(Portland, OR) – The Craft Brewers Alliance reported its third quarter earnings on Monday. Ten takeaways (and I apologize in advance for my stats geekery finding its way onto the blog here)…

1. Net profit is still strong against past quarters. Though two of the brands are slow to follow the direction of other craft segment peers in terms of growth, the bottom line still looks healthy.

2. CBA-brand shipments for the quarter were up ~4% to 165k barrels. Kona Brewing is still the top performer over RedHook Brewery and Widmer Brothers though growth came back down to earth in Q3. Kona was up 15.6% for the quarter versus 31.4% YTD. That said…

3. Depletions (shipments from wholesalers to retailers) grew 8.6% meaning that wholesalers shipped more product out than what the breweries shipped in. Maybe the variance will be addressed during the conference call (still to come). The earnings press release makes mention of pricing actions (discounts?) in key markets so it’s possible some big promotions led to larger drops at retailers. [ed. note: admittedly not much of an analyst when it comes to distribution but maybe something will surface during the conference call.]

4. Year to date, Widmer/Kona/RedHook shipments are up 7.6% to 482,000 barrels. Widmer Brothers accounts for 210k barrels. RedHook and Kona are just about even at around 136k barrels. Total shipments when taking contracts into account are ~521k barrels.

5. Capacity utilization jumped ~9% to 80% in Q3. CBA has two contract arrangements: one with Goose Island and another with BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse (per TTB registrations). 55k-60k barrels of contract production will account for around 8-9% of total production this year, helping that along.

6. CBA is hinting that depletions will be weak in Q4. Depletions are currently up 7.3% YTD and CBA is setting a full-year depletions projection of 5.5% to 6.0%. On the other hand, CBA is predicting a big year in 2012 with depletions falling in the ballpark of a 10% increase.

7. Spending in Sales, General & Admin (SG&A) are up 40%. Heavy spending in this area started in Q4 of last year with the acquisition of Kona.

8. Per the financial statements, “In conjunction with our acquisition of Kona, sale of FSB, and rebranding efforts, we are aggressively targeting growth through national retail sales and eastern U.S. expansion.” Is this all Kona expansion or Widmer Brothers, too? What eastern markets?

9. On that note, ~80% of total shipments flow through the AB distributor agreement. I’m assuming that 100% of what flows through the network is under that agreement.

10. The mix shift from draft to bottles increased 410 basis points (or 4.1%). I wonder how much of larger craft segment pricing growth is attributable to this shift?