Carol Hodes prizes her Anheuser-Busch stock certificates — collected by her father, who spent 35 years with the St. Louis brewer — as if they were sacred family heirlooms.

She sees them as a legacy passed on to her and her two sisters by her dad, Raymond E. Krings, who retired from Anheuser-Busch in 1969 as Budweiser's advertising manager and died later that year.

Now what's left of her family's connection to the brewer lies in a bank deposit box.

Though Belgian brewer InBev wants to acquire Anheuser-Busch at $65 a share, Hodes isn't ready to give up the stock.

"Emotionally, I just hate to have to sell it," said Hodes, 69, of St. Louis Hills, who inherited the stock with her two sisters. "We intend to pass (the stock) along to our children, assuming we have it to pass it along. But it's not up to us now."

Anheuser-Busch's largest owners are investment firms, mutual funds, asset managers and pension funds. But many are individual shareholders who invested their money to support a local company or build a nest egg, or who inherited the ownership, as Hodes did.

Many investors will be looking to get the best return on their Anheuser-Busch shares, regardless of the outcome of InBev's takeover bid. Others, however, are torn between numbers and emotions.

A windfall might result if Anheuser-Busch is sold, but for Hodes, the value of her stock "has nothing to do with the price of the shares."

"I feel as if I'm honoring my father's legacy," said Hodes, who declined to say how many shares she owned. "For me to sell this stuff ... I wouldn't choose to do it."

It's no surprise that long-term stockholders put sentimental value on their shares. Local companies that develop strong relationships with their communities and stay in the area for years, such as Anheuser-Busch, create emotional attachments for their investors, said John Nofsinger, an associate professor of finance at Washington State University who studies investor psychology.

"People like to invest in what they're familiar with," so a portfolio often includes companies from an investor's hometown and national companies that make recognizable brands, Nofsinger said. "We tend to think those companies are better companies. We tend to think they're going to earn us a higher return."

A MIGHTY WINDFALL?

Anheuser-Busch stock began being traded in 1933 in the over-the-counter market, where brokers buy and sell among themselves rather than through a stock exchange. The company first was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on April 18, 1980, making it more widely accessible to individual investors.

That year, Sean Gorham bought his first piece of a public company: a $500 investment in Anheuser-Busch, even though he had no connection to the brewer or its St. Louis roots. He's reinvested the dividends, or the cash payout shareholders receive, over the years.

"I've always admired how well the company is run. They exude a very clean image and a very American image," said Gorham, 48, an insurance agent who lives in York, Maine, about an hour northeast of Anheuser-Busch's Merrimack, N.H., brewery. "It's been one of the best investments I've had. ... The dividend I get every year is more than what I originally paid for" the stock.

In the past 28 years, Anheuser-Busch's stock has split four times. So one share bought in 1980 is now 24 shares.

If InBev's offer of $65 a share succeeds, Gorham would receive more than $58,000 and said he would invest the cash in another company. But he dismissed the offer as "way undervalued."

Gorham's loyalty to his Bud stock is steeped in nostalgia for a company that supports local communities, but he said it was also based on the good investment returns he has received. To him, an InBev deal would mean losing future dividends, or payouts that stockholders receive every three months.

"Sixty-five dollars, to many I'm sure, is going to be attractive, but after taxes and loss of revenue," it's not going to be worth it, he said.

Gorham said Anheuser-Busch was worth double what InBev was offering.

Bret De Rousse has owned stock for about the same time, and he believes the company's value is some price between InBev's $65-a-share proposal and $75 per share.

"If someone wants to buy (your company), they're going to offer you as little as possible," so InBev made an offer that's acceptable but low, said De Rousse, 56, who lives on the Hill and works as a project manager for a general contractor. He and his wife own about a thousand shares.

Investors who are emotionally attached to a company often add a sentimental premium to the stock price, said Nofsinger, who has written books about investor behavior.

"That's why it's so hard for them to let (the stock) go at any price," he said.

'INVESTING WITH YOUR MIND'

But many investors seem able to cut through sentiment.

William Conway, owner and president of William J. Conway & Co. brokerage firm in Brentwood, said that Anheuser-Busch's stock price had been flat for years and that his clients who owned Anheuser-Busch stock believed a deal with InBev would happen.

"Our individuals actually feel ($65 a share) is a very generous offer," said Conway, who wouldn't say how many Anheuser-Busch shareholders he had as clients.

Other shareholders, such as Scott Simon, 51, noticed warning signs in Anheuser-Busch's steady stock prices and missed opportunities to buy smaller companies. Simon, of Creve Coeur, sold most of his shares in 2003 after owning stock in the company for about nine years.

Although InBev's recent offer was 18 percent more than Anheuser-Busch's record price in 2002, Simon said he didn't regret selling his part of the brewing company.

"You can't make money investing with your heart," said Simon, a traffic report editor. "You have to make money investing with your mind."

Matthew Hathaway of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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