You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: This is Jim Koch, Founder and Chairman and I'm pleased to kick off the 2021 first quarter earnings call for the Boston Beer Company.
Joining the call from Boston Beer are Dave Burwick, our CEO; and Frank Smalla, our CFO.
As the world slowly reopens and the COVID pandemic winds down, our primary focus continues to be on operating our breweries and our business safely and working hard to continue to innovate and meet customer demand.
Before I turn to our key first quarter operational achievements, I want to note that working with the Greg Hill Foundation, our Sam Adams Restaurant Strong Fund has raised over $7.5 million dollars thus far to support bar and restaurant workers who were experiencing hardships in wake over COVID-19 and it committed to continue to distribute 100% of its proceeds through grants to bars and restaurant workers across the country.
The company's depletions increased 48% in the first quarter and we achieved double-digit volume growth for the 12th consecutive quarter.
This just would not have been possible without the outstanding coworkers in our breweries and our sales force and the frontline workers and our distributors and retailers.
Early in 2021, we launched Truly ice tea Hard Seltzer and during the second quarter, we plan to launch Truly Punch hard seltzer, both buying refreshing hard seltzer and bold flavors, and we believe these new launches continue to demonstrate our innovation leadership within the hard seltzer category.
We are also making steady progress in improving our brand support and messaging for a beer and cider brands to position them for long-term sustainable growth in the face of the difficult on-premise environment.
We're optimistic that our on-premise business will significantly improve in 2021 as restrictions are lifted.
We're excited about the response, the introduction in early '21 of several new Sam Adams beer including Sam Adams Wicked Hazy, Sam Adams Wicked Easy and Samuel Adams Just The Haze, our first non-alcoholic beer as well as the positive reaction to our Samuel Adams Your Cousin from Boston advertising campaign.
We are confident in our ability to innovate and build strong brands that complement our current portfolio and help support our mission of long-term profitable growth.
I will now pass over to Dave for a more detailed overview of our business.
Before I review our business results, I'll start with our disclaimer.
Okay, now let me share a deeper look at our business performance.
We are happy with our strong start to the year and our record first quarter shipment and depletion volumes.
Our depletions growth in the first quarter was the result of increases in our Truly Hard Seltzer and Twisted Tea brands, partly offset by decreases in our Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head brands.
The recently launched Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer has accelerated Truly brand growth, which has more than doubled since last year.
In the first quarter in measured off-premise channels, the Truly brand outgrew the hard seltzer category by nearly 2 times or 50 percentage points, resulting in a share increase of 6.5 percentage points.
The Truly brand has now reached a market share of over 28%, accounting for approximately 40% of all growth cases in the hard seltzer category year-to-date, which is two times greater than the next largest growth brand.
Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer has achieved a 4.3 percentage point market share in measured off-premise channels, well ahead of all other new entrants to the entire beer category.
We expect the launch of Truly Punch Hard Seltzer during the second quarter to continue this positive momentum.
Brand, evolve our brand communications, and further improve our position in the hard seltzer category as more competitors enter.
Truly Tea continues to generate double-digit volume growth rates that is significantly above full year 2020 trends.
In the first quarter in measured off-premise channels, case growth in Twisted Tea brand products was almost three times higher than its closest competitor and we believe, Twisted Tea is on its way to becoming the number one flavored malt beverage by year's end.
We see significant distribution and volume growth opportunities for our Truly and Twisted Tea brands and are looking to continue to expand distribution of our Dogfish Head brand.
Pursuing these opportunities in 2021 remains a top priority.
Our Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head brands were hit the most by COVID-19 and the related on-premise closures.
We continue to work hard on returning these brands to growth and are optimistic that they will return to growth in 2021.
Overall, given the trends for the first three months and our current view of the remainder of the year, we've adjusted our expectations for higher 2021 full year volume and earnings growth, which is primarily driven by the strong performance of our Truly and Twisted Tea brands.
During the quarter, we have taken various steps to ensure we have capacity to support this accelerating growth.
We continue to work hard on our comprehensive program to transform our supply chain with the goal of making our integrated supply chain more efficient, reduce costs, increase our flexibility to better react to mix changes, and allow us to scale up more efficiently.
We expect to complete this transformation over the next two to three years.
We will continue to invest in capacity to take advantage of the fast-growing hard seltzer category and deliver against the increased demand through a combination of internal capacity increases and higher usage of third-party breweries, although meeting these higher volumes through increased usage of third-party breweries has a negative impact on our gross margins.
Margin improvements in 2021, our gross margins and gross margin expectations will continue to be impacted negatively until our volume growth stabilizes.
Brand portfolio and innovations, and we remain prepared to forsake short-term earnings as we invest to sustain long-term profitable growth, in line with the opportunities that we see.
Based on information in-hand, year-to-date depletions reported in the company through the 15 weeks ended April 10, 2021, our estimated depletion is approximately 49% from the comparable weeks in 2020.
Now Frank's going to provide the financial details.
For the first quarter, we reported net income of $65.6 million or $5.26 per diluted share, an increase of $3.77 per diluted share in the first quarter of last year.
This increase was primarily due to increased net revenue, partially offset by higher operating expenses.
In the first quarter of 2020, we recorded pre-tax COVID-19-related reduction in net revenue and increases in costs, that total $10 million or $0.60 per diluted share.
In 2021 going forward, we've chosen not to report COVID-19-related direct costs separately as they have used to be a normal part of operation.
For the first quarter of 2021, shipment volume was approximately 2.3 million barrels, a 60.1% increase from the first quarter of 2020.
Shipment volume for the quarter was significantly higher than depletions volume and resulted in significantly higher distributor inventory as of March 27, 2021 when compared to March, 28 2020.
We believe distributor inventory as of March 27, 2021 average approximately seven weeks on-hand, and was an appropriate level based on the supply chain capacity constraints and inventory requirements to support the forecasted growth of our Truly and Twisted brands over the summer.
We expect wholesaler inventory levels in terms of weeks on-hand to be between three and seven weeks for the remainder of the year.
Our first quarter 2021 gross margin of 45.8% increase in the 44.8% margin realized in the first quarter of last year.
The increase was primarily a result of price increases, the absence of the COVID-19-related direct cost incurred in the first quarter of 2020 and cost saving initiatives company-owned breweries, partially offset by higher processing costs due to increased production at third-party breweries.
First quarter advertising, promotional and selling expenses increased by $43 million in the first quarter of 2020, primarily due to increased brand investment of $21 million, mainly driven by higher media and production costs.
Higher salaries and benefits costs and increased freight to distributors of $21.9 million due to a higher volume and rate.
General and administrative expenses increased by $4.9 million from the first quarter of 2020, primarily due to increases in salaries and benefits costs.
During the first quarter, we recorded an income tax expense of $11 million, which consists of income tax expenses of $19.6 million partially offset by $8.6 million fixed benefit related to stock option exercises in accordance with ASU 2016-09.
The effective tax rate for the first quarter, excluding the impact of ASU 2016-09 increased to 25.6% and was 23.6% in the first quarter of 2020.
Based on information of which we are currently aware, we are targeting 2021 earnings per diluted share of between $22 and $26, an increase from the previously communicated range of between $20 and $24, excluding the impact of ASU 2016-09, but actual results could vary significantly from our target.
We are currently planning increases in shipments and depletions of between 40% and 50%, an increase from the previously communicated range of between 35% and 45%.
We're targeting national price increases per barrel of between 1% and 3%, an increase from the previously communicated range of between 1% and 2%.
Full year 2021 gross margins are currently expected to be between 45% and 47%.
We plan increased investments in advertising, promotional and selling expenses of between $130 million to $150 million for the full year 2021, an increase from the previously communicated range of between $120 million and $130 million.
These amounts do not include any increases in freight costs for the shipment of products to our distributors.
We estimate our full year 2021 effective tax rate to be approximately 26.5% excluding the impact of a ASU 2016-09.
We're not able to provide forward guidance on the impact of ASU 2016-09 [Indecipherable] 2021 financial statements and full year effective tax rate as this will mainly depend upon unpredictable future events, including the timing and value realized upon the exercise of stock options versus the fair value with those options were granted.
We're continuing to evaluate 2021capital expenditures and currently estimate investments of between $250 million and $350 million, a decrease in our previously communicated range of between $300 million and $400 million.
The capital will be mostly spent on continued investments in capacity to supply chain efficiency improvement.
We expect that our March 27, 2021 cash balance of $144.7 million together with the future operating cash flows and the $150 million remaining under the line of credit, will be sufficient to fund future cash requirements.
Before we go there, similar to the last couple of calls, Dave will be the MC on our side and coordinate the answers when needed since we are in different locations.

user
compname reports q1 earnings per share $5.26.
q1 earnings per share $5.26.

assistant