Will ThaiBev suffer amidst the 12-month mourning in Thailand?

Public drinking will be limited then.

The death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has set the nation mourning, as public drinking will be frowned upon during the 12-month period of grieving and alcohol sales be more strictly limited to particular times of the day.

For ThaiBev, one of the largest producers of alcoholic beverage, this could be bad news. However, after falling the past week as the king's health is worsened, its traded stock on Singapore exchange saw a rebound at 1.7% ahead of the official announcement of the King's death. And it even rose as much as 3.8% the next day, its sharpest gain since July.

So, will the situation hurt ThaiBev's alcohol sales?

ThaiBev makes its money selling rum and beer to a population whose religious texts, ironically, exhort them to abstain from alcohol.

Even with 63% of working-age Thais abstain from alcohols, the group's trailing 12-month revenues have risen 53% over the past five years.

Shareholders at present give ThaiBev a forward price-earnings ratio of 21 -- bang on the median for brewers and distillers globally with more than $1 billion in trailing 12-month sales, and ahead of the likes of Diageo, Heineken, Carlsberg and Kweichow Moutai. If more Thais respond to their monarch's death by abstaining from alcohol than choose to drown their sorrows, that valuation could start looking tipsy.

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