A sluggish US spirits market, Gen Z cutting back on drinking and concerns over the impact of weight-loss drugs on alcohol consumption have left shares in Jack Daniel’s distiller Brown-Forman (BF.B:NYSE) down 45% over one year.

Throw tariff worries and the US surgeon-general’s Vivek Murthy’s call (3 January) for more prominent cancer warning labels on alcoholic drinks into the mix, and it’s no wonder sentiment towards this dividend aristocrat, which has increased its payout for more than four decades, is depressed.

Brown-Forman previously forecast a return to organic sales and profit growth for the year to April 2025 with performance to accelerate through the second half of the year.

Therefore, investors will be looking for signs of organic growth improvement when the Louisville-based group serves up third quarter earnings (5 March), with Wall Street calling for earnings of 55 cents on revenue of $1.09 billion.

On 14 January, the $15.2 billion cap, whose other brands include Woodford Reserve, Diplomatico Rum and Fords Gin, announced a series of strategic initiatives to position the company for growth. These included restructuring the executive leadership team, a significant reduction in its global workforce and the closure of its Louisville-based barrel-making operation.

This followed mixed second-quarter results (5 December 2024) which revealed a 1% net sales decrease to $1.1 billion, although organic sales edged up 3% and Brown-Forman reiterated full-year 2025 guidance for organic sales growth in the 2% to 4% range. 

US UPDATES OVER THE NEXT 7 DAYS

QUARTERLY RESULTS

4 March: Crowdstrike Holdings, AutoZone, Ross Stores, Best Buy

5 March: Marvell, Zscaler, Brown Forman, Campbell Soup

6 March: Broadcom, Costco, Kroger, Hewlett Packard, Cooper

‹ Previous2025-02-27Next ›