{"id":779537,"date":"2024-07-04T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=779537"},"modified":"2024-07-04T14:26:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T12:26:07","slug":"two-south-africans-built-a-global-powerhouse-which-outperformed-apple-and-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/779537\/two-south-africans-built-a-global-powerhouse-which-outperformed-apple-and-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"The two South Africans who built a global powerhouse – outperforming Apple and Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two South Africans, Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg, built the highly successful Monster Beverage Corporation, whose shares outperformed Apple, Microsoft, and Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Monster Beverage Corporation has its roots in the Hansen Natural Corporation which dates back over a hundred years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1930s, Hubert Hansen and his sons began selling juice to retailers under the company name \u201cHansen\u2019s Fruit and Vegetable Juices\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forty years later, Hubert Hansen’s grandson also started to develop sodas under the Hansen name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its early success, the Hansen company struggled and raked up big losses by the late eighties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this time, Sacks and Schlosberg had moved from South Africa to the United States and were ready for a big business move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They joined forces to acquire Hansen Natural Corporation for $1.71 million and the assumption of $12 million in debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 1990 acquisition, Sacks has been chairman and CEO of Hansen Natural Corporation, and Schlosberg has served as president and COO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company performed well. However, a step change occurred in 2002 when Monster Energy launched. Within ten years, the company increased revenue to $2 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So successful was Monster Energy that the Hansen Natural Corporation changed its name to Monster Beverage Corporation in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monster drinks are now sold in 141 countries, and the company has a significant share of the $53 billion global energy drink market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes Monster Beverage Corporation stand out, apart from its energy drinks, is its stellar financial performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last 25 years, between April 1999 and April 2024, Monster was the best-performing share in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis by YCharts showed that a $10,000 investment into Monster Beverage 25 years ago would be worth $13.86 million today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monster outperformed well-known market darlings like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This growth also made Sacks and Schlosberg billionaires and gave them the title of the world\u2019s best value creators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Monster Beverage Corporation, with Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The two men behind Monster Beverage Corporation\u2019s success, Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg, were born and raised in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacks was born in South Africa in 1949 into a Lithuanian-Jewish family. His father was Johannesburg businessman Wolfe Harry Sacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) with a law degree and a postgraduate higher diploma in tax law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating, he joined the country\u2019s largest corporate law firm, Werksmans. He excelled and became the youngest partner the firm has ever had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After two decades at Werksmans, in 1989, Sacks left the law firm and emigrated to California with his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schlosberg was born in South Africa and, like Sacks, attended the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is very private, and little information is available about his personal life before he and Sacks acquired Hansen Natural Corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schlosberg has been the company’s CFO since July 1996, an executive committee member since October 1992, and vice chairman and director from July 1992 to the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2021, Schlosberg was promoted to co-CEO from chief financial officer. He served alongside Sacks in the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 2024, the company announced Sacks would reduce his day-to-day responsibilities as co-chief executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monster said Sacks will continue to \u201cmanage certain areas of the company\u2019s business for which he has always been responsible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-CEO Schlosberg will become the sole chief executive in 2025, while Sacks remains chairman of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest Forbes Real Time Billionaires list shows that Rodney Sacks has a net wealth of $3 billion, and Hilton Schlosberg has a net wealth of $2.9 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacks and Schlosberg rank as two of the thousand richest people in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read: Canada is after these skills in South Africa \u2013 offering up to R6 million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two South Africans, Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg, built a globally renowned company which outperformed Apple, Microsoft, and Google.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":780980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[20129,20127,18005,20128],"class_list":["post-779537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-hilton-schlosberg","tag-monster","tag-monster-beverage-corporation","tag-rodney-sacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780972,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779537\/revisions\/780972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}