Campbell's Closes Fiscal 2026 on Thursday Against a Reaffirmed $2.15-$2.25 Adjusted EPS Range

by Leah Avraham · September 2, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

The Campbell's Company is scheduled to report fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results at 7:15 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, September 3, covering the fiscal year ended August 2, 2026. The company said in an August 13 announcement that it would post a press release, slide presentation, transcript and pre-recorded management remarks at that time, with President and Chief Executive Mick Beekhuizen and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Todd Cunfer hosting a live question-and-answer session at 9 a.m. Eastern. The results have not been published and nothing here describes them.

The frame the company set for itself has been in place since June. In its third-quarter release on June 5, Campbell's reaffirmed full-year fiscal 2026 guidance for organic net sales of negative 2% to negative 1%, adjusted EBIT down 20% to 17%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $2.15 to $2.25, a range it described as a 26% to 23% decrease. Every one of those figures is an adjusted or organic measure. The company did not attach a GAAP EPS range to them.

Why the third quarter's two EPS lines moved in opposite directions

Campbell's third quarter, the three months ended May 3, 2026, produced a result that is easy to misread. GAAP diluted EPS was $0.41, up 86% from $0.22 a year earlier. Adjusted diluted EPS was $0.50, down 32% from $0.73. One measure nearly doubled and the other fell by a third, in the same quarter, on the same business.

The mechanism is the size of the adjustment itself. A year earlier the gap between the GAAP and adjusted figures was $0.51 a share. In the most recent third quarter it was $0.09. Campbell's excludes items including cost savings initiative costs, commodity mark-to-market adjustments, acquisition costs, litigation expenses, pension gains and losses, and impairment charges. When the volume of those excluded items shrinks sharply, GAAP earnings can rise even as the underlying adjusted figure falls, and that is what happened here. The GAAP increase is a statement about how few one-off charges the quarter contained, not about demand.

The operating figures underneath point the same way as the adjusted line. Net sales fell 4% to $2,366m on both a reported and an organic basis, and adjusted EBIT fell 24% to $274m. Meals & Beverages organic sales fell 4% with segment operating earnings down 16%, and Snacks organic sales also fell 4% with operating earnings down 32%. Both halves of the portfolio declined, and Snacks declined harder at the earnings line.

Even the gross margin comparison inverts. GAAP gross margin was 27.5%, down 190 basis points, while adjusted gross margin was 27.7%, down 240 basis points. The adjusted measure sits higher in absolute terms but fell further year over year, a 50-basis-point difference in the direction of travel between the two.

What the estimates say, and how much weight they carry

A preview published on Yahoo Finance on July 27 put the fourth-quarter EPS estimate at $0.40, down 35.5% from $0.62 in the prior-year quarter, and the full-year estimate at $2.18, down 26.6% from a $2.97 base. That piece does not state whether the estimates are GAAP or adjusted, does not name the firm compiling the consensus, and attaches no analyst count to the EPS figures, which are material omissions given how far apart Campbell's two EPS measures have been running. The same piece also misnames Campbell's chief financial officer as Mark Cunfer; the company's own August 13 announcement gives the name as Todd Cunfer.

The $2.18 full-year figure does sit inside the company's own $2.15 to $2.25 adjusted range, which is circumstantial support for reading it as an adjusted number. The prior-year base does not reconcile as cleanly. Campbell's described its $2.15 to $2.25 range as a 26% to 23% decline, which implies a fiscal 2025 adjusted base of roughly $2.91, about six cents below the $2.97 the digest uses. Because the two bases disagree, this article does not derive an implied fourth-quarter figure from the full-year numbers.

The same Yahoo Finance preview reported forward commentary attributed to Campbell's chief financial officer pointing to high inflation in the first half of fiscal 2027 from elevated commodity and input costs, an incentive compensation reset of roughly $40m, and higher planned marketing spend. That commentary is relayed here as it appeared in that digest rather than from a Campbell's filing or release, and given the digest's error on the finance chief's name, readers should treat the fiscal 2027 framing as unconfirmed until the company addresses it directly on Thursday.

The three things worth watching in Thursday's release, then, are whether full-year adjusted EPS lands inside the reaffirmed $2.15 to $2.25 range; whether organic net sales finish inside the negative 2% to negative 1% band, against a 4% organic decline in the third quarter; and what the company says about fiscal 2027, which it had not guided to publicly as of its June 5 release. The GAAP-versus-adjusted gap is worth checking a fourth time, because on the evidence of the third quarter the direction of the GAAP line has recently been telling you more about charge timing than about trading.

Campbell's reports into a soft tape. The S&P 500 closed Tuesday, September 1 at 7,631.47, down 0.71%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 52,766.88, down 0.79%. US markets are open as this is published and no Wednesday close exists. Nothing in this article is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.