Transport - Australia: Brambles Monthly Monitor Edition #05: Flat April

Research evidence excerpt

Transport - Australia: Brambles Monthly Monitor Edition #05: Flat April

Tracking grocery spend & BXB pallet sales

Card spend on groceries: Good indicator of pallet revenues

We leverage BAC US aggregated credit and debit card data to analyse spending in the

grocery category in the US. Our analysis indicates that there is a high correlation

between BXB’s US pallets revenues and BAC US card data on grocery spending. For the

period between 1H15 and 2H20, the correlation between the YoY changes for BAC US

card spending on the category versus US pallets revenue YoY change for BXB (in

constant currency) was 60%. In fairness, the correlation is lower (at c. 29%) if we include

the entire time period between 1H15 through 2H25. We think the correlation is

impacted by Covid-related supply chain bottlenecks and inventory fluctuations between

1H21-1H22. That said, the correlation for the time period post covid (i.e 2H22-2H25) is

fairly high at 80%, albeit we note the relatively fewer datapoints during this period.

Please see the following link for methodology, limitations, disclaimers and additional

commentary on broader retail trends from the BofA Global Research US Economics team

April grocery spending: -0.1% YoY

For the month of April, spending on grocery declined 0.1% YoY and 2.6% MoM per BAC

US aggregated credit and debit card data. For context, Feb/Mar card spend was

+0.3%/-0.5% yoy. 1Q26 spend was up 0.4% (vs -0.2% in 4Q25). CY26 spending was up

0.3% YoY vs. a -0.7% YoY decline in CY25.

Exhibit 1: BAC US card spending data for grocery (YoY) vs BXB US pallets revenue (YoY)

Between 1H15- 2H20/2H22- 2H25 the correlation between BAC US card spending on the category (YoY) & BXB US pallets revenue (yoy) was 60%/80% respectively

30.0%