Beer and tobacco stocks have long been considered “safe” plays for investors in down markets but even the big players are pulling in their horns. South Africans with some institutional memory will talk of the glory days of SAB / SAB Miller as a staple in their investment portfolios.

Times however have changed and SABMiller was taking out by ABInbev and dividends are now under pressure.

Unfortunately, scooping up SABMiller and others left the company with $109 billion in net debt — a fairly heavy bar tab — and as MarketFoolery host Chris Hill and MFAM Funds’ Bill Barker explain in this segment of the podcast, management was a bit too optimistic in their forecasts about how they’d be paying it down