Pepsi to acquire energy drink giant Rockstar for $3.8B

March 11 (UPI) -- PepsiCo announced Wednesday it will pay more than $3.8 billion to acquire Rockstar Energy Beverages.

The buy moves Pepsi further into the energy drink market. It already owns brands like Mountain Dew's Kickstart, GameFuel, and AMP.

Energy drink sales in the United States grew by almost 30 percent between 2013 and 2018, and was estimated at $13.5 billion last year.

"This highly strategic acquisition will enable us to ... accelerate Rockstar's performance and unlock our ability to expand in the category," PepsiCo Chairman Ramon Laguarta said in a statement.

The company already has a distribution agreement with Rockstar in North America.

"We have had a strong partnership with PepsiCo for the last decade, and I'm happy to take that to the next level," Rockstar founder Russ Weiner said."PepsiCo shares our competitive spirit."

Pepsi unveiled a coffee-cola hybrid in December called Pepsi Cafe. Rival Coca-Cola, which paid more than $2 billion for energy drink giant Monster in 2014, launched its own branded energy drink in January.