Russ Savage built Rockstar Energy and sold it to PepsiCo for $3.85 billion in 2020. Made his money. Walked away. Now he's back with 4.7% of Celsius and wants to run the place.
This is the energy drink equivalent of your dad divorcing your mom, marrying a younger woman, then showing up at Thanksgiving demanding to carve the turkey. Nobody asked for this. Nobody needs this. But here we are.
Savage told CNBC he controls 12 million shares. That's roughly $600 million worth at current prices. He could've bought a basketball team. He could've bought an island. He could've done literally anything else. Instead he's starting a proxy fight at a company that sells caffeinated beverages to people who think pre-workout is a food group.
The current CEO is John Fieldly. He's been running Celsius since 2018. The stock is up over 5,000% since then. Savage's pitch is apparently "I also sold energy drinks once." That's the entire resume. It's like applying to be a cardiologist because you had a heart attack.
Retail traders are already dividing into camps. Team Savage thinks he's the energy drink whisperer who will unlock shareholder value. Team Fieldly thinks changing leadership during a growth phase is insane. Both teams will lose money regardless of who wins because they're trading on headlines instead of charts.
The funniest part is that Savage didn't even found Rockstar alone. He co-founded it with his mother. So technically his biggest career achievement was a family business. Now he wants to run a public company with a $7 billion market cap because he's bored and rich.
This ends one of two ways. Either Savage gets the CEO job and Celsius becomes PepsiCo's problem in five years, or he sells his stake at a loss after the board tells him to f*ck off.
Either way, someone's getting acquired, and it won't be on the charts.
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