Recent Celsius scanner data has brought into question the trajectory of the core Celsius brand with its retail sales declining 3% YoY.
Just a few years ago, they were growing 100% YoY.
It isn’t all bad news, as Alani Nu growth remains impressive at 49% YoY, though decelerating from 100% YoY growth just a few months ago.
While it’s true that, no matter how you slice it, Celsius has decelerated growth, the negative 3% YoY figure is a bit misleading. There is a lot of missing context in the scanner data around what is actually going on. And that context has been significantly elaborated on in the Goldman Sachs Global Staples Forum that took place yesterday, May 12, 2026.
After analyzing the transcript from the forum, the whole picture of what is going on with Celsius, and the entire portfolio, becomes clear. Celsius is delivering a new strategy for the entire portfolio and doing some much needed housekeeping for the core Celsius brand.
Without further ado, here is what is actually going on.
There’s limited retail shelf space. When you’re a growing brand and only have a single unit of shelf space, you ask for more, and release a new SKU (product). The whole goal at these early stages is to keep getting new shelf space and releasing new SKUs to fill it.
Eventually, new shelf space assignments start to slow and consumers can become a bit bewildered by all the SKUs, especially for a newer brand.
At this point it’s no longer about just releasing new products, but cutting worst selling ones. And it’s also about releasing a steady cadence of new innovative flavors, which provide an immediate boost to replace under-performers. Eventually some of those will become permanent offerings as well.
The whole process of cutting bad SKUs is called SKU rationalization. Celsius hasn’t really done as much work on this, as they kept getting significant new shelf space YoY. However, shelf space gains have stagnated, and so have Celsius sales.
At this point, SKU rationalization is what drives future growth for the core Celsius brand and makes way for new releases. The number of SKUs sold by Celsius to the avg store peaked in the Summer of last year. This was the time SKU rationalization should have aggressively started. But it didn’t, because of the Alani Nu acquisition, which paused most strategic initiatives of the brand as they began to focus on Alani Nu integration more than anything else.
Now that Alani Nu is integrated into Celsius and the Pepsi distribution system, SKU rationalization has come to the forefront of re-accelerating the health and growth of the core Celsius brand.
In the short term, SKU rationalization can taste a bit like sour medicine as it means:
The SKUs that aren’t selling will be heavily discounted to clear them off shelves. Those that aren’t distributed locally yet will be aggressively sold off on Amazon at lower price points.
The overall variety of product at some stores will decline as discontinued SKUs are sold off without an immediate replacement. This is more a timing issue.
The net result is, in scanner data, it will show that Celsius core brand prices are declining and that sales are declining. This might look like the core brand is struggling when out of context, but this is exactly what happens when you do substantial SKU rationalization. However, what happens next is most important.
Celsius has said the core brand is actually getting 17% more total shelf space in stores this year, and Alani Nu is getting triple digit shelf space gains. Many of these gains are in premium types of shelf space, such as coolers and end caps, which have higher velocity of sales than dry shelves.
What happens next is that the dead SKUs (a total of which about 14 are being dropped by Celsius), will be replaced with the better selling Celsius flavors as well as better selling Alani flavors. And these new flavors are going in higher velocity of sale placements as mentioned. There is however a lag, as those new shelves can take a few months to be set up and fully installed.
Another key highlight is that Alani Nu has more premium pricing than Celsius as customers are willing to fork over more for the brand. This means that SKUs that core Celsius cut that are underperformers can be replaced with higher performing Alani Nu SKUs. Not only does that mean more overall brand revenue per can sold, it also means higher velocity vs the dead SKU. This is a double shot of growth.
Currently, Alani Nu only averages 11 items per store vs Celsius at 16 (which was in the 18s not long ago).
With the triple digit shelf gains, Alani will have significantly more room to expand their SKUs.
The shelf cut gains today will also make room for the substantial innovation overhaul that Celsius announced for 2027.
The net result of all of this SKU rationalization is visible in the scanner data and Celsius updates:
Decrease in avg items per store for Celsius, despite new shelf space gains
Fewer avg items per store for Celsius brand
Increase of over 20% YoY in Amazon sales by Celsius (likely from SKU destocking efforts)
Celsius sales prices went from 6% increases YoY in early 2026 to a 3% YoY decrease as destocking efforts went on
Overall, my interpretation of scanner data and the Celsius announcement is that the current Celsius slowdown we see in scanner data is temporary.
New shelves are coming online in significant quantity, and this will naturally increase sales. Getting bad SKUs off the shelf will also naturally increase future sales with their replacements. The only negative part of all this is the temporary bad scanner data we see during the SKU rationalization process. In all likelihood, I believe this is a short-term blip, and the Celsius core brand as well as gains to Alani will return stronger than before the process began (and when everyone was reasonably happy with scanner data).
The full transcript from the Celsius Goldman Sachs Staples Forum on May 12, 2026 is currently available for free from Fiscal.ai here.
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