Please see the full attached 44-page Briefing Book. Our upcoming virtual client meetings, contact us with questions:​ Agentic AI Commerce & Stablecoin / Crypto – Impacts in 2026 & Beyond – Virtual Meeting – 12/19…

Optimal clients are invited to a virtual meeting hosted by David Schick featuring Joshua Orenstein. Josh is the former Head of Consumer Legal at Stripe, Inc., where he helped develop new global payment products, including a…

Announces ambitious 2026 guidance early.  Last night, after a comprehensive board review, Pepsico announced slightly better than expected 2026 guidance for organic revenue growth (+2%-4%) & core EPS (+5%-7%).  This includes plans for select price…

Yesterday’s disappointing Magnum debut suggests opportunity.  Yesterday, shares of the Magnum Ice Cream Company, newly spun off from Unilever, first traded on multiple exchanges. Shares were valued (12/8 close) at roughly 8x its apparent “as…

Consumer Velo is still softening … the run rate is now 80 bp slower than just one week prior and has turned negative y/y. Shorter-term spending trend further decelerated last week. Our metric is now…

On 12/2, Optimal Advisory hosted a discussion with Dan Markey, senior fellow in China & South Asian programs at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, to discuss the critical & changing dynamics of the economic…

HSY, MDLZ lead beneficiaries of cost relief on cocoa. FMCG spot input costs down -1.9% y/y overall, -2.4% y/y for food producers. Energy and freight (nat gas +4.5% w/w, +16.3% m/m) remain offsetting headwinds (e.g….

On 12/2, Optimal Advisory hosted a discussion with Dan Markey, senior fellow in China & South Asian programs at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, to discuss the critical & changing dynamics of the economic…

We are pleased to host our next client virtual meeting on Tuesday, 12/9 at 11 am ET with Shergul Arshad, Head of Aston Martin Formula One North America. Topics to include: Growth of Formula One,…

While the overall Optimal Cost Factor is down 8% YTD and 3.5% since 6/30/25, the average of weighted spot costs for the top 7 US based packaged food companies is down -18.1% YTD and -8.5%…

Consumer Velo continued to decelerate last week. Shorter-term spending trend decelerated further last week, now running up +0.3% y/y (this was running 3%+ just two months ago, now running 1.4 standard deviations below average since…

AI platforms are increasingly impacting consumer choices. In this November report, we update and expand our October analysis to 88 names, see summary Figure 1. We calculate both the relative (a) inflection of AI-driven traffic…

Please see the full attached 42-page Briefing Book. November real-time spending is softening across 15/18 proprietary Optimal staples subsectors, we also note positive inflection in spending growth for club & mainstream grocers’ ticket… versus a…

Consumer Velo slowed further last week. Shorter-term spending growth decelerated further last week, now running up +0.4% y/y (now 1.4 standard deviations below average since the start of 2022). Longer-term spending growth is running up…

Optimal Advisory Cost Factor – Energy joined the cost decline party this week on macro concerns – albeit still +24% off 12 month low.  Last week’s surprise tariff reduction on key CPG inputs augments an…