UBS US Spirits tracker "May Update: industry deteriorates; Diageo price ..."

Research evidence excerpt

UBS US Spirits tracker "May Update: industry deteriorates; Diageo price ..."

Global Research

26 June 2026ab

UBS US Spirits tracker Equities

GlobalMay Update: industry deteriorates; Diageo price

repositioning expands beyond Casamigos Beverage

Sanjeet Aujla

Analyst

sanjeet.aujla@ubs.com

UBS US Spirits tracker update +44-20-7567 4529

In this report, we update our UBS US Spirits tracker for May, which integrates volume Peter Grom

and value sell-out data from NielsenIQ (including the liquor channel) and NABCA (17 Analyst

control states). We estimate our tracker now covers c70% of US Spirits industry $ value. peter.grom@ubs.com

We believe this provides investors with the most comprehensive US Spirits industry +1-212-713 3482

dataset on the sell-side (available upon request). Arnaud Autier

Associate Analyst

US Spirits category May trends in line with April ; industry remains weak arnaud.autier@ubs.com

We present data for May, which shows Spirits industry value excl RTDs -5.5%, +44-20-7901 6849

deteriorating vs April -4.7% showing Q2TD -5.1% vs Q1 -4.5%. May volumes are more

negative -4.5% while price/mix -1.1% in line vs April. per NielsenIQ ex RTDs, May

shows value trends were -5.7%, which compares to -5.4% per NABCA ex RTDs selling

day adjusted. Overall Q2TD is sequentially worse vs Q1 in Nielsen (-5.9% vs -5.3%) and

NABCA -3.7%. We remain cautious as the category appears to be losing share of total

beverage alcohol, which is co-inciding with the acceleration of higher ABV Spirits

based RTDs.

Pricing and downtrading - price/mix still negative in May: Industry price/mix ex-

RTDs remains weak across almost all categories showing -1.1% in May, in line with April

but still weak. Headline pricing is still negative and promotional activity steps up, with