CAGNY 2026 day two: Protein, premiumization, and pragmatic growth

By Sri Rajagopalan & Peter V.S. Bond, The CPG Guys

ORLANDO — If Day One of CAGNY 2026 was defined by the giants of food and beverage charting recovery courses through consumer stress, Day Two brought a different but equally revealing cast: companies further along in portfolio simplification, brands leaning hard into protein and premiumization tailwinds, and a few honest conversations about where AI and omnichannel sophistication still need to catch up with ambition. Six presentations — from Church & Dwight, PepsiCo, Utz, J.M. Smucker, Hormel Foods, and Molson Coors — offered a grounded view of where the broader CPG industry sits heading into the second half of the decade.

Church & Dwight: Quiet Strength Behind the Headlines

Church & Dwight may be the most underappreciated strategic story at CAGNY 2026. The company's reported 2025 organic growth of just +0.7% obscures a more important truth: strip out the deliberate divestitures of approximately $400M in weaker businesses — Spinbrush, Vitamins, Flawless, Showerheads — and underlying consumption growth was running at 3.5%. That gap between headline and reality is the story of a management team making hard portfolio choices ahead of the market, not behind it.

The seven Power Brands anchoring the portfolio represent more than 75% of sales and profits, split roughly evenly between Personal Care and Household. For 2026, incremental new product sales are expected to accelerate to 1.5–2.0% of net sales — up from a historical 1.0–1.5% — contributing approximately half of organic growth. The innovation infrastructure behind this acceleration is real: five pathways including FutureWorks, Open Innovation, and White Space development give the pipeline both structure and flexibility.

What stands out most in the Church & Dwight presentation is the quality of consumer insight at the brand level. The statistic that 42% of baking soda users mix it with vinegar for cleaning and 36% use it for drains isn't just interesting — it's the foundation of an extension strategy that creates incremental occasions without cannibalizing the core. The A&H HardBall litter line's 48% repeat purchase rate, running 14 points above the category average, is the kind of data that validates a launch before it becomes a market share story. This is consumer insight operationalized, not just presented.

The omnichannel trajectory is also worth noting. E-commerce has grown from 2% of global consumer sales in 2016 to 24% in 2025, and management describes it as continuing to accelerate. With a 1.6x leverage ratio and approximately $5.4B in acquisition capacity, Church & Dwight is one of the more financially flexible companies on the Day Two roster — actively pursuing international M&A to grow from $1B to $2B in international sales. The one gap relative to Day One peers: AI is entirely absent from the presentation, a notable omission for a company otherwise demonstrating strong analytical rigor.

PepsiCo: Restaging Icons for a New Consumer Reality

PepsiCo arrived at CAGNY with the most consequential brand restage story of the conference. The Lay's holistic reinvention — real potatoes, no artificial flavors, gluten-free positioning across a Good/Better/Best architecture — is not a line extension. It is a fundamental repositioning of the company's largest snack brand for a consumer who has made clean ingredients a baseline expectation, not a premium preference. Quaker is being reorganized around specific health benefit pillars: gut health, heart health, weight management. These are not marketing repositions; they are portfolio restructuring decisions with long supply chain and formulation implications.

The "Faster, Stronger, Better" growth agenda addresses the full consumer landscape — functional health and wellness, multicultural flavor demand, experiential occasions, and away-from-home growth are all named as structural shifts the company must meet. The acquisition of Poppi, Siete, and Sabra represents a bet on multicultural and functional food occasions that aligns directly with demographic momentum. The divestiture of Tropicana and lower-margin water reflects the same discipline in reverse.

On AI, PepsiCo delivered one of the more structured articulations of Day Two. AI-powered marketing is explicitly embedded within the company's end-to-end value chain loop — alongside Digital Twins, Transportation Control Towers, and Next-Gen Go-to-Market systems — suggesting integration into operations, not just communications. The "Same Size, New Low Price" campaign across Cheetos, Doritos, Lay's, and Tostitos is a consumer-facing RGM move that directly addresses the affordability gap created by snacking inflation. Portioned formats and multi-pack variety are named alongside price reductions, reflecting a tiered approach to value across income cohorts.

Full-year 2025 organic revenue growth came in at approximately 1.5%, but Q4 accelerated to +2.1% — a sequential improvement that gives management credibility when targeting mid-single-digit long-term organic revenue growth and at least 100 basis points of core operating margin expansion over three years. Away-From-Home is elevated to a dedicated growth pillar, with DRIPS crafted beverage destinations and Doritos Loaded across QSRs representing genuine channel expansion beyond the traditional grocery footprint.

Utz: A Leaner Machine Gaining Speed

Utz Brands is the smallest company on the Day Two roster and arguably the one with the most compelling operational transformation story. The reduction from 16 plants to 7 is not a cost cut — it is a structural repositioning that has driven a projected 400-basis-point improvement in adjusted gross margin from 2022 to 2025. When a snack company grows adjusted EBITDA at 8.3% while growing net sales at 2.4%, the message to investors is clear: the machine is getting more efficient faster than the top line is growing, and that creates operating leverage as volume returns.

The Power Four brands — Utz, On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon — anchor 89% of branded salty snack net sales, with potato chips at 46% and pretzels at 17% providing resilient category footing. The hybrid distribution model balancing Direct-to-Warehouse at 50% and Direct Store Delivery at 45% gives the company channel flexibility that pure-DSD or pure-DTW competitors lack. Household penetration is growing across all age cohorts, with younger consumer momentum particularly encouraging as a leading indicator of long-term brand relevance.

AI is acknowledged as an operational enabler — planned for deployment across commercial and supply chain functions — though the articulation remains early-stage. M&A is sequenced appropriately behind debt reduction and organic investment, with the 2026 adjusted free cash flow target of $60–80M establishing the financial foundation for future optionality. Utz is not trying to be everything at once, and at this stage of its transformation, that discipline is the right call.

J.M. Smucker: Uncrustables Carries the Growth Story

Smucker's CAGNY narrative is anchored by one of the most impressive organic brand-building achievements in recent CPG history. Uncrustables targeting $1B in net sales for FY26 is not a projection — it is the culmination of sustained investment in a frozen handheld format that grew ahead of consumer trends in convenience and on-the-go snacking. In a conference where many companies are managing portfolio complexity and volume headwinds, a single brand approaching ten-figure revenue on organic momentum alone commands attention.

The broader portfolio — approximately $9B in FY26 net sales across coffee, snacking, and pet food — reflects the outcome of prior M&A now being optimized rather than expanded. Nearly two-thirds of the portfolio is holding or growing dollar share, providing a stable base from which Uncrustables and pet food premiumization can drive incremental growth. Coffee's consumer foundation remains one of the strongest in CPG: three out of four Americans drink coffee, giving Smucker a category with both defensive volume characteristics and premium trading opportunity.

The honest challenge in the presentation is Sweet Baked Snacks, currently in stabilization mode with SKU rationalization and facility closures underway. This is disciplined portfolio management — accepting near-term drag to create a cleaner long-term growth architecture — but it does weigh on the headline organic growth narrative. Free cash flow exceeding $1B provides meaningful capital flexibility as the balance sheet strengthens. The gaps relative to peers are visible: AI and advanced analytics are absent from the presentation, and omnichannel depth beyond pet food e-commerce acknowledgment is limited. Both are areas to watch in future communications.

Note: for the first time in 5 years at CAGNY, JMS used the term “ecommerce” on a slide they presented!

Hormel: Protein Tailwinds Meet Strategic Clarity

Hormel delivered what may be the strongest consumer insight section of Day Two. The data is specific, trend-forward, and directly connected to portfolio strategy: over two-thirds of consumers intentionally consume protein; menu protein callouts have grown 165% in four years; 60% of consumers prefer natural or free-from-artificial protein sources; and GLP-1 drug adoption projected to grow from $62B in 2026 to $158B by 2035 is cited as a structural demand accelerant for high-quality protein. This is not category cheerleading — it is a coherent thesis for why Hormel's six enterprise growth platforms (convenient breakfast, substantial snacking, global sushi, authentic Mexican, breaded chicken, and game-changing bacon) are positioned in the right places.

The portfolio simplification underway is credible and financially coherent. Divesting the whole-bird turkey business and Justin's concentrates resources on value-added, brand-led platforms with superior margin profiles. Q1 FY26 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of organic net sales growth — validation that the post-2025 reset is working. FY26 guidance of +1–4% organic net sales growth and +4–10% adjusted diluted EPS growth reflects realistic ambition, and the long-term algorithm of 2–3% organic sales growth and 5–7% operating income growth is credible given the protein category tailwind.

The gaps are the same as several Day Two peers: AI is not explicitly called out despite a reference to "technology and data modernization," and omnichannel strategy beyond multi-channel distribution acknowledgment is not prominently featured. For a $12B company in 2026, more specificity on both fronts would strengthen the investment narrative. But the strategic clarity on where Hormel is going — and why protein is the right organizing principle — is among the clearest of the conference.

Molson Coors: Honest Guidance in a Difficult Category

Molson Coors deserves credit for presenting a 2026 guidance of flat net sales revenue (+/- 1%) and underlying pretax income down 15–18% without burying the lead. The drivers — elevated Midwest Premium aluminum costs and higher short-term incentive compensation cycling — are transitory, and management makes the case that stripping those two factors out, underlying pretax would be approximately flat. That framing asks investors for patience, and the doubling of the share buyback authorization from $2B to $4B through 2031, with 72% of the original plan already executed, provides a tangible signal of confidence in cash generation.

The portfolio architecture — Core Power Brands for margin, Above Premium Beer and Beyond Beer for growth — is logically structured. Fifteen brands generating over $100M in net sales revenue gives the system scale, and the Beyond Beer buildout through Simply Spiked, Fever-Tree, ZOA, and Aspall represents genuine category diversification beyond beer's structural volume challenges. The medium-term algorithm of low-single-digit NSR growth, mid-single-digit income growth, and high-single-digit EPS growth is achievable if the aluminum headwind normalizes and the above-premium and beyond beer investments gain traction.

AI is mentioned within the modernization pillar — specifically for marketing effectiveness and data-driven decision-making — but at a high level without disclosed investments or partnerships. Omnichannel is cited but not detailed. The "Just Bring the Beer" campaign suggests occasion-based marketing insight that resonates, but consumer insight methodology is not elaborated. Molson Coors is a company managing through a difficult moment in a structurally challenged category, doing so with financial discipline and portfolio logic. The story gets better if the macro improves; the discipline ensures it doesn't get worse.

Day Two Themes: What the Second Wave Tells Retailers

Day Two reinforced and extended the themes that opened CAGNY 2026. Protein is emerging as the organizing principle for multiple portfolios simultaneously — Hormel, PepsiCo, and Smucker all frame growth strategies around it, and Conagra from Day One belongs in that conversation too. The GLP-1 tailwind is being taken seriously as a structural demand shift, not a trend to wait out.

Portfolio simplification is the other defining theme. Church & Dwight, Hormel, Smucker, and Utz all presented deliberate pruning of weaker businesses or SKUs as a prerequisite for growth acceleration — accepting near-term revenue drag to create cleaner, higher-margin foundations. This is the right long-term move, but it creates short-term noise in organic growth metrics that retailers and analysts need to look through carefully.

The AI gap on Day Two is wider than Day One. PepsiCo and Church & Dwight's e-commerce trajectory aside, most Day Two presenters either omitted AI entirely or mentioned it at a level of generality that signals awareness rather than deployment. As Day One's General Mills, Conagra, Coca-Cola, and McCormick demonstrated, the companies embedding AI into specific business processes — promotion optimization, formulation, demand forecasting, consumer feedback loops — are building compounding advantages. Day Two's presenters have runway to close that gap, and the companies that move fastest will show it in their volume trends first.

For mass market retailers, the Day Two message is this: your CPG partners are getting leaner, more focused, and more deliberate about where they grow. The question is whether your joint business planning conversations are keeping pace with the strategic clarity these companies are bringing to CAGNY.