Primark, Nike and Diageo are flipping the script. Do big changes pay off?

It’s not easy to right a ship, especially when it’s more of a tanker than a sailboat. But some of the most well-known consumer names are being forced to give it a go with big changes in a bid to meet customer demands.

The group of companies highlighted here, including Primark, Nike, and Diageo, are household names. But they can feel of a slightly different age: those that once weathered the chaos of a Primark shopping trip now have easier and cheaper options like online retailer Shein. Diageo faces a dwindling appetite for drinking among younger people, and Nike has lagged its peers in streetstyle, as people moved from Nike's Air Force 1s to Adidas Sambas.

Companies have been successfully rehabilitated in the past: long-time Netflix shareholders were well rewarded for their patience. Turnarounds take time, but a big hint towards how things are going are if the companies can meet the objectives they set out and/or are beating market forecasts. If evidence of this starts to come through, this is likely to be rewarded by the market. However, if tangible improvements don’t follow these actions, then shares can keep falling. Here, we’ll examine a few of the names starting to shift, and what the path has looked like for companies that have made the move in the past.

Primark begins online deliveries

Primark is not currently listed on its own and is instead owned by Associated British Foods. However, the conglomerate announced that Primark would be spinning off into its own listing by the end of 2027, so shareholders are paying extra attention to the future strategy.

Primark accounts for a big chunk of Associated British Foods. Its half-year revenue came in at £4.65 billion, while the total business’s half year revenue was £9.47 billion. But it’s been a difficult time for the business as a whole and the Primark retail arm specifically. The share price of Associated British Foods has essentially gone nowhere in the past five years and has fallen nearly 14% year to date. Primark experienced a like-for-like sales decrease of 2.7% in the six months to their April update. Analysts will be watching this figure when full year results are announced in November.

Earlier in September, Primark announced that it would be launching home deliveries for the first time, something they held off on even during the Covid era. While the company had previously argued against going fully online, only offering a limited service which allowed you to buy online and collect in store, saying the low cost of its clothes made the act of packing and shipping too difficult to justify on a commercial basis, it seems that it’s finally given in to the overwhelming retail trend.

Investors will have to wait to see if Primark’s bet pays off, both in terms of the spin-off and the launch of online shopping. Current Associated British Foods shareholders will be given stakes in both companies when the split occurs. But if the brand can keep up its UK reputation, making the move that others made over a decade ago could be an obvious solution for much coveted growth. The other element will be building the brand further outside the UK, namely winning the affection of the US market.

• Read: The UK companies with the most consistent earnings

Diageo brings in 'Drastic Dave’

Most of us wouldn’t have anticipated drinking going out of fashion. But there is evidence of such a shift, and alcoholic beverage company Diageo is dealing with the repercussions. The company’s share price has fallen 53% in the past five years, so bringing in a CEO with the nickname ‘Drastic Dave’ seems like a good starting point. Dave Lewis was credited with the turnaround of Tesco by taking extreme cost-cutting measures, and some investors seem to have faith he could do it again: the share price is up 1.2% this year after he was appointed CEO in November 2025.

The first six months with Lewis at the helm saw a small drop in sales, but an improving operating margin. Lewis has announced plans to cut costs by $1 billion in the next three years, but it’s only part of the puzzle: the company will also need to get people buying again. One plan for improvement here is a doubling of Guiness production, which has been the shining star of the Diageo business through its tough years.

Some investors have been willing to jump back into Diageo due to Lewis’s reputation, but others will want to see balance sheet improvements first. If markets like the sound of a change, they can sometimes start to move before the effects come through. But if the bet doesn’t pay off, the price is liable to fall again.

Diageo doesn’t need people to go back to drinking in the same way, but it needs some sort of buy-in on products. They are pushing ahead with zero-alcohol beers and canned cocktails, which seem to be growing in appeal.

Nike goes back to athletes

Instead of taking the brand in a new direction, Nike is looking to get back to what it knows: athletes. CEO Elliot Hill, who took the role in October 2024, already had three decades worth of experience with the company. So far, his tenure isn’t off to the racing start he may have hoped. The company’s share price has dropped 50% in the past year. Hill’s plan is to rebuild the focus of ‘sports first’ and is rebuilding its wholesale business after a period where Nike prioritised direct to consumer sales. Nike has also built a partnership with Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS brand, which could bring with it a new cohort of customers.

Moving forward, analysts will have a close eye on Nike’s operating margins. The figure, which has in the past sat in the mid-to-high teens, has this year been in the 7-8% range. It will also look to push its gross margin above 40%.

How long does it take to see improvement?

The turnaround time for companies can vary. If there’s a clear issue that can be resolved, improvement can come as soon as six months. But if the company is facing a changing consumer environment, the turnaround can stretch over two or more years. This seems likely to be the case for Diageo, Primark and Nike.

Nike has a market cap of £53 billion. Change at a company this size is unlikely to be fast, but as an investor, there’s likely to be a cutoff point. We can look to companies of the past to get an idea of when things began to turn around after a strategy pivot. Netflix began to introduce streaming in 2007, but its share price didn’t begin to explode until three years later. Equally a decision to introduce an ad-supported tier and crack down on password sharing as a way of reigniting growth took time to show up in the company’s financial performance.

Aerospace and defence business Rolls Royce announced it would restructure to become a more streamlined business in 2018, and the share price continued to decline until 2023. It took another CEO, Tufan Erginbilgiç, and more dramatic shift in strategy, to set the company on its upward trajectory, not to mention an uptick in business as air travel returned to normal after the pandemic and as Europe prepared for increased conflict. Notably, his strategy went beyond cost-cutting measures and included getting more employees involved in decision making.

What likely made Rolls Royce so appealing to stakeholders has been its ability to deliver: according to JP Morgan, Rolls Royce has now beaten and raised expectations in terms of earnings and cash flow nine times in a row.

New plans will be quickly ignored by the market if the figures don’t follow.