The Infusive Consumer Global Alpha Leaders Fund delivered +5.4% net-of-fees in April, with year-to-date net performance at -1.1%. This is for the USD Class A.
For the 12 months ended 30 April 2026, Infusive USD A delivered a return of 11.75% with annualised volatility of 12.2%. The latest UCITS documents available via https://infusive.com/ucits
The geographical mix of the portfolio is tilted towards companies listed in North America, followed by Western Europe and Asia Pacific. We held approximately 5% cash.
The top contributors: Alphabet (+1.39%), Amazon (+1.28%), Microsoft (+0.65%), Meta (+0.36%), Visa (+0.30%).
The bottom contributors: EssilorLuxottica (-0.20%), Spotify (-0.15%), McDonald’s (-0.11%), Tencent (-0.06%), Domino’s Pizza (-0.05%).
The turbulence of tweets, tankers and technology continued in April. Amongst the fast and dynamic news flow, we did hear updates from many companies, which provided a chance for investors to focus on operational execution, reported numbers and commentary from management teams. We consistently observed that those companies who have control over what they do, tend to be more immune to unexpected shocks. Control of pricing, control of distribution, control of the customer relationship, and—more subtly—control of cost curves in a world where labour, compute, and attention are all scarce, tend to thrive. This may appear obvious, but the complexity in executing this make it much more difficult in practice.
This is the core of Infusive’s consumer strategy – we aim to identify and invest in businesses that we believe have a strong connection with their customer, which influences spending behaviour, pricing power, durability and growth opportunities.
During April, several key themes stood out:
1) Referendum on quality of demand and likelihood of repeatability
Across consumer categories, company earnings reinforced that “growth” is splitting into two very different categories:
- Engineered growth: repeatable, driven by loyalty, product cadence, channel strategy, and data.
- Borrowed growth: pulled forward via promotion, price, or favourable mix that tends to mean-revert.
This distinction matters because the market is increasingly willing to punish businesses that report growth but can’t explain why the customer came back and why they’ll keep coming back. We’ve written extensively that the consumer is much more decerning in their spending patterns and willing to change, if it is identifying value.
This was evidenced across a range of areas in our investible universe:
- Platforms / Large Technology: The market has been sceptical about the near $1 trillion in AI capital investments from large technology leaders, such as Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, arguing that the payback will take time and could pressure margins, increase debt levels and shift the unit economics of the businesses. As readers know, we have been large users and believers in AI. We observed in this set of results that AI adoption is increasing and consumers are paying for improved services. The monetisation thesis has begun and argubaly, much faster than investors anticipated. Our analysis suggests that this will be a long adoption cycle, representing a significant share of global GDP.
- Staples & beverages: the market focused on elasticity, volume resilience, and whether pricing power is turning into brand strength or demand leakage. We continue to observe in staples that segment leaders, with strong data, innovation and distribution, tend to compound at rates above peers. Coca-Cola is such an example, with a broad product range and captive customer base spanning the globe.
The key takeaway: the market is paying for systems (repeatability) and discounting episodes (one-off spikes).
2) Consumer demand is not “weak” or “strong” — it’s segmented and strategic
Our team travels extensively and speaks to both listed and unlisted companies to better understand consumers, industries, companies and trends. Our research continues to echo the same thematic: the consumer is not collapsing; the consumer is allocating.
What’s changing is how they choose:
- value is being defined more by price-to-benefit (functionality, durability, convenience) than by headline price (for example, Carnival Cruises);
- discretionary spend is being defended where there is **identity, status, or experience utility (**for example, American Express);
- and friction is being punished—people increasingly pay to remove friction (time, planning, uncertainty).
That creates a different competitive landscape:
- The winners are often those who can increase or hold price without losing trust.
- The losers are often those who chase volume and erode the brand contract.
In practical terms, this is why we focus not only on “pricing power,” but also on pricing architecture:
- channel-specific products,
- promotional discipline,
- and premium tiers that feel earned rather than opportunistic.
Those tactics are not cosmetic, but rather what we’ve observed through multiple cycles, as a way incumbents defend share without training the customer to wait for discounts.
3) Barriers to entry are shifting: “brand + distribution + data” is compounding again
A subtle but important April theme: barriers to entry are moving away from “can you make a product?” toward “can you operate the loop?”
In many consumer categories, manufacturing is not the moat. The moat is:
- distribution rights (physical shelf, digital placement, platform access – such as Visa),
- data advantage (who understands the customer at the margin – such as Netflix),
- speed (innovation cadence and refresh rate – such as McDonald’s),
- and trust (especially when the consumer is more selective – such as Colgate-Palmolive).
This is why the most interesting battles are increasingly fought in the “invisible layer”:
- trade terms and route-to-market (both physically and digitally),
- last-mile economics,
- loyalty penetration,
- and the algorithms of discovery (search, social, marketplaces).
It also explains why we treat “innovation” differently:
- the market is rewarding quiet innovation—small improvements that scale across a system—more than moonshots that don’t translate to distribution and repeat purchase. We continue to search for those businesses that can surprise the market positively, by using AI to improve what they do and drive more sales, or greater profits.
4) “AI monetisation” moved from narrative to income statement (and will shape consumer markets indirectly)
It is hard to believe that ChatGPT was “only” released in Q4 2022. In under four years, industries have transformed, the nature of work has changed for many, traditional education looks vulnerable and the way people work and what their employer expects, will almost certainly be different. In some categories, the market is now demanding AI accountability. The question is no longer “who is exposed to AI?”—for us, we focus on three core areas:
- who can monetise it,
- who has distribution for it,
- and who can fund it without breaking the model.
For platforms, the market’s obsession is justified: compute and capex are real constraints, not theoretical ones. But the downstream implications matter for consumer businesses too, because AI is already changing:
- customer acquisition efficiency,
- merchandising and conversion,
- supply chain and labour scheduling,
- and customer service quality.
In other words: AI’s first-order winners may be the semiconductors, hyperscalers and platforms, but second-order winners are likely to be businesses that use AI to compress cost curves and increase lifetime value—especially where customer data and loyalty are already strong. We view this as more significant that the rise of China in the early 2000s for many companies.
This is also why we frame AI as a barrier-to-entry amplifier: if a company already has distribution and data, AI makes that moat wider. If it doesn’t, AI can become a cost burden without payoff. The variance of success is significant, as we speak with companies.
What we take forward (and what we’re watching)
If April had a single lesson, it’s this: the market is paying for repeatability.
We try to focus on what we can analyse and control:
- Customer ownership (loyalty, ecosystem, repeat purchase mechanics)
- Control of cost curves (labour, logistics, compute—where relevant)
- Pricing architecture (not price increases; the ability to segment without damaging trust)
- Distribution power (physical, digital, and platform placement)
- Innovation cadence (frequency and relevance, not theatrics)
Where those ingredients exist together, the barriers to entry are widening. Where they don’t, valuation risk rises quickly—even for good brands—because the tape has shifted from stories to proof.