Anheuser-Busch CEO August Busch IV has been insisting for months that his company is not up for sale. This Bud is not for you, he warned acquirers. The market’s reaction: clapping its hands over its ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.”

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Budweiser options have been trading at healthy and steadily rising volumes, MarketBeat chieftain David Gaffen pointed out to us this morning: “Demand for [Anheuser-Busch] call options has surged,’” noted analysts at Credit Suisse. The heaviest activity is in the June call options (an option to buy a stock at a later date at a given price) at the $55 strike price.

That indicates that some investors are betting that Anheuser-Busch is a prime candidate for a takeover, and probably in the next two months.

Some deal matchmakers think the AmBev-Interbrew combination of InBev and Anheuser-Busch would get along great. David Silver of Wall Street Strategies wrote today, “We continue to see little growth opportunity for AB barring a combination with AmBev.”

The tale of the tape shows that Anheuser-Busch’s key stats are as unappealingly lukewarm as a lager left out in the sun. Sales inched up only 6% to $16.68 billion in 2007. Net income, similarly, dripped up 7% to $1.96 billion last year. Wholesaler inventories of Anheuser-Busch products are not moving.

One out of every two light beers sold in the U.S. is a Bud Light. That happy incumbency may not last for long. Anheuser-Busch’s international revenues rose 20% last year, but its domestic inventories barely budged. And SAB Miller and Coors plan to combine their U.S. operations to create a formidable competitor to Anheuser-Busch.

Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch has little exposure to the faster growing segments of the beverage industry. It has struggled to build presence in the faster growing “craft” beer market, leading Credit Suisse to conclude the company should just accept its fate as a purveyor of mainstream brews.

That is, if the company can also accept its fate in being disbelieved by the markets when it insists it won’t sell.

Deal Journal bonus: Readers, has Anheuser-Busch lost its touch with potent potables, or do you still like their brands? This is what the company makes: Budweiser, Bud Light, Budweiser Select, Michelob, Busch, Natural Light, King Cobra, Hurricane Malt Liquor, and Rolling Rock. The company also imports and distributes several foreign brands, including Kirin, Tsingtao, Grolsch, Stella Artois, Beck’s and Bass.