General Mills Sees Lower Sales on Weak Consumer Sentiment

Kristina Peterson

Tue, February 17, 2026 at 10:45 PM GMT+9 2 min read

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GIS

-5.50%

(Bloomberg) – General Mills Inc. lowered its fiscal 2026 sales outlook, citing a more challenging consumer environment.

The maker of Cheerios and other food products said it now expects organic net sales to be down 1.5% to 2%, compared with its previous outlook of down 1% to up 1%.

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“Weak consumer sentiment, heightened uncertainty, and significant volatility have weighed on category growth and impacted consumer purchase patterns,” the company said in a statement Tuesday ahead of a conference presentation.

Chief Executive Officer Jeff Harmening said cereal, snacks and dog food were seeing the biggest hits from the shakier consumer environment, fueled by higher inflation, reductions in food aid benefits and geopolitical uncertainty. Those factors “have led to significant consumer stress, especially for the middle and lower income groups,” he said in a presentation at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference.

Adjusted operating profit and adjusted diluted earnings per share are now expected to be down as much as 20% in constant currency, versus previous guidance for down as much as 15% in constant currency.

In December, General Mills said it had lowered prices across roughly two-thirds of its North American retail business in the face of shaky consumer sentiment.

Where General Mills has lowered its base prices, volume has gone up by eight percentage points, said Dana McNabb, group president of North America retail at General Mills, said at the conference. McNabb said General Mills has targeted key levels that the company views as a threshold beyond which consumers aren’t willing to pay for a product and lowered prices below those levels.

The company is also taking about 20% of its “least productive” products off the market, McNabb said.

The stock fell 3.6% at 8:35 a.m. in New York. The shares have declined 18% over the past year.

(Updates with context from executive presentations starting in the fourth paragraph.)

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