General Mills (NYSE: NYSE:GIS) is a $33 billion company today. Investors that bought shares one year ago are sitting on a -13.64% total return. That's below the S&P 500's return of 17.81%.
General Mills stock is underperforming the market. It's beaten down, but it reports earnings next week. So is it a good time to buy? To answer this question, we've turned to the Investment U Stock Grader. Our Research Team built this system to diagnose the financial health of a company.
Our system looks at six key metrics...
Earnings-per-Share (EPS) Growth: General Mills reported a recent EPS growth rate of 1.64%. That's below the food products industry average of 11.4%. That's not a good sign. We like to see companies that have higher earnings growth.
✓ Price-to-Earnings (P/E): The average price-to-earnings ratio of the food products industry is 24.94. And General Mills’ ratio comes in at 18.63. It's trading at a better value than many of its competitors.
✗ Debt-to-Equity : The debt-to-equity ratio for General Mills stock is 184.4%. That's above the food products industry average of 71.94%. That's not a good sign. General Mills’ debt levels should be lower.
✗ Free Cash Flow per Share Growth : General Mills’ FCF has been lower than that of its competitors over the last year. That's not good for investors. In general, if a company is growing its FCF, it will be able to pay down debt, buy back stock, pay out more in dividends and/or invest money back into the business to help boost growth. It's one of our most important fundamental factors.
✓ Profit Margins : The profit margin of General Mills comes in at 9.43% today. And generally, the higher, the better. We also like to see this margin above that of its competitors. General Mills’ profit margin is above the food products average of 7.56%. So that's a positive indicator for investors.
✓ Return on Equity : Return on equity tells us how much profit a company produces with the money shareholders invest. The ROE for General Mills is 30.58%, and that's above its industry average ROE of 17.52%.
General Mills stock passes three of our six key metrics today. That's why our Investment U Stock Grader rates it as a Hold.