Models with three Higgs doublets in the triplet representations of A4 or S4

We consider the quark sector of theories containing three scalar SU(2)_L doublets in the triplet representation of A4 (or of S4) and three generations of quarks in arbitrary A4 (or S4) representations. We show that, for all possible choices of quark field representations and for all possible alignments of the Higgs vacuum expectation values that can constitute global minima of the scalar potential, it is not possible to obtain simultaneously non-vanishing quark masses and a non-vanishing CP-violating phase in the CKM quark mixing matrix. As a result, in this minimal form, models with three scalar fields in the triplet representation of A4 or of S4 cannot be extended to the quark sector in a way consistent with experiment.