General Mills Focuses on Value to Drive Volume Growth

MINNEAPOLIS – general Mills Inc. executives said the companyS pricing investments have better positioned its brands to spur volume growth wiht increasingly value-conscious shoppers.

“We haven’t really seen an increase thus far in the competitive levels, which is to say that levels of discounting are about the same as they were a year ago, broadly speaking, across our categories,” Jeffrey Harmening, chairman and chief executive officer, told analysts in a Dec. 17 conference call on fiscal 2026 second-quarter results. “When you think about what we have done, there are a couple of things I would say. Going first is fine, but doing it well is even better. And our team has executed the pricing really well. If you think about being in 26 different categories across lots of different customers,it takes a lot to get the pricing reflected in a manner that is consistent with what you’re looking for.”

The realization that General Mills needed a more compelling value proposition came back in March,when Harmening noted that an expected improvement in the consumer habitat hadn’t materialized and instead had deteriorated. In turn, the company hatched plans to leverage cost-savings initiatives to ramp up investment in pricing, innovation, brand marketing and media to reignite volume growth.

“Importantly, on our pricing, we’re not getting down to the levels of private label or somthing like that,” Harmening noted in the call. “We’re just kind of getting under price cliffs and within a certain range. If you look at our price/mix in North America Retail (business unit), it’s down about 3% or so far this year. That’s after 30%-plus increases over prior years where we had a lot of inflation. So we feel good about where we’re competitively positioned and feel really good about the way that we are executing.”

Dana McNabb, group president of North America Retail and North America Pet, characterized the current promotional environment as “rational,” with the frequency and the depth of promotions similar to last quarter and to last year. Yet harmening said shoppers – especially lower- to middle-income consumers – are “being stretched” and seeking out discounts before buying.

“We continue to see consumer weakness,particularly for those making under $100,000 a year,” Harmening said,adding that consumers in higher income ranges are “faring a lot better” due to the current stock market. “So that plays itself out in a few different ways. One is that people continue to eat at home quite a bit. Eighty-six percent or so of eating occasions are still at home and 14% away from home. We haven’t really seen a change in that for a couple of quarters, but it’s still at a very high level of