Chief Executive Officer Denise Morrison abruptly stepped down from Campbell’s Soup Co. on Friday as the foodmaker ponders reshaping its brand portfolio after the $6.1 billion purchase of snack-maker Lance-Snyder.
Board member Keith McLoughlin, the former head of home-appliance manufacturer Electrolux, will service as interim CEO while Campbell’s seeks a permanent successor for Morrison, the Camden, N.J.-based company said.
The management shakeup followed a quarterly loss of $393 million, as well as lower profitability than executives had expected, prompting the firm to project a full-year drop in earnings rather than growth of as much as 4 percent.
“These results are unsatisfactory and disappointing to us as well as our shareholders,” McLoughlin told investors on an earnings all. “We intend to take appropriate and decisive actions to ensure that Campbell’s is positioned to compete and win in the marketplace. That means we must take a fresh look at our strategies, our operations and our portfolio and to do so with urgency.”
While McLoughlin declined to share details on what strategic moves the company consider, he promised that “there are no sacred cows.”
The company also suggested it would raise prices on its products as a result of the looming steel and aluminum tariffs the Trump administration announced earlier this year.
“That’s obviously going to put some pressure on the margin,” Chief Financial Officer Anthony DiSilvestro said. “It would certainly be our intention that, over time, productivity and pricing will offset cost inflation.”
While the Lance acquistion helped boost total revenue 15 percent to $4.12 billion for the quarter that ended on April 30, sales in the company’s meals and beverage sector declined by 3 percent.
“We are facing both execution-related and external challenges,” DiSilvestro told investors. “We are analyzing these issues in depth, developing action plans to address them and doing so with a heightened sense of urgency.”
Campbell’s fell 11 percent to $34.80 in New York trading on Friday, taking this year’s decline to 28 percent.
