Introduction
Newell Brands (NWL), a diversified consumer goods company that markets and sells its broad product portfolio (see image below to get a better sense of its product categories) in over 150 countries across the globe (although over 60% of sales are still in the U.S.), has proven to be a source of wealth destruction for investors for a while now.
For instance, over the past year, other consumer discretionary stocks have at least managed positive returns of single digits (on average), and other small caps have fared even better. But NWL, which currently has a market cap of less than $1.5B, has lost almost half its value.
Is there hope for this beleaguered entity, which houses some storied consumer brands like Rubbermaid, Graco, and Coleman (among others), to turn things around, or is the distressing status quo likely to persist?
Business Growth Will Likely Get Worse Before It Gets Better
If some passive observers of NWL are wondering why the stock has taken such a beating, they may want to first start with looking at the company’s topline backdrop, where it has failed to post any positive annual growth for 15 straight quarters on the trot (that’s almost 4 years of revenue attrition)!
Against this very low bar, one would hope that NWL can eke out some positive growth soon enough, and it appears that we will finally get that this year, but not until the seasonally weakest Q1 is out of the way and potentially even Q2 (last year’s Q1, which is the base period, had also benefited from 1-2% of positive pre-buying due to impending tariff pressures further in the year). To shed more insight, note that revenue growth in Q1-26 is expected to worsen by -3 to -5% YoY (consensus is budgeting for a figure of -3.99%) from the -2.6% run rate in Q4-25.
