Early Look at June Q Earnings – 21 Previews Across HPC, Beverages, and Packaged Food

Research evidence excerpt

Early Look at June Q Earnings – 21 Previews Across HPC, Beverages, and Packaged Food

HSY (soft NA Confection consumption).

As a reminder, our highest conviction ideas for 2026 are CHD, PG, MNST, EL, KO, KMB, and PRMB.

Key Themes - We expect several themes to dominate this upcoming earnings season:

Expect June Quarter to Be Mixed…with Pockets of Topline Softness: We expect most Q2 earnings prints

to be solid, but anticipate pockets of topline softness driven by consumer pressures. On the bottom

line, we expect most companies to hold up, though margin pressure is building as cost headwinds ramp

on the P&L — with productivity remaining the primary offset at this point. At industry conferences

during the quarter, the dominant tone from management teams on the consumer was cautious to

incrementally worse — characterized by a clear K-shaped divergence, with the low- and middle-

income consumer under meaningful pressure from gas prices above $4/gallon during the quarter, SNAP

restrictions now active in eleven states, persistent food inflation, and record-low consumer sentiment.

Companies largely acknowledged these headwinds candidly: CL flagged a notable North America

category slowdown beginning in early May, MDLZ stated that US consumer economic anxiety is expected

to "deteriorate further," and STZ/SAM pointed to a tough Memorial Day weekend and softening tracked

channel volumes driven largely by macro pressures. While the broad message from management teams

was one of managed resilience — leaning on cost programs, value-skewed portfolios, and innovation to

characterize headwinds as "manageable" — the underlying data (decelerating category growth, volume

pressure, and rising promotional intensity) consistently pointed to an incrementally more difficult