Procter & Gamble

IThe business

P&G makes and sells products people use every day: laundry detergent, diapers, razors, toothpaste, shampoo, paper towels and a long list of smaller things. It does this in about 180 countries, with operations in roughly 65, and a little over half of sales are outside the US.² It runs as five segments. The largest is Fabric & Home Care at 35% of sales, with Tide, Ariel, Downy, Dawn and Swiffer. Baby, Feminine & Family Care is 24% (Pampers, Always, Charmin, Bounty), Beauty 19% (Pantene, Olay, SK-II, Old Spice), Health Care 14% (Crest, Oral-B, Vicks) and Grooming 8% (Gillette, Braun).²

The model is old and simple. The products are cheap, bought often and judged by whether they work. P&G spends $10.2B a year on advertising and $2.1B on research to keep them better than the next brand, then sells through stores it does not own.⁷ Walmart alone is about 16% of sales and the top ten customers 43%.² That means the shelf is rented, and the landlord is large. I come back to this in the next section.

In fiscal 2026, which ended 30 June, net sales were $87.0B, up 3%, operating income $19.7B, down 3%, and net earnings $16.0B. Core earnings per share, the figure the company guides to, rose 1% to $6.89.²³ Ten years ago, in fiscal 2017, sales were $65.1B.⁷ That is 3.3% a year C (calculated), and the five years to 2026 grew 2.7% a year C (calculated). This is a steady business, and it is not a fast one.

Volume against price

This is the central question about P&G in 2026. Sales growth has three parts: how many units are sold, what each sells for, and what mix of products they are. The company reports all three, rounded to whole points.² From fiscal 2019 to 2022 volume did most of the work, adding 2 to 4 points a year. Then inflation came. In fiscal 2023 price added 9 points and volume took away 3.¹² Since then volume has been 0, 1 and 0, and price 4, 1 and 1.⁵⁸²

Add it up. From fiscal 2023 to 2026, organic volume is down about 2 points in all, and price is up about 15 C (calculated). Organic sales growth fell from 7% to 4%, then 2% and 1%. The company took the price, kept the margin and gave back the units. That is what pricing power looks like at first, and it is also what it looks like just before it runs out.

The first quarter of fiscal 2027, reported on 22 October, is the first sign of a change. Organic sales rose 4%: volume 2.4 points, mix 1.1 and price only 0.4. All ten categories and all six regions grew, and the company said the market share it measures was flat overall.⁴¹⁶ Notice where the volume came from.

Fabric & Home Care and Baby, Feminine & Family Care are 59% of sales C (calculated).² Both lost a little price in the quarter and both grew units. Health Care and Grooming took price and lost units. I read that as ordinary behaviour: shoppers buy more when it costs less. It also says that price and volume still trade off, and that the 2023 price rises had a cost. Chief financial officer Andre Schulten, as MarketBeat summarizes the call, said: “The strength is real, but it will not be a straight line.”¹⁶

Where the sales are

Greater China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Germany are the largest markets outside the US, together about 21% of sales.² Greater China sales rose 8% in the first quarter, with SK-II up 12% and Pampers up nearly 50%, which Schulten partly attributed to near-term competitive dynamics.¹⁶ Inside the US, he said over 70% of its largest retail customers were holding or gaining P&G’s share in the quarter, against under 10% in the first half of fiscal 2026. That is a company figure from a summary of the call, and I could not check it.¹⁶

What changed this year

Four things matter. First, a two-year plan announced in June 2025 to cut up to 7,000 non-manufacturing jobs by the end of fiscal 2027, along with brand and market exits, at a total cost of about $2.0B before tax.²⁶ Employees were already down 4% to about 104,000.² Second, on 1 January 2026, Shailesh Jejurikar became chief executive.¹⁰ Third, on 1 October it bought Thorne, a vitamin and supplement brand, for $3.9B in cash, to go in Personal Health Care.⁶ Fourth, costs: in July the company expected a $1.0B after-tax hit from materials, energy and transport in fiscal 2027, and in October it raised that to $1.4B, assuming Brent crude at $100.³⁴¹⁶

IIThe moat

The protection comes from people reaching for the same box. A parent who has used Pampers on one baby and Tide on every wash will pay a few cents more to avoid a bad night or a stained shirt, and the cost of being wrong is large compared with the saving. P&G adds the second layer: it spends more on advertising than any rival, $10.2B in 2026, which is 11.7% of sales, so a new brand needs to spend as much to be known.⁷ Shelf space is the third layer. A retailer needs the top brands in each aisle, and it can’t show all of them if a smaller supplier asks for the room.

How strong is it? One test is price. In fiscal 2023 P&G raised prices by 9% and lost 3 points of volume.¹² The lesson for the brand is mixed: it could raise prices, which most companies cannot do, but shoppers did buy fewer units. A second test is margin. Gross margin was 49.8% in 2017, 51.2% in 2021, 47.4% in 2022 and 50.2% in 2026 C (calculated).⁷ So price kept up with costs, and I can’t see price getting ahead of them. Protection that merely holds the margin level through a decade of inflation is good. Protection that widens the margin would be better, and this has not.

The part I can’t measure

Private label is the threat that matters, and P&G does not publish how much share it has lost or gained to it. Costco says its Kirkland Signature brand saves members at least 15% to 20% against the national brand, and it does not report Kirkland’s share of sales. I covered that on my Costco page. Walmart, P&G’s largest customer, has its own advertising business, about $6.4B a year, and its own cheaper brands, as I set out on my Walmart page. Walmart’s revenue was $713.2B in its last fiscal year, and 16% of P&G’s sales is about $13.9B C (calculated), so P&G is roughly 2% of Walmart’s sales. For Walmart, P&G is one of many. For P&G, Walmart is one in six dollars. That is the bargaining position, and it is why I give the shelf only a moderate rating.

IIIThe competitive advantage

Here is P&G against the three nearest US-listed rivals on this scale, and the retailer that sells a cheaper version of the same thing. They report on different calendars and define growth differently, so I show them as reported and don’t net them.

Where P&G wins

It wins on margin and size. An operating margin of 22.7% compares with 14% to 16% for the other three, and its $10.2B advertising budget is about half of Colgate’s total sales.⁷⁹ It also wins on how many categories it leads. P&G often holds a leadership position, with more than 60% of blades and razors, over 35% of fabric care, more than 30% of baby care, about 30% of feminine care and about 40% of paper towels in North America.² A rival can attack one category, but few can attack five at once. And it wins on earnings: net earnings of $16.0B in 2026 against $2.0B at Kimberly-Clark and $2.1B at Colgate in 2025.²¹⁷⁹

The productivity machine is the other advantage. In the first quarter it was worth 250 basis points of operating margin, 120 of them in gross margin. That is a very large number, and it was not enough. Commodities took 140 points of gross margin, product and package reinvestment 140 and mix 50, against gains of 50 from tariffs and 20 from price, so core gross margin fell 150.⁴

Where it loses

It loses on price. Colgate says it holds 41.4% of toothpaste worldwide, and P&G says it holds nearly 30% of oral care, which also covers brushes.¹⁹² In the September quarter P&G grew organic sales 4.0% and Colgate 3.6%. Yet Colgate’s base-business earnings per share rose 7% and P&G’s core earnings per share rose 1%, and Colgate’s gross margin rose 80 basis points where P&G’s core gross margin fell 150.¹⁹⁴ Growth is not the difference. Costs are.

It loses on speed in categories where small brands win with a story. P&G bought Thorne, a premium supplement brand, instead of building one.⁶ That is sensible, and it shows that some of the next dollar of growth is bought.

And it loses on bargaining power. The brand protects the margin, and does not give P&G the right to name a price. The shelf belongs to the retailer, and retailers can see the whole basket.

IVManagement

Shailesh Jejurikar, 59, became chief executive on 1 January 2026. He was chief operating officer from 2021 to 2025 and ran Fabric & Home Care before that, so he has run the largest segment and was the heir for some years.²¹⁰ Jon Moeller, his predecessor, stayed on as executive chairman and then retired. The board has combined the roles again, and Jejurikar is chairman as well as chief executive.¹⁰ Andre Schulten, 55, has been chief financial officer since 2021.² Everyone on the list below has worked at P&G for more than five years, and the filing says so.²

I read this as a deliberate reset. A new chief executive, a new chairman, and four of five segment heads new in two years, all promoted from inside. That is how a company changes direction without hiring from outside, and it also means the people who made fiscal 2026 a hard year are mostly not the people running the segments now. I cannot judge any of them from outside.

How they are paid, and what that pays them to do

Jejurikar’s salary became $1.6M from January. His annual bonus has a target of 200% of salary, prorated to 170% for the half-year, and paid $1,634,720 for fiscal 2026, or 60% of target. His long-term award was $14.0M: half in performance stock and half in options and stock units.¹⁰ Total chief executive pay for the year, shared between him and Moeller for the periods they held the job, was $19.0M, against $68,595 for the median employee, a ratio of 277 to 1 C (calculated).¹⁰ At the 2025 meeting 92.2% of votes backed the pay plan.¹⁰

The performance stock turns on four measures with weights of 20% or 30%: organic sales growth against competitors, growth in core operating profit at constant currency, growth in core earnings per share, and free cash flow productivity, plus a relative share-return multiplier. The payout for the three years to 2026 was 69% of target.¹⁰ That is a fair design, and it pays for the right things in the short run: sales, profit and cash. Two things stand out to me. No measure counts volume, so a point of price counts the same as a point of units; the company has just spent three years proving that. And two of the four measures are on a core basis, which leaves out “incremental” restructuring. That has been $801M after tax in fiscal 2025 and $903M in fiscal 2026, and it moves core earnings per share up by $0.33 and $0.37.³ I do not find an explicit return-on-capital measure in the plan. The Gillette purchase has been written down by $8.3B in 2019 and $1.3B in 2024, and nothing in the plan would have charged executives for that.¹¹⁵

How much of their own money is in

Jejurikar must hold stock worth eight times his salary, $12.8M, and other officers four times.¹⁰ The proxy shows 834,315 shares and share rights for him, of which 9,011 are held outright or in the profit-sharing plan; at $167.32 those are worth $1.5M C (calculated).¹⁰ The rest is options and units, which pay only if the price rises. All 27 directors and officers together show 5,228,764 shares and rights, 0.225% of the company.¹⁰ That is aligned with a rising price and little else. It is also how it is at most companies this size, where no manager owns more than a rounding error.

What they did with capital over a full cycle

Over the ten years to June 2026, P&G earned $135.4B of free cash flow, or $130.4B after share-based pay. It paid $85.3B in dividends and $69.5B in buybacks, together 119% of owner cash C (calculated).⁷ The difference came from employees exercising options, which brought in $18.6B, and from debt that rose from $31.6B to $34.1B.⁷ Diluted shares fell 11.6%, from 2,740M to 2,422M.⁷ A shrinking share count is the whole point of a buyback. Option exercises put $18.6B back, 27% of what the buybacks cost C (calculated).

VFinancials

Ten years of P&G show a very stable business. Sales grew 3.3% a year. Operating margin moved between 20% and 24%, apart from the 2019 write-off. Operating cash flow was above net earnings in nine of the ten years and 20% to 25% of sales in nine. Share-based pay was $0.35B to $0.56B a year. The only large shock was the $8.3B write-down in fiscal 2019.⁷¹¹

What an owner could really take out

Net earnings in fiscal 2026 were $16.0B. Operating cash flow was $19.6B and capital spending $4.4B, leaving $15.1B of free cash flow. The company adds back $0.7B, the last payment of a transition tax from the 2017 US tax law, to get $15.8B of adjusted free cash flow and a productivity ratio of 100%.³ That tax was a real payment, but it is finished, so I add it back too. I then take off $0.5B of share-based pay, which is a cost to owners paid in shares.² That leaves $15.3B of owner cash, 95% of net earnings and 92% of the $16.7B of core net earnings C (calculated).³ So an owner gets about 92 cents of cash for each dollar of core profit. The gap is small and has three parts: stock pay, restructuring cash that the core figure leaves out, and capital spending that now runs above depreciation.

Capital spending is the part I watch. It was $4.4B in fiscal 2026, or 5.1% of sales, against an average of 4.4% in the nine years before. It is 1.4 times depreciation.⁷ The company guides to 4.5% to 5.5% of sales again for fiscal 2027.⁴ I take it down only slowly, to 4.2%, because supply chain automation is how it pays for the 250 basis points of savings. If it stays at 5%, my base value falls by about $5 a share E (estimate).

Quality of earnings

Three things to know. First, “core” earnings differ from reported earnings by one thing, restructuring: core earnings per share were $6.89 in 2026 and reported $6.62, after taking out $0.11 for the Glad gain.³ I count about half of the restructuring cash as a cost in 2027 and a tail in 2028 E (estimate). Second, working capital helped. Payables rose $0.9B in 2026, and $6.5B of payables sit in a supplier finance programme at terms of 60 to 180 days.²⁶ If suppliers got paid faster, that money would leave the business. I show what $6.5B would be if I counted it as debt: about $2.70 a share C (calculated). Third, inventories rose $0.6B, partly for safety stock, and inventory is 8% higher than a year earlier on sales that are 3% higher.²

The balance sheet

Debt was $34.1B at 30 June 2026 and cash $9.9B, a net $24.2B, or about 1.1 times operating income plus depreciation C (calculated).² By 30 September, debt was $38.9B and cash $15.4B, because P&G had raised money ahead of the $3.9B Thorne payment on 1 October.⁶ On 3 November it closed €3.25B of euro notes in four tranches, due 2030 to 2046, at rates from 3.75% to 4.625%.²² The long-term ratings are Aa3 from Moody’s and AA- from S&P.² Interest expense was $877M, covered 22 times by operating income C (calculated).² Goodwill and intangibles are 50% of assets, $62.7B C (calculated), which is what ten years of buying brands leaves.² Pension and retiree plans are net positive and need no adjustment.² Current liabilities exceed current assets by $12.5B, which is normal here, because suppliers are paid later than customers pay.⁶

The share price doubled in ten years, from $85.08 to $167.32, or 7.0% a year before dividends C (calculated).¹ Core earnings per share grew 6.3% a year from fiscal 2018 C (calculated).²¹³ So the price kept pace with earnings, and the multiple did not do much of the work. The highest close was $179.70 in December 2024. The lowest close in the last three years was $138.04 in January 2026.¹ The price today is 6.9% under the high C (calculated).

VIValuation

First, how this goes badly wrong

Before any number, three ways this ends badly, working backward from the price. The first is volume. From fiscal 2023 to 2026 P&G took about 15 points of price and lost about 2 of volume.¹²⁵⁸² If the shopper who stayed is now the shopper who leaves, units fall and P&G has to choose between price and share. The first quarter shows the trade is live: segments that cut price grew units.⁴ The second is cost. The company expects $1.4B of after-tax commodity pain in fiscal 2027, which is about $0.58 a share, or 8% of earnings, with Brent assumed at $100.⁴¹⁶ Schulten said it would weigh more in the second quarter and the second half.¹⁶ The third is the price itself. At $167.32 the stock trades at 24.3 times fiscal 2026 core earnings and 23.9 times the midpoint of this year’s guide C (calculated).⁴ If the business is fine and the multiple falls to 18 times, which is my base value over fiscal 2026 core earnings, the holder loses 25% C (calculated). No one needs to be wrong about the business for that to happen.

What the price implies

Run the model backward. Hold every input at the values below and ask what sales growth makes the stock worth $167.32.

The answer is 6.5% a year for ten years, with the margin flat at 24.5%. P&G grew sales 3.3% a year in the nine years to 2026. Its best organic growth in the past eight years was 7%, in fiscal 2022 and 2023, and in 2023 that came with 9 points of price and a loss of 3 points of volume.⁷¹² The other way to get there is margin: at my growth, the margin would need to be 31.9%, which is far above anything P&G has earned. Either figure is far from anything P&G has done. The usual answer to this is that I have the discount rate too high, and it is a fair one. I show it below.

What I can’t judge

Four inputs I cannot know from outside. How much of the price rise of 2023 was permanent: the company gives volume and price only in whole points. What the 7,000 job cuts save, because the company says savings are “difficult to estimate” given reinvestment.² How much of the $1.4B commodity bill is passed on, and when, because management declined to give detail on pricing plans.¹⁶ And what Thorne earns, because it said only that the result is not material.⁶ So I show a range and not a figure. The table moves two things I know matter, growth and the final margin.

The discount rate

I discount at 8.0%, about 3.1 points above the ten-year Treasury yield of 4.90%.²³ The capital asset pricing model, with Damodaran’s implied equity risk premium of 4.41%, gives 6.3% on P&G’s beta against the S&P 500 over 36 months (0.32), 6.5% over 60 (0.36) and 6.6% over 108 (0.39) C (calculated).²⁴²⁵ I do not use those, for a reason I think matters. A low beta says the earnings do not swing with the market. It does not say the price is steady: the share fell 23% from $179.70 in December 2024 to $138.04 in January 2026, while earnings kept growing C (calculated).¹ A share that pays 2.5% and grows at 3% is priced like a long bond. My 8.0% is the rate I use on my Walmart page too.

That is the real argument for the price, and it is not a silly one. If you accept a 6.5% return from an exceptionally steady business, the base value is $176 and the market is nearly right. I don’t accept it, because the same return is 1.6 points above a Treasury that pays it with no risk, and the volume record of the last three years does not look like a bond.

Three cases

The cases differ on three things: sales growth, the core margin and capital spending. Everything else is held the same.

The odds. My base needs four things, and I put rough numbers on each. Sales growth near 3% a year to 2030: 55%. The core margin at 24.3% by 2030 despite this year’s costs: 60%. No large deal or write-down that destroys value: 85%. A commodity shock that fades, with price recovered without losing units: 70%. Multiplied, those are 20% E (estimate). They are related, so say 30% in practice. The price needs more: it needs the base and a market that still accepts a 6.7% return, or it needs 6.5% sales growth, which I put well below 5%. These are my guesses, and they are not used in the values, except that the weighted value of $122 uses 25%, 50% and 25%.

Other uses of the same dollar

The ten-year Treasury pays 4.90% and the 30-year 5.28%, both with no business risk.²³ Against that, my base cash flows return 6.7% a year from $167.32 E (estimate). The other pages on this site are priced the same way. At today’s prices my Costco base returns 6.2% a year against an 8.5% hurdle, and my Walmart base 5.5% against 8.0%. P&G’s 6.7% is the best of the three, and still 1.3 points short of 8.0%. Costco is a better-growing business at a higher price and Walmart a thinner one. So P&G is the least expensive of the three, and it is not cheap. The extra 1.8 points over the Treasury is the pay for all the risks in this section, and I do not think it is enough.

What past lows looked like

The last close below $100 was on 23 March 2020, at $97.70. The last below my base value of $125 was 12 October 2022, at $124.43. In the past three years the lowest close was $138.04, in January 2026, 4% under my bull case C (calculated).¹ So I cannot point to a recent time when the stock was priced within my range. A close at $100 has not happened in more than six years, and I do not know that it will.

The margin of safety

My margin-of-safety price is $100, 20% under my base value. At that price my bear case returns 7.7% a year, close to the 8.0% I need, my base 9.2% and my bull 10.1%. I use a cushion of one fifth here. On my Costco page I used 30%, because that range ran from $323 to $731. Here the range is narrow, $95 to $144, and the cash flows are among the steadiest I cover. The price is 67% above $100.

Two different questions

How good is the business, and how good is the price? They are separate. P&G earned 22% to 24% operating margins, turned 92% of core profit into owner cash, raised its dividend for 70 years and has leading shares in most of its categories. Those are the marks of a very good business. The price asks for more than it has delivered: 6.5% growth in sales, where it has delivered 3.3%. This looks like a very good business at a price that already pays for it, and a bit more. My values assume it stays very good.

VIIThe case for the price

What most people miss

Three facts cut in P&G’s favour and get less notice than the headline. First, the first-quarter volume was broad. All ten categories and all six regions grew, and the company says over 70% of its largest US retail customers were holding or gaining its share, against under 10% in the first half of fiscal 2026.⁴¹⁶ Second, the productivity machine is large: savings worth 460 basis points of operating margin in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 let the company reinvest 410 points in SG&A, mostly marketing, and lose only 130 of core operating margin.³ Third, the share count did more than sales did: diluted shares fell 11.6% in ten years, so core earnings per share grew 6.3% a year from fiscal 2018 on sales growth of 3.3% a year C (calculated).⁷²¹³

The bull case

In plain words: P&G is the safest compounding business a market has, it has just turned volume positive after three flat years, a cost programme worth thousands of jobs is arriving, and it pays out $15B a year. I did not open any sell-side report, so I name no analyst. The company’s own line is steady. Jejurikar: “We are confident in the near term and excited about the future.”⁴ Schulten said, as MarketBeat summarizes the call, that the strength is real and will not be a straight line.¹⁶

On who holds it, at 30 June 2026, the latest 13F date, Fundsmith, Terry Smith’s firm, held 4,078,371 shares worth about $598M, down from 4,248,048 at 31 December 2025.²⁶ Berkshire Hathaway shows no P&G in its filing for that date.²⁷ Those positions are four months old, and they do not say why.

Against reality

If P&G does what the bull case says, with volume up 1% to 2% a year, price at 1% to 2%, the core margin back to 24.3% by 2030 and no more big write-offs, then my base of $125 is possible. It is still $42 below the price. My bull needs sales growth of 4% to 4.5% for six years and a 26% margin and is worth $144. The gap to $167.32 is the discount rate. At 6.5%, the CAPM rate, my base is $176. So the case for the price is that P&G is a nearly riskless 6.5% instrument that also grows. That could be right. My values do not pay for that.

The first-quarter numbers are good news with a footnote. Earnings per share rose 1% on 4% organic growth, and core operating margin fell 80 basis points.⁴ Guidance asks it to rise by the year-end: my own bridge from the guided core earnings per share of $6.89 to $7.10 implies a core margin of about 24%, up from 23.6%, in a year when costs are rising by $1.4B E (estimate).⁴

For the price to be right at 8.0% I would need sales growth near 6% a year for ten years with a 26% margin. P&G managed 6% to 7% organic growth from 2020 to 2023, on volume and then inflation, and never for ten years. At 6.7% the price needs my base, about 30% likely, and a market that stays generous.

What a 10x would take. Ten times $167.32 is $1,673, about $4.0T of market value on today’s shares. At 24 times core earnings, which is today’s multiple, that needs about $165B of net income, ten times fiscal 2026. At the 19% core net margin it earns now, that is about $863B of sales, ten times fiscal 2026 and more than Walmart’s $713B C (calculated). By 2036 it needs 26% sales growth a year for ten years, from a company that has grown 3.3% a year in nine. Buying back 1.2% of the shares a year would cut those sums by about a tenth, and it still needs more than $750B of sales. The stock has doubled in ten years, from $85.08, about 7% a year, so a tenfold move would need nearly four times that pace.¹ I know of no company in my files that has grown tenfold from a $400B start, and for P&G it is close to impossible. I would not build a case on it.

Where I come down

The volume in the first quarter moved me. Three flat years made me expect a story about price alone, and units are growing again. The 4% growth did not move me much, because earnings rose only 1% and the quarter had lower pricing in two big segments. What would raise my values most is volume of 1% to 2% a year with price at or under 2 points for four quarters, and a core margin that rises while commodities are rising.

VIIIRisks, and what would change my view

The three ways this goes badly wrong are at the start of Valuation. These are the rest.

• Retailers. Walmart is 16% of sales and ten customers 43%.² Retailers sell their own brands, run their own media businesses and can move shelf space. P&G does not report how many dollars it loses to private label.
• Tariffs. The September quarter included about $90M from a refund of tariffs paid under the emergency powers act,¹⁶ and tariffs added 50 basis points to core gross margin through lower costs and recognized recoveries.⁴ Gains like these may not repeat, and new tariffs would hit costs again.
• China. Greater China is its largest market outside the US and grew 8% in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 skin care volume there fell.³¹⁶ A weak consumer there would show up quickly.
• Currency. More than half of sales are outside the US. Currency added 2 points to fiscal 2026 sales, and core earnings per share were unchanged at constant currency.²³ The liquidation of Argentina brought $801M of charges after tax in fiscal 2025, mostly non-cash currency losses.²
• Supplier finance. $6.5B of payables are in a supplier finance programme at 60 to 180 days.⁶ If banks or suppliers ask for less time, cash falls.
• Health Care and Thorne. Personal Health Care sells products regulated by the FDA, and the Thorne purchase adds supplements, a category with its own rules.²⁶ Health Care volume fell 2.9% in the first quarter.⁴
• New ways to shop. The 10-K names social commerce, streaming and AI-based search as changes it must adapt to.² If shoppers ask an assistant for “the cheapest detergent that works,” the brand is in a weaker position than when the shopper reads the box.
• New leadership. A new chief executive, a new chairman and four new segment heads, all during a 7,000-job restructuring.¹⁰² Changes this large usually help, and also tend to distract.
• Interest rates. The ten-year yield is 4.90%. A share with a 2.5% dividend yield competes with that every day.²³