Market's In A Mood For Consolidaton When It Comes To The Hershey Company (HSY), Says Jim Cramer

We recently published 10 Stocks That Were On Jim Cramer’s Radar As He Warned “It’s Too Early” To Buy. The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.

The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY)’s stock has weathered the storm that has hit the broader packaged food sector, as it is up by 9.3% year-to-date. The stock surged by 16% in July, benefiting from several catalysts such as the firm’s announcement that it would raise prices due to high cocoa costs. Cramer has discussed several food stocks recently, and for some, such as JM Smucker, he has attributed some of their woes to a lack of pricing power. Therefore, the rise in The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) shares is unsurprising. In this appearance, the CNBC TV host had the following to say when co-host Carl Quintanilla mentioned The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) and other food stocks:

“They’re all, not Bristol-Myers, my charitable trust owns, has not been good. But I think the others Campbell’s, General Mills, people feel, wait a second, it’s time for the great consolidation. We don’t have the FTC blocking us. We really have to just get some bandwidth. Mars has bandwidth. . .I do think that when you look at a stock like a General Mills, it yields five percent! General Mills is a very good company in a market that says listen we need more growth and they don’t have it.”

Here are Cramer’s previous thoughts about The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY):

“If you really want overlooked, there’s the other side of the story, Hershey, down big yesterday and today. I get it. They’re losing the steady hand of CEO of Michele Buck and getting Tanner, who only spent about a year and a half at Wendy’s, where he departed. Even though Tanner originally had a consumer packaged goods background, he’d been in PepsiCo for 32 years before Wendy’s, it always raises eyebrows when a CEO flees a struggling company to work somewhere else in a hurry.

Plus, Tanner was the guy who brought dynamic pricing, where they jack up prices in periods of high demand to fast food. Well, that didn’t go down well. The other reason Hershey’s getting hit, if you were hoping for a takeover here, hiring this new CEO seems to take that off the table. It was a clarion call to sell. And if you didn’t get out when it was announced because you were busy paying only attention to the president, you may have caught a 14-point decline, and you want to avoid a 14-point decline all the time. That’s hazardous.”

While we acknowledge the potential of HSY as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.