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General Mills (GIS) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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General Mills (GIS - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $77.44, moving +1.04% from the previous trading session. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.19%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.71%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.23%.

Coming into today, shares of the maker of Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and other packaged foods had gained 3.64% in the past month. In that same time, the Consumer Staples sector gained 5.71%, while the S&P 500 gained 11.37%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from General Mills as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect General Mills to post earnings of $0.98 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 1.01%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $4.62 billion, up 1.69% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $4 per share and revenue of $19.37 billion. These totals would mark changes of +1.52% and +1.99%, respectively, from last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for General Mills should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. General Mills is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that General Mills has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.14 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 18.42, so we one might conclude that General Mills is trading at a premium comparatively.

We can also see that GIS currently has a PEG ratio of 2.55. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. GIS's industry had an average PEG ratio of 2.88 as of yesterday's close.

The Food - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 140, which puts it in the bottom 45% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.


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