GLOBAL logistics firm Brambles will seek to reassure investors this week that its 50 per cent share price recovery over the past nine weeks is warranted, despite concerns that competitors continue to eat into its share of the US pallet market.

Sydney-based Brambles, the world's largest supplier of pallets across more than 45 countries through its key Chep division, will hold its annual review of operations in Madrid for three days from today.

Brambles has surged 54 per cent from a record low in March of $4.08 to close on Friday up 8c at $6.27, outstripping a 25 per cent bounce in the Australian benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index as global equity markets rally.

The company's share price bottomed after it warned in February that a dramatic slowdown in its key US and European markets meant it would probably not achieve its full-year earnings forecasts. Analysts have called on Chep to reveal the results of a review of its US business, where it has already planned to scrap 7million wooden pallets in response to the economic slowdown, and to define how it will deal with the threat posed by plastic pallet providers.

Last month it was revealed that major US food producer General Mills would be rolling out plastic pallets provided by iGPS, a competitor to Chep in the US, across its production and distribution network from June.

Credit Suisse analyst Anthony Moulder said the news was "further support for our thesis that customers are looking to move to dual sourcing for pooled pallets", after Chep lost a contract with units of PepsiCo in March.

Mr Moulder said in a research note that one of Chep's three biggest US customers, Kraft Foods, was also believed to be considering rival pallet offerings from iGPS or another competitor, Peco Pallets, highlighting the urgency for Chep to "conclude its review ... and articulate a strategy" to stem customer losses.

While a slanging match between iGPS and a Chep-backed wooden pallet association in the US has developed, analysts point out that both plastic and wooden pallets have their respective advantages.

Partly dismissing the threat to Brambles of plastic pallets, JPMorgan's Matthew Crowe in March upgraded Brambles to overweight from neutral, arguing a 12 per cent sell-down in Brambles' share price on the loss of the PepsiCo contract was "overdone" as the iGPS product was "unsustainably cheap" and "not the first time Chep has been threatened by a new entrant".

Mr Crowe has since further raised his price target on the stock to $7, arguing any decline in profit margins at Chep this fiscal year was temporary, driven by a combination of one-off costs and weak volume growth.

"The long-term outlook for Chep margins remains positive," Mr Crowe said, adding the competitive threat from iGPS was "overstated by the market, creating a buying opportunity".

However, after criticism of how Chep dealt with communicating a restructure of its business with Wal-Mart Stores, before incurring a one-off $20 million charge, many market watchers believe it is Brambles' articulation of its strategy that is crucial.

"I think the bigger issue is how management present themselves because one of the challenges the company has is the lack of trust the market has in the management after a number of problems they've had in communicating," said Roger Collison, head of research at Tyndall Investment Management in Sydney. He said that while Chep's exposure to consumer staples should help insulate Brambles while European economies were "doing it tough", the company faced challenges in reassuring the market of its value.