Is CEO Dave Lewis Diageo’s hangover cure?
Dave Lewis, new CEO of alcoholic-drinks giant Diageo, laid out plans to revamp the company after several years of falling profits, says Madeleine Speed in the Financial Times. The maker of Guinness and Johnnie Walker posted a 2% decline in organic revenue for the year to 30 June 2026, while operating profits dropped 27% to $3.2 billion.
Savings will be made by “redesigning Diageo’s operating model and overhauling its supply chain”, with the elimination of what Lewis calls “massive duplication”. Dave Lewis also promised to boost growth by taking Guinness global, investing in neglected, affordable brands such as Smirnoff and Captain Morgan, and offering smaller, cheaper bottles to “inflation-weary US drinkers”.
Good, says Alex Brummer in This is Money. The “simple thing to do” would be to “lop off great brands for an easy win”, but Dave Lewis has gone beyond that with his “speeded-up savings target of $1 billion”. It seems he will try to repeat his success at Tesco, where he repaired supply chains and relationships with suppliers. It’s also “reassuring” that he thinks Diageo has “the brilliant brands and distribution”, particularly in North America, to “halt recent declines and maintain sales”.
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What is in Dave Lewis’s turnaround plan for Diageo?
There’s certainly plenty of scope for Dave Lewis to repair Diageo’s “outdated and overly complex framework”, says Jessica Newman in The Times. For example, Diageo is still entering 60% of all its orders manually, while in India, where it employs 30,000 people, its payroll system is around “ten times more expensive than the one at Tesco”, even though Tesco employs far more people. In sum, the “unintended consequences” of operating on a market-by-market basis are “too many complicated processes and systems building up”. What’s more, the decision to cut the dividend suggests that Lewis’ Diageo is clearly willing to make some hard choices.
Yet boosting growth may be unexpectedly hard, says Yawen Chen on Reuters Breakingviews. In North America, Diageo’s largest market, sales fell 8.4% in the year to 30 June. And luxury groups’ recent rebound suggests affluent Americans are “still buying handbags, jewellery and holidays”. Diageo’s problem “may not simply be price but a structural decline: Americans may just be drinking less”. Dave Lewis’s overhaul should leave the firm “leaner and better positioned”, but until and unless Diageo can fix its “US hangover”, it is set to keep its “groggy valuation”.
Many analysts wonder if the market for younger consumers is a growth area at all in view of “changing attitudes” toward drink and the rapid spread of weight-loss drugs, says Richard Hunter on Interactive Investor. Nevertheless, the market’s reaction to Diageo’s “resolute” update was “immediate, positive and one of relief for an overdue transformation”, suggesting that the group’s “longstanding supporters” are still inclined to give the new management the benefit of the doubt.
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