Campbell's pays a dividend of $0.39 a share every quarter, or $1.56 a year. With the stock trading near $21.50, that yield sits above 7%. The company hasn't cut its dividend since 2001, and the board reaffirmed the $0.39 payout on May 13, 2026. On the surface, then, the dividend looks secure.
The surface isn't where dividends get decided. We read every payout through four things: how much of earnings it consumes, whether free cash flow actually covers it, how much debt sits behind the business, and how the company has treated the dividend over time. On Campbell's, two of those four are comfortable and two are stretched.
A word on what follows. The figures are current as of June 5, 2026. The most recent reported quarter is the second quarter of fiscal 2026, which Campbell's announced on March 11. We are not forecasting a cut, and nothing in these numbers points to one. The useful takeaway is narrower than that. The room behind this dividend has shrunk, and a 7% yield on a soup-and-snacks company is a signal to investigate rather than a coupon to reach for.
One housekeeping note for anyone searching the old name. The Campbell's Company (NASDAQ: CPB) is the former Campbell Soup Company, renamed in late 2024. Same ticker, same fiscal year ending in early August.
The numbers, at a glance
| Item | Figure (as of June 5, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Quarterly dividend | $0.39 per share |
| Annual run-rate | $1.56 per share |
| Forward yield | roughly 7.2% to 7.6% (7.24% at StockAnalysis and MarketBeat, about 7.64% at MacroTrends) on the $21.50 price from June 4, 2026 |
| Next ex-dividend date | July 2, 2026 |
| Payment date | August 3, 2026 (declared May 13, 2026) |
| Payout ratio | about 71% on the cut FY2026 adjusted-EPS midpoint of $2.20; about 85% trailing (StockAnalysis); about 77% (GuruFocus) |
| Net debt to adjusted EBITDA | about 3.7x at Q1 FY2026 |
| Credit profile | low end of investment grade (BBB-/Baa2 range) |
Those yield numbers move with the share price, so treat them as approximate and date-stamped. We're not trying to beat a data aggregator on the raw figure. The table is there to set up the question the aggregators don't answer, which is what sits behind a yield that high.
Why the yield is over 7%
The dividend itself hasn't done anything dramatic. Campbell's declared $0.39 on February 25 and again on May 13, holding it flat across the whole fiscal year. Annualized, that comes to $1.56.
What moved was the price. The stock recently touched a 52-week low of $19.56, a long way down from its high of $34.66. When a dividend stays put and the share price falls, the yield rises on its own. That is the entire story behind the 7% figure. It reflects the decline, not a more generous payout.
This is worth dwelling on, because a consumer-staples yield running this far above the sector norm is usually the market admitting it isn't sure about the business. Understanding why comes first, and that is what the rest of this comes down to.
What the four lenses show
Start with the payout ratio. On the lowered fiscal 2026 guidance, with an adjusted-EPS midpoint around $2.20, the $1.56 dividend eats up roughly 71% of earnings. That is up from about 63% under the company's earlier, higher guidance. Trailing measures read higher still, with StockAnalysis near 85% and GuruFocus around 77%. Whichever you use, it sits well above the roughly 49% Campbell's has averaged over the past decade. The ratio didn't climb because the dividend grew. It climbed because earnings fell underneath it.
Cash flow tells a friendlier story, and it is the strongest part of the case for the dividend. In fiscal 2025 the company produced $1.13 billion in operating cash flow and spent $426 million on capital projects, leaving about $704 million of free cash flow against $459 million in dividends. That is roughly 1.5 times covered. Through the first half of fiscal 2026 the cushion was wider, not narrower: $740 million in operating cash flow and $227 million of capex left around $513 million of free cash flow against $237 million in dividends, close to two times. The cash that funds the payout is still there, even as the reported earnings line gets squeezed.
The balance sheet is where it tightens. Net debt sat at about 3.7 times adjusted EBITDA at the end of the first quarter, pushed up by the roughly $2.7 billion Campbell's paid for Sovos Brands, the owner of Rao's. Total debt was $7.075 billion against $561 million of cash at the end of the second quarter, and the company holds the lowest rung of investment grade. A senior-notes offering in December 2025 came with expected ratings of Baa2 from Moody's and BBB- from both S&P and Fitch. The pressure here isn't the dividend draining cash. It is that paying down debt and paying the dividend draw on the same pool of money.
The track record is long but stagnant. Campbell's hasn't cut its dividend since 2001, when it reduced the payout by about 30%, from $0.90 to $0.63. Call it 25 years without a cut. That is durable, though it isn't a Dividend Aristocrat, which takes 25 straight years of increases. The quarterly dividend sat at $0.37 from early 2022 into late 2024, then rose 5.4% to $0.39, declared in December 2024 and first paid that January. It has been frozen ever since. Dividend growth has run about 2.3% a year over the past decade and around 1.3% over the past year, a long way from the steady annual raises you get at a Coca-Cola or a PepsiCo.
The quarter that changed the story
The reason any of this is a live question is the second-quarter report. For the quarter that ended February 1 and was reported on March 11, net sales fell 5% to $2.564 billion, with organic sales down 3%. GAAP earnings came in at $0.48 a share, down 17%. Adjusted earnings were $0.51, down 31% and short of the roughly $0.57 analysts expected. Adjusted operating profit dropped 24% to $282 million, and adjusted gross margin slipped about 270 basis points to 27.7%.
Then management cut the full-year outlook. Adjusted-earnings guidance went to a range of $2.15 to $2.25, down from $2.40 to $2.55, against the $2.91 the company earned in fiscal 2025. That is a step down of 23% to 26%. Organic sales guidance moved to a decline of 1% to 2%, and adjusted operating profit to a decline of 17% to 20%. The new earnings range landed below the roughly $2.41 the Street was modeling.
It is worth getting the sequence right, because it's easy to muddle. At the first-quarter report on December 9, 2025, management still backed the higher $2.40 to $2.55 range. The cut came one quarter later, on March 11. The company blamed softer demand in Snacks, tariffs, cost inflation, and shipment delays from January storms, sizing that last item at about 1% of net sales, roughly $14 million of adjusted operating profit and about $0.04 a share.
Where the weakness is
The trouble is concentrated rather than broad. Snacks saw second-quarter sales fall 6% to $914 million and segment profit drop 39% to $67 million, hurt by weak demand for salty snacks and execution problems in Fresh Bakery. The Meals & Beverages side held up better, with sales down 4% to $1.65 billion and profit down 15% to $252 million.
There is a genuine bright spot. Rao's passed $1 billion in trailing sales, which is the asset Campbell's bought Sovos to get and the clearest piece of the case for the business as a whole.
The case that the dividend holds
The cash side of this dividend is sound, and a fair reading has to say so without hedging. Free cash flow covered the payout about 1.5 times in fiscal 2025 and close to twice in the first half of 2026. This is not a company funding its dividend with borrowed money or a shrinking cash balance, which is what an actual pre-cut situation tends to look like.
The brands are the second support. Campbell's owns a deep shelf of category leaders, and Rao's crossing $1 billion in sales validates the deal that pushed leverage up in the first place. A cost program is also doing real work. The company is targeting $375 million in savings by fiscal 2028 and had banked about $180 million of that by the second quarter, adding $20 million in the period, which takes some of the sting out of the margin pressure.
Management has also said, in plain terms, that the dividend comes first. On the second-quarter call, finance chief Todd Cunfer put it this way: "The dividend is extremely important to us, but we will not be increasing that dividend anytime soon." He was just as blunt on buybacks: "We are going to have no more share buybacks; even anti-dilutive share buybacks we will not do." That is a company steering cash toward protecting the dividend and paying down debt rather than repurchasing stock. And for all the pressure, the payout is still under 100% on either basis. A high payout alongside 3.7 times leverage can run for years in a stable-demand staples business, which is a different thing from a company paying out more than it brings in.
The case for caution
The other side is real too, and it reads as a set of warning lights rather than a conclusion.
The forward payout is pushing 71%, and around 85% on a trailing basis, well above the roughly 49% the company has averaged for a decade. It is rising for the wrong reason, because earnings are falling rather than because the dividend is growing. Leverage near 3.7 times sits against a guided earnings decline of 23% to 26%, and Cunfer himself framed the priority bluntly: "getting that leverage down closer to three than to four is imperative for us." When cutting debt is the stated goal and earnings are shrinking, the dividend and the balance sheet are competing for the same dollars.
Snacks profit fell 39% in the quarter, and the guidance cut was the second of the fiscal year. The dividend has been frozen since that December 2024 raise, and management has now said it won't move for a while. Analysts have spent 2026 trimming their price targets, the consensus rating is a Hold, and the 7% yield is itself a tell. The market is pricing in stress, which is exactly why the question is worth asking.
So, is it safe?
Put both sides together and the picture is coherent, if uncomfortable. The payout is being squeezed from the top by falling earnings while cash flow still covers it from the bottom. Two of the four lenses look stretched, the payout and the balance sheet. One looks healthy, the cash coverage. One is durable but flat, the 25-year record. That is a genuinely split read, and flattening it into a clean "safe" or "at risk" would do the numbers a disservice.
For transparency about our own product: Campbell's isn't in dividendscut.com's score snapshot yet, so we won't invent a number. On the figures here it would land in the double-check band, somewhere around 5 to 6, held down by payout and leverage and kept off the floor by cash coverage and the long no-cut record. That is a judgment from public data, not a published score.
It helps to see what a real forced cut looks like by comparison. We wrote about Whirlpool suspending its dividend in May 2026. There, free cash flow had run far below the dividend for years, and the safety score had been under 5 for months before the suspension dropped it to 1. Campbell's isn't in that position. Its cash flow still covers the payout, and that gap is the difference between a dividend that is stretched and one that is broken.
The thing to watch, with no prediction attached, is whether earnings stabilize enough over the next year or two to bring leverage back toward the roughly 3 times management is aiming for. One scheduling note: Campbell's was set to report its third quarter on June 8, 2026, three days after the date these figures are drawn from, so nothing from that quarter is reflected here. Any third-quarter number you see elsewhere is an estimate, not a result.
dividendscut.com sends you an email the moment a US dividend is cut, suspended, or eliminated, and gives every stock a nightly safety score from 1 to 10 built on the same four lenses used here. Pro runs $29 a month with a 14-day free trial and no card required. If you'd rather understand the options first, see how to be alerted to dividend cuts and the retail dividend information gap.
A note on sourcing
Figures are current as of June 5, 2026, ahead of the third-quarter report due June 8. The primary sources are Campbell's investor releases for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 and the first two quarters of fiscal 2026, the related SEC 8-K filing, and the second-quarter earnings call transcript. The quotes come from finance chief Todd Cunfer, who became executive vice president and CFO on October 20, 2025. Yield, price and payout figures come from data providers (StockAnalysis, MarketBeat, MacroTrends and GuruFocus) and are date-stamped because they move with the share price. On credit, Campbell's sits at the low end of investment grade in the BBB-/Baa2 range; Fitch affirmed it at BBB with a negative outlook in April 2025, and we are not claiming a downgrade. This is information, not investment advice.
Common questions
Is Campbell's dividend safe? It hasn't been cut or suspended, and the board reaffirmed it in May 2026. On the four things we track, the read is split. Cash flow covers the dividend comfortably, about 1.5 times in fiscal 2025 and closer to twice in early fiscal 2026, while the payout ratio and the debt load are both stretched. The numbers don't point to a forced cut, but the margin for error has shrunk.
Why is the yield over 7%? Because the share price fell hard, close to a 52-week low of $19.56 against a high of $34.66, while the $1.56 annual dividend stayed flat. A static dividend over a falling price produces a higher yield on its own.
What is the payout ratio? Around 71% on the lowered fiscal 2026 earnings guidance, closer to 85% on a trailing basis at StockAnalysis, and about 77% at GuruFocus. All of those sit well above the roughly 49% Campbell's has averaged over ten years.
What about the debt? Net debt was about 3.7 times adjusted EBITDA at the first quarter, lifted by the roughly $2.7 billion Sovos Brands purchase. Total debt stood at $7.075 billion against $561 million of cash, and management has named getting leverage back toward 3 times as a priority.
Will Campbell's cut its dividend? We don't predict that. The dividend hasn't been cut, it was reaffirmed in May 2026, and free cash flow still covers it. What the numbers show is a stretched payout and stretched leverage set against healthy cash coverage, which is a situation to watch rather than a forecast.