Brown-Forman: No Big Surprises

Research evidence excerpt

Brown-Forman: No Big Surprises

Barclays | Brown-Forman

No Big Surprises

What to do with the stock: Yesterday’s results struck us as a relatively straightforward print,

inclusive of a newly issued FY27 outlook that is generally in-line with expectations. Recall, the

company already did the heavy lifting to recalibrate cost expectations for FY27 at the F3Q print,

so we think the Street went into yesterday’s results with better visibility than is often the case.

Earnings days can often times prove tumultuous for BFB, but yesterday’s update was instead

largely clear, with messaging that struck us as largely consistent as the last several quarters

with respect to the industry and consumer backdrop.

Unpacking the F4Q gross margin beat and updating our FY28 GM outlook. While the near-

term surprised to the upside, we take an incrementally cautious view towards the multi-year

pressure that’s to come. Starting with F4Q, we were struck by the nearly +525 bps of gross

margin expansion YoY, with both price/mix and cost meaningfully inflecting to positive territory

in the quarter. Our understanding is that the former was driven by specialty innovation at super

premium price points launched during the quarter (vs. limited edition releases that skewed

more towards F1H in the prior year). Meanwhile, the input cost line benefitted from higher cost

comps in F4Q25 as well as favorable cost changes that flowed through LIFO reporting.

We’ve made a few tweaks to our outlook for FY27 gross margins, where the key driver remains

an estimated ~150 bps of organic compression stemming from higher cost inventory. However,

we have an incremental ~10 bps of cost pressure now embedded to better capture the impact of

higher energy costs on transportation and glass for the company.