Hershey (HSY) Stock Forecast & Price Target

Hershey is positioned to benefit from its dominant scale in a $55 billion US confectionery market, where it controls more than 35% of the domestic chocolate aisle and supports a portfolio of 100 brands across core labels like Reese’s, Kit Kat, Kisses, and Ice Breakers. Its outlook is reinforced by management’s ability to defend category share while using data and analytics to drive innovation, pricing power, and “dial-moving” product velocity, with expansion of capacity supporting margin improvement and incremental share gains. Financially, the upside case embeds roughly 4% revenue CAGR, ~28% peak margins, a 6.8% WACC, and expects +2-4% organic sales growth alongside +18-20% average annual EPS growth in 2026-28.

Hershey is facing a fundamental deterioration in its core chocolate franchise, with 2Q’26 candy-aisle losses of about 115 bps in dollar share and 190 bps in volume share as Mars gained share through wider price gaps, stronger innovation, and large-format value packs. The company’s mainstream brands appear poorly positioned for the current market split, as premium and “better-for-you” alternatives, plus private label, are increasingly taking lapsed Hershey shoppers while recent launches have shown weak repeat rates aside from Reese’s Oreo, which also creates a difficult comparison starting in 3Q’26. Rising cocoa futures near $5.6k/ton, limited pricing flexibility, and the need for more reinvestment to defend share all threaten margin and volume recovery, making a near-term positive inflection hard to see.