Mad Money

Mondelez CEO shares what makes her confident about her snack giant's comeback

Key Points
  • Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer that a new, healthier snack offering makes her confident in her company's prospects.
  • The CEO said that renovating Mondelez's core portfolio sets the stock up for a breakout.
  • Rosenfeld also touched on Donald Trump, industry consolidation, and a new initiative aimed at helping cocoa farmers.
Mondelez CEO: Why she's confident about snack giant's comeback
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Mondelez CEO: Why she's confident about snack giant's comeback

As snacking patterns change around the globe and more people embrace healthy living, Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld sees a promising path for her massive snack distributor.

"We have the most robust health and well-being pipeline in our U.S. franchise that we've ever had," Rosenfeld told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Thursday. "We're doing lots of work in terms of renovating our core portfolio."

Among the new items are belVita protein, a new savory biscuit product called Vea, and GOOD THiNS, which the CEO said will bring in over $100 million this year.

Mondelez's better known brands include snacks such as Nabisco Oreos, Cadbury Eggs, Chips Ahoy, Trident Gum, and Sour Patch Kids.

Watch the full segment here:

Mondelez CEO shares what makes her confident about her snack giant's comeback
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Mondelez CEO shares what makes her confident about her snack giant's comeback

But much of what pushes the company ahead is exposure, whether it is in emerging markets — which take up 40 percent of Mondelez's revenue stream — or at home in the United States.

"There's a lot of leverage in these brands, and we are taking every action we can to shift our spending from traditional media into digital," Rosenfeld said. "It's going to be about 30 percent of our spending by next year, and [for] markets like here in the U.S., it's about 50 percent."

With 14 million fans on Facebook, a place in the top 5 food brands and a loyal following, Mondelez seems to playing the digital game right.

And health food is still not the be-all, end-all when it comes to Mondelez, Rosenfeld told Cramer. A $1.2 trillion category globally, the snacks space draws people of every demographic, making it all the more promising in this CEO's eyes.

"It's growing everywhere. If you look at the demographics of the consumers around the world, you have more women in the workforce, you have people commuting longer distances to work, so they're not eating traditional meals. They're eating snacks. And so we like the margins," Rosenfeld said. "We feel really terrific about our portfolio and we think it is poised to break out."

The CEO also touched on Mondelez's $400 million "Cocoa Life" initiative, which the world's largest chocolate manufacturer started to help improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers.

"Many of these are family-owned businesses. Many of them are small, leasehold farms owned by women, and the opportunity to help these farmers earn a more attractive livelihood, to learn how to use modern, state-of-the-art farming methods, all of them is good for them and it's good for us," Rosenfeld said.

And despite a tiff involving then-candidate Donald Trump over the Oreos manufacturer moving some operations to Mexico, Rosenfeld was steadfast about Mondelez remaining a primarily U.S.-based company.

"The fact of the matter is the United States is a major manufacturing and business hub for us. We've got 17,000 employees here in the U.S. We absolutely continue to manufacture all of our products here in the U.S. We just happen to have located four lines in Mexico. But we've invested over $500 million in our manufacturing facilities here in the U.S.," the CEO told Cramer.

Finally, even in light of the Amazon-Whole Foods tie-up, Rosenfeld said she and her colleagues were not worried about Amazon uprooting the world of food retail and causing widespread consolidation among Mondelez and its peers.

"Every time there's an announcement of any transaction, everybody says, 'Oh, that's the beginning of a big wave of consolidation.' I think each company has to think about that for themselves," Rosenfeld said. "We have a fabulous portfolio, we have a fabulous geographic footprint, 40 percent of our sales are in the emerging markets, they are coming back, they will come back even more, and we feel terrific about the supply chain investments we've made."

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