WEN Reddit Squeeze (+25% Pre Mkt), CCL/Cruise Recovery, NKE CFO Change, Equity Strategy Mid-Year Outlook: US Consumer Sector Specialist Commentary

Research evidence excerpt

WEN Reddit Squeeze (+25% Pre Mkt), CCL/Cruise Recovery, NKE CFO Change, Equity Strategy Mid-Year Outlook: US Consumer Sector Specialist Commentary

Briggs Barton - Specialist Sales - US Consumer AC North America Specialist Sales J P M O R G A Nbriggs.barton@jpmorgan.com

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 24 June 2026

BF/B Takeaways From Roundtable with New CFO

Drew Levine attended a sell-side roundtable discussion with recently appointed BF CFO Jim Peters in New York. The

underlying message was largely consistent with recent commentary from F4Q26 earnings results ~three weeks ago — the

operating environment in Developed Markets remains challenging with no expectation for material improvement/inflection in the

near-term, so BF will continue to invest more resources into areas that are growing, such as Emerging Markets and innovation.

CFO Peters also sounded focused on driving cost efficiencies and instilling a culture of continuous improvement (probably less of

a focus historically when industry was growing and company was generating >60% GM) with a goal of driving margin

improvement subsequent to high-cost inventory working through the P&L, but also acknowledged the pricing environment in the

U.S. may not be supportive in the near-term.

With CFO Peters in the seat for less than three months so far and coming into the spirits industry from consumer appliances, we

suspect he is still in the process of fully formulating his views and priorities as CFO. Net-net, we came away from the meeting

continuing to view the fundamental set-up as challenging (e.g., cost/competitive pressures amid weak consumption

environment) with a number of the talked-to strategic drivers/goals as either longer-term in nature (e.g., additional