a trailing four quarters which is about $135 million, and again having some of those negative effects -- just as I go forward, which is the better base to use? And how do I think about some of the bridges to get to a forward four quarters operating profit?
- VP, IR
Yes, okay. Thanks for the question, Brian.
If you use the trailing four quarters, I think what you'll miss is some of the timing, the differences that we talked about on the earlier call. Those do include the packaging costs, back half of 2011. Also, we talked about spending incremental dollars in the first half of 2012, and assuming that, that plus the innovations that we're introducing this year -- they're designed to give us a return, and over varying time frames. But the benefit of those innovations we did not see in the first half of 2012 but we did see the investment. So I think from where I sit, a full year base of 2011 looks more representative, but we'll have to see as we go forward. But I think it is important to understand those timing aspects.
- Analyst
So using the 2011 as a base to look at the next four quarters versus using the trailing four quarters as a base?
- VP, IR
I think that takes some of those timing issues out.
- Analyst
Okay, and just order of magnitude -- it sort of implies then that the value of those factors, the step up in marketing expense as well as the packaging, the effect of the cost of the packaging mix are roughly equal to -- are roughly about $35 million or $40 million, or more or less equal to what the FX drag is? Is that ballpark the right way to think about it?
- VP, IR
We haven't totaled all those up, but let me give you some help with, particularly the second quarter, because that's definitely the bigger, it's a relatively seasonal business; second quarter is generally significantly bigger profit quarter than first quarter in Central Europe. And we have, we've provided more information around the results for the second quarter because, obviously, we owned the business for part of that second quarter this year, as opposed to the first quarter, where we have less information that we provided.
In the second quarter, as we mentioned on the earlier call today, Mark Hunter mentioned that coming out of the very poor weather in the first quarter, the business, before we acquired it, made the decision to invest incrementally behind marketing and innovations in those markets in anticipation of, obviously, a good return on that coming out of some of the issues early in the year. What that resulted in was a shift in marketing and sales spending, as well as some costs on the cost of goods line associated with some of those innovations. So if you look specifically at the US dollar pro forma income statement for Central Europe that we distributed this morning, you'll see a little less than $27 million decline in pre-tax underlying earnings year-over-year in the second quarter.
One way to bucket that change, which might be helpful for your modeling, is about a third of it was foreign exchange, going from local currencies -- lots of different local currencies -- to US dollars. Another third would be inflation of various kinds -- these are just round numbers. And then the other third would be a combination of the extra marketing and sales spending, particularly marketing; and then also the cost of some of the innovations, so you can tell that some of that of that last third that I mentioned wouldn't actually map to the cost of goods line. So some of the innovations for example, innovative packaging, innovative new products -- they have a higher cost of goods than the products of the existing portfolio.
Does that help for second quarter, at least?
- Analyst
Yes, that does help, that does help.
And then, Dave, just one last question -- The one thing that was a little confusing to me was that, in the first quarter, the volumes were actually up; so the weather was bad but -- and I guess like you can definitely see the negative effect on -- you could see net/net sales were down, gross profits were down. But just square for me just why the weather was bad, why volumes would have been up in the first quarter?
- VP, IR
Rob Borland is my guy on the ground, so take it away, Rob.
- Commercial VP- Molson Coors International
Yes, a couple of things there. One was really the mix between the more northern countries in the region, which got more adversely affected by the bad weather, versus the more southerly. So you just got a profit mix going on. So, for example, Czech got particularly badly affected by the weather, while the volume was being picked up in other markets. And you also get a little bit of package mix going on as well which I think was also mentioned in the call earlier this morning, might have been covered. So, volume's up but it's up in packages which, just according to seasonality may be slightly less profitable than regular on returnable glass bottle. So you got geography and also package mix playing into that as well.
- Analyst
Okay, great.
- VP, IR
No, that's a good point, Rob. And in addition, Bryan, from a profit standpoint, when you're trying to square that up first quarter is again a very small profit quarter for us, and so you'll, call it, moderate shift in things like the mix components that Rob mentioned can have a more significant impact, or will tend to have a more significant impact, on the bottom line in the small quarters.
- Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks, Dave.
- VP, IR
Thanks, Bryan.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Brett Cooper with Consumer Edge Research.
- Analyst
I know you touched on this with Bryan, but the packaging issues that you were talking about that drove abnormally high rates of increases in cost of goods sold in the second half, are they any more pronounced in the third or the fourth quarter? Or should we assume they're relatively evenly split between the quarters?
- VP, IR
I think for our purposes, at this point we won't break that out. We may have some additional costs of a similar nature this year, as these are the types of things that are not exceptional items that we do not take out of our underlying earnings. And so I think for now it's-- we're not going to get more granular on a quarterly basis, because of whether or not we'd have any this year. So I guess that means you'll get to choose how you want to spread it.
- Analyst
Okay, just to make sure I get this straight though, right -- your COGS per hectoliter on an underlying basis were up in the neighborhood of 10% in the first half; and then I think you said that they would be up low-single digits for the year, for the second half we're obviously going to be down low-single digits to get those numbers. Is that correct? I was just trying to make sure that we got this right and that the quarterly flow was right, and that's what I was trying to drive at.
- VP, IR
Yes, okay. We said that the guidance -- what was it, up low single digits for the year? Second quarter we're up 11% in local currency. First quarter we didn't give a local currency number on that, so I don't think you can model that one directly. But for full year we expect to be up low single digits. So given that-- I will say that we did have commodity inflation, input inflation in the first quarter.
We had some incremental logistics costs related to the incredible freezing that happened in some of those Northern Central Europe Markets, as Rob mentioned, in the first quarter. So there's certain -- anyway, so let's just say, the first quarter was challenging from a cost perspective, along with the second quarter -- a bit more in the second, to be sure, though. And then when you average those out, we'll get to low single digits for the year, is our expectation.
- Analyst
So we know that you're up 1.9 in the first quarter, 1.4 in the second. Do you have -- I don't know if you'd be willing to give it -- the volume growth rates by quarter for 2011? I'm just trying to figure out what the comps were as we're going into the back half of the year.
- VP, IR
Volume growth rates by quarter? No.
- Analyst
In 2011.
- VP, IR
Right. Since we did not provide pro formas for the back half of 2010, we do have to draw the line in the sand somewhere. I can't provide those, but you do have them for the first half, and I think if you listen to the earlier call, I think you'll get a sense of the tone of what we expect out of those investments in marketing and innovation and how the Business is performing now in peak season.
- Analyst
Perfect. Moving on to corporate -- you gave corporate expense at $135 million and then you said $35 million in acquisition fees. Those are one-time items that you guys pull out for underlying earnings, correct?
- VP, IR
That's correct.
- Analyst
So is the underlying number for corporate should be about $100 million then?
- VP, IR
That's right.
- Analyst
Okay, perfect.
And the last question was on Canada. So if I have my math right, you guys upped COGS guidance by 200 to 300 basis points, and presumably we should continue to see some of that come through in revenue per hectoliter. But are the brands in the mix that you're seeing -- are they gross margin brands? Or is there gross margin pressure as a result of the brand mix that you're seeing?
- VP, IR
Yes, that varies by the brand you're talking about. Coors Light Iced Tea is sold at a premium, so is Coors Light? So it is, call it a premium, at least at a gross margin line, a premium to the broader portfolio. Some of the other brands, like Strongbow and Newcastle are, how would you say, licensed brands; and so we share the profits with the brand owner and so that'll tend to drive lower than average profitability for those brands.
- Analyst
Okay; thanks, Dave.
- VP, IR
Thanks, Brett.
Operator
[Michael Muddy] with Goldman Sachs.
- Analyst
Hello, Dave, it's Judy Hong, actually. How are you?
- VP, IR
Great, thanks.
- Analyst
So going back to the StarBev -- so you gave the breakdown by country for sales when you made the acquisition. I'm just wondering, is there a big different in terms of profit in each of those countries? Because, clearly, you've talked about this a little bit in terms of the negative geographic mix; but I also want to understand how this impacts FX impact on the EBIT line as opposed to sales line.
- VP, IR
Okay, yes -- so I don't think we'll get to that level of granularity. When you look at a, call it a self-contained business of sorts, there's some cost to go cross border -- logistics, shipping, actually production and shipping between markets and so on -- depending on which market you're in. So no, I don't think we'd be able to provide a breakdown of profitability market by market.
- Analyst
Is there a range? Because it sounds like maybe Czech is one of the more profitable ones. But is there a range from low to high, what that looks like?
- VP, IR
Yes, depending on how you slice it, and which costs or factors or whatever you include, yes, there would be some difference; but as I say, I can't provide details on that.
- Analyst
Okay, so then the FX comment -- so you had $9 million of negative FX impact on operating income in Q2 for Central Europe, right? And for the full year is it $23 million? Or for the back half is it $23 million?
- VP, IR
Yes, we said that second half, call it low $1.20s per euro, we expect that about $25 million of, call it negative translation impact, in the Central Europe Business. Now obviously if the euro and those local currencies that go with it strengthen, then that's less of an issue.
- Analyst
Yes, I'm just surprised why it's so much worse than the $9 million. I mean you've seen a little bit of a weakness, but it just seems like a pretty big delta between the $9 million in Q2 versus the $25 million in the back half.
- VP, IR
Yes, it does. So $25 million in the back half, and if you look at some of those representative currencies over there, you could see that there's a lot less headwind in the fourth quarter. Most of what we're talking about here is in the third quarter. The reason the third quarter might be substantially more than the second quarter really has less to do with percentage change in various foreign currencies -- foreign currency movements -- and more to do with, although not entirely, but more to do with, call it the seasonality of the business.
We said that we invested heavily in the first half, and particularly the second quarter of this year, behind brand growth and innovation, and had not seen noticeable returns on those investments. And I think you can tell from the tone from the call this morning, earlier this morning, that we do expect that to flow through in the months and years ahead, including the second half.
- Analyst
So you expect the absolute dollar profit to be much higher in the back half, which makes the FX impact bigger? Is that what you mean?
- VP, IR
Yes, I can't, how do you say, talk to much higher; but I would say that, based on the seasonality of the business and based on the investments that we made in the second quarter, that does give you -- what would you say? Normally we would make more money in the third quarter, or let's say the second half, than we would in the first half. That's normal in that particular business.
- Analyst
Okay, and then I apologize if you had talked about this on the call, and I may not have followed it -- but just in terms of the additional income from StarBev for the two weeks that you had owned it being much higher than the balance of the quarter that you saw -- was it mostly seasonality? Or why the two weeks added so much more than the full quarter?
- VP, IR
Yes, again it gets -- like my last comment, it gets back to the seasonality of the business. If you look at the sales -- well, first of all, it is a capital-intensive business, call it a fixed cost intensive Business; most brewing businesses are. And so if you look at the margin structure in January and compare it to late June, when we're really rolling into peak season, you're going to see a pretty stark difference in the earnings of the Business between those weeks. So, yes, I'd say it's -- how do you say that -- the difference in the two weeks' performance versus, say, the average of some other period earlier in the year, much or all of that -- certainly much of it -- could be explained by seasonality.
- Commercial VP- Molson Coors International
Dave, just a point, I've got [the euro] at 2012 as well, which came right at the end of that period of time as well -- a major football competition had taken place in the region.
- VP, IR
Good point, Rob. So euro happened right in the middle of that two-week time period.
- Analyst
Right, right. Did July benefit also, just in terms of that high -- because you had said high single-digit volume growth in Central Europe -- did that also have some of that residual benefit on the volume side as well?
- VP, IR
I would say, just broadly speaking, that July is the sweet spot of the summer. Well, August is sweet spot too, but -- so yes, this is the time of year when you ought to be selling the most beer every year in that time of the seasonal calendar.
- Analyst
Okay. And then do you have maybe a better clarity in terms of what the ongoing tax rate should be now, with the StarBev acquisition?
- VP, IR
Yes, so similar to what Gavin said on the earlier call today -- Gavin Hattersley -- we've got a range of statutory tax rates in these countries of 10% to 20%, so you could tell that compared to the US, statutory tax rate is much lower compared to our tax rate, it's-- would you say our guidance, our last guidance on tax rate for this year was 17% to 21%, and so you could tell that, if anything, the average sort of span of these statutory tax rates is -- there's some overlap but it's actually a bit lower than the tax rate that we had guided to for this year.
Having said that, however, we are in the process of finalizing things like financing and Company structures related to the new Central Europe business, and so until we actually complete that work, we will not be able to provide a more definitive view of the tax rate on a consolidated basis including Central Europe.
- Analyst
Okay. All right; thanks, Dave.
- VP, IR
Yes, thanks, Judy.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Tom Mullarkey with Morningstar.
- Analyst
You actually led into one of my questions on the balance sheet. You have about $800 million of current debt. I was wondering what your thoughts are in terms of how much of that you need to refinance and push out? And do you have available what the debt maturities might be for the next three years or so?
- VP, IR
Yes, we'll scare up the debt maturities. But related to the current debt, we haven't said exactly what we're going to do with the debt that's coming due in the next year, and it is -- depending on how you, if you make it 18 months, it's actually north of $800 million. But suffice to say that even prior to announcing this transaction we had worked out in pretty good detail how we were going to address the liquidity needs of the Company, not only in the short term, but over the entire term of the debt that we needed to issue. And so we're very confident that we're going to meet all of our liquidity needs over the next year, over the next two years, three years, 20 years. So I think it's matter of confidence.
The amount of debt that's coming due -- we have a convertible note of $575 million coming due in July of next year. And that's a pre-existing one that we issued in 2007. We have EUR500 million convertible issued to the seller of the StarBev business. That comes due some time between mid-March of next year and December of next year. And then, let's see -- and then we have some term debt and some related types of debt that could be paid off any time in the next few years. Those are the only pieces of debt that I'm aware of that are coming due in the short term. Does anybody have anything else?
No. That's it for the short term and then obviously we have -- you probably know -- we have notes, 5-year, 10-year, 30-year, and so on which are all delineated in our quarterly SEC filings.
- Analyst
Fantastic, and my next question has more to do with the UK operations. There were share losses in the second quarter and I think the commentary had that mid single-digit declines in the quarter-to-date period. Can you give us more color on the competitive landscape in the UK? And if you have plans that you're currently undertaking to try to stop the share loss?
- VP, IR
Yes, as I think you've probably heard from a variety of global brewers, certainly the ones that operate in the UK, that's a very challenging market. From a competitive standpoint there are four large brewers and then a handful of decent-sized regional brewers. And with that kind of set up, it tends to be a very competitive market -- one of the most, if not the most, competitive developed market -- developed beer market, I mean -- in the world. So yes, we gave up a bit of share. The good news in all of that is that the top end of our portfolio is growing and we have some programs around the Carling brand, which is by far the biggest brand we have in that market; that we're optimistic we'll strengthen the brand in our position, our share position, going forward. But obviously we got to see how that plays out in the marketplace.
In the second quarter some of the issues we saw were increased competitive activity in the marketplace. And -- yes, anyway, it's a tough market. So the team there has had a lot of experience. The only thing I'd add is the team there has had a lot of experience with dealing with that kind of competitive environment, and so we're confident that we have the tools in place to address the issues in the marketplace at least as well as anyone. And we'll see how it shapes up.
- Analyst
Thanks, Dave.
- VP, IR
Okay. Thanks, Tom.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
John Faucher with JPMorgan.
- Analyst
Thanks. So Dave, in terms of looking at the timing of when the deal came through this year, and looking at the lower levels of profitability in Q1 next year, I'm running into something basically where, depending on the growth rate, particularly in the second quarter, but it looks as though the deal should be sort of neutral for 2013 versus 2012 absent any synergies. Is that right, basically? Because, since you avoided the most dilutive part of the deal by the deal closing late in Q2, does that sound about right?
- VP, IR
Yes, let's see. I'm not going to take earnings forward, so to speak. What I would say is that -- let's see -- I guess what I'd do is, I'd go back to what we originally said and then reiterate it -- originally said back in April, when we announced this deal, and then reiterate it once we had the US GAAP pro formas distributed this morning. And that is, that we expect this Business to be earnings-accretive in the first full year of operations.
And essentially you can calculate that by -- make whatever assumption you want around profitability. For example, we gave you all of 2011 on a pro forma basis, and then look at what the pro forma interest expense looks like. And we gave you the coupon rate of 3%, so that does get you somewhere close to $85 million US per year as a starting point, until we pay down some debt.
- Analyst
Okay, and I realize, in terms of trying to figure this out, and I realize it's very difficult because you guys weren't theoretically controlling the Business in the first half of the year. But as we look out on some of this additional investment that went into the Business through the first 5.5 months of the year, do you have any thought in terms of how much of that needs to be repeated? Or do you think that's all sort of one-time items?
- VP, IR
On the earlier call we talked about how we expect full-year marketing and sales investment to be roughly even on the year. So it sounds as though it's -- based on that, it sounds more like a timing difference to me than, call it a step up, if you will. But we make brand investment decisions on an annual and a, call it a tri annual, basis; and so we'll see what we require to, how do you say, make the most and drive the best returns on the brands that we have in that market. And we'll do that on an annual basis.
- Analyst
Okay. But for now we should go with a more normalized cadence, it sounds like, for 2013?
- VP, IR
Well, we expect full-year normal amount in 2012, so I'll let you --
- Analyst
Yes, okay, just a better pattern next year, though. Okay, thank you.
- VP, IR
Yes, different timing, right?
- Analyst
Yes.
- VP, IR
That's at least the possibility. Certainly different from 2011.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Bryan Spillane with Banc of America.
- Analyst
Hello, Dave, thanks for the follow up.
Just on that question about accretion -- given $85 million of interest expense and I think that the StarBev tax rate on its own is going to be somewhere between 15% and 20%, is that correct?
- VP, IR
Actually, what we said so far is that the statutory rate is between 10% and 20%, unless I misspoke earlier.
- Analyst
So if we use 15% as a mid point, the hurdle rate for just being accretive is roughly $110 million of EBIT, so I think what we're really -- the question isn't so much if we're getting into using last year, the $174 million as a kind of a benchmark of profitability -- the rate of accretion ought to be pretty healthy, right? Am I missing something there?
- VP, IR
If you use 2011 as your, call it base pre-tax income on an underlying basis, obviously that means taking out the deal and financing-related costs, then, yes, that's well above the interest cost of buying the business, which makes the hurdle for earnings accretion relatively easy. I think that's what you're saying and I would agree. You do have the FX headwinds, but if you're using a 2011 base, then clearly it's a relatively easy hurdle.
- Analyst
Right, but I guess going back to the question about using the last 12 months as a base versus using what was 2011 as a base, and maybe I understood this wrong, but we're talking about roughly $35 million at the EBIT level of currency headwind, knowing what we know about what you've said about the second half. But offsetting that are all these other additional costs -- that the quote-unquote costs associated with the bad weather in the first quarter, the stepped up marketing expense and not really getting the return for that which we're expecting to see, and also absorbing the negative packaging -- the effect of the packaging changes last year in the second half -- those things roughly net out to the foreign exchange, we're getting back to that $175 million level versus the $135 million level.
- VP, IR
Okay, so -- sorry, what was the question?
- Analyst
Well (laughter) there's a pretty big range we're talking about, I guess, in terms of, is it accretive or not accretive. And getting back to John's question, if we're looking at an ongoing rate that's in the $170 million or $175 million range, a couple of weeks in the second quarter isn't going to make that much of a difference. But if we're looking at there being, taking a pretty good haircut for currencies, and we're really looking at a lower base, then those two weeks do make a difference. So I'm just trying to get a better understanding of just that bridge, I guess, on the calendar '11 to those items that we've just talked about -- bridge you back something that's closer to the 2011 or not.
- VP, IR
Okay. Yes, well, let me try at least addressing a little bit of that. FX, we said approximately $25 million in the back half at current rates, FX exchange rates; and then we had $9 million in the second quarter. We didn't say what was the first half. And then so the net difference there, obviously is, what? $16 million or so, so I was having trouble getting to the $35 million number.
- Analyst
I was using just the $25 million that you're expecting for the second half, and then the $9 million in the second quarter. And I think what was said on the call earlier was the first quarter was kind of minimal.
- VP, IR
Yes, okay. So you're saying year-over-year, as in 2012 versus 2011, you got $35 million of FX that you have to deal with, roughly, and then how does that compare to what we saw some of those costs in 2011, I guess?
- Analyst
Right.
- VP, IR
Yes, well we haven't put dimensions around those, but I would say that $35 million of packaging costs -- that would be a huge number in a business that size. Call it unlikely if you want, but that's probably as far as I would go on that, since we didn't provide a specific number. Yes, Is there some other specific piece of that you want me to address?
- Analyst
No, I think that's helpful. I guess just the only other piece was just trying to gauge how big -- my thought was that in the last four quarters, there's been a higher level of marketing investment maybe than what we would see in the next four quarters. And just, A, whether that's true or not; and then if so, some idea of what the order of magnitude of that would be?
- VP, IR
Yes, okay. No, that's a helpful question.
In essence, the answer is, based on the information we have today, we've talked about acceleration of marketing and sales spending in 2012, and we also talked about 2012 being roughly in line with 2011. So unless we make a decision to change the flow of our marketing investment in the months ahead, then that would imply, call it earlier marketing and sales spending in 2012 than we saw in 2011, which is what you said, in other words.
- Analyst
Okay. All right, thanks, Dave.
- VP, IR
Thanks, Bryan.
Operator
Brett Cooper with Consumer Edge Research.
- Analyst
Just a quick one -- I think when we started off this year you guys said -- this would obviously be for the base business -- you said that marketing would be up at least $30 million. Is there any update on that? Or how we're doing midway through the year?
- VP, IR
Yes, we anticipate that our marketing in those Businesses will be up approximately $40 million this year. That's what we've said, so that's your update.
- Analyst
Okay, thanks.
- VP, IR
But let me clarify. That excludes what's going on at StarBev, although we did say that StarBev would be, or Central Europe would be a little bit, essentially even. It also excludes MillerCoors.
- Analyst
Right, okay.
- VP, IR
Okay.
- Analyst
Thanks, Dave.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I'd turn the call back over to the presenters.
- VP, IR
Great. Thank you, Tracy, and thank you, everybody, for your interest in Molson Coors today. If you have additional questions that we did not cover during our time this afternoon, please call me on my direct line, or Heather Pollard on her direct line. The main number here is, at Molson Coors is 303-927-BEER, or 927-2337. You can also call us at those numbers. Thank you again and have a great day.
Operator
Thank you for your participation in today's conference call, ladies and gentlemen. This now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.