General Mills (GIS) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know

In the latest trading session, General Mills (GIS) closed at $68.35, marking a +0.81% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.54% loss on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.02%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.12%.

Heading into today, shares of the maker of Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and other packaged foods had gained 1.16% over the past month, outpacing the Consumer Staples sector's loss of 1.36% and the S&P 500's loss of 7.87% in that time.

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 $0.83 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 1.22%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $4.6 billion, up 1.66% from the prior-year quarter.

GIS's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $3.78 per share and revenue of $18.78 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of -0.26% and +3.58%, respectively.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for General Mills. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. General Mills currently has a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).

Digging into valuation, General Mills currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 17.96. This valuation marks a discount compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 18.13.

It is also worth noting that GIS currently has a PEG ratio of 2.39. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. Food - Miscellaneous stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 3.05 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Food - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 205, which puts it in the bottom 20% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. 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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