To begin our analysis of ThaiBev (“THBEV”), we would have to go back to 2017, when THBEV made a blockbuster acquisition of a majority stake in SABECO, Vietnam’s national brewery. The massive acquisition was largely financed by debt, much like how private equity funds use significant amounts of leverage to finance buyouts of their target companies. The deal was valued at $4.8 billion USD, and Reuters reported that this was at a valuation of about 36x core earnings. The price that THBEV paid for SABECO was steep, given that comparable publicly traded global breweries were trading at an average of less than half that earnings multiple at that time. In addition, the leverage that THBEV took on to finance the acquisition also resulted in a deterioration of the balance sheet’s quality, as their gross interest bearing debt to equity ratio rose from 0.31x to 1.49x post acquisition....