The Campbell's Company (CPB)
NASDAQ: CPB · Real-Time Price · USD
20.69
-0.49 (-2.31%)
At close: Sep 18, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT
20.80
+0.11 (0.53%)
After-hours: Sep 18, 2026, 7:59 PM EDT
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Sep 3, 2020

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q4 and fiscal 2020 Campbell Soup Company live Q&A session. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star and then one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star and then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Rebecca Gardy, Vice President, Investor Relations. Ma'am, you may begin.

Rebecca Gardy
VP of Investor Relations, Campbell Soup Company

Thank you, operator. I hope everyone has had the chance this morning to read our press release and listen to our pre-recorded management presentation, both of which are available on the investor relations section of campbellsoupcompany.com. In addition, we have posted a transcript of the pre-recorded presentation. After the conclusion of today's live Q&A session, we will post a transcript and an audio replay of this call. Please note that during today's Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements which reflect our current expectations about our business plans, our first quarter 2021 guidance, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates, which could be inaccurate and are subject to risk. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures.

Please refer to today's earnings release available on the investor section of our website, campbellsoupcompany.com, for a list of factors that could cause our actual results to vary materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements and for reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Joining me today are Mark Clouse, Campbell's President and CEO, and Mick Beekhuizen, Chief Financial Officer. We kindly ask that you limit yourself to one question. With that, I'll now turn it over to the operator for the first question. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. Our first question will come from Andrew Lazar from Barclays. Your line is open.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays

Morning, everyone. Thanks for the question.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays

Hi there. Mark, I know that fiscal 2021 was sort of initially, as the way you laid it out in the multi-year plan, thought to be a pretty big year in terms of reframing the soup category for Campbell through innovation and other means. I'm trying to get a sense of what's maybe changed or what needs to change around the strategy for this soup journey, if anything, given recent trends. If you think about it, Campbell has picked up so many new households and users that I'm thinking the focus maybe now shifts more to retaining users rather than maybe solely gaining new ones. I'm just trying to get a sense of how that, if at all, changes the approach and the journey around soup.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. No, great question. I think, the good news is that a lot of the strategic framework of what we had set out to accomplish on soup, initially was laid out in such a way where the primary goal or the objective was to improve relevance of the category and begin to add or recover households that had lost. As you point out, I think the best way to describe where we are right now is that we've, through the pandemic, been able to jump forward on that strategic journey. If you go back and think about what did we set out to do in 2020, it was really to strengthen the base, improve quality, make some material investments in the business to begin to reestablish or rebuild that relevancy, then begin to build back the innovation funnel.

If you think about what we then accomplished in 2020, really across the board, we well went beyond what our expectations are. As we go into 2021, although I do think it is more about retaining those households, a lot of the strategies and the things that we had planned to do are things that we will continue to do, I think, just with a higher degree of probability of success and a better set of insights on what's compelling consumers and what's been working or not working. I think there's been a lot of discussion or debate about when you come through all this, how do you feel about where you are in the strategic journey on soup?

That was why, to some degree, I tried to cover in the remarks that this, to me, on soup, is a little bit less about peaks and valleys as we think about how to manage through the short term, but really that steady progress that enables us to come out of this tunnel in a position where soup is a steady contributor to the business. Because if you go back to the thesis of the company, if you're able to accomplish that in conjunction with what we believe we can do on snacking and even the balance of the Meals & Beverages business, it really does position us in a very advantaged way.

As we get into 2021, I think one of the things I'll just leave you with is a lot of, I guess, powder is still dry in the strategy when it comes to innovation, shelving, many of the things that we had planned in 2021. I think, as I said in my comments, I'm building confidence because you still have those elements to layer on top of what the shorter-term boost has been. I'm sure we'll get into a little bit more of the consumer trends, but we've done a lot of work on this behavior of increased cooking and quick scratch cooking in particular, and we've built now a series of insights that give us a lot more confidence that this is going to sustain beyond just the pandemic period.

I'm sure that'll come up a little bit later, and we can talk more about it. I think the net of it is. A lot of the same activities, it's just we're further down the road than we expected. We keep staying that course. I think, if anything, this is building a lot more confidence in our ability to make soup a steady contributor.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays

Great. Thanks so much for the perspective.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Goldman from JPMorgan.

Ken Goldman
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hi, good morning, and thank you.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yes.

Ken Goldman
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hey, Mark, you said that the operating environment is creating opportunities, I think, to evaluate future efficiencies as you learn from COVID-19. Can you maybe elaborate on what that means, how big the opportunity might be? I know it's hard to know for sure right now, but a lot of your peers have discussed this in rough terms. Maybe some travel costs can be reduced. I'm just trying to get a sense from you.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah

Ken Goldman
Analyst, JPMorgan

of what you're seeing and the size of that, if possible?

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. You're right, it's hard to quantify. I think the way I would describe it is, it's creating drill sites for us for future productivity, and that's, I think, quite helpful, because we've been able to create this kind of, I'd say, real-world case studies and laboratory to test a few things. I think there's three primary areas, though, that we see as future opportunity. I think the first is in optimizing the portfolio, right? Where are we over-skewed, under-skewed? Where are we really getting incrementality from certain extensions of our portfolio? How do we really think about optimizing the effectiveness of our offerings to really match where consumers, our needs are, and to create room for what we think is going to be meaningful innovation, while setting up a more efficient overall approach to the portfolio.

I think the second area is, as we've seen full utilization across our entire supply chain and route to market, I think it's enabled us to understand some places, almost out of necessity in the short term that we've done, that we think in the longer term, our ability to create certain consolidations, how to think about perhaps hubs to supply in a more efficient way, especially as you think about our Snacks business, where you've got a little bit more complicated route to market. I think we've been able to find, even if it's in the face of some higher costs in this year, but it's pointed out places where if we can improve that architecture or structure, I see opportunity to save money.

The third, where I think a lot of people have spent time talking, is how do you learn from this virtual work environment, ways to operate companies more efficiently? Do you need as much travel? Do you need quite the infrastructure that you might have? Can you figure out a way to take what has been working very effectively for the company, and use that as a little bit of a blueprint? I do very much still believe that the concept of team environments is important for businesses like ours.

A lot of the innovation and creativity is done through cross-functional collaboration, and although we've done a great job with that virtually, and although I think it can enable and unlock some potential efficiency and savings going forward, I think at the heart of the company, I still believe that there's real value in folks being able to sit face-to-face and across the table to work on things. I think the good news is all three of those, we're beginning to mine as opportunities going forward, and I think that's going to help strengthen our pipeline of savings, especially as we're coming to the end of our enterprise savings program, as we've talked about. We're wrapping up here the value capture from the Snyder's-Lance integration. It's just great to see some new ideas that are beginning to populate that pipeline.

A good thing coming out of a tough situation.

Ken Goldman
Analyst, JPMorgan

Thanks so much.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yep.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nik Modi from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Nik Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Yeah. Good morning, everyone.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, Nik.

Nik Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Hey, Mark. I just wanted to revisit the discussion on these new households. It's going to obviously be an important part of how your growth curve looks over the next couple of quarters and the next couple of years. Can you just talk about the composition of these new households and how they might differ from what you were seeing pre-COVID? I'll just give an example. From the data we've reviewed would suggest new Prego consumers are younger singles, spend higher online than the average, skewed to vegan and vegetarians, and tend to dine out two to five times a week. I'm just curious if this is consistent with what you've been observing in your data.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah, it's very consistent. We would see, essentially in the households we've added, just shy of 50% of those new households are coming from younger consumers. It's a combination of different size households. It can be a little bit older millennials who are now just beginning young families, working with a little bit of a different budget perhaps than they did when they were younger, as well as much smaller households. I think as we think about this going forward, those become as you would imagine, a very, very high priority for us.

One of the great things about Q4, and I know even coming out of Q3, I had a lot of questions about, okay, even as you're navigating some of the supply pressure, you continue to invest at a very high level, and I think that was incredibly valuable for us in the fourth quarter, and it really proved some terrific learnings and results. One of the things that I think harder to see in the numbers in Q4. If you take e-commerce as an example, where we know there's a higher index to where these particular younger consumers are shopping and gaining information, 86% of our spending on our Meals & Beverages business in the fourth quarter was on digital to support this, through a combination of retailers' platforms, as well as a whole range of different tactics to really try to understand what works and what doesn't.

As we go into this year, we're going to be more effective. What we found is we can have a big impact with that population. Our e-commerce business was up over 100% in the fourth quarter. It now represents for us as a company, it essentially doubled in 2020. It was low single digits. Now it's up into the mid-single digits. Again, as you think about our ability to demonstrate growth there, which, again, doesn't really show up as much in your measured channels, it creates a really great platform for us to connect to consumers in a very specific way to influence them. I think one of the things that I'll just mention too with this particular target that's giving us a lot of confidence beyond just the online success that we had, is this dynamic around cooking and quick scratch cooking.

I think for a lot of people, and myself included, I wanted to try to understand a little better behaviorally what's going on, so we can better predict what's going to happen after the pandemic and does that give us a higher likelihood of keeping those consumers in the franchise, right? I think that's the big question. We found a couple of very specific things that I think are giving us a lot of confidence. The first is that the initial read-through of what was going on in this cooking was a lot of consumers trying to recreate favorite meals, comfort food, feeling out of necessity having to cook, but staying pretty close to home. I think what we've seen as time goes on and as confidence is building, think about cooking three meals a day, seven days a week for a couple of months.

The amount of confidence these consumers have now in their ability to cook has really broadened their ability to add significant creativity, which is allowing them to reach into dishes and food that is far more, I think, sustainable longer term, right? Where for me, it might be 15-minute chicken and rice. For these consumers, it's Tuscan chicken and mushroom on riced cauliflower, using still our ingredients, but doing it for a meal that feels far more consistent with where they're going. The other exciting thing is that we all knew that there would be a pivot eventually back to healthier recipes. Again, a little more comfort oriented initially, a little more healthier now. Our products are staying right in there.

With the combination of what we offer with Pacific, the recognition that a lot of the quality improvements and some of those historical barriers to the can, that we really have been working on to overcome, I think we're seeing great indication that we're moving through it. The final one is value. I think what we're realizing and what consumers are realizing is that that value equation on this quick scratch cooking is quite powerful. You roll that all together, our ability to impact consumers online, as well as the strengthening conviction to quick scratch cooking moving forward, gives me a lot more confidence, and I think you heard that in my comments earlier, on our ability to retain these households.

In particular, retaining these households on soup, which I think is going to be a very important milestone or indicator or proof point, as we go forward on whether we're able to sustain more of this, starting in the back half, but certainly going forward. Helpful, Nik?

Nik Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Super helpful.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah.

Nik Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Thank you.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Great.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason English from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning, folks.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, Jason.

Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hey, thank you for spotting me in. Two reasonably straightforward questions. First, in the press release, you mentioned some gains on commodity hedges. You explained to effectively account for the majority of corporate cost decrease, which implies like $37 million, but in the presentation, you say it would only partially offset the commodity inflation, which suggests less than $15 million. First question, what is the magnitude of that? Second question, I'm going to just bundle these together. Net pricing. It was surprising to see that your trade spend's still up year-on-year and promos, a net drag on sales. It's surprising in context what's happening with promotional volume overall. Two parts to that question. One, where's the money going?

Two, as we think forward, we're hearing from pretty much every company that they're expecting promotions to kind of come back into the market and become more elevated going forward. Do you expect that to happen as well? Given that it's already a net negative, would you expect that net drag to increase as we go forward? Thank you.

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. Okay. Why don't I take the first one, Jason? With regard to your first question, to clarify the mark-to-market gains on commodity hedges, it's in and around $20 million.

Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Thank you.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. On the promotional, what we're seeing promotionally and as pricing, we have framed it a little bit as a relatively neutral position in the quarter. I think our net pricing as a contributor within our gross margin bridge was essentially flat. There's a couple things that are underlying that. We are seeing especially in categories where there is more pressure on supply, some pullback in promotion. I think one of the things we're trying to wrestle with a little bit through all this is, okay, if I promote the business with retailers, I may drive a growth rate of 10% or 15%. I can supply maybe 5% or 6% growth, and then if I don't promote, I only grow 2%, right? We're trying to figure out how to calibrate the right kind of promotion and support to get to the best position possible.

I do expect as we go through 2021, that's going to moderate and return to more normality. I think it'll be a little choppier in the first quarter, as we start to get into soup season and beyond, I think you'll see a much more consistent promotional calendar and schedule as we advance. I think in the near term, what you are seeing, though, is in the absence of some of those, and as we shift mix to things where we may have more supply and better position, I think you're seeing us continue to promote fairly aggressively.

Again, I think we're working very collaboratively with the retailers to try to make sure, too, that I mentioned this last time, if you're a high-low retailer versus an EDLP retailer and you're pulling back on promotions, it does create a little bit more of a disadvantage in certain customers. We're trying to work hard to make sure that we're equitable in our approach and that we're supporting customers to navigate through that in the best way possible. There's a little bit of mix that may be elevating as well. I think from my perspective, though, I think, how I would've depicted it is relatively neutral, with a trajectory to increase as we go into 2021. Mick, anything to add on the kind of the financial bridge side of it?

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

No, I agree with that. I think that's pricing in the end. I mean, as you also see in one of our bridges in the materials was actually net neutral.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah.

Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Growe from Stifel. Your line is open.

Chris Growe
Analyst, Stifel

Hi, good morning.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, Chris.

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Morning.

Chris Growe
Analyst, Stifel

Hi. I had a question for you. I heard about some supply chain challenges in certain parts of your business, and at the same time, an ability to ship out a consumption in some other areas, I'm thinking like in soup. I want to get a better sense, if I could, about your production capabilities, especially the areas in which you're investing to improve your supply chain. Just to get a sense around retail inventories, are there still some areas you have to build up? Kind of where you stand on retail inventories overall?

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. Great question. Let me kind of chunk that into the three pieces you kind of asked. First, as far as the supply chain capability and our execution, I feel great about how the team has shown up. A lot of discussion in the Q3 earnings call, and as we kind of guided to Q4, the real improvement or the uptick in what we guided to where we landed, was improvement in capacity as it related to soup, which enabled us to replenish inventory at a higher level, which was our goal. Not fully complete yet. I think you'll continue to see that going forward. Just on the basis of when I talk about supply chain challenges, these are not executional challenges. This is not us performing, this is not COVID-related impact.

This is simply the sustained level of demand in certain businesses, where we may have a little less flexibility to be able to kind of move to that higher level. First off, that's kind of the starting point. I think what you're seeing in this quarter is some variation between businesses, right? If we were in Q3, we were talking a little bit about the depletion of inventory on soup. The great news in Q4 is we were able to replenish in many areas. One of the dynamics that's happening is you'll see, throughout Q1, is the return of the vast majority of the SKUs that we had removed.

There will be some that we choose not to come back with that we think were just good business decisions, but that pipeline still remains, and I would still expect to see an ability to ship ahead of consumption as it relates to soup, as we go through the first quarter. Again, our guidance implies a certain limitation there. We're going to continue to work on improving that capacity as we go forward, to hopefully more broaden that ability and ensure. At the end, we feel good that we'll be there by the time we get to soup season. I think what you saw on the other side of the equation was some pressure on businesses across Snacks. In particular, I think the two that right now are probably our areas of biggest focus is our potato chip businesses, our Kettle and Cape Cod.

The good news is we've got a great plan in place, which is really to your third point on adding capacity, but there's certainly been pressure there. We've also seen some pressure on supplying Lance, our sandwich cracker business. On Goldfish, I think we're in great shape on supply. We've opened the new line at Willard. A little bit of what we're navigating on Goldfish is trying to figure out again that mix, as we go through back to school on whether it's bulk or individual packs. We continue to see demand remaining very, very high on the bulk side. I think generally speaking, we feel good about that.

There are a little bit of improvements on one opportunities on other, but as we come through the end of the first quarter, we really expect to be back across the board, and we are making major investments in many of the areas where we have great confidence in the sustainability of the demand going forward. Places like Goldfish, places like Milano, places like Kettle Chips, places like broth on our business, all of those are getting investments and we need them. They're, I think, going to be helping us in a pretty significant way as we get into the second quarter. Again, I think that's a little bit of the nature of the guidance in Q1.

Again, we would hope that we can create further upside there that could be opportunity, but for where we are right now, again, we're trying to be as pragmatic as we can be.

Chris Growe
Analyst, Stifel

That was very good color. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Moskow from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Robert Moskow
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Hi, thanks.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, Rob.

Robert Moskow
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Two quick ones. The sales guidance for 1Q, do you expect in total to ship to consumption in 1Q, or does that include some degree of shipping above consumption in that range? Secondarily, I think you quantified last quarter exactly how much inventory you needed to reload. I think the number was like $200 million. Maybe you can give us an update on that. Last thing, there was a lot of margin compression in Snacks, I think you attributed to the A&C investment in the quarter. You also talked about COVID costs really hitting Snacks harder. Why is there margin compression in Snacks related to COVID, but in Soup, the margins are actually going higher. Is it just different businesses in terms of how the COVID costs run through them?

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Let me first talk a little bit about inventory again and what we expect in Q1. You have a couple things that are going on in Q1 that I think are important for people to try to calibrate on. I know you're coming out of a quarter where your organic growth is 12%. Seeing a guide of 5%-7% may feel, to some, a little bit like, "Okay, well, that's not why aren't we just running at the rate going forward?" I think there's a couple variables in there, and then on the tail end, I'll catch your inventory piece. The first thing is that we do expect consumption demand to be elevated, especially on the Meals & Beverages side. One thing that is worth noting is it's a significantly bigger base in the first quarter.

Although I do think growth will be there, I just think the absolute numbers are going to be a little bit moderated from where we are. Right now, what we have planned is to continue to recover some inventory on the Meals & Beverages side. To be honest, we're pushing the team hard to try to create room to recover even more. I would say from a total inventory recovery position across the company, we're probably about halfway done. I still think further ahead on soup, not as far ahead on some of the other businesses. I would still expect there to be over the course of Q1, some may even bleed a little bit into Q2. I'm still expecting about half of that, Rob, to come back over the first half, primarily Q1, but over the first half of the year.

Again, a lot of this is going to boil down to how much capacity we're able to generate. Certainly, we hope we're going to push above that. Snacks is a little bit different, right? I think Snacks, what we're seeing is, although elevated level of demand in some areas, a more return to normality in others, which, by the way, I still believe is going to be healthy growth and continuing to make great progress. For example, we're in the midst right now of back to school. It's been very interesting to watch the first couple weeks of that, where you see, on the one hand, a significant increase in our demand for soup, for quick lunches, as well as bulk on our Snack business. We definitely see a reduction in some of the more traditional back-to-school portion packs.

I think as we navigate that, we're trying to calibrate to the right numbers. I will just say, as I said in my comment, I think it's a complicated time to give people a tremendous sense of precision in the numbers, but I think the general drivers we feel very good about, it's now our ability to match the magnitude. Still a lot of inventory to go, I think healthy demand underlying it, and we would expect that to continue through the first half. That's kind of how we've initially set up these numbers in the first quarter.

Robert Moskow
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Yeah, about the margins.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. On COVID costs, Mick, maybe just a little bit why Snacks is different than-

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah, sure. Okay. Let me give you a little bit of context around the COVID cost. We had about $25 million of COVID cost in Q3. If you look at Q4, because Q3 was obviously only half impacted by COVID, Q4, we had a full quarter. The overall costs were double that, give or take about $50 million. If you look at the distribution between the two divisions, you see that about two-thirds of that hit Snacks, which is really driven by the nature of the manufacturing footprint of the Snacks division, i.e., we have many more facilities, obviously there.

The other piece, on the one hand, you had more COVID costs in Snacks than we had in Meals and Beverages. The other piece that I saw kind of looking through the quarter, we had increased operating leverage disproportionately within the M&B business, driven by obviously much more volume than what we saw on the Snacks side. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of a sense of the dynamic there.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Just to add a little more color as you go then into the first quarter and into 2021. We essentially are modeling those COVID costs to be 50% or closer to Q3, I think.

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Is what we-

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Basically more in line with that.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah, more in line with that.

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

I agree with that.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah.

Mick Beekhuizen
CFO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah.

Robert Moskow
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Right. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our last question from John Baumgartner from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

John Baumgartner
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Good morning. Thanks for the question.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Hey, John.

John Baumgartner
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Mark, I just wanted to build on Jason's question in that the Snyder's-Lance brands, those tended to over-promote relative to their categories in the past. Given the continued reductions in promo we're seeing in conjunction with, I guess, limited moderation in base volume growth into Q1, I guess I'm curious, A, how do you feel about the ability to use an environment to sort of wean consumers off at higher promo, especially if you're getting higher ROI on the marketing dollars? B, to what extent do you see the environment offering opportunities to maybe accelerate any sort of increase in the share of your own brands, as opposed to the allied or partner brands? Thank you.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Yeah. Well, as I said a couple of times before, I think what's unique about our Snacks business is the differentiated position that we're in. In the sense that we tend to play in a little more added value segments within larger categories. I think that does position us to be in a position where we should be less dependent on merchandising and promotion. I think the reality is, though, on something, for example, like Snyder's of Hanover and the pretzel business, it's a very competitive segment, as it is in Kettle Chips right now as well.

I think one of the things we learned last year, if you remember turning back the clock, actually all the way back to 2019, our ability to get to the right price points on promotion, just given the nature of snacking, the right level of frequency, will always be an important underpinning to execution in Snacks. I think that if you pair that then with where we've really been building added value as it relates to the equity of the businesses, as we've turned campaigns back on, especially on the Snyder's businesses, we've been able to see continued progress. Let me point to Late July as a great example. First national campaign that we've ever turned on or had on the business. We turned that on in the fourth quarter.

That business grew 30% on a 52-week basis and share gains of over a point in a fairly congested tortilla chip segment. Because of the premium positioning relative to Late July, great communication, we could do that in a way where we were able to achieve that without necessarily having to drop down into the price points that more mainstream players have. That's the balancing act we're trying to walk, and I think if we get that formula right, as we have on brands like Milano and Farmhouse and on Pepperidge Farm, even Goldfish, although that one's, again, you've got a very habitual program calendar for Goldfish that when that deviates, that does put pressure on the business.

As we get back into normality on that as we roll through the year, I think most of these businesses, we're going to be able to do trade in a more efficient way than perhaps history. We still got to have enough there that we remain competitive on display, and making sure that we recognize what's happening around us competitively.

John Baumgartner
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Great. Thanks, Mark. Much appreciated.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our question and answer session for today's conference, and I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mark Clouse for any closing remarks.

Mark Clouse
President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Thanks everybody for joining. I hope you're appreciating the new format. I think we will kind of stick with this, where we try to publish our comments earlier and give people a chance to kind of digest and read through, and then focus our time together in Q&A when we're on the call. I know there's a lot to digest in this. I know it's a tricky time, too. We've certainly tried to build as much conviction and I guess credibility and being as transparent as we can to give the information as we get it and give perspective. Of course, that always creates a little bit of a dynamic that we need to make sure that we're updating it as we go, and we will.

I think as we navigate this year, we'll try to make sure that as we see things change or as capacity or demand moves, we'll be as upfront as possible. I don't know that that translates, and I don't think it will to quarterly guidance each time. We'll certainly try to keep everybody as informed as we can be. I just would close with something that I talked about in my comments, which is if you take a step back and you take stock of where the company is right now, and you say, "Okay, a year ago, where were we expecting to be, and how do we feel about navigating this kind of moment in time?" I have to say that across the board strategically, I see tremendous benefit that we've been able to extract from a tough moment.

I think that that is going to set us up very well for the future. If I think about, again, not perhaps the peaks and the valleys of the near term, but the longer-term view of what the thesis of the company is, I have just built significantly more confidence. I think as you see our two-year stack numbers together, I think that's going to provide further evidence of our progress against where we originally set out. I think in particular, what we've talked about on soup and the conviction around soup, to be not only what we needed it to be, which was a stable player, but with the potential for it to be a more steady contributor, along with great progress on our Snacks business, again, I think gives us the benefit of being a very focused portfolio, a very straightforward strategy.

Now with a great deal more proof points of our ability to sustain performance going forward. Hopefully that helps give you a little bit of perspective. I know we mixed a bit of Investor Day stuff along with earnings into today, but I thought it was a good moment to try to talk a little bit about where we are in that strategic journey, because I know it's top of mind for many of your investors. Appreciate everybody's time and questions. I know we'll talk to many later today, and we'll try to make sure you've got everything that you need to put the results in context and the guidance going forward. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.