Latest news with #ChefBoyardee
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
UBS Sees Sluggish Growth for Conagra Brands, Inc. (CAG) in FY26
Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) is one of the 7 best future food stocks to buy according to analysts. A close-up of a hand selecting a food or beverage item from a store shelf. UBS maintained a 'Hold' rating on Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) on June 16, 2025, amid growth pressures and a projected decrease in earnings per share by fiscal 2026. However, most of these concerns are already reflected in the company's current low valuation. Meanwhile, its strong financial stability, supported by a 6.49% dividend yield and 14% free cash flow yield, helps balance the company's risk-to-reward profile. Moreover, the company streamlined its portfolio, reducing debt by finalizing the sale of its Chef Boyardee and Van de Kam's brands. Furthermore, Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG)'s recent launch of 50 new frozen food items in June 2025 is a demonstration of its commitment toward aligning with evolving consumer preferences. The company boasts a well-established portfolio, consisting of Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, and Slim Jim. It is one of the best future food stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of CAG as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and 10 Low Risk High Reward Stocks Set to Triple by 2030. Disclosure: None.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
UBS Sees Sluggish Growth for Conagra Brands, Inc. (CAG) in FY26
Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) is one of the 7 best future food stocks to buy according to analysts. A close-up of a hand selecting a food or beverage item from a store shelf. UBS maintained a 'Hold' rating on Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) on June 16, 2025, amid growth pressures and a projected decrease in earnings per share by fiscal 2026. However, most of these concerns are already reflected in the company's current low valuation. Meanwhile, its strong financial stability, supported by a 6.49% dividend yield and 14% free cash flow yield, helps balance the company's risk-to-reward profile. Moreover, the company streamlined its portfolio, reducing debt by finalizing the sale of its Chef Boyardee and Van de Kam's brands. Furthermore, Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG)'s recent launch of 50 new frozen food items in June 2025 is a demonstration of its commitment toward aligning with evolving consumer preferences. The company boasts a well-established portfolio, consisting of Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, and Slim Jim. It is one of the best future food stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of CAG as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and 10 Low Risk High Reward Stocks Set to Triple by 2030. Disclosure: None.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
UBS Sees Sluggish Growth for Conagra Brands, Inc. (CAG) in FY26
Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) is one of the 7 best future food stocks to buy according to analysts. A close-up of a hand selecting a food or beverage item from a store shelf. UBS maintained a 'Hold' rating on Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) on June 16, 2025, amid growth pressures and a projected decrease in earnings per share by fiscal 2026. However, most of these concerns are already reflected in the company's current low valuation. Meanwhile, its strong financial stability, supported by a 6.49% dividend yield and 14% free cash flow yield, helps balance the company's risk-to-reward profile. Moreover, the company streamlined its portfolio, reducing debt by finalizing the sale of its Chef Boyardee and Van de Kam's brands. Furthermore, Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG)'s recent launch of 50 new frozen food items in June 2025 is a demonstration of its commitment toward aligning with evolving consumer preferences. The company boasts a well-established portfolio, consisting of Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, and Slim Jim. It is one of the best future food stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of CAG as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and 10 Low Risk High Reward Stocks Set to Triple by 2030. Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Quadrupled Need: East Alabama Food Bank fights soaring child hunger
AUBURN, Ala. () — Every Friday during the school year, nearly 850 East Alabama elementary school students head home with more than just books in their backpacks. Thanks to the East Alabama Food Bank's Backpack Program, they carry six weekend meals—two breakfasts, two lunches, and two snacks—to help them through until Monday. 'We serve 14 different schools in the area—I think the final number at the end of the year was 845—which is a very bittersweet number,' said Neeley Chapman, Programs Coordinator and Administrative Assistant with the East Alabama Food Bank. 'The number was about 250 to 300 just a few years ago. In the course of about two to four years, it's quadrupled.' The backpack program aims to ensure children who rely on school meals during the week don't go hungry over the weekend. The food is kid-friendly and easy to prepare, including staples like mac & cheese and Chef Boyardee. During holidays, the bags are dressed up with themed treats—Valentine's candy or Christmas goodies—to offer a little joy along with nourishment. 'These bags go out every Friday, starting after Labor Day and continuing through the end of the school year,' Chapman said. 'We know they get breakfast and lunch at school, but we don't know what their weekends look like.' Chapman's concerns reflect a broader national trend. In 2024, Feeding America reported that more than 12 million children in the U.S. lived in food-insecure households. That's about 1 in 5 school-aged kids—many of them struggling quietly in classrooms across the country. Studies consistently show that hunger impairs academic performance, focus, and emotional well-being. 'A child who has the opportunity to eat performs better than a hungry child,' Chapman emphasized. 'They're not thinking about the test they're taking. They're just thinking, 'Where's my next meal gonna come from? I just want a snack.'' At the start of each school year, the food bank works with teachers and counselors, equipping them with a checklist to discreetly identify students who may be food insecure. Chapman said younger children often show clear signs—saving food, asking for extras—but as students get older, hunger becomes harder to detect. 'When the kids get older, pride becomes a factor,' she said. 'But one in five children are going to bed with hungry tummies, and that breaks my heart.' The Backpack Program is sustained by a mix of federal, state, and local funding, including support from TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). In addition, churches, community organizations, families, and individual donorsplay a critical role in ensuring the program can continue to meet growing demand. 'Financially is the best way to help because this is a purchase program—foods need to be uniform for each bag—but we also love volunteers,' Chapman said. 'Just say, 'Hey, we have a group that wants to come in and pack these bags.' We have church groups, small groups, Rotarians. They give me two hours and we just party—and it's so worthwhile because we know the next person that touches it is gonna be hungry.' To learn more or sign up to volunteer, visit their website. 'I'm so lucky that I've never had to question where my next meal is coming from,' Chapman added. 'My heart goes out to every single person who's ever been in that situation. This program is our way of doing something about it.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'We need to go buy some more things' – Brynwood Partners' Henk Hartong III eyes more M&A after Chef Boyardee deal
US private-equity firm Brynwood Partners has announced two significant deals in the last two months – the acquisition of pasta and Italian meals brand Chef Boyardee from Conagra Brands and the disposal of Sunny D juices maker Harvest Hill Beverage Company to Castillo Hermanos. Brynwood Partners is the buy-out house behind US manufacturer Hometown Foods, which it founded in 2018 to buy a collection of assets from JM Smucker and has since built through M&A. Just Food caught up with Henk Hartong III, Brynwood Partners' chairman and CEO, to discuss the two transactions, his plans for Chef Boyardee and his thoughts on the wider M&A environment. Henk Hartong III (HH): We raised our ninth fund in 2023. That's a $750m fund. I had been working on the divestiture of Harvest Hill, which was our biggest portfolio company and owned by Brynwood VIII, a previous fund to our current fund. We started working probably since the fall of 2024 on the divestiture of Harvest Hill. We ended up divesting in that business for over $1.4bn. With Harvest Hill leaving, I was looking at the balance of the portfolio and thinking with Hometown Food that we wanted to have an anchor that would provide us with scale. We got the agreement of our limited partners to have an acquisition of Hometown Food, a collection of iconic American brands – Pillsbury, Hungry Jack, Martha White, De Waffelbakkers, Arrowhead Mills – into fund nine because fund eight, which was then fund seven, the owners of it were at the end of their lives. We were able to do that; we completed that transaction first, so that Hometown Foods is owned by Brynwood IX and the second leg was to get Chef Boyardee, which we were able to negotiate and secure from Conagra. Those two businesses will be merged together at the closing, which we expect will happen in early June. HH: That story was accurate. We did explore that. We didn't get the outcome or offers that we were looking for and, at that point, we decided to continue to drive the performance of the business. We have a bunch of different components within that company that have had nice performance. The nice part about the Chef Boyardee business is it's big, it's predominantly a US business, which suits very well our combination of assets already in Hometown Food and it's a single manufacturing operation in central Pennsylvania. Our predominant ambient manufacturing for the current business sits in Toledo, Ohio, about 500 miles away. There's some pretty good business synergy combinations. The moment you buy something out of a big company you end up with freight and manufacturing dis-synergies. In this case, we actually created synergies because we're going to be able to pool our two ambient businesses of really significant scale together to ship our customers all the products on the same truck. HH: It's not that dissimilar from Sunny D. When we bought Sunny D in 2015 for less than $200m and people said, 'What are you doing, Henk? Its best days are behind it. The heyday was with Procter and Gamble.' I said, 'This business has been fundamentally under-managed. It's a great, iconic, American brand that has lost its way.' Our whole investment strategy is providing our operating skills and insights with the retailer and supplier and manufacturing know-how. Those connections and relationships can help us unlock value if we can get a business in our hands that we feel has the potential to respond to that level of therapy, triage and initiative. If you look at that business at the time of acquisition, it was $250m in sales and, when we closed on it yesterday, the TTM [trailing twelve months] sales were almost $550m on a business that people had started their sentence, 'Sunny D? Oh, I used to drink that when I was a kid.' When you ask someone about Chef Boyardee: 'Oh, I used to eat that when I was a teenager or whatever' but you got to get the 'used to' out of there. That's going to require some work, right? HH: We're not going to do that by just selling the current format. It's going to have to go into different applications in the store. We're not going to do anything to change the existing offerings. We may look to improve them if we feel that's the appropriate fix but the core offerings would be the core offerings. That brand is so well known. I would argue it's better known than Sunny D. Conagra, nothing against their efforts but big companies make choices of what are core brands and, when something's determined to be non-core and non-strategic, they manage it for cash. That means that business does not get the things it needs that respond to trends in the market. We will correct that quickly. We'll look at the adjacencies within the category that we're in and find ways to compete in different parts of the store. Chef Boyardee has the legs to run. We just need to give it the resources to get there quickly. We're selling in the canned meals, cup meals sector but we're not in skillet meals, for example. We should be. We're not in shelf-stable trays. We're not in shelf-stable cups, microwavable cups. We're not in refrigerated, ready-to-eat, high-quality meals, which is a big segment of the store that consumers are often going to for slightly differentiated eating experiences. The foodservice business hasn't been a priority. We think there's a big application for foodservice. We have a long list of go-gets. What does that take to get into those categories? Capital investment. Marketing initiatives. It takes new product, R&D work. That wasn't getting funded by the current owner of the business not because it wasn't a good idea but because this was not a growth brand for them and that's what we have to change. We did the same thing with Sunny D. The brand has the legs to run. We just need to give it the resources to get there quickly. HH: It's a good question. We obviously were aware of what was being proposed from a regulatory perspective. We were mindful of that as we looked at this opportunity. Fortunately, the larger companies have been more proactive in terms of taking some of these voluntary initiatives to make adjustments. Whether they're merited or not to be made, they've been doing them anyway. We are confident that, whatever regulations will come down, that these products are not going to have substantial, if any, modifications required. Where does this go from here, that I can't opine on but, from what I can see in terms of legislative or regulatory requirement changes, I don't anticipate that this is going to affect the Chef Boyardee business in any meaningful way. The proposed regulations are banning certain ingredients that, quite frankly, I don't think they've determined to be unsafe or unhealthy The tariffs, on the other hand, are far more problematic in terms of managing rising costs in the time when we're looking to try to control inflation and grocery prices. A lot of the initiatives are catching areas of the economy that are unintended, I think, from the administration's application of these tariffs. They don't intend to catch steel cans for food packaging when you're putting these wild tariffs on steel but they are catching it because 90% of the steel tin plate that's required to service the US manufacturing businesses is produced outside of the US at the moment. The proposed regulations are banning certain ingredients that, quite frankly, I don't think they've determined to be unsafe or unhealthy because, if they were, they would already be regulated by the FDA, and they're not. And yet, at the same time, you can buy tobacco and alcohol, there's plenty of other things that are known to be harmful that they're not posing bans on, so the double standard, in my judgment, seems to be quite significant. It appears to be a political opportunity, not something that's applied equally across all regulatory decisions that have been made, across anything that people are able to buy or consume. Putting that aside, one benefit for someone in the M&A business is, look at the times where industry has been afflicted with a common set of problems. The four times I can remember – 9/11, the great financial crisis, coronavirus and now the current political instability – at those four moments in time, businesses were afflicted with the same set of problems and, what I found for Brynwood is, when we're dealing with that, our opportunity to outperform the market is always better. I compare it to duplicate bridge, I always tell our investment team. Duplicate bridge, everybody has the same cards but somebody wins. It's the best player. In this circumstance, we're all afflicted with the same set of problems and some people are choosing to sit out and wait for things to calm down. We're choosing to buy. We feel that our operating skills, given the same set of cards that everyone's dealing with, will allow us to outperform the market. HH: That's a good question. We're a middle-market buy-out fund, so this deal is outsized. We made a substantial commitment from fund nine, so we need to have some diversification in our portfolio. We'll continue to look for traditional, middle-market deals. If we see an opportunity that we feel is too good to pass up, then we will go raise the required funds, or co-investment, or whatever we need to get a bigger deal done. We continue to look at both of them but I would not consider us being in a position where we're only going to go out and do bigger deals. We wanted to do that when we raised a bigger fund but I'm not necessarily inclined to do that because I think our strategy that we've consistently applied for 41 years is best applied against the size of deals that we've typically done through our business history. HH: Yes, we're both looking at selling and buying opportunities right now. HH: I hope so, both buy-side and sell-side. That's my job. HH: We're active in the beverage space but we have a non-compete in the categories that Harvest Hill participates in, both in alcohol and in juice. That said, we're currently in contract manufacturing through Carolina Beverage, which makes Monster and Spindrift and some of the larger seltzer and energy-drink brands, so that's an active space that we're still in and not actively trying to exit right now. I would expect given the challenges of the current market you will continue to see portfolio reshaping, which will lead to further M&A activity. HH: I don't know if it's increasing but I would consider corporate portfolio structuring and rationalisation is always something that's happening in our business, regardless of the condition of the market. I would say, in the current market, if you just look at the public companies in the food and beverage space that have released earnings in the past six months, just look at the results: down, soft, sales are down, earnings are missing. When you're in that position, you typically look to start a path to growth again. One of the ways to get a path to growth is to divest your non-growth, non-strategic businesses. The question is what price can you get in this market with all this uncertainty? You may not be willing to sell a non-growth business at a price that you can get paid because it's dilutive and there's tax leakage. There's a combination of factors that end up answering that question that depend on the company itself. I would expect that given the challenges of the current market that you will continue to see portfolio reshaping, which will lead to further M&A activity. The question is do those deals get done because buyers and sellers can get together on price? HH: I would say I think the market for us is better because, anytime there's a down market, if we're buying under-nurtured, under-managed businesses that require some form of operational involvement to accelerate the performance, that's not a growth market. Most private-equity firms back growing businesses, growing sectors, management teams, etc. If you have a non-core brand in a down market with no management team in the corporate carve-out, well that doesn't meet any of their requirements, so it eliminates a lot of the financial buyers from these opportunities. I think that creates more deal flow for us. HH: I don't think so, not for the deals that we're looking at. I would argue that right now a lot of private-equity folks are on the sidelines if they don't have the ability to raise high-leverage deals, given the fact that there hasn't been a lot of interest-rate compression that they'd hoped for. Traditional LBOs for businesses that may have some headwinds for growth and are in a general category of products that are fighting for volume typically don't lend themselves to a low-touch, private-equity, LBO model. That lends itself to guys like us, so we need to go buy some more things. "'We need to go buy some more things' – Brynwood Partners' Henk Hartong III eyes more M&A after Chef Boyardee deal" was originally created and published by Just Food, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
