Procter & Gamble moved the exact same volume of deodorant and toilet paper this quarter as last quarter. Wall Street analysts who get paid six figures to predict deodorant volume are devastated. Revenue missed estimates because apparently nobody told the Excel jockeys that selling the same number of units at the same price produces the same revenue.
Earnings per share beat expectations. Revenue missed. This means P&G spent less money making the same amount of money, which in any other context would be called "not being a f*cking idiot," but in finance requires a sixteen-paragraph report with price target adjustments.
Volume stayed unchanged. That's the whole story. Zero percent growth in the number of Tide pods and Crest tubes leaving warehouses. Some analyst at JPMorgan built a model that said Americans would brush their teeth 0.3% more this quarter. They did not. His model is now worthless, which makes it identical in value to his model from last quarter.
Retail traders saw the revenue miss headline and panic-sold before reading that EPS beat. They will now read seven Seeking Alpha articles about whether P&G is a value trap and conclude that the company that sells toothpaste to three billion people might be overvalued because volume was flat for ninety days.
The technical chart shows P&G exactly where it was six months ago. The fundamental story is a company selling the same amount of shampoo as before. The news story is that analysts were wrong about shampoo demand by two percent.
Everyone involved in this earnings report will spend the next week discussing what flat volume means for 2026 guidance, as if the number of diapers sold in Ohio contains predictive information about anything other than the number of babies in Ohio.
Check the chart in three months. It'll be the same. So will the volume.
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