How Headline Bias Costs You
Reality resides in the footnotes
The news of Treasury Wine Estates’ $450 million US write-down is dominating the drinks headlines right now, but the company’s insistence that it’s just an “accounting adjustment” is exactly why you need to read the fine print.1
Multinational beverage companies know that most investors, analysts, and industry junkies only skim the headlines of their quarterly and annual reports.
They count on it. If you want to know what’s really going on inside a company, you must read the footnotes.2
They contain the crucial details that the main report often minimizes.3
Here are three recent examples:
📉 Impending Loss: Molson Coors
The headline for Molson Coors’ 2025 Q3 earnings was stable and unremarkable. But a footnote in the report revealed a $75.3 million impairment charge on its Blue Run Spirits brand. This disclosed the near-total loss of value on a relatively recent acquisition, a huge detail minimized in the main text.
🗓️ Strategic Delay: Constellation Brands
Constellation Brands’ “2025 Restructuring Initiative” looked promising and immediate. However, a defined term buried in their Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report clarified that the full cost savings will not be realized until Fiscal 2028—a three-year delay on the announced benefit.
🧮 Accounting Boost: Pernod Ricard
Based on a quick glance of their Integrated Annual Report, Pernod Ricard’s group share net profit for the year appeared to be up an impressive +10%. A deeper dive into the notes showed this was driven primarily by significantly lower non-recurring costs (e.g., restructuring, reversal on Kahlúa impairment), not purely core business growth.
Good news makes the headline. The full, accurate, and often uncomfortable picture is always reserved for the footnotes.
If you are an investor, analyst, or competitor, make reading the fine print your priority.4
Or make sure to read through the entire document. Pernod buried their news on page 330 of 476 of their 472-page Universal Registration Document (Integrated Annual Report). Constellation Brands’ definition of their “2025 Restructuring Initiative” is found on page 90 of 98 here. Molson’s third quarter results can be found here.
Look for publicly available documents like U.S. SEC filings (Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K) and European regulatory reports (URD and IAR).
This post was inspired by Anthony Scilipoti’s discussion on financial statement analysis on The Knowledge Project podcast.