10 Best Cookies and Crackers Stocks to Buy

2. PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 58

PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) is a renowned global food and beverage company. The firm offers a complementary portfolio of brands, including Lays, Cheetos, Doritos, Pepsi-Cola, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Quaker and SodaStream. The firm offers cookies and crackers through its various brands including Grandma’s as well as Gamesa, the leading cookie and cracker Hispanic brand in the US grocery channel.

PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) leverages its global scale and reach to spark joy and create more smiles. The firm’s product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including many iconic brands that generate over $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales. PepsiCo’s products are enjoyed by consumers over one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe. The global beverage and convenience food market presents the firm with a promising opportunity to further grow.

Despite tough conditions including business disruptions due to rising geopolitical tensions in certain international markets and subdued category performance trends in North America, the firm closed a resilient third quarter of 2024. The quarter was marked with 1.3% organic revenue growth, 110 basis points expansion in core gross margin, and 75 basis points expansion in core operating margin versus the previous year. While consumers remain choiceful and value-conscious due to inflationary pressures, PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) continues to accelerate its existing productivity programs by expanding automation at its plants, warehouses, and distribution centers, advancing digitalization across its organization, maximizing labor efficiencies, and minimizing areas of waste.

While a strong pipeline of productivity initiatives is in place, the firm expects inflationary pressures to moderate versus the preceding year. Although the firm has been through multiple challenges since 2019, the long-term resilience of its categories and businesses is evident from the fact its net revenue has grown to more than $90 billion and it remains on track to deliver more than 45 percent core USD earnings per share growth in 2024 versus 2019.