Sydney, June 23, 2026, 07:09 (AEST)
- Brambles ended Monday at A$19.14, off 0.31%. The S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.14%. The ASX is in pre-open, regular trading begins about 10:00.
- The company is cancelling 1.94 million shares from Friday’s buyback, worth A$37.23 million, with the change effective Tuesday.
- The market is mostly missing how fast the buyback is running. The big unknown is if Brambles can fix its U.S. pallet-repair network without more costs or losing more customers.
Brambles Limited (ASX:BXB) is set to cancel 1,943,252 shares on Tuesday after spending A$37.23 million on its latest buyback. The company said in filings that its latest programme has now picked up 8,178,060 shares for A$146.48 million since June 1. After the cancellation, Brambles will have around 1.337 billion shares on issue.
ASX:BXB slipped six cents to A$19.14 Monday, after moving in a range between A$18.79 and A$19.29. Shares are up 18.3% since the June 3 low, but still trade nearly 29% under the 52-week high of A$26.93. The buyback is helping support the price, though the earnings outlook hasn’t fully reset.
Using Monday’s Reserve Bank of Australia reference rate of US$0.7004 per Australian dollar, Brambles’ A$146.48 million outlay comes to about US$102.6 million. That’s around 25.6% of its US$400 million buyback authority spent in under three weeks. The stock bought back represents about 0.61% of the disclosed share count in the buyback notice, slightly boosting earnings per share as profit is spread across fewer shares, though overall profit is unchanged.
Brambles’ broker bought 1.94 million shares on Friday, making up 13.9% of the 14.03 million shares traded. Turnover was a little more than four times the company’s 2026 daily average. It was the last session before the quarterly S&P/ASX 200 reshuffle, which kicked in on Monday. Brambles stayed in the index. The timing points to the broker using the extra index-driven volume to get the trade done without moving the price much. Brambles still rose 2.07% for the day.
Share buybacks in the latest tranche came in at an average of A$19.161 per share, right around where the stock closed on Monday. Management is bidding again at the current market price, not grabbing shares at a big discount. That could help the stock hold up. But it leaves the wider operating questions unresolved.
Brambles cut its 2026 guidance on May 18, blaming repair-capacity issues at subcontractor sites in the central and northeast U.S. The group now sees sales growth at 2%-3% instead of 3%-4%, and trimmed underlying profit growth to 3%-5% from the prior 8%-11%, both at constant currency. Brambles put the earnings impact at US$60 million, including around US$40 million in extra repair, transport, handling and storage costs. The firm plans to buy about two million extra pallets at a capital outlay of about US$60 million.
Brambles CEO Graham Chipchase said, “meeting our customers’ needs is non-negotiable.” He expects repair constraints to clear by the end of the first half of fiscal 2027. The next key date for investors is the August 20 full-year result. They’ll watch for signs that more pallets are actually being repaired and put back in use, and not just shifted between sites or swapped out.
Marcus Ryan at Yarra Capital Management took a cautious line on Brambles in comments out Monday. “We remain cautious on Brambles,” Ryan said. He flagged “risks the market may not have fully accounted for.” Ryan also questioned whether consensus forecasts for sales growth to pick up to 4.5% in fiscal 2027 were too hopeful. Soft service levels could hold back customer wins, pricing and margins, he said. At around 18 times forward earnings, he said valuation support looks limited. Livewire Markets
The downside case is still seen as operational, not financial. If the repair slowdown drags past the first half of fiscal 2027, spending on transport, labour and pallets could tie up cash that could have funded buybacks. Service gaps could also help competitors in North America. PECO Pallet and iGPS might get more power in customer talks. PECO runs a wood-pallet network, iGPS has a national plastic-pallet pool.
Brambles’ next filings should show if the company is still buying back stock at the same speed after Monday’s drop. Investors are waiting for the August numbers to see if the buyback is helping cover a weak patch in operations, or just putting excess cash to work while the business fixes itself more slowly.
