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Photograph by Dylan De Jonge

The color drained from MGP Ingredients stock on Friday morning, after the Kansas-based distiller warned that unsold whiskey left it with a sales shortfall. The shares (ticker: MGPI) were down 24% by midmorning, to $40.

In May 2019, Barron’s noted that MGP stock was a high-price bet that it could expand from contract distilling for other people’s brands, to aging and selling its own whiskey. Hoping to benefit from the bubbling popularity of craft bourbons, MGP built an inventory of distillate that it told investors would triple in value after a few years of aging. With the stock at $67 and 25-times earnings, Barron’s worried about MGP’s ability to compete in a market already awash in hundreds of whiskey brands.