General Mills Drops 4% Following Campbell's Cut

General Mills shares fell 4% to $38.88 on 3 September. The decline mirrored an industrywide selloff triggered by peer The Campbell's Company, which dropped 9% to $21.53 after slashing its quarterly dividend and issuing lower fiscal guidance.

The pullback focused specifically on center-store packaged food producers rather than the broad market. The S&P 500 ETF Trust gained 1% to $772.73, and the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF held flat at $85.57. Meanwhile, peer Kraft Heinz also fell 3% to $25.43 amid the shared industry pressure.

Campbell's cut its quarterly dividend by 36% from $0.39 to $0.25 per share, lowering its annualized payout to $1.00 from $1.56. Campbell's also guided full-year adjusted earnings per share to between $1.65 and $1.80 on a net sales drop of 2% to 4%, missing consensus expectations for $1.86 in adjusted EPS and a 0.8% net sales decline.

General Mills did not report earnings but entered the session down 9% year to date. Investors grew cautious over volume and product mix trends across North American grocery aisles after Campbell's highlighted category-wide weakness in salty snacks and outlined a $500 million multi-year cost program.