Ten headlines. One story.
The K-split is now in the boardroom.
In the past two weeks, Ten stories crossed my feed. None of them look connected at first glance. One is about a beauty brand moving into haircare. Another is about a Belgian brewer appointing a new chairman. A third is about coffee prices.
Read them separately and you get industry noise. Read them together and you get a structural signal: the K-shaped split that has been reshaping the consumer market for three years has moved upstairs. It is now visible in corporate portfolios, boardroom appointments, ownership structures, and M&A positioning.
Let me walk through what I saw.
The financial discipline cluster
Start with AB InBev. The company has appointed Dirk Van de Put as its new chairman. Van de Put is currently chairman and chief executive officer of Mondelēz International , and the appointment signals something clear: AB InBev wants someone who has managed a complex branded portfolio through margin pressure and mixed volume signals. The “strong comeback” narrative AB InBev has been building since 2021 is real in terms of EBITDA and free cash flow. Volume is a different conversation.
At Mondelez, Amit Banati has been named chief financial officer, effective 1 July 2026. Banati joins from Kenvue , previously Kellanova CFO. The profile is clear: financial discipline, portfolio rationalisation experience, cost structure management. The timing, with Van de Put simultaneously stepping into the AB InBev chairmanship, raises a straightforward question about leadership direction at Mondelez. The CFO appointment looks like preparation, not routine succession planning.
The J.M. Smucker Co. is guiding FY2027 net sales down 3 to 4%. The target is approximately 3x net leverage by year-end. Smucker is not in growth mode. It is in debt management mode.
Kraft Heinz gained over 8% across six consecutive sessions, then fell 1.66% in a single day after Bernstein downgraded the stock to Underperform. The analyst note cited SNAP benefit reductions, GLP-1 drug penetration, the MAHA food agenda, strained consumer spending, and oil price pressure on input costs as structural headwinds. The stock is essentially flat year-to-date against an S&P 500 up approximately 8.5%. A for valuation. D minus for growth trajectory. The market is not yet convinced by the green shoots narrative, and the Bernstein note explains why.
The same day, Kraft Heinz announced a structural reorganisation effective 1 July. The company is consolidating from four operating units to three regions: North America, Europe and Pacific Developed Markets, and a new combined Emerging Markets region. Procurement and Supply Chain merge under a single global function. CEO Steve Cahillane describes the goal as ‘volume-led growth.’ That is the right ambition. The question the Bernstein downgrade raises is whether a regional reshuffle addresses the actual problem, which is not organisational structure but portfolio relevance against a consumer that has moved.
Four companies. Four different situations. The common thread: financial discipline has stopped being a differentiator. It is the minimum requirement for a licence to operate.
Escaping the Middle
Not everyone is navigating the same terrain.
Coty presented at an investor conference this month and used the phrase “K-shaped economy” directly to explain their own strategy. No analyst framework needed. The company did it themselves. Their Prestige division, home to Burberry, Hugo Boss, Chloe, and Marc Jacobs fragrances, represents two-thirds of sales and over 90% of profit. Their Consumer Beauty division, which includes CoverGirl, Rimmel, and Sally Hansen, is under strategic review. Coty’s new Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Markus Strobel has introduced a programme called Coty.Curated: sharper investment concentration, smaller launches cut, complexity reduction built into the operating model. They have been explicit about exiting the Gucci licence. The barbell portfolio is not a framework Coty is considering. It is a framework they are living.
The Coca-Cola Company has launched BodyArmor Fit, the brand’s first sparkling sports drink: zero sugar, electrolytes, caffeine, functional positioning, slim can format. Coca-Cola paid 5.6 billion US dollars for BodyArmor in 2021. BodyArmor Fit is the company making that bet earn its return by extending into white space between flat sports drinks and energy drinks. This is the Total Beverage Company strategy in action. Functional hydration, better-for-you positioning, everyday use case. Not the middle of the shelf. The upper arm of the barbell.
E.L.F. BEAUTY is moving into haircare. The brand has delivered 25% sales growth by building demand at accessible price points and using TikTok Shop, Roblox, and Target as its distribution channels. The haircare launch follows the same sequencing: validate consumer demand first (77% of customers had already asked for it, 96% positive reviews on the limited edition), then expand on the back of demonstrated pull. The US haircare market is projected to reach approximately 40 billion dollars by the mid-2030s. e.l.f. is not chasing that market. It is entering the segment of that market where its existing consumer already shops, on the channels that consumer already uses. Distribution sequencing done correctly.
L’Oréal has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Innovist, an Indian personal care company founded in 2019. Innovist operates two brands, Bare Anatomy and Chemist at Play, selling science-led skincare and haircare through direct-to-consumer channels, quick-commerce platforms, and offline retail across India. The acquisition sits in L’Oréal’s Consumer Products Division. The logic is the same as e.l.f., but at the geographic level: India’s beauty market is growing fast and L’Oréal’s existing route to market there was not built for the digital-first, quick-commerce consumer. Rather than constructing that infrastructure internally, they are acquiring it. Distribution sequencing applied to geography.
Four different companies. Four executions of the same underlying logic: choose your end of the market, build from there, and do not compete for the middle.
The Structural Reshaping Signal
The biggest structural signal of the fortnight sits in beverages.
JAB HOLDING COMPANY LLC has sold its remaining 4.3% stake in Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. , completing a full exit from a position that once stood at approximately 87% controlling interest. JAB assembled that position through the 2016 Keurig Green Mountain take-private, the 2018 merger with Dr Pepper Snapple, and a decade of active strategic ownership. The exit is complete.
The JAB exit completes a process KDP set in motion almost a year ago: a structural split into two independent companies. Global Coffee Co will hold the Keurig and JDE Peet’s coffee assets. Beverage Co will hold Dr Pepper, Snapple, 7UP, and the legacy soft drinks portfolio. Target for completion: end of 2026.
Read the JAB exit and the structural split together. JAB accumulated KDP to build a global coffee platform. That mission is now being carved out cleanly as Global Coffee Co. Beverage Co, the soft drink legacy assets, becomes a standalone entity with no anchor owner.
The conventional read is that Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, or Monster will move. That view deserves scrutiny. Coca-Cola faces regulatory complexity in acquiring a second cola brand at scale. PepsiCo has the same constraint. Monster’s interest would be in distribution access, not in owning a broad legacy soft drinks portfolio.
The more interesting acquirer logic sits elsewhere. Beverage Co. is essentially asset-light: strong US brand equity, deep domestic retail relationships, and a distribution model that is almost entirely US-centric. Dr. Pepper is a genuine American icon. Outside the US and the UK, the brand barely registers. That profile, dominant at home and underdeveloped everywhere else, is not primarily interesting to another US-focused soft drink company. It is interesting to a large beer or spirits group that wants to strengthen its US non-alcoholic position and has the international distribution infrastructure that Dr. Pepper currently lacks. The value creation thesis for that buyer is clear: acquire the US market position, then develop the Dr. Pepper franchise internationally through a route to market the brand has never had access to. AB InBev appointing a new chairman with FMCG branded portfolio experience, precisely as KDP splits into acquirable pieces, is a timing worth noting. But my money would be on Carlsberg Group berg or even The HEINEKEN Company , but the latter still has not announced a successor to the CEO departed at the end of May.
On the input cost side: US roasted coffee prices are up 16.1% year-on-year. Instant coffee is up 24.0%. Both categories have risen for five consecutive months. Coffee futures have pulled back 30 to 40% from their 2025 highs as supply improves, with the USDA projecting a record Brazil harvest for 2026 to 2027. Consumer prices will follow, but with a lag. The split of KDP into coffee assets and beverage assets is partly about separating commodity-exposed earnings from branded beverage earnings. Structurally rational.
For the ones obsessed with AI and its current role in FMCG, here is my view on the current level of B/S we are sold. Come and fight with me on Substack!
What the data says
All of this is playing out against a specific consumer context.
In research we have recently published, (available here), we examined the structural conditions facing consumers in the lower arm of the K-shaped economy. Private label now holds approximately 50% unit share in Europe. Branded units are sold on promotion 34% of the time, against 14% for private label. The branded premium is not disappearing. It is being paid selectively and conditionally.
The K-shape also presents differently by market. In the US, the lower-K consumer cohort is expanding. In Europe, the rewiring looks more permanent. In isolated categories, particularly affordable indulgence and functional products, there are selective returns to branded spending. This is why e.l.f. is winning and why BodyArmor Fit is being launched now. Consumers under pressure do not stop spending. They become more deliberate about where they spend.
The question is not whether the K-shaped dynamic is real. Every company presenting at investor conferences this month is confirming it. The question is whether your current growth model is calibrated to where the consumer is now, or where the consumer was three years ago.
When I run a Growth Operating System diagnostic, I look across five dimensions: Brand, Marketing, Route to Market, Commercial, and Financial. The news flow of the last two weeks illustrates what that diagnostic surfaces in practice.
The Brand dimension tests whether your portfolio has genuine permission at the price points it occupies, or whether it is coasting on historical loyalty. Coty’s Prestige division passes that test. Its Consumer Beauty division is under strategic review for exactly that reason. Kraft Heinz is navigating the same question across a much broader portfolio, against a consumer that has structurally changed its behaviour.
The Route to Market dimension asks whether you are in the channels where your target consumer actually buys. e.l.f. has answered that question correctly. TikTok Shop, Roblox, and Target are not three random choices. They are the specific touchpoints where e.l.f.’s existing consumer spends time and money. The haircare launch does not need new infrastructure. It needs the existing consumer relationship extended into an adjacent category.
The Commercial dimension asks whether your portfolio structure matches the market as it is, not the market as it was. The KDP split answers that question at the ownership level. Coffee and legacy soft drinks have different cost exposures, different growth trajectories, and different strategic futures. Separating them is a structural decision, not a financial engineering one.
The Financial dimension is where the Kraft Heinz downgrade and Smucker’s leverage target sit. Both situations share the same diagnostic profile: strong asset base, weak volume trajectory, and investment resources being consumed by the wrong parts of the portfolio. The work in those situations is not finding growth levers in isolation. It is establishing which parts of the portfolio deserve capital and which parts are absorbing it.
The three questions I hear most often in these diagnostic conversations are: why are we growing in value but losing volume; which demand spaces do we have genuine permission to enter; and is a smaller, more focused portfolio actually a more profitable one.
Those are exactly the questions I cover in three one-hour online workshops. Workshop 01 is the Volume-Value Growth Conundrum. Workshop 02 is Demand Spaces. Workshop 03 is Shrinking for Growth. Each session is 149 euros, one hour, and designed for P&L owners who need a working framework, not a theoretical one. Details here
Ten headlines. One story.
The K-split is not a consumer trend any more. It is now a corporate structure. The companies that are performing have chosen a side: premium with pricing power, or accessible with genuine functional value. The ones that are struggling are still searching for the middle.
The middle is not a market position. It is a waiting room.