Jefferies lowered its price target for Campbell’s, citing challenging fiscal 2027 guidance.
- Jefferies cut Campbell’s price target to $20 from $22 and kept a ‘Hold’ rating, seeing a 9% downside.
- Campbell’s Q4 sales fell 8% to $2.14 billion, while adjusted EPS dropped 37% to $0.39.
- The company cut its dividend 36%, and targets $500 million in savings by 2030.
The Campbell’s Company (CPB) stock is on track for its worst week since March after fiscal fourth-quarter (Q4) 2026 results and a surprise 36% dividend cut rattled investors, prompting Jefferies to trim its price target.
Campbell’s stock inched 0.02% lower overnight, ahead of Friday, after closing its worst day in five months in the regular session. The stock has declined 5% so far this week.
Jefferies Sees A 9% Downside For Campbell’s
Jefferies lowered Campbell’s price target to $20 from $22 and retained a ‘Hold’ rating, implying a 9% downside to the stock’s last closing price. The bigger blow to sentiment came from fiscal 2027 guidance, which landed below consensus and led the analyst to warn that the coming year is “shaping up as a difficult year” for the company.
The packaged-food giant’s Q4 sales came in at $2.137 billion, an 8% year-on-year decline that missed the roughly $2.1 billion consensus estimate, as per Fiscal Ai data, while adjusted earnings per share of $0.39 matched forecasts but marked a steep 37% drop from a year earlier.
Alongside earnings, Campbell’s board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, a 36% slump from the prior $1.56 annualized payout. The company framed the move as a way to ramp up debt reduction. Campbell’s also unveiled a new enterprise-wide cost savings program targeting $500 million in savings by fiscal 2030, building on about $225 million already achieved under a previous efficiency push.
“Right now, we believe the inflation hit is going to be fairly consistent throughout the year about plus 5% to 6%. As we talked about, logistics is going to be around double digits. That will get a little bit better at the end of the year as we lap some of the inflation that we already have embedded in Q4 of this year,” said CFO Todd Cunfer in the earnings call.
The company sees 2027 net sales declining between 2% and 4%.
What CPB Retail Traders Are Saying
However, on Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the stock improved to ‘extremely bullish’ from ‘bullish’ territory the previous day.
A user said, “Feels like something $BRK.B would quietly add under their umbrella by the end of the year. Dividend cut is not ideal, but management is dedicated to further reducing debt obligations and dividend remains ~5%. Hopefully these are the right moves with an uncertain rates environment ahead.”
Another user said, “Campbell’s soup owns some of the largest solar array setups for their factories. Truly forward thinking stuff heading into these times of energy demand, and price increases with looming increases in fossil fuels that drive modern energy creation.”
CPB stock has declined 20% year-to-date.
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