3Q26 Commentary

The author applauds Fortune Brands' decisions to protect inventory availability and reinvest tariff refunds in product development, and added to the position late in the third quarter.

“Fortune Brands Innovations (FBIN) – Building products company FBIN saw its stock price decline in Q3, retracing Q2’s positive move related to excitement over Jesse Singh’s appointment as CEO. In August, Singh cut annual earnings guidance for both external and internal reasons. Externally, interest rate increases are pressuring all housing-related companies. Internally, Jesse is temporarily utilizing costly airfreight to ensure customers have proper inventory until temporary inefficiencies in FBIN’s supply chain are fixed. He also decided to reinvest some of FBIN’s tariff refunds into product development spending. We applaud both moves as proper long-term business decisions. While we had trimmed our position into Q2’s stock price strength, we added later in Q3.”