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- Kobe Bryant's estate could receive $400 million from Coca-Cola's purchase of BodyArmor.
- The late basketball star invested $6 million in the maker of sports drinks in 2014.
- Bryant earned a total of $328 million during his 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Kobe Bryant's estate is set to collect $400 million from Coca-Cola's acquisition of BodyArmor, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.
Coca-Cola bought a 15% stake in BodyArmor in 2018. It will shell out $5.6 billion in cash for the remaining 85% of the sports-drinks startup, the beverage group announced on Monday.
Bryant, a basketball superstar who died in a helicopter crash early last year, invested $6 million in BodyArmor in 2014. That stake has skyrocketed in value by about 67-fold since then, The Journal said.
Notably, Bryant earned a total of $328 million during his 20-year NBA career. The family of the late Los Angeles Lakers player is poised to receive more than that from BodyArmor, the first investment the athlete made after launching his business career in 2014.
Bryant explained his interest in BodyArmor in an ESPN interview in 2014. The shooting guard said the sports-drink category had been dormant for years, and people were drinking Gatorade out of habit and because of a lack of alternatives.
"There hasn't been a product that has come to them and said, 'There's another way to upgrade your sports drink,'" he said.
BodyArmor's $5.6 billion price tag makes it Coca-Cola biggest single-brand purchase ever. It's unclear whether Coca-Cola ran the transaction past its largest shareholder, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
The famed investor and legendary dealmaker's company has racked up a $21 billion unrealized gain on Coca-Cola, based on its latest annual report and the drinks group's stock price. Coca-Cola is the fourth-biggest holding in Berkshire's US stock portfolio after Apple, Bank of America, and American Express.