Headwinds Challenge Campbell Soup
Commodity cost inflation, the need for brand reinvestment, and a shifting business mix mute the wide-moat firm's margin potential.
Erin Lash, CFA, is a sector director, consumer equity research, for Morningstar. Beyond managing a team of nine analysts and associates covering an array of consumer firms, Lash also conducts fundamental analysis of 13 multi-billion-dollar market-capitalization firms in the packaged food and household and personal care space.
Before joining Morningstar in 2006, Lash spent four years as an investment analyst covering retail, transportation, and technology firms for State Farm Insurance. In this capacity, Lash analyzed financial statements, business strategy, and fundamentals of owned companies and potential investments, presenting her recommendations based on this analysis to State Farm's portfolio managers for ownership consideration.
Lash holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Bradley University’s Foster College of Business. She also holds a master’s degree in business administration, with concentrations in accounting and finance, from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Lash has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation. She ranked second in the food and tobacco industry in The Wall Street Journal’s annual “Best on the Street” analysts survey in 2013, the last year the survey was conducted.
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