Smucker wrote its Hostess goodwill down to zero within two years of the $5.6B deal

In late 2023, J.M. Smucker, best known for its jams and coffee, completed its roughly $5.6 billion acquisition of Hostess Brands, adding Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other sweet baked snacks to its portfolio. The deal was meant to give Smucker a bigger, faster-growing presence in snacking.

The sweet-baked-snacks category did not perform as the deal assumed. Competition, shifts in consumer spending and integration costs weighed on the business, and the premium Smucker had paid for Hostess goodwill began to look unsupported by the earnings the unit could generate.

For its fiscal 2025, Smucker recorded a goodwill impairment of roughly $1 billion on the Hostess-derived Sweet Baked Snacks reporting unit. The write-down continued into fiscal 2026, when the company took about $962 million in combined goodwill and intangible-asset impairments on the same unit, reducing the goodwill carried on its books to zero.

Across the two fiscal years, the total impairment on the Hostess purchase reached roughly $2 billion. The company kept its coffee business strong through the same period, but the snack acquisition had consumed the value it was bought to create, and management had to walk back the strategic promises made at the time of the deal.