Coronavirus outbreak may have unleashed panic buying of Hostess Twinkies and Ding Dongs – Yahoo Finance

Alongside those coronavirus prep bags being filled by shoppers with bleach and hand sanitizer may be boxes of long shelf life Twinkies and Ding Dongs.

We are seeing that, Hostess Brands CEO Andy Callahan said on Yahoo Finances On the Move, when asked if he is seeing a bump in business as people stock up, should they be trapped at home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Added Callahan, We are benefiting likely in the short-term due to traffic. Thats the great thing about Hostess, we are there to celebrate things. We are there to comfort things. So we are seeing a slight uptick in traffic. Its too early to tell, a lot of our point of sale data lags.

Even without the bump in business, Hostess has been doing just fine.

Fourth quarter sales rose 6.7% from the prior year to $216.7 million on the back of momentum for breakfast items such as Donettes. Adjusted operating profits increased 6.3% year-over-year to $52.4 million.

Hostess Twinkie snack cakes and Donettes are on display at a store.. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Hostess shares are up 8% over the past year, outperforming the Dows slight gain and the S&Ps 500 7.5% gain. Since joining Hostess as CEO in 2018, Callahan has looked to streamline the business, ramp up product innovation. He also pulled the trigger on the $320 million acquisition of cookie maker Voortman.

Hostess has been increasingly improving its base for improved go-forward revenue growth first, with Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo out of bankruptcy; and now, with Andy Callahan as CEO. Were simply in late stage two of an operational turnaround, which we like, wrote Jefferies analyst Rob Dickerson in a note to clients.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and co-anchor of The First Trade at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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Coronavirus outbreak may have unleashed panic buying of Hostess Twinkies and Ding Dongs - Yahoo Finance