Pilgrim's Pride Eyes Expansion In Europe On Moy Park Buyout

Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC) recently acquired Europe-based poultry producer — Moy Park — for $1.3 billion, in a bid to become the leading global prepared foods and poultry company over the long run.

Pilgrim's Pride stock remained nearly flat at $28.99 per share on Sep 12, after news of the acquisition surfaced.

In a month’s time, shares of this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company yielded a return of 5.9%, as against 1.8% loss incurred by the industry.

Notably, the attractiveness of this stock as a current investment choice is further accentuated by its favorable VGM Score B.

Pilgrim's Pride is poised to grow on the back of elevated sales of organic and antibiotic-free chicken products, strategic acquisitions and contract launch of innovative product categories.

Moy Park Buyout Details

Moy Park was a subsidiary of the Brazilian meat processing company — JBS S.A. — before it was acquired by Pilgrim's Pride. The company is a prominent prepared foods and poultry supplier in the U.K. and Continental Europe. The company owns around 13 processing plants across the Netherlands, Ireland, France and the U.K.

The Moy Park acquisition will not only broaden Pilgrim's Pride’s operations across new end markets in the U.K. and Mainland Europe, but will also open up a number of business opportunities in the prepared foods and poultry production platform.

Furthermore, Pilgrim's Pride anticipates the Moy Park buyout to bolster its annual revenues by nearly $2 billion. It also believes the deal will generate roughly $50-million yearly synergies over the next two years. Notably, these positives are likely to boost the company’s earnings per share in the quarters ahead.

Though Moy Park is operating as a business unit of Pilgrim's Pride post acquisition, it will retain its headquarters in Craigavon.

Other Key Picks

Other similarly-ranked stocks in the same industry are listed below:

Craft Brew Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:BREW) has an oustanding average positive earnings surprise of 222.74% for the last four quarters. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Sanderson Farms, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAFM) generated an average positive earnings surprise of 14.02% over the trailing four quarters.

The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) pulled off an average positive earnings surprise of 13.69% during the same time frame.

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