Brown-Forman Corporation ($BFB)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brown-Forman Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sue Perram, Vice President, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank each of you for joining us today for Brown-Forman's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are Lawson Whiting, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Peters, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This morning's conference call contains forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. Numerous risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or projected in these statements. Many of the factors that will determine future results are beyond the company's ability to control or predict. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update any of these statements, whether due to new information, future events or otherwise. This morning, we issued a press release containing our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026. In addition to posting presentation materials that Lawson and Jim will walk through momentarily. Both the release and the presentation can be found on our website under the section titled Investors, Events and Presentations. In the press release, we have listed a number of the risk factors you should consider in conjunction with our forward-looking statements. Other significant risk factors are described in our 2025 Form 10-K and from time to time in our Form 10-Q report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures, a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and the reasons management believes they provide useful information to investors regarding the company's financial condition and results of operations are contained in the press release and investor presentation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Lawson.

Thank you, Sue, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that Brown-Forman delivered a strong finish to fiscal 2026 with full year results coming in ahead of our organic expectations. Today, I'll walk through the key drivers of this performance, including the continued success of our innovation pipeline and our momentum in international markets. Then I'll turn the call over to Jim to discuss our financial metrics and our full year outlook for fiscal 2027. Before I move to our results, I want to provide a few comments regarding the termination of our discussions with Pernod Ricard. First, Brown-Forman regularly explore strategic opportunities in the normal course of business, evaluating every opportunity against the standard of long-term shareholder value. In this particular case, we were unable to reach mutually agreeable terms. Our ultimate goal is to create long-term value for all shareholders, and we intend to do that by focusing on our strategic and operational priorities, which include expanding our geographic footprint building brands to resonate with consumers and enhancing operational efficiency. Our strong balance sheet and healthy free cash flow support our long-held capital allocation philosophy of investing in the business, paying increasing regular dividends, pursuing strategic opportunities and returning cash to shareholders. With that, let's turn our attention to our results. Despite continued volatility and uncertainty, we delivered fiscal 2026 organic net sales and organic operating income above our expectations and perform near the top of our industry. The drivers of our business were very consistent throughout the fiscal year as market conditions remained largely unchanged. Specifically, key emerging international markets in the travel retail channel experienced strong growth, supported by solid demand for our brands macroeconomic uncertainty continued to pressure discretionary spending in the U.S. and many developed international markets. Substantially lower used barrel sales and the trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada remain persistent headwinds negatively impacting our full year organic net sales by more than 2 points with a significantly greater impact on our organic operating income. While these external factors were outside of our control, internally, our team remains laser-focused on executing our fiscal 2026 initiatives, including our organizational evolution, a generational U.S. route to consumer transformation and meaningful innovation led by the launch of Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry. I'm very proud of the way our people navigated a challenging and dynamic operating environment. They remain resilient and agile, while making the necessary changes in how we think, work and lead. The results Jim and I are sharing with you today are a direct result of their efforts and a testament to their dedication and hard work, and I'm deeply appreciative of their continued focus on our strategic priorities. Now to the numbers. For the year, reported net sales declined 1% with organic net sales flat after adjusting for the unfavorable impact related to the absence of Korbel and Sonoma-Cutrer as well as the positive effect of foreign exchange. For the first time in decades, Brown-Forman is no longer in the wine or champagne business. From a geographic perspective, the emerging international markets collectively delivered organic net sales growth of 12%, driven by the strong double-digit performance of New Mix in Mexico. New Mix, Mexico's original tequila RTD continues to gain market share while leading the fast-growing RTD category in Mexico. This momentum is supported by the consumer trends of flavor, convenience and value especially as macroeconomic headwinds continued to impact consumer spending. The travel retail channel delivered 5% organic net sales growth, driven by Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey, which benefited from an increase in the number of travelers as well as new product launches such as Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry and Jack Daniel's Heritage Barrel. Organic net sales collectively for the developed international markets declined by 3%. This was led by Canada, which decreased nearly 60% as American made products remain off shelves in the majority of Canadian provinces. In addition, the macroeconomic landscape within numerous European markets remains under pressure as persistent headwinds continue to weigh on consumer sentiment resulting in a more cautious approach to discretionary spending. This behavior is notable in Germany and the U.K., where total distilled spirits trends remained weak and our organic net sales declined 7% and 9%, respectively. Despite the challenging environment in Europe, we're maintaining or gaining share of the whiskey category in 6 of our top 8 European markets and strategic innovation is delivering growth with Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry continuing to outperform expectations, achieving almost 150,000 9-liter depletions across 6 European launch markets in fiscal 2026. Also within the developed international markets, our route-to-consumer decisions are delivering strong growth in our most recently launched owned distribution markets of Italy and Japan. In fiscal 2026, Italy doubled its organic net sales, driven by price and distribution momentum we experienced growth across the entire portfolio of brands led by Gin Mare, Italy's #1 super-premium gin by volume and value in Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey, which both delivered very strong double-digit growth. In Japan, our distribution of the William Grant & Sons portfolio enables us to leverage our combined premium spirits expertise to scale our Japanese operations and deepen our relationship with trade partners, further reinforcing our commitment to driving growth and innovation within the world's third largest whiskey market. We continue to believe that owning our distribution fosters deeper engagement with our trade partners, drives the expansion of super premium labels such as Diplomatico and Gin Mare and reinforces the strength of our iconic American whiskey portfolio anchored by the Jack Daniel's family of brands. Let's turn now to the United States, where we also made significant route-to-consumer decisions, naming 11 new distributors across 25 markets. With these changes, we've engaged with distributors who we believe bring the capabilities, scale and operational excellence required to drive our next generation of growth as we recognize the benefits of enhanced dedication and focus, increased distributor investment funds and an improved margin structure. Organic net sales were flat in the U.S. in fiscal 2026, which remained ahead of both our depletion-based results and takeaway trends driven by the benefit from our U.S. distributor changes and the ongoing impact of innovation. In general, invasion has been one of the few sources of growth within total distilled spirits. Since the launch of Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry in August of 2025, the brand has continued to exceed expectations, reaching almost 300,000 9-liter depletions by the end of the fiscal year. It's the second largest new product by value within total distilled spirits and Nielsen. We had expected the gap between shipments and depletions of BlackBerry to close during fiscal 2026, but we continue to see excitement and an outstanding consumer engagement for the brand, while shipments of BlackBerry exceeded depletions, the gap between the two continues to narrow. In addition to the strong U.S. launch, we're encouraged by BlackBerry's early performance in markets outside of the United States where we have launched the brand. Our team is now focused on capitalizing on this momentum as we continue executing our multiyear phased global launch of BlackBerry. But BlackBerry wasn't the only innovation within the Jack Daniel's family of brands in fiscal 2026. This year, we made the Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Heritage Barrel, the newest permanent addition to the Jack Daniel's Single Barrel collection. The expression was originally shared as a special release in 2018 and 2019 and has already received multiple awards. In 2018, it was named Whiskey Advocate's #3 Whiskey of the Year. And just last year, it was named Breaking Bourbon's #1 whiskey of 2025. Our super premium innovations further strengthened Jack Daniel's craftsmanship and whiskey-making credentials, and we believe they will be continued growth drivers for the Jack Daniel's family of brands in the upcoming years. In addition to innovation, RTDs are the other source of growth within total distilled spirits, and we continue to apply a consumer-first approach to our RTD portfolio. First, the launch of New Mix in select U.S. markets has surpassed our expectations. New Mix is an opportunity for us to connect with Mexican-American consumers through a highly recognizable brand while simultaneously introducing new consumers to the world's first tequila-based RTD. We're also continuing to innovate within the high-growth tequila RTD category in the U.S., where we launched El Jimador Spirits this spring for RTD drinkers seeking a light refreshing option. Following the brand's initial introduction in Australia last summer, performance has continued to exceed our expectations, giving us confidence in its potential. While still early, we believe the initial launch in the U.S. is off to a solid start and look forward to providing you with future updates. In summary, I'm proud to say that we delivered on our planned fiscal 2026 by executing our strategic priorities with excellence and managing the factors within our control. We acted swiftly in a challenging and dynamic operating environment with a focus on our brands, geographies and people as we strategically innovated with a focus on the Premium Plus brands and ready-to-drink offerings to strengthen our brand portfolio and align with current consumer trends. We made key route-to-consumer transitions, including Japan, Italy and the United States and streamlined our workforce structure with the goal of accelerating growth in an increasingly challenging and competitive environment. With that, after 19 quarters of hosting this conference call with Lean, we now have a new CFO, and I'm pleased to introduce Jim Peters. Jim is a seasoned financial leader who brings a proven track record of driving operational discipline and resilience. During his 22-year career at Whirlpool, Jim led the company through complex global cycles and navigated margin pressures and volatile global consumer demand. Just as importantly, Jim is a values-based leader with a strong commitment to developing the next generation of talent. While the CFO recruitment process took a bit longer than we originally anticipated, this was not a decision to be rushed. Jim has been with us since the end of March and as expected, the transition has been smooth. I'll now turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, Lawson, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here in joining the strong leadership team. I truly believe we have the right brands, products and people to continue winning in this industry. Building on Lawson's overview, I will dive into the financial drivers that underpinned our fiscal 2026 performance, including our gross margin expansion, operating expenses and capital allocation. From there, I will provide context on our fiscal 2027 outlook, outlining how we will manage the business through a unique cost cycle that we have discussed previously. First, looking at our gross margin. In fiscal 2026, our reported gross profit increased 2%, resulting in a reported gross margin of 60.5%. Our gross margin expanded 160 basis points due to a 130 basis point A&D benefit largely related to the conclusion of our relationship with Korbel the absence of the prior year transition services agreement for Sonoma-Cutrer, a 20 basis point favorable impact from foreign exchange and 20 basis points of lower cost. While we are still experiencing higher costs due to low production levels and inflation on our input costs such as wood, these were largely offset by the timing of cost fluctuations. These benefits were partially offset by 10 basis points of unfavorable price mix due to the strong growth of New Mix and lower used barrel sales. Turning to operating expenses. Our long-term philosophy remains investing in our brands to drive sustainable growth. In fiscal 2026, our organic advertising expense decreased 5%, reflecting a more targeted efficient and disciplined approach to our marketing spend as well as strategically investing behind sources of growth, such as innovation, particularly Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry. Our organic SG&A investment increased 7% driven by costs associated with the contemplated business transaction discussions as well as higher compensation and benefit-related expenses. In the fourth quarter, we recognized $45 million and $87 million noncash impairment charges for the Gin Mare and Diplomatico brand names, respectively. These impairments largely reflect a decline in our forecast assumptions due to the softening category outlook and challenging macroeconomic environment in many of our top markets for these brands. While the brands had a slower start than we planned, and the operating environment has become more challenging since we acquired the brands in 2023, we continue to expect that Gin Mare and Diplomatico will contribute long-term growth to our portfolio of brands. In total, reported operating income decreased 10% and organic operating income decreased 2% in fiscal 2026. Diluted earnings per share decreased 17% to $1.53 per share, which was driven largely by the noncash impairment charges and the absence of the prior year gain on sale of our investment in Duckhorn. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet and have strengthened our cash position in 2026. Our capital allocation philosophy has not changed. We continue fully investing in our business through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. We balance these investments with a commitment to returning cash to shareholders through increasing regular dividends, share repurchases and special payouts, all aimed at the fundamental goal of generating sustainable long-term value for our shareholders. We have been disciplined in managing our working capital appropriately. In fiscal 2026, our working capital needs were lower as we completed a series of significant multiyear capital investments that we believe will set us up well for the future. We grew cash flows from operations by $402 million to $1 billion, primarily reflecting our disciplined approach to working capital management. As you can see on Schedule E of our earnings release, free cash flow, which we define as cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures increased by $462 million to $893 million, reflecting strong operating cash flow generation and the lower capital expenditure needs. For the 42nd consecutive year, we increased our regular dividend and paid quarterly dividends totaling $427 million to stockholders in the fiscal year. We also repurchased $400 million of our outstanding shares of Class A and Class B common stock. Now to our full year fiscal 2027 outlook. The spirit sector continues to face macroeconomic headwinds and geopolitical uncertainties. We anticipate that these conditions will continue to influence consumer behavior, negatively impacting beverage alcohol consumption, largely within developed markets, resulting in category growth that remains below long-term historical averages for total distilled spirits. As we navigate these cyclical disruptions, we will continue to leverage the strength of our portfolio of brands, including strategic innovation, our evolved route-to-consumer structure and our talented team of people around world. With this in mind, in fiscal 2027, we expect the depletion-based trends in the U.S. and developed international markets to remain similar to fiscal 2026, offset by continued growth in our emerging international markets and the travel retail channel. There are a few exceptions, though, mainly related to year-over-year comparisons. First, while we remain hopeful for the return of American Spirits products to Canadian store shelves, we continue to assume they will remain off the shelves across most of Canada for our full fiscal year, although this will compare against a similar environment in the year ago period. Next, the demand and pricing for used barrels remains volatile and at cyclical lows. Therefore, we expect continued pressure on used barrel sales the year-over-year dollar impact on net sales will be significantly less. Finally, we anticipated that shipments would be roughly in line with the depletions in 2026. Yet shipments related to innovation, particularly for Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry continue to exceed our expectations. While it is taking slightly longer than anticipated, we continue to expect that the gap between shipments and depletions will close. Therefore, we anticipate that depletions will exceed shipments in fiscal 2027. These expectations are reflected in our fiscal 2027 outlook. While we continue to execute on our long-term pricing strategy and expect to benefit from our revenue growth management activities and strategic innovation, particularly the continued international launch of Jack Daniel's Tennessee BlackBerry anticipate product mix headwinds due to the faster growth of our RTD portfolio. Based on the currently known factors, we expect organic net sales to be approximately flat. In this dynamic operating environment, we will carefully manage our costs and operating expenses. As we shared on our last earnings call, our inventory includes whiskey and barrels produced during the hyperinflationary years of the early 2020s when we faced significant cost increases for barrels, grain, energy as well as general inflation. As we bottle and sell this inventory, we expect the cost pressures associated with our barreled whiskey to persist for the next couple of years. While we have taken strategic steps to optimize our wood supply chain due to the aging of most of our products, the impact of these actions will take time to materialize in our results. Therefore, we have also been identifying other cost savings and efficiencies to help partially offset these cost pressures in the near term. We project higher input costs in fiscal 2027, largely driven by the impact of inflation, particularly transportation and gas related to higher energy cost as well as lower production volumes. Our outlook for organic operating expenses continues to reflect investment behind our brands, utilizing our long-term brand investment philosophy. We anticipate a reduction in SG&A as we lap the significant investment levels of fiscal 2026. Based on the above, we forecast organic operating income to decline in the 3% to 5% range. We expect our estimated capital expenditures outlook to be in the range of $60 million to $70 million, which is down significantly compared to recent years. We believe our fiscal 2027 effective tax rate will be in the range of approximately 20% to 22%. In summary, we delivered above our organic net sales and organic operating income expectations in an uncertain and volatile operating environment in fiscal 2026. While we navigate these near-term cycles, we are leaning into the power of our brands our innovation momentum and the benefits of our optimized route to consumer, supported by a more agile organization and strong balance sheet. We remain focused on driving sustainable growth and delivering long-term value for our shareholders. Before proceeding to the Q&A, I want to briefly reiterate a few points on the termination of our discussions with Pernod Ricard. As Lawson noted, we evaluate every opportunity against the standard of long-term shareholder value. And in this case, we were unable to reach mutually agreeable terms. Our focus remains on our strategic and operational priorities and delivering long-term value creation for our shareholders. We will not comment further on this topic or any M&A speculation. So thank you in advance for focusing your questions on our ongoing business operation. This concludes our prepared remarks. Please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will be coming from the line of Lauren Lieberman of Barclays.

First thing I wanted to ask just the CapEx guidance. So is the implication is something less than 2% of sales. That's a level we haven't been since for the depths of COVID. So capital discipline makes a lot of [indiscernible] course. Just curious if you see this as sort of a short-term decision or reflective of lighter capital needs kind of over the medium term, like stepping beyond fiscal '27? And any additional color you think would be relevant there.

Yes. Lauren, this is Jim. Here's where I start with. I think you have to kind of look back over a multiyear time frame to begin with on where our CapEx has been, and we've made some significant investments over the last few years. And what we're doing is we're coming to the end of those significant investments right now. And so I would say that the 2027 or fiscal year '27 is really reflective of what is more of an ongoing level. And then as we continue to evaluate our portfolio and what the needs are, obviously, we'll vary off of that. But I think this is just more reflective of the completion of a lot of big investments we've made that will give us the portfolio and the capacity that we believe is necessary on a go-forward basis.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Peter Grom of UBS.

This is maybe a bit more of a housekeeping question, but just over the last year, there's a lot of moving pieces as you think about GAAP operating income versus kind of the organic. So can you maybe just walk through the various puts and takes. And I guess what I'm trying to understand, as we think about the GAAP operating income of fiscal '26 around $1 billion, what's the right starting point after adjusting for these items and then kind of applying the minus 5% to minus 3% guidance.

So here's what I would say. I think, obviously, the biggest item in there has been the impairments. And that -- those are a type of one-off type of thing. And obviously, we did have something with Gin Mare last year, but I believe when you look at that and you back that out, you get to some significantly smaller items that we have there that are very reflective of just some opportunities, to be honest, that we've taken advantage of around duty drawbacks and some other things. And so I think if you think about it on a go-forward basis, I don't know that we expect that to be a significant amount within our results. And so I think our organic and our gap will be relatively close, absent of anything unknown out in the marketplace.

And our next question will be coming from Filippo Falorni of Citi.

I wanted to ask about the guidance on organic sales for fiscal '27 was about flat. I think, Jim, you said that you expect depletions to outpace shipments next year, which kind of would imply the patient base result probably up slightly as you get the reversal of the over shipment. I guess what gives you the confidence to get to more positive kind of depletion numbers given, to your point, the macro environment in developed markets is still be challenging. Emerging market is still growing nicely, but it just feels there is quite still a bit of headwind in the macro environment on the distilled spirits category. So I was hoping to get a little bit more clarity on the drivers to get to the implied positive kind of shipment result -- positive depletion result.

Yes. So let me kind of start here. And what I would say is you took some of the big moving pieces there and moving parts. But what you've got to start with is I think we're going into the year with good momentum to begin with, especially around our innovation portfolio. And you kind of heard mention multiple times the Jack Daniel's, Tennessee BlackBerry. We're rolling that out [indiscernible] internet. That's been mainly a domestic launch this year. It's now becoming more of an international launch. Also, we're launching different sizes of that into the marketplace at this time. So as I start to step back and say, yes, from a macro environment perspective, we still see that to be challenging. From a depletion standpoint, we do believe that but inventories will come down some next year, but there still will remain some additional inventory probably in the system as we look at the innovation and new launches as well as our new distributor portfolio. Additionally, what we've had over recent years is a negative impact of barrel sales decreasing, which is starting to stabilize now at this point. So we don't have that type of drag. Other things that I see as a neutral to positive are things around pricing in that. And again, we continue to execute our long-term pricing strategy. And maybe we'll put a little bit of pressure -- will help us from a volume perspective, but puts a little bit of pressure on mix is just as our portfolio shifts more to RTDs. But I think when you take all of those into account, we feel good about the innovation and the new products we're bringing to market that are really offsetting what I'd say is a challenging environment right now.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Nadine Sarwat of Bernstein.

Mine on the guidance and in particular, operating income growth being weaker than top line. Could you provide us with your expectations with regards to gross margin contraction in particular? And here, I'm trying to get a sense of how much of that contraction would come from more costly barreled whiskey versus the present day headwinds from transportation and glass versus the negative product mix you called out? Any form of magnitude that you could provide around those would be helpful.

Yes. I think -- and again, this is Jim. I think we don't necessarily split out all those kind of components as we look at it. I mean, we had talked in the previous earnings calls about the whiskey that we have in barrels, that is a cost that we know a cost that we understand very well and a cost headwind that will be with us for the next few years. And I think that's probably, if you just start to take order of magnitude that's maybe one of the bigger cost issues that we see in front of us and that we're dealing with to offset. The other things that I talked about within there are more just reflective of the current environment and what's going on and can be costs that fluctuate on a regular basis, such as energy and transportation costs and the rest of that. So I think you just have to think about the biggest part of it is, what we have in our barrel whiskey inventory right now, and that's driving the gross margin impact of 2027, which we'll continue to see. But we do believe it's stabilizing, and it's very predictable. And then on a go-forward basis, our cost actions will begin to offset more and more of that.

And let me add something to on the pricing side of things because I think there's some good news sort of bubbling down low in the world of pricing in the U.S. market. I mean, the -- if you look at ex RTDs, I mean, the 13-week numbers in TDS pricing is down 1, 52 weeks is basically down 1 also, and we're like down 0.5 point range. So for all those that thought the tequila business and the American Whiskey business and expect a big significant drop in pricing around that, it has not happened. Tequila has down 2, I think America Whiskey is down 1.5-ish. So not -- I mean it's not great, but it's certainly not reflective of a giant repositioning of the category or a big amount of discounting or anything like that. It's -- as we have said on a few of the last quarters, the big companies seem to be pretty rational on the state of pricing, at least in the U.S. market, and I think it's true for Europe, too, and it's holding together. So now impact on gross margin. I'm not saying it's -- we expect a big increase either. We're just trying to hold our own at this point, but it shouldn't be a drag. Pricing and mix, I don't expect to be really any kind of a significant drag at all on fiscal '27. I know you didn't ask any [indiscernible], but I gave it to you anyway.

And our next question will come from the line of Kevin Grundy of BNP Paribas.

Question for Jim. First, congratulations and welcome. Of course, you're joining the company at a very unique time. I don't need to tell you that with the strategic discussions and some pretty intense demand headwinds. Firstly, I wanted to ask for your early observations, what you see is the biggest opportunities here to unlock shareholder value as you think about sort of the big value trigger sales, margins and capital efficiencies. I don't expect you to comment, of course, on the terminated discussions. But within that context and thinking about those value triggers, what would you share with shareholders in terms of what you think is misunderstood about your current share price? I appreciate your comments there.

Yes, thank you. And maybe I'll kind of tell you a little bit of my thoughts here. I mean, first off, as you heard in my prepared remarks, I'm excited to be here. I mean -- and Brown-Forman has been a strong performer in what is now a challenging industry cycle. And I think fiscal year 2026 represents that. Strengths that I see within this company, obviously, our brand and product portfolio are second to none out there. And I think that really gives us the the tools that we need to be able to drive value. I think the other thing is -- and this is where you asked, one of the things that I would say differentiates us and maybe is misunderstood in our value proposition is we have an extremely strong balance sheet. We generate extremely strong free cash flow. And as you saw with this year, and I think that will continue into the future. And in our industry, I'd tell you what we're the top out there in terms of that. So I think that sets us up very well for the future. Listen, I think we're taking a lot of strong actions towards margin improvement and gaining share. And that is going to be key, especially in a market that is down and in a cyclical type of environment. And as you kind of heard from Lawson, I spent almost 20 years dealing with a cyclical type environment, but I think that's going to be very key for us. And if you look at what I bring, hopefully, is -- I bring a different perspective coming from that type of environment. I bring some experiences over the last 20 years in constantly having to operate in something like that. And I think that my role now is to help drive and accelerate these actions and really help move forward on our organic growth strategy because I think that's also something that as people become understand that better. I think that is something also that will continue to drive shareholder value here. So when I just step back and kind of summarize it all up, listen, I believe there is a very strong value creation opportunity here. And whether it comes from the assets we have, the strong balance sheet we have, but also the actions that we are taking today to make us successful in this type of environment. So I'm excited to be here and excited about the future.

And our next question will come from the line of Andrea Pistacchi of Bank of America.

So my question is actually on the new mix launch in the U.S., which you said is exceeding your expectations. Now looking at Nielsen data, which I know may be skewed to certain states, but it appears to have had a really strong start and is becoming an important contributor to your growth. So could you update us on where you are with the distribution rollout? What you see as a potential. In what way has it exceeded your expectations? What makes the brand really stand out in a crowded RTD space?

So I'll try this one. I mean it's -- look, New Mix, as I think you all realize is a massive brand in Mexico. So it is very well known among Mexican consumers, both in Mexico and in the United States. And so it's been one of our -- in terms of top line, just a massive driver now for several years in a row and has gotten to be very, very large within that market. So we've got a set of consumers that know the brand already, and we want to go after that inside the United States. So it was launched in October in 9 markets. I did say it's the eighth largest contributor to the RTD category growth, and we haven't even had it out there for a year. So we're pretty happy with the the beginning days of this. And it's a way to really get into the Mexican-American accounts. And they are where you probably would expect heavy emphasis on California and the Southwest and places like that, which are very much Nielsen markets, but it's exciting stuff. We've also done El Jimador spirit, which is launched like in the last few weeks. Similar, it's going to be a broader set of consumers that we go after with that. But it's still a brand that's well known, both in Mexico and the United States. And it's a little bit different. It's very much going after that light refreshing option, which pretty much dominates the RTD category these days. So yes. So off to a good start. It's just so new, but we'll see. I think there's a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. And we will slowly begin to move it out into the rest of the United States, I would expect over the next year.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI.

Congratulations, Jim. So Lawson, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit, and you kind of inched into it, right, with your discussions on price, price being down a little bit. I was wondering if you could talk about to what extent you think that price levels are a barrier to more spirits consumption in the U.S. And to what extent, given a pretty constrained consumer, particularly at the lower end, the fact that in general spirits, on the package side, doesn't have me as much flexibility in terms of variety of package sizes and units as some other categories. And so perhaps you don't have as many levers to pull in terms of price pack architecture and revenue management tools to address affordability issues. So kind of big topic there, I know, but love to get your thoughts on that in terms of the spirits industry and Brown-Forman in particular, and how you may or may not address those challenges?

Yes. So interesting question. Thank you, Robert. The -- taking a real -- like a long -- like a decade view on it to start with a little bit. I've always kind of found it interesting and honestly, I think spirits has underpriced over the last decade, not over price. So -- but I always compare it to beer. So beer a decade ago or even a little longer, was not getting any volume growth, and they got all their value go through pricing, which look great on the financial statements at the time and improve margins, it does all that kind of stuff. But now we stand where we are today, relatively speaking, beer is more expensive than spirits, at least compared to history. And -- so as I said, spirits really hasn't taken all that much pricing over the last decade. There was that spot post COVID, but for the most part, it hasn't been all that much. Where the pricing challenge, I think, for the spirits industry is the on-premise, and it's not that we're selling in and particularly higher prices earning like that, it's the restaurants that have taken massive margin increases on the spirit side of their business and to pay for the rent in the higher wages and all the rest of it. So I don't really see pricing, particularly off from pricing, I guess, as a significant impediment to consumers. Now you're right, the sort of K economy changes. You still have super ultra-premium price brands that are doing really doing well, and that's a consumer that isn't so price sensitive. We're not very exposed to the sort of the lower end products, and that's kind of been a debate over the last year, really, should we have more exposure in that space. But I don't expect that we're really going to chase that kind of volume. So -- and we've had some good -- some success stories. I mean I'll say Jack Daniel Heritage Barrel is one that we had this year that is very high priced, and it's flying. It absolutely flies off the shelf. So we're all -- we're feeling pretty good about where the consumer is relative to our brands. And I just don't think pricing is the -- that's not the challenge.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank.

I guess going back real quick, going back to Peter's question on organic operating income. I'm just wondering if there is a specific dollar amounts in terms of -- we should anchor to exiting fiscal '26 as the organic operating income base of which of fiscal '27 guidance is based because I'm not 100% sure exactly what the base is. I'd be kind of clean up, number one. And then I wanted to talk about the 150 basis points over the next couple of years of higher costs that are flowing through the P&L. I guess as I think about it, a lot of those costs would be cash expenditures that were made historically. So I'm just -- I'm wondering if there is a silver lining to those costs as they flow through the P&L that maybe the cash conversion on the flow-through has actually improved because maybe today's costs are less than what's flowing through on a cash basis, if that makes sense.

So maybe I'll start with your second question because I think that's probably the -- is a very straightforward one. And yes, there is an obvious cash benefit with that as you look at the inventory that we have that was higher priced and already has been paid for and then what we were able to sell it for right now and looking at what we're doing and how we're managing our inventory levels working capital, and especially inventory should generate positive cash flow for us on a go-forward basis. And I think even if you look at working capital within this year, it was positive to cash flow. So I think that's the right way to think about it. I think the other thing is, as we kind of talk about this year on the starting point for organic income compared to what to expect for next year. And if you really just go to the schedule that we had that shows that our reported was around $1 billion. And then you do the adjustments off of that and especially the biggest one being the impairment, it really kind of implies but that's probably on an organic basis, closer to $1.1 billion and that's the base where we start from an organic perspective and work off of there.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Robert Moskow of TD Cowen.

This is Seamus Cassidy on for Robert. I wanted to ask about the realignment of your U.S. control state distribution network. I know it's been 3 days now, so I won't ask about early learnings yet. But can you discuss, I guess, your expectations for this transition from an execution standpoint? And do you anticipate any short-term disruption? And then also, what sort of benefit does your organic sales guidance begin just from an improved margin standpoint?

Make sure I heard all that. But look, control state evolution isn't really -- we're not expecting dramatically different than what we've been through in the open states over the last year. If anything, it's a little bit easier, quite honestly, because just the way that the control states are set up and how you do the purchases and things like that. So look, it's a -- this is going to be a good thing for Brown-Forman. We've made these changes over the last year. And look, there were last summer and into the fall, there were some bumps along the way. It's going to take a little bit to get the emerging brands as an example, going again. Everybody focused on Jack first and sort of works their way down. So we expect better performance in the emerging brands over the next year. And I think, look, at this point, the particularly distributors that were beer distributors before, it took a little bit of time to sort of get them up to speed, but they're fully up to speed now. And we're regaining, I mean the one thing that happens when you do these changes are, we lost some on-premise listings in a lot of states, we lost them. You just got to go fight and go get it back, and they're doing that now. So hopefully, this year, just it has a little bit less disruption, a little bit less volatile. And I know there are a lot of puts and takes in there, and everybody is trying to figure it all out. But at the end of the day, we feel pretty good about our position now better than we did a year ago and excited to see what happens in fiscal '27.

And our next question will be coming from the line of Chris Pitcher of Rothschild & Company Redburn.

Can I ask a question and a quick follow-up. In terms of Japan, given your opening comments, loss, I'm surprised it wasn't called out in the statement, given extra sales you'd have got from William Grant & Sons, et cetera. Are there any technical effects which held back the performance of Japan in the year because you sounded pretty confident on it? And then secondly, could I just follow up on the comment around the non-branded and bulk, that's only been reported during a period of strong growth in the scotch industry, for example. Is there any sort of residual income within that, like contract bottling or maybe some bulk sales, that means it can't go to zero?

Well, let me hit Japan here first. So -- and I'm not quite sure exactly how you -- what your question was other than let me just talk about Japan for a second, and I'll -- so look, it's one of the biggest whiskey markets in the world. It's a very big American whiskey market, and it's one that we've had success. We're actually pretty good size there. we hired a lot of people to be able to go after that market. It's not -- it's a challenging market. So we've hired a lot of people with the expectation of pretty significant growth, bringing in William Grant on just a handful of brands from them just helps us get started. And they're good brands and the brands that fit well within our portfolio, they're very premium. And so it's just -- it's a way for us to supplement or bring more brands in more scale so that we can just not justify, but so that we can continue to use our sales force and optimize on the people that we have. Do you want to take the barrel...

Yes. Then the biggest impact when you look at the non-branded in Baltics is that's where our barrel sales flow through. And we've talked about this multiple times, but our barrel sales probably peaked around 2022, 2023 and then have come down significantly right now. And I think that -- the one question that what you implied there is, yes, you get to a point where eventually you don't have any of that would just hit the bottom. But right now, I'd say we're still selling used barrels, but the prices are down significantly and the market is down significantly. And as I mentioned earlier in some of the comments, it should not be a significant impact on our top line go forward that we've really seen the bulk of the decline and that has already occurred. And so now we're kind of what is a steady state level that at some point, we would probably expect to go back up but doesn't have much further [ and good ] fall.

And our next question will come from the line of Eric Serotta of Morgan Stanley.

Lawson, can you just give us a little bit of an update as to the BlackBerry international plans? And first, I guess, where are you today in terms of which markets and when you entered them, what are the plans for the next 12 months? And maybe it's too early, but how are these markets tracking versus other international flavor or other -- flavors in other international markets like like how honey is done.

Sure. Yes, yes, yes. So we said on the call and a little bit earlier that we talked about the U.S. and how excited we are about the U.S. and how fast it's growing. So I'll really these on the international side of things. So we went into the U.K., Germany, Poland, Chile, in France in fiscal '26, so about halfway through the year. So they are -- they have launched, and they're continuing to go. It's actually -- the volumes are nice, and we're pretty excited about it. Now I think we've said multiple times, this was always planned out to be a 2-year launch plan. We have the advantage where others don't of having a very large international demand for the Jack Daniel's brand. And so BlackBerry is going to basically go everywhere eventually. Everywhere where we've got our other flavor, honey. And honey has been a rock success for a long time. It's been in the market now for 15-ish years. That's approaching 2 million cases. So we're very happy with where that goes. We'll see how big BlackBerry can get. But it's a flavor that works well in the -- we think, in the international markets. It's just -- it's a globally relevant flavor, and they're harder to find globally relevant flavors, to be honest, there's been -- there's just so many different brands out there these days. But the initial response from retailers and consumers has been really strong, and we're going to continue this launch throughout fiscal '27. We've got probably the market to look at or that would we would say, to be the most optimistic is Brazil just because Apple has been a home run down there and even Tennessee was basically the entire decade portfolio does so well down there. And we think BlackBerry can do well. Just to end on, one of the things about BlackBerry, I think that is exciting is it mixes so well with lemonade. It's just a simple to -- simply lemonade BlackBerry mix for a great summertime drink as we move into summer. Other flavors, even our own flavors, it's more challenging to have a natural partner for it, either the cocktails either get fancy or it just hasn't been as easy. This one seems to work really, really well. And so we're going to continue to grow that basically around the world.

And I would now like to hand the conference back to Sue Perram for closing remarks.

Thank you. And thank you, Lawson and Jim, and thank you to everyone for joining us today for Brown-Forman's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026 earnings call. If you have any additional questions, please contact us. As we close, just to let you know, National Bourbon Day is June 14. It's a day to commemorate the 1964 U.S. Congressional Resolution declaring Bourbon as America's native spirit. On this day, wherever you are, we hope that you will responsibly enjoy a glass of Old Forester and Woodford Reserve and always remember that all Bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is Bourbon. With that, this concludes today's call.

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.