Dive Brief:
- Hormel has announced a shakeup in upper management as current CEO Jeffrey Ettinger steps down from his position to retire, effective Oct. 30, according to a company statement. He will continue to serve in his board chairman role.
- Hormel's current president and COO James Snee will succeed Ettinger as CEO.
- Snee has held many positions at Hormel since joining the company in 1989, including management and VP roles of various business segments before being named president and COO in October 2015.
Dive Insight:
Ettinger also joined Hormel in 1989, taking over a variety of roles before becoming chairman, CEO and president in November 2006. Over the past decade, Ettinger has led Hormel on a growth trajectory that includes boosting revenue from $5.4 billion to $9.3 billion, more than doubling earnings, almost quadrupling dividends, generating about a 400% return on its stock price and bumping up its Fortune 500 ranking by nearly 100 spots, to No. 304 this year.
Snee has played an integral role over the years in his various management and VP positions, but over the past year, he's been directly at Ettinger's side as president and COO. In that year, Hormel has continued its track record of delivering value to shareholders and being a leader and innovator in a range of grocery and refrigerated categories.
That includes integrating and expanding upon the mission of its 2015 acquisition Applegate Farms, arranging its 2016 acquisition of nut butter snack maker Justin's, joining the industrywide commitment to simpler ingredients, leading the charge for an immediate switch to cage-free eggs and positioning itself as an early innovator in new promising categories, like medical foods.
Not all of the company's pursuits have panned out, such as Spam Snacks, which the company discontinued after only six months. That's despite the product appearing to align with consumers' demands for meat snacks.
But despite those missteps, investors and industry experts remain confident in Hormel's aptitude for growth. Last month, Credit Suisse upgraded its rating on Hormel to "outperform" and increased its target stock price. That announcement came days after Hormel boosted its full-year profit outlook for the third time this year and reported record earnings for the 13th consecutive quarter.