Tariffs would be a drag, but Guinness boss still needs to find a brew for recovery
There’s no hiding from a 5% fall in operating profit at owner Diageo in the second half of 2024, Trump trade policy or notDonald Trump’s on-off tariffs are at least good for one thing: they provide struggling managements with a handy excuse to ditch their sales forecasts. Diageo, the Guinness, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff combo, was able to cite “the current macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty” – exhibit A being the possible US tariffs on Canada and Mexico – as it dropped its guidance for growth.What that reasonable-sounding explanation misses, however, is that nobody believed Diageo’s old forecasts anyway – and they hadn’t for a long time before Trump re-entered the White House. Continue reading...
There’s no hiding from a 5% fall in operating profit at owner Diageo in the second half of 2024, Trump trade policy or not
Donald Trump’s on-off tariffs are at least good for one thing: they provide struggling managements with a handy excuse to ditch their sales forecasts. Diageo, the Guinness, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff combo, was able to cite “the current macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty” – exhibit A being the possible US tariffs on Canada and Mexico – as it dropped its guidance for growth.
What that reasonable-sounding explanation misses, however, is that nobody believed Diageo’s old forecasts anyway – and they hadn’t for a long time before Trump re-entered the White House. Continue reading...
