Top analyst: Buy Hershey on US candy growth

Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

With Hershey Co. shares treading water the past two years and down 11 percent year to date, the candymaker is now undervalued and it is time to buy, according to a top-ranked analyst of the packaged-goods food sector.

Ken Goldman of J.P. Morgan upgraded Hershey to "overweight" from "neutral" Wednesday morning in a note sent to clients.

Goldman is one of the top analysts on Wall Street. His picks average a 16.5 percent one-year return with a 75 percent success rate and he is ranked in the top 2 percent of all analysts, according to TipRanks.com.

Here's why he likes Hershey now…