SUJA LIFE, INC. — NASDAQ IPO

May 7, 2026

On May 7, 2026, Suja Life, Inc., a plat­form of well­ness bev­er­age brands, began trad­ing on Nas­daq under the tick­er sym­bol SUJA. Ground­Force Cap­i­tal was an ear­ly investor in Vive Organ­ic through our PPV II fund, and fol­low­ing Suja’s acqui­si­tion of Vive in Octo­ber 2022, PPV II retained an equi­ty inter­est in a com­bined Suja/Vive enti­ty. Today’s IPO marks a land­mark moment for the found­ing team we backed from the start.

In 2015, Wyatt Taub­man, Kyle With­y­combe, and JR Simich found­ed Vive with a line of cold-pressed well­ness shots and a belief that func­tion­al well­ness should be acces­si­ble to every­one. JR hand-deliv­ered shots from the back of his pick­up truck. Kyle brought deep exper­tise in organ­ic sourc­ing and farm­ing. Wyatt held the vision togeth­er, ral­ly­ing the team through the years of build­ing a brand before the cat­e­go­ry even exist­ed. That grind, earn­ing shelf space one store at a time, scal­ing pro­duc­tion on a shoe­string, and con­vinc­ing retail­ers to bet on a prod­uct most con­sumers had nev­er tried, is exact­ly the kind of founder jour­ney Ground­Force Cap­i­tal exists to sup­port. These are the founders and teams we cham­pi­on, and today’s IPO is a mile­stone we are proud to cel­e­brate along­side them.

As we will dis­cuss in the next sec­tion, we believe the tail­winds dri­ving this moment extend to our broad­er oppor­tu­ni­ty set.

THE BROADER PICTURE — A QUIET RECOVERY GAINS MOMENTUM

Beyond any sin­gle com­pa­ny, we think the more inter­est­ing sto­ry is what’s hap­pen­ing across brand­ed con­sumer at large.

Twelve months ago, the nar­ra­tive around con­sumer brands was cau­tious at best. Com­ing off a dif­fi­cult 2023 and 2024, marked by ris­ing input costs, com­pressed val­u­a­tions, and a fund­ing envi­ron­ment that pun­ished all but the most prof­itable oper­a­tors, many investors had stepped to the side­lines. Deal flow slowed. Con­fer­ences felt ten­ta­tive. The pre­vail­ing ques­tion was­n’t “what’s excit­ing” but “what’s sur­viv­ing.” Con­sumer M&A deal val­ues fell 32% in 2022 and anoth­er 31% in 2023¹, with H1 2023 mark­ing the low­est semi-annu­al peri­od for food and bev­er­age deal val­ue in five years, total­ing just $3.1 bil­lion².

That mood has shift­ed con­sid­er­ably, and what’s notable is how qui­et­ly it hap­pened. The recov­ery was built through a series of sig­nals that togeth­er paint a pic­ture of an indus­try enter­ing a new phase.

In 2024, Ground­Force Cap­i­tal port­fo­lio com­pa­ny OWYN exit­ed to Sim­ply Good Foods, sig­nal­ing strate­gic buy­ers re-engag­ing around high-growth, bet­ter-for-you assets. OWYN, a RTD pro­tein shake brand, exem­pli­fies the type of scaled asset com­ing back into favor, even as the broad­er mar­ket in 2024 still felt ten­ta­tive.

Then 2025 changed the con­ver­sa­tion:

• Glob­al con­sumer M&A val­ues surged 41% year-over-year³, with megadeals dou­bling from six in 2024 to twelve in 2025³
• Deal val­ue in the Amer­i­c­as surged 89% year-over-year, dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by an increase in megadeals with U.S. tar­get­s³

Pep­si­Co was the clear­est sig­nal. The com­pa­ny deployed more than $3 bil­lion in a sin­gle year to acquire Siete Foods ($1.2B, Jan­u­ary 2025) and Pop­pi ($1.95B, May 2025)⁴, with CEO Ramon Laguar­ta pub­licly stat­ing the com­pa­ny is accel­er­at­ing its shift toward low­er sug­ar, reduced sodi­um, and func­tion­al ingredients.⁵

They weren’t alone: Cel­sius acquired Alani Nu for $1.8 bil­lion⁶, Her­shey acquired organ­ic snack mak­er LesserE­vil for rough­ly $750 mil­lion⁷, and Flow­ers Foods closed Sim­ple Mills for $795 mil­lion⁸, all in 2025.

The pace has only accel­er­at­ed into 2026, and the breadth is strik­ing. In a sin­gle week in ear­ly 2026, CPG deal activ­i­ty gen­er­at­ed rough­ly $3 bil­lion in trans­ac­tion val­ue across six major deals. A few that stood out to us:

• Unilever / Grüns ($1.2B)⁹ A greens sup­ple­ment brand that did­n’t exist until 2023 became one of the largest brands in the U.S. greens sup­ple­ment cat­e­go­ry by 2025.
• Danone / Huel (~$1.2B)¹⁰ The com­plete nutri­tion brand, acquired as part of Danone’s push into func­tion­al nutri­tion, explic­it­ly cit­ing the grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of GLP‑1 users seek­ing high-pro­tein, high-fiber options.
• Marzetti / Bachan’s ($400M)¹¹ The Japan­ese bar­be­cue sauce brand is a tes­ta­ment to what clean-label, cul­tur­al­ly authen­tic prod­ucts can do when paired with real con­sumer demand.
• Con­stel­la­tion Brands / HOPWTR¹² A non-alco­holic func­tion­al bev­er­age brand with hops, adap­to­gens, and nootrop­ics. The deal reflects a broad­er shift among lega­cy alco­hol com­pa­nies posi­tion­ing for a gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers who increas­ing­ly choose func­tion over intox­i­ca­tion.

CONSUMERS WANT WHAT THEY WANT

The pat­tern across all of this is the same: emerg­ing brands with momen­tum are attract­ing seri­ous cap­i­tal. The nat­ur­al healthy bev­er­age mar­ket is now grow­ing at four times the rate of total bev­er­age, 13% ver­sus 3%¹³. The nat­ur­al and organ­ic prod­ucts mar­ket has reached $343 bil­lion in sales¹⁴, more than tripling from $97 bil­lion in 2007, out­pac­ing total store growth every year since the pan­dem­ic.

Under­neath it all, a struc­tur­al tail­wind is com­pound­ing: 12.4% of Amer­i­can adults are now tak­ing GLP‑1 med­ica­tion­s¹⁵, more than dou­ble the rate from ear­ly 2024, and those house­holds are pro­ject­ed to rep­re­sent 35% of all U.S. food and bev­er­age units sold by 2030¹⁶. These con­sumers are active­ly shift­ing toward prod­ucts high­er in pro­tein, fiber, and func­tion­al ben­e­fits, cre­at­ing a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal accel­er­ant to the same pref­er­ences that bet­ter-for-you brands have been build­ing toward for a decade.

This is exact­ly the the­sis we have been build­ing around at Ground­Force Cap­i­tal. We believe the next gen­er­a­tion of icon­ic con­sumer brands will be built at the inter­sec­tion of health, taste, and func­tion, and that the investors who iden­ti­fied these busi­ness­es ear­ly, and sup­port­ed them through the dif­fi­cult mid­dle chap­ters, will be well-posi­tioned as the mar­ket con­tin­ues to rec­og­nize their val­ue.

If you’re build­ing a brand in this space, whether in func­tion­al bev­er­ages, bet­ter-for-you food, well­ness, or adja­cent con­sumer ser­vices and tech cat­e­gories, we’d love to hear from you.

Sources:

¹ PwC, “Glob­al M&A Trends in Con­sumer Mar­kets: 2024 Out­look” (deal val­ues fell 32% in 2022, 31% in 2023) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/deals/trends/2024/consumer-markets.html

² Bak­er Tilly, “Food and Bev­er­age M&A Update: H1 2023” ($3.1B low­est semi-annu­al in five years) https://www.bakertilly.com/insights/food-and-beverage-ma-update-h1-2023

³ PwC, “Glob­al M&A Trends in Con­sumer Mar­kets: 2026 Out­look” (41% surge, 12 megadeals, Amer­i­c­as +89%) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/deals/trends/consumer-markets.html

⁴ Pep­si­Co Press Releas­es: “Com­pletes Acqui­si­tion of Siete Foods,” Jan­u­ary 2025; “Com­pletes Acqui­si­tion of Pop­pi,” May 2025

https://www.pepsico.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025/pepsico-completes-acquisition-of-siete-foods

https://www.pepsico.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/pepsico-completes-acquisition-of-poppi-accelerating-strategic-portfolio-transformation

⁵ Food Nav­i­ga­tor-USA, “Pep­si­Co Piv­ots from Indul­gence to Func­tion­al Health,” Feb­ru­ary 2026 (Laguar­ta quote) https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2026/02/19/pepsico-pivots-from-indulgence-to-functional-health/

⁶ Cel­sius Hold­ings Press Release, “Com­pletes Acqui­si­tion of Alani Nu,” April 2025 https://ir.celsiusholdingsinc.com/news/news-details/2025/Celsius-Holdings-Completes-Acquisition-of-Alani-Nu/

⁷ The Wall Street Jour­nal, “Her­shey to Buy Snack Mak­er LesserE­vil for Rough­ly $750 Mil­lion,” 2025 https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/hershey-to-buy-snack-maker-lesserevil

⁸ Flow­ers Foods Press Release, “Com­pletes Acqui­si­tion of Sim­ple Mills,” Feb­ru­ary 2025 https://flowersfoods.com/news/news-releases/2025/flowers-foods-inc-completes-acquisition-of-simple-mills/

⁹ Unilever Press Release, “Unilever to Acquire U.S. Greens Sup­ple­ment Com­pa­ny Grüns,” April 2026 https://www.unilever.com/news/press-and-media/press-releases/2026/unilever-to-acquire-us-greens-supplement-company-gruns/

¹⁰ Food Ingre­di­ents First, “Danone’s US$1B Huel Acqui­si­tion,” March 2026 (con­firms ~$1.2B and GLP‑1 dri­ver) https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/danone-huel-complete-nutrition-deal.html

¹¹ The Marzetti Com­pa­ny Press Release, “Agree­ment to Acquire Bachan’s, Inc.,” Feb­ru­ary 2026  https://www.marzetticompany.com/news/the-marzetti-company-announces-agreement-to-acquire-bachans-inc/

¹² BevNET, “Con­stel­la­tion Brands Agrees to Acquire HOPWTR,” March 2026 https://www.bevnet.com/news/2026/constellation-brands-agrees-to-acquire-hopwtr/

¹³ SPINS, 52 Weeks data as cit­ed in Suja Life S‑1 Reg­is­tra­tion State­ment, April 10, 2026 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1934114/000110465926041905/tm2530822-6_s1.htm

¹⁴ New Hope Net­work / Nutri­tion Busi­ness Jour­nal ($343B mar­ket, tripled from $97B in 2007) https://www.newhope.com/market-data-and-analysis/editor-s-take-personalization-is-the-future-of-natural-products-are-you-ready

¹⁵ Gallup, “Obe­si­ty Rate Declin­ing in U.S.,” Octo­ber 2025 (12.4% on GLP‑1 drugs) https://news.gallup.com/poll/696599/obesity-rate-declining.aspx

¹⁶ Cir­cana, “GLP‑1 Users Will Rep­re­sent 35% of U.S. Food and Bev­er­age Sales by 2030,” Novem­ber 2025 https://www.circana.com/post/glp-1-medication-users-to-represent-35-percent-of-u-s-food-and-beverage-sales-by-2030

NOTICE TO RECIPIENTS

THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE. This doc­u­ment has been pre­pared by GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL and is not intend­ed to be (and may not be relied on in any man­ner as) legal, tax, invest­ment, account­ing or oth­er advice or as an offer to sell or a solic­i­ta­tion of an offer to buy any secu­ri­ties of any invest­ment prod­uct or any invest­ment advi­so­ry ser­vice. The infor­ma­tion con­tained in this doc­u­ment is super­seded by, and is qual­i­fied in its entire­ty by, such offer­ing mate­ri­als. This doc­u­ment may con­tain pro­pri­etary, trade-secret, con­fi­den­tial and com­mer­cial­ly sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion. U.S. fed­er­al secu­ri­ties laws pro­hib­it you and your orga­ni­za­tion from trad­ing in any pub­lic secu­ri­ty or mak­ing invest­ment deci­sions about any pub­lic secu­ri­ty on the basis of infor­ma­tion includ­ed in these mate­ri­als.

THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY SECURITY OR INVESTMENT. Ref­er­ences to any port­fo­lio invest­ment are intend­ed to illus­trate the appli­ca­tion of GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL’s invest­ment process only and should not be used as the basis for mak­ing any deci­sion about pur­chas­ing, hold­ing or sell­ing any secu­ri­ties. Noth­ing here­in should be inter­pret­ed or used in any man­ner as invest­ment advice. The infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed about these port­fo­lio invest­ments is intend­ed to be illus­tra­tive and it is not intend­ed to be used as an indi­ca­tion of the cur­rent or future per­for­mance of GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL’s port­fo­lio invest­ments.

An invest­ment in a Fund entails a high degree of risk, includ­ing the risk of loss. There is no assur­ance that a Fund’s invest­ment objec­tive will be achieved or that investors will receive a return on their cap­i­tal. Investors must read and under­stand all the risks described in a Fund’s final con­fi­den­tial pri­vate place­ment mem­o­ran­dum and/or the relat­ed sub­scrip­tion doc­u­ments before mak­ing a com­mit­ment. The recip­i­ent also must con­sult its own legal, account­ing and tax advi­sors as to the legal, busi­ness, tax and relat­ed mat­ters con­cern­ing the infor­ma­tion con­tained in this doc­u­ment to make an inde­pen­dent deter­mi­na­tion and con­se­quences of a poten­tial invest­ment in a Fund, includ­ing US fed­er­al, state, local and non-US tax con­se­quences.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS OR A GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RETURNS. The per­for­mance of any port­fo­lio invest­ments dis­cussed in this doc­u­ment is not nec­es­sar­i­ly indica­tive of future per­for­mance, and you should not assume that invest­ments in the future will be prof­itable or will equal the per­for­mance of past port­fo­lio invest­ments. Investors should con­sid­er the con­tent of this doc­u­ment in con­junc­tion with invest­ment fund quar­ter­ly reports, finan­cial state­ments and oth­er dis­clo­sures regard­ing the val­u­a­tions and per­for­mance of the spe­cif­ic invest­ments dis­cussed here­in.  Unless oth­er­wise not­ed, per­for­mance is unau­dit­ed. There can be no assur­ance that GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL will be able to invest in sim­i­lar oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future

DO NOT RELY ON ANY OPINIONS, PREDICTIONS, PROJECTIONS OR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS CONTAINED HEREIN. Cer­tain infor­ma­tion con­tained in this doc­u­ment con­sti­tutes “for­ward-look­ing state­ments” that are inher­ent­ly unre­li­able and actu­al events or results may dif­fer mate­ri­al­ly from those reflect­ed or con­tem­plat­ed here­in. GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL does not make any assur­ance as to the accu­ra­cy of those pre­dic­tions or for­ward-look­ing state­ments. GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL express­ly dis­claims any oblig­a­tion or under­tak­ing to update or revise any such for­ward-look­ing state­ments. The views and opin­ions expressed here­in are those of GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL as of the date here­of and are sub­ject to change based on pre­vail­ing mar­ket and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and will not be updat­ed or sup­ple­ment­ed.

EXTERNAL SOURCES. Cer­tain infor­ma­tion con­tained here­in has been obtained from third-par­ty sources. Although GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL believes the infor­ma­tion from such sources to be reli­able, GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL makes no rep­re­sen­ta­tion as to its accu­ra­cy or com­plete­ness.

THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION AND IT MAY NOT BE COPIED, QUOTED OR REFERENCED WITHOUT GROUNDFORCE CAPITAL’S PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT.