Most investors who owned Celsius Holdings a couple of years ago lost patience with it. The stock ran from under $15 to nearly $100 at its 2023 peak, then spent the next two years giving most of it back. It looked like a fad. A hot trade that got cold.
This morning’s earnings report tells a different story.
Celsius just posted record first-quarter revenue of $783 million — up 138% from the same quarter last year. Net income came in at $110 million. Adjusted EBITDA hit $195.5 million. These aren’t the numbers of a company fading out. They’re the numbers of a company that just figured out how to scale.
Celsius Holdings (CELH)
Here’s what actually changed. Last year, Celsius acquired Alani Nu, a wildly popular energy drink brand with a loyal following among women — a demographic the energy drink category has historically underserved. The acquisition looked bold at the time. The Q1 numbers show why it made sense.
Alani Nu contributed $368 million in sales this quarter alone, after moving from its previous distribution system into PepsiCo’s network. That’s the key detail most people are glossing over. PepsiCo already distributes the original CELSIUS brand across the country. When Alani Nu joined that same system, the company essentially got a massive distribution upgrade overnight. You don’t build that kind of reach from scratch. You plug into it.
Together, the Celsius portfolio captured 45% of the U.S. zero-sugar energy category’s $800 million in growth during the quarter. That’s not a brand fighting for shelf space. That’s a brand defining what the category looks like.
The stock trades around $35 today, up about 7% on the earnings news but still well below where it was a year ago. Analysts have a $47 price target on it. That’s roughly 34% upside from here — assuming the Alani Nu integration continues to deliver. The international business is still small relative to domestic revenue, and that’s where the next leg of growth has to come from. But the domestic story is working. The numbers prove it. At $35 with fundamentals this strong, the stock has room to make up a lot of lost ground.
