5 Best Consumer Staples Stocks To Buy Now

4. PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 60

Moving on, PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) is another compelling consumer staple stock to buy in 2022. Not only does PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) boast profitable quarters, but the company is also a dividend king, having hiked dividends for over 50 consecutive years.

This February, PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) announced that its revenues for the fiscal fourth quarter of 2021 amounted to $25.25 billion, up 12.44% year over year, and outperformed the market by $1 billion. The company reported earnings per share of $1.53 and beat expert estimates by $0.01.

On February 10, PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) increased its annualized dividend of $4.30 per share by 7% to $4.60 per share. The dividend is expected to be paid in June 2022. At the same time, the company announced a new share repurchase program of up to $10 billion of the company’s common stock through February 28, 2026.

This April, Deutsche Bank analyst Steve Powers raised his price target on PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) to $173 from $171 and kept a Hold rating on the shares ahead of the company’s fiscal-first quarter 2022 results which are expected on April 26.

PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) has been an investor’s favorite for quite a long time now. By the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, 60 hedge funds held stakes in the company worth $4.64 billion. This is compared to 61 positions in the third quarter of 2021, with stakes worth $4.43 billion.

 As of December 31, 2021, Fundsmith LLP is the largest shareholder in PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) owning over 10.4 million shares of the stock. Fundsmith LLP’s stakes were valued at roughly $1.80 billion, which accounts for 4.41% of Terry Smith’s hedge fund portfolio.

Here is what ClearBridge Investments had to say about PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP) in its fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter:

“The pandemic created opportunities for us to be more aggressive in a variety of areas of the market. We were opportunistic throughout the year. After a strong year for equities, we sought to bolster more defensive areas of the portfolio and added to PepsiCo, increasing our exposure to a high-quality and stable name.”