The Best Women-Led Companies to Own: 2025 Edition

CEO Abby Johnson transformed Fidelity Investments from a firm reliant on active management of traditional mutual funds to one that now offers financial advice, brokerage services, and index funds. General Motors GM CEO Mary Barra, the first woman CEO of a Big Three automaker, is pushing innovation in electric vehicles. CEO Sallie Krawcheck, who launched Ellevest as a digital financial advisor for women, is an outspoken—and often quoted—proponent of closing the gender pay gap.

Don’t let these successful headline makers fool you, though: Women still hold a disproportionately small number of CEO roles among US companies. How small? Only 9% of the companies on Morningstar’s list of the Best Companies to Own are led by female CEOs.

Of course, buying a stock simply because the company’s CEO is a woman doesn’t make any more investment sense than buying a stock simply because the company’s CEO is a man. Instead, you want to examine fundamentals, consider valuation, and apply whatever other investment metrics matter to you before buying. Moreover, CEOs come and go. That woman-led company may be managed by a man—and vice versa—soon enough.

Inspired by International Women’s Day, we’re highlighting the companies with female CEOs that made our list of the best companies to own in 2025. These companies earned their spot on the list by having carved out wide Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings and having made smart decisions with their capital.

Here’s a closer look at three of the names from this list of high-quality companies with women CEOs.

Clorox CLX

Clorox CEO Linda Rendle assumed her position in 2020 after 20 years with the company and holding various leadership roles. In her words, Rendle takes a human-centric approach to leadership because she believes that realizing the full potential of her teammates is the best way to achieve results.

With its entrenched retail standing and its unwavering focus on investing behind its leading brand mix, Clorox has withstood the onslaught from covid, supply chain pressures, rampant inflation, and an August 2023 cybersecurity attack. More recently, it has acknowledged a step-up in promotional spending (particularly within the litter, bags, and wrap aisles), but we don’t surmise this suggests an irrational competitive landscape or that the firm is pursuing a volume over value strategy. Rather, we posit that Clorox remains resolute in investing to support the long-term health of the business to ensure its stout competitive edge holds.

As e-commerce adoption has taken hold since the onset of the pandemic, Clorox has earmarked more than $500 million to bolster its digital capabilities and to look for additional productivity advancements within the organization, which we view as a prudent way to boost investments. And we’re encouraged that Clorox’s strategic playbook remains tethered to bringing consumer-valued innovation to market and touting its fare in front of consumers, which we view as particularly critical against the current backdrop of weakening consumer spending and intense competition. We recognize Clorox goes to bat against lower-priced private-label fare in most of the categories in which it plays, but we think investments in innovation and marketing should help its products win at the shelf and stifle trade down. This underpins our forecast for Clorox to direct nearly 13% of sales annually, just north of $1 billion, toward research, development, and marketing.

Even with these investments, we believe Clorox is on the path back to the 44% gross margin levels that have historically characterized the business (up from the low-30% trough in the second quarter of fiscal 2022 when cost inflation took a toll) by the end of fiscal 2025. In this context, we expect Clorox will continue employing multiple tactics, including keeping a stringent eye on its cost structure while surgically raising prices to the extent that the inflationary backdrop warrants (particularly around agricultural products, diesel, and labor) as it builds back profits.

Diageo DEO

Debra Crew assumed her role as Diageo’s CEO in 2023 after holding multiple leadership positions at the firm. Women make up nearly 40% of Diageo’s C-suite, and Crew was on Forbes' latest list of the world’s most powerful women.

Diageo was formed in 1997 following the merger of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness. Mergers and acquisitions remain part of the firm’s fabric, and subsequent transactions have established Diageo as a global industry leader. The largest spirits players have expanded and scaled their portfolios over decades, holding as many as 250 brands, and we believe there is more consolidation to come. Outside the top five firms, the industry is highly fragmented, and regional players often dominate in niche product categories or local markets. These firms present acquisition opportunities for the industry consolidators, including Diageo, to expand their footprint.

The key motivation for Diageo’s acquisition strategy is to broaden the product portfolio, which is critical in the on-trade channel (bars, restaurants, pubs). Volume in the spirits industry is more cyclical than beer, and with transient trends. For instance, Diageo has benefited from the rise in popularity of tequila in recent years. Its broad presence across categories with both global strategic and local niche brands mitigates the risk to volume from shifting consumer preferences.

Diageo is also focusing on premiumization, which we think will be a long-term tailwind to revenue and margins. We see the long-term secular trend of consumers “drinking less but better” gradually leading to pricing growing ahead of volume in select categories. The way Diageo has laddered the pricing structure of brands such as Johnnie Walker demonstrates that there is vast scope for premiumizing some of the core brands in the portfolio.

By 2030, Diageo expects to increase its global share of the total beverage alcohol market to 6% (from 4% currently), which implies 30 billion extra servings being sold. This will require Diageo to continue acquiring smaller players. Given industry cyclicality, the acquisition strategy is unlikely to lead to materially improved returns.

Zoetis ZTS

Kristin Peck, who became CEO of Zoetis in 2020, helped the company make its initial public offering in 2013. She serves on the board of directors of Catalyst, a nonprofit that helps companies create environments that support women, particularly women in leadership.

Zoetis is the undisputed leader in the global animal health industry, and we believe it possesses the widest moat of all the competitors. Zoetis has set itself apart based on its impressive innovation that shows up across its product portfolio, including a number of drugs for specific pet ailments, such as separation anxiety. The firm has also sought to expand its presence into virtually every type of animal-related health market, including aquaculture and pet diagnostics.

The animal health industry had long been largely ignored because these businesses were buried within larger human health companies, but no longer. It has many attractive characteristics, including cash-pay buyers, a fragmented customer base, and opportunities to introduce novel therapies. Because of the fragmented and cash-pay customer base, animal drugmakers hold significant pricing power. On the human health side, firms are traditionally at the mercy of payers. Government payers or large managed-care firms with pharmacy benefit managers have more power to force generic utilization, squash price increases, and even in extreme cases extract sizable rebates from drug manufacturers. However, animal health products are purchased by a fragmented group of protein producers, veterinarians, and pet owners, allowing very little bargaining power over the highly concentrated animal health firms.

This industry also benefits from favorable growth tailwinds that should allow Zoetis to increase companion animal revenue at a low-double-digit long-term growth rate. Zoetis has benefited from pet owners’ increasingly strong relationships with pets as members of the family, which drastically increases their willingness to pay for expensive treatments. We expect Zoetis to grow faster than the industry and maintain above-average margins because of its pricing power, as the companion animal segment rises to account for more than 70% of total revenue by 2028. Zoetis' investments in dermatology, parasiticide, and monoclonal antibody innovation have been paying off handsomely here.

This article is based on the 2025 edition of Morningstar’s Best Companies to Own. Read about our selection methodology here.