Summer represents the low point in the seasonal demand for Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup. In Summer 2025, it also presents a significant effort by The Campbell's Company (NYSE: CPB) to rein its costs to minimize the impact of new tariffs on steel.
In many ways, that's a re-run of what the company faced in 2018. Back then, we estimated the Trump administration's 25% tariff would add somewhere between $0.006 and $0.032 to the cost of each 10.75 fluid ounce can of condensed soup it sells. Which is not very much per can, but multiplied across hundreds of millions of cans sold per year, could have an impact on the company's bottom line.
Which is a point Campbell's then-CFO made while pointing out that small increase would shrink the company's net income (or profit) by roughly 5-6%.
Flash forward to 2025, and the tariffs on steel, which includes the tin-plate steel used to make Campbell's soup cans, have been set at 50%. Double the tariff, double the cost impact.
It wouldn't be surprising then to see one-time price increases related to 2025's steel tariffs taking effect. However our survey of prices and 10 major grocery-selling retailers shows as yet little in the way of price changes for Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup, which so far have been muted. Here's the results for our survey for July 2025 and how prices changed from our previous snapshot in April.
- Walmart: $1.26/each, unchanged
- Amazon: $1.26/each, unchanged
- Kroger: $1.50/each, increase of $0.11 (+7.9%)
- Walgreens: $1.99/each, unchanged
- Target: $1.39/each, increase of $0.10 (+7.8%)
- CVS: $2.49/each, unchanged
- Albertsons: $1.69/each, unchanged
- Food Lion: $1.25/each, unchanged
- H-E-B: $1.31/each, unchanged
- Meijer: $1.29/each, unchanged
For these price increases, only Kroger's $0.11 increase to $1.50 per can counts as a true cost increase. While Target has a similar increase in this snapshot, its price of $1.39 per can is really going back to the same level it was in January 2025 after having had it on sale at a small discount in April 2025.
Here's our chart tracking the price per can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup from January 2000 through July 2025.
For its part, Campbell's current CFO Carrie Anderson is taking measures to avoid passing price increases through to consumers while also maintaining its low profit margins:
Campbell’s tariff mitigation plan also includes strategic inventory management, alternative sourcing, product cost optimization, and “where absolutely necessary, consideration of surgical pricing actions,” Anderson said. The company expects “the net incremental headwind of tariff-related costs to be up to $0.03 to $0.05 per share to fiscal ’25 adjusted EPS,” she added.
These projected tariff-related costs are spread across all of Campbell's products, which includes a lot more than just soup.
Finally, because tariffs are a heavy topic and because it is summer when soup sales are at their lowest, we'll leave you with something a little more light-hearted that explores an unexpected way to get more Campbell's condensed tomato soup onto your dining table:
There has to be a recipe out there somewhere that would make Campbell's Tomato Soup (Condensed) a better seller during the summer months.
Image credit: Advertising for Campbell's Tomato Soup from August 1925 Ladies Home Journal. Public domain image posted at EBay.
Labels: soup
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
ironman at politicalcalculations
Thanks in advance!
Closing values for previous trading day.
This site is primarily powered by:
CSS Validation
RSS Site Feed
JavaScript
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
Blog Roll
