This turned out pretty well for Kobe, wouldn’t you say.
He saw the future and was correct.
An investment made by Kobe Bryant has yielded more than 30 times its money in fewer than four-and-a-half years.
On Tuesday, Coca-Cola announced it purchased a minority stake in sports drink BodyArmor.
Bryant made his first investment in the brand, for roughly 10 percent of the company, in March 2014, putting in a total of roughly $6 million over time. Based on the valuation of the Coca-Cola deal, his stake is now worth approximately $200 million, sources told ESPN.
Bryant is now the fourth largest investor in the brand, marketed as a healthier competitor to Gatorade, behind the brand’s co-founder Mike Repole, Coca-Cola and Keurig Dr Pepper. When he invested in BodyArmor, the brand had just come off a year of $10 million in sales. BodyArmor is projected to top $400 million in sales in 2018.
As part of their endorsement deals, many athletes had equity stakes in BodyArmor. Sources tell ESPN that as many as a dozen superstar athletes could also have stakes themselves in BodyArmor worth more than $1 million including James Harden, Dustin Johnson and Andrew Luck.
Smart moves, by a very smart man.