General Mills Inc. (GIS, Financial), the U.S. international producer and marketer of branded consumer foods that are sold through retail stores, is going to release the financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 and for the entire year on June 28.
The company’s portfolio is composed of over 89 popular brands in North America. Some of them are: Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Annie's Homegrown, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs and many others.
For the fourth quarter of 2017, analysts forecast that General Mills will close the reporting period with an EPS of 71 cents. This EPS is a mean of 17 estimates of analysts who were surveyed on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings. Considering that the EPS was 66 cents at the end of the comparable quarter of 2016, analysts foresee a 7.6% upside in the quarterly bottom line.
Source: Yahoo Finance
For full fiscal 2017, analysts estimate an EPS of $3.05 per share, which represents a 4.45% increase year over year and ranges between a minimum of $2.97 and a maximum of $3.11 per share.
These estimates are produced by analysts on revenues that for the quarter in question are expected to come in at $3.76 billion, ranging between a low of $3.65 billion and a high of $3.79 billion.
Source: Yahoo Finance
For full-fiscal 2017, analysts expect General Mills will bill its customers for $15.57 billion. This is also an average figure, and it ranges between a low of $15.46 billion and a high of $15.72 billion.
Both figures on revenue for the fourth quarter and full-year 2017 are expected to decrease by 4.40% and 6% on a year-over-year basis.
General Mills is currently trading at $55.83, down 33 cents or 0.60% from the previous trading day with a market capitalization that, considering a total volume of 576.13 million shares outstanding, is $32.16 billion. About 99.7% of the total volume of shares outstanding is float.
An estimated 0.32% of the company’s total volume of shares outstanding is held by insiders while a portion of 71.70% is held by institutions. Among the top institutional holders of General Mills are Blackrock Inc. with 41,481,439 shares held, or 7.20%, valued $2,427,648,745 as of March 30, followed by Vanguard Group Inc. with 39,434,313 shares held or 6.84% valued $2,307,843,285 and State Street Corp. with 36,585,988 shares of General Mills held equal to 6.35% of the company’s total volume of shares outstanding and valued $2,141,148,668 as of March 30, 2016.
The stock is downtrending on the New York Stock Exchange and lost 9.57% year to date. General Mills has been outperformed by the Standard & Poor's 500 by more than 18% over the same span of time the stock market having gained the 8.50%. With a beta of 0.52, General Mills is less volatile than the market.
General Mills is currently trading only a few cents over its 52-week low of $55.57 while its 52-week high is $72.95. The company has a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 20.68, a price-book (P/B) ratio of 7.91 and a price-sales (P/S) ratio of 2.04.
The forward P/E ratio is 17.44 and the forecasted EPS for full-year 2018 is $3.2 on average. Both analysts’ estimates lead to a value of $55.81 per share which is in line with the current market valuation.
The average target price per share is $59.06. This is a mean of 18 analysts’ forecasts on the value that General Mills will have on the stock market over the next 12 months. The recommendation rating for General Mills is 3.2 out of 5. This is because 13 analysts out of a total of 20, or 65%, suggest holding shares of General Mills.
A look at General Mills’ balance sheet gives the following figures:
- $899.1 million in cash on hand and securities or $1.56 per share.
- A total current ratio of 0.72 versus an industry average of 1.82.
- A total debt (mrq) of $9.72 billion for a total debt/equity (mrq) of 239.28 versus an industry average of 45.13.
- An interest coverage ratio (ttm) of 8.85 versus an industry average of 5.79.
The company generated a cash flow of $1.56 billion over the last nine trailing months while funds invested as capex have been $457.20 million for a free cash flow of $1.1 billion. Of which 77.8% has been distributed by General Mills to its shareholders.
General Mills distributes an annual dividend of $1.92 through quarterly payments of 48 cents and according to a pay-out ratio of 70.37%, for a dividend yield of 3.43%.
Disclosure: I have no position in General Mills.
