There’s more news in the Budvar privatization saga: the Czech government’s tender for an adviser is now complete, with the contract going to the Prague law firm of Kříž & Bělina, as the Prague Daily Monitor reported yesterday, via Hospodářské noviny (subscription required). Kříž & Bělina will help the Czech government take the initial step toward privatization, that of turning Budvar into a joint-stock company.

Though the path forward remains unclear, we now know four of the parties stumbling down it: the Czech government, Budvar, Kříž & Bělina and, inevitably, Anheuser-Busch, described in the article as “considered the most serious bidder in the privatisation.” The article also takes a stab in the dark at Budvar’s worth, suggesting 1 billion dollars or perhaps even 1 billion euros.

Why so much? Well, it’s not what Budvar sells, currently just 1.25 million hectoliters of high-grade lager per year. It’s what Budvar’s regional rights to the name Budweiser might keep Anheuser-Busch from selling.

Some back-of-the-beermat math: if you figured, very optimistically, that Budvar could generate a profit of $.30 on every half-liter — which only wholesale for about $1 on the local market anyway — that would only come out to about $37 million annually. The latest figure I could find was for 2006, when Budvar earned 267.2 million Kč, or about $15.7 million at today’s rates. There are many ways to calculate the sale price of a company, but as far as I know, very few of them suggest multiplying a company’s annual take by a hundred.

However, once you factor in all of those countries around the world where Budvar has the right to use the name Budweiser, then throw in all the money that Anheuser-Busch has spent on billable hours, you end up with a very large number. I personally can’t count that high, so I’ll shrug and say $1 billion. Sure.

More details from the report:

• Kříž & Bělina are getting 12.5 million CZK (about $777,000) for the job of helping convert Budvar to a joint-stock company.

• Another tender, later, will choose another adviser for the actual sale of Budvar.

• Prague Airport and Czech Airlines should both be privatized before Budvar.

• Again, Czech Agriculture Minister Petr Gandalovič says that Budvar should not be privatized before the end of 2008.

People who know people who know things have just passed the message that the price for Budvar won’t have anything to do with Budvar’s annual sales, cash flow or profits, and it won’t have anything to do with the brewery itself in České Budějovice. It is only about the brand — period. I’ve been told that I should make it clear that the brand in question is, of course, Budweiser.

Sometimes when anonymous tips come through they sign off in ominous ways. Like this: “The Budvar trademark isn’t worth jack.”

There’s a new twist in the Budvar sale story. As most readers of these pages are probably already well aware, Budějovický Budvar (pictured above) is the last brewery to remain Czech national property and its privatization seems to be proposed about every two years. Due to Budvar’s claim to the name Budweiser and its numerous ongoing legal battles with Anheuser-Busch on the issue, many argue that Budvar should not ever be privatized, lest it be bought by the maker of American Budweiser and shuttered — or worse, forced to brew bad beer.

Last month I mentioned that the current Czech government has announced a tender for its legal advisor in the sale of Budvar — a first step toward privatization. Yesterday, Forbes reported that the proposed sale of Budvar will not take place before the current government leaves office in 2010, contrary to what was suggested in December.

In this story, Czech Agriculture Minister Petr Gandalovič is quoted as saying that the sale won’t take place in 2008, but it’s “still a question” if the sale will take place in 2009, the first half of which is scheduled for the Czech Republic to hold the EU presidency. (2010, of course, will be dedicated to the national elections. Budvar might or might not be the country’s favorite beer, but many, many people here do take pride in the brewery and its history, and selling off a prized possession could end up being a very unpopular issue with voters. There’s a reason governments tend to do things like this right after they get into office, not right before elections.)

However, follow-up reports in today’s Lidové noviny and Hospodářské noviny newspapers confirm that the sale will be left to the next government. As Prague Daily Monitor’s English-language Czech press review explains, Gandalovič said his ministry plans only to transform the company into a joint-stock company in preparation of future privatization. For now, the joint-stock conversion is no big deal, as the Czech government will still own 100% of the stock. What happens after the elections of 2010 is up in the air.

Incidentally, Budvar is currently doing very well indeed: Budvar’s production climbed 8.7% in 2007, according to CNNMoney. Domestic sales climbed by 11% and exports rose 5.8% to 587,000 hectoliters, the highest export figure yet, aided in part due to an agreement last year by which, ironically, Anheuser-Busch began to distribute Budvar in the United States, though only under Budvar’s alternate name of Czechvar.

Yeah right, sell it off. If Budvar would only deign to add a polotmavý and a wheat beer to its excellent lineup, it just might take over the world.