Campbell’s Soup Beats The Bear

Mmmm….Mmmm….Good.

That’s what Campbell’s (NYSE:CPB) soup is these days as consumers every where struggle in a slowing economy.

Here’s the story from Bloomberg by Chris Burritt entitled: Campbell Beats Bear Market as Consumers Seek Out Soup.

“Judging by Dayna Neumann’s pantry, Campbell Soup Co. may turn the U.S. recession into rising sales, just as it did in the last two contractions.

Neumann’s family in Louisville, Kentucky, is bracing “for a rough road ahead,” the 32-year-old working mother said. After her 30-year-old husband, Nick, substituted $1.75 Campbell Chunky soup for restaurant lunches in September, she started buying as many as 15 cans at a time.

The recession will make 2009 “the year of condensed soup, driven by the backdrop of severe economic pressure on the consumer,” Mitchell Pinheiro, a Philadelphia-based analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, wrote in a note yesterday.

The appeal of a cheap meal is turning the world’s largest soupmaker, which says it sells to 85 percent of U.S. households, into an outperformer in hard times. The shares led the 12- company Standard & Poor’s Packaged Foods Index over the past three months before today, and their 0.87 percent loss this year beat the S&P 500 by almost 48 percentage points.

The food producer has survived 28 recessions, two world wars and the Great Depression over its 139-year existence. “Historically, Campbell’s soup sales have done well during tough economic times as consumers look for value,” said spokesman Anthony Sanzio.”

I always wondered why they called it comfort food.

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