
Public Company CEO Rule 1 - "When all else fails…just mention AI." Glanbia Plc (LON:GLB) is a multibillion-dollar global nutrition company that's currently comprised of three divisions that span across the B2B supply chain (i.e. Health & Nutrition and Dairy Nutrition) and branded products (Performance Nutrition). “Health & Nutrition” is a leading global ingredients solutions business, providing value added ingredient and flavor solutions to a range of attractive, high-growth end markets. In the first nine months of 2025, revenue increased by 11.5% YoY. “Dairy Nutrition” is the number one producer of American-style cheddar cheese in the U.S. market, but more importantly (for my audience) the number one producer of whey protein isolate…and provides a wide range of dairy and functional protein solutions. In the first nine months of 2025, revenue increased by 3.2%. The brands in the Glanbia Performance Nutrition portfolio include; Optimum Nutrition, BSN, think!, Isopure, and Amazing Grass. Glanbia Performance Nutrition had first nine months of 2025 revenue that declined by 2.6% YoY. Additionally, I'll dive deeper into Glanbia Performance Nutrition geographical, sales channel, product format, and categorial performance. As part of the branded products portfolio part of the group-wide transformation program announced last November, Glanbia completed the sale of SlimFast and Body & Fit. In total, those divestures generated only around $63 million…which is a far cry from the almost $400 million paid for both assets less than a decade ago. Optimum Nutrition, which was the initial M&A transaction in 2008 that created the GPN division, now represents 68% of the total revenue. In the last year, Optimum Nutrition generated revenue of approximately $1.2 billion. The other largest share of GPN revenue is the healthy lifestyle brand portfolio makes up 19% and includes ISOPURE, think!, and Amazing Grass. And these healthy lifestyle brands has collectively performed relatively strong over the last several years, with like-for-like revenue increasing 2.6% YoY in the first nine months of 2025. Moreover, in terms of U.S. market tracked channels retail consumption growth…the healthy lifestyle brand portfolio was up 6.8%. And for the final portion of my latest first principles thinking content, I'll focus on the recent AI chatbot launch by Optimum Nutrition. While this is hardly “AI washing,” the current iteration of "Coach Optimum” is also not even worth mentioning on quarterly earnings calls. This isn’t to nitpick Glanbia (because it really wasn’t mentioned in any kind of predominant manner) but before parading around “Coach Optimum” again…maybe leadership should deepen its understanding of strategic flywheels from powerful predictive health platforms like Hims & Hers.