Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, March 19, 2021

Article Excerpt

CAMPBELL SOUP CO., $49.79, New York symbol CPB, is a buy. With the February 2021 payment, Campbell raised your quarterly dividend by 5.7%. Investors now receive $0.37 a share instead of $0.35. The new annual rate of $1.48 yields a solid 3.0%. The company continues to benefit from its new strategic plan, which began in 2018. Under that plan, it sold most of its international and refrigerated-foods businesses. That let it focus on canned soups, pasta and V8 vegetable juices. Campbell also kept its snack foods operations. They were significantly expanded in March 2018 when the company paid $6.1 billion for snack foods-maker Snyder’s-Lance. In its fiscal 2021 second quarter, ended January 31, 2021, Campbell’s sales rose 5.4%, to $2.28 billion from $2.16 billion a year earlier. However, that missed the consensus forecast of $2.30 billion. If you adjust for the businesses Campbell sold, sales improved 5% in the latest quarter. The company also continues to find savings in the wake of the Snyder’s-Lance…