Danone Grew 4.5% Last Year. North America Barely Managed 1.5%. Protein Is the Fix

Danone grew 4.5% last year. In North America, one of its two biggest markets, sales barely moved. That gap is the story to watch when the French food giant reports first-half results this Wednesday.

The problem region

North America is the weak spot in an otherwise strong Danone. The group lifted like-for-like sales 4.5% in 2025 and pushed its recurring operating margin to 13.4%. Free cash flow jumped a third to €2.8 billion. Then you reach the United States. In the third quarter of 2025, North American sales rose just 1.5%, the slowest quarter since the end of 2019. The fourth quarter came in at 0.7%. Danone pointed to weak coffee creamers and factories that could not make enough yogurt to meet demand.

So the company behind Oikos, Silk, Horizon, Activia and International Delight has a growth problem in the one market where the health boom should help it most. Wednesday's results are the first clean read on whether the fix is working.

The fix is protein

Danone's answer is to pour money into protein and functional nutrition. Oikos is already the number one high-protein yogurt brand in the US. Over the past year Danone pushed it well beyond the dairy aisle. Oikos now sells shelf-stable protein shakes in a market worth more than $7 billion that is growing almost 16% a year. Silk Protein claims the highest protein of any chilled plant milk on US shelves. There is even an Oikos drink built for people losing weight on GLP-1 medicines.

The buying has been just as aggressive. Danone took control of Kate Farms, the top doctor-recommended plant-based nutrition brand in the US, to grow its medical nutrition arm. It agreed to pay about €1 billion for the British meal-replacement brand Huel. It is buying Australia's MADE Group and the rest of its Saputo dairy venture to add more protein and gut-health drinks. Each deal points the same way: sell more high-protein nutrition to shoppers who now put health first.

Where the protein bet could break

Here is the catch. Everyone is chasing the same shopper. General Mills, PepsiCo, Nestlé and a wall of private-label brands are all loading protein onto shelves. When every label shouts 30 grams of protein, the word stops selling the product and price takes over. Danone is spending to plant its flags early. It even became the first official yogurt and plant-based drinks partner of the Big Ten college sports conference, a deal that reaches 580,000 students and 14,000 athletes.

The bigger risk sits closer to home. Danone said its US weakness came partly from plants that could not keep up with orders. New brands and sponsorships do not fix a factory that has run out of capacity. That takes money, time and patient management. It is the least glamorous part of the plan and probably the one that matters most.

What This Means for Operators and Investors

On Wednesday, look past the group headline to North American like-for-like growth. If it climbs back above 3%, the protein bet is starting to pay. If it sits near 1%, Danone is buying growth faster than it is building it, and investors will start asking what all the deals are really worth. Watch whether protein is adding sales or just shifting them from plain yogurt to premium yogurt. Watch the margin too, because Huel was expensive and its integration costs land this year. For everyone else in food, Danone is a live test of a bet the whole industry is making: that protein is a lasting growth engine rather than a crowded fad. The company that fixes its supply and holds its price will win this category. The one that only launches products will hand its margin to the retailer.