No. of Recommendations: 11
I bought a starter position at around 190 and am keeping an eye on some of the factors that are presumably affecting price
1. Cocoa prices...is this cyclical or more secular?
2. GLP-1 drugs...I brought this up before; to what extent will these reduce consumption of sweets vs fast foods vs all food..
3. Rise of off brand ...Mr Beast and future upstarts...Monster, Celsius etc in the beverage space...
Hershey is primarily a very large vendor of relatively low-end (but well known) chocolate in the US. Their non-US business is pretty minor, almost and afterthought.
So several disparate things are working together to cap volumes. The high penetration and US focus (nobody new to sell to), the secular trend to pricier cacao since there will be a shortage of growers willing to work for so little, and to a lesser extent any competitive issues.
I think they can defend their margins--being a "low end" chocolate brand doesn't mean that even a doubling of cocoa prices will be a big worry for margins: it isn't the largest cost of a bar. They will have to pass on the costs at some point, but so will all the competition. So I think they will be more than fine financially. Mainly it's really a cap on volume growth. The volume growth, if any, may be mostly on the "salty" side. I believe they are forecasting growth around 1.5%/year in volume on a like-for-like basis, so they aren't unrealistic.
Jim
