Last Updated: October 7, 2025
Analyzing Management
Leadership within public companies serves as a crucial variable for hedge funds and asset managers during both initial due diligence and continuous risk assessment. ManagementTrack offers a consistent methodology that filters out distractions—highlighting specific strengths and weaknesses, identifying warning signs and positive indicators, and establishing a clear connection between CEO actions and investment performance.
CEO Tanner’s ops skill may be misaligned with external relations challenges.
Analysis of Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner
While Tanner’s proven operational skill is well-suited for managing input costs, a critical gap in government relations and prior communication missteps may leave him poorly aligned with the company’s external challenges.
ManagementTrack’s analysis focuses on Kirk Tanner’s track record and skillset against the following key factors for HSY:
- Ensuring strategic continuity during CEO transition.
- Securing tariff exemption to avoid a $170M P&L hit.
- Mitigating cocoa inflation to protect gross margins.
- Executing price hikes while managing consumer elasticity risk.
Report Available: Proprietary Interviews & Analysis on Kirk Tanner Answers Key Questions
ManagementTrack reports provide track record analysis, career playbooks, strengths, and weaknesses for every CEO. They allow investors to dig deeper to uncover hard-to-find data to answer the most pressing questions.
Reach out to sales@paragonintel.com or visit https://paragonintel.com/access-now/ for more information.
Question Answered #1
How will Tanner overcome his tendency to rely on a narrow circle of lieutenants to successfully integrate as an external hire, a challenge where he previously failed at Wendy’s?
Question Answered #2
How will Tanner balance his operational strength in mitigating input costs against his underdeveloped strategic vision to set Hershey’s long-term direction?
Question Answered #3
How will Tanner’s approach to executing necessary price hikes avoid the disastrous public communication failures that undermined a similar initiative in his past?
Why Do Investors Use ManagementTrack?
What is ManagementTrack’s assessment of Kirk Tanner at HSY?
ManagementTrack establishes an executive’s track record, strengths, and weaknesses through its proprietary career analysis and interviews with former colleagues. This profile is then evaluated against HSY’s most pressing challenges: ensuring strategic continuity during the CEO transition, securing a critical tariff exemption, mitigating severe cocoa inflation, and executing price increases while managing consumer elasticity.
What other proprietary tools does ManagementTrack use to link executive actions to company performance?
ManagementTrack utilizes proprietary models to flag unusual instances of executive evasion in earnings call Q&A. Its platform also analyzes all insider transactions to identify predictive outliers that signal future stock performance. These inputs, together with the ManagementTrack Rating—a predictive 1-10 score assigned to every executive—give investors a clear, forward-looking view on how management capabilities will impact company results.
What is the scope of ManagementTrack’s coverage?
ManagementTrack maintains real-time coverage on the complete c-suite for every publicly listed company.
How to Learn More
Reach out to sales@paragonintel.com or visit https://paragonintel.com/access-now/ to see our deep dive analysis on any executive.
Author
Colby Howard is the co-founder and President of Paragon Intel. Paragon Intel’s ManagementTrack is the premier executive analysis platform for hedge funds, asset managers, corporations, boards, and recruiters. Our proprietary data, built over a decade of analysis, allows us to analyze each public company executive to understand their fit and ability to execute at their company. We leverage our proprietary data – key quantitative research on an executive’s career plus interviews with their former colleagues – with public documents, including SEC filings (10-K, 10-Q), investor presentations, press releases, and earnings call transcripts. to build a holistic, evidence-based view of an executive’s capabilities and playbook.
Sources
- Verified Career History by ManagementTrack for Kirk Tanner
- Analysis of Capital Allocation, Performance, and Fundamentals across career by ManagementTrack
- The Hershey Co. 10Q
- The Hershey Co. 10K
- The Hershey Co. Earnings Calls
- The Hershey Co. Press Releases
Relevant Links
- For more information on ManagementTrack’s Data visit: https://paragonintel.com/management-track-data/
- For more information on ManagementTrack’s Interview & Analysis visit: https://paragonintel.com/management-track-reports/
- For more information on ManagementTrack’s Interview library visit: https://paragonintel.com/management-track-report-library/
- For more information on ManagementTrack’s Evasion Analysis visit: https://paragonintel.com/earnings-call-evasion/
- For more information on how ManagementTrack helps hedge funds and asset managers visit: https://paragonintel.com/
