General Mills - GIS Stock Forecast, Price & News

General Mills, Inc. manufactures and markets branded consumer foods worldwide. The company operates in five segments: North America Retail; Convenience Stores & Foodservice; Europe & Australia; Asia & Latin America; and Pet. It offers ready-to-eat cereals, refrigerated yogurt, soup, meal kits, refrigerated and frozen dough products, dessert and baking mixes, bakery flour, frozen pizza and pizza snacks, snack bars, fruit and salty snacks, ice cream, nutrition bars, wellness beverages, and savory and grain snacks, as well as various organic products, including frozen and shelf-stable vegetables. It also supplies branded and unbranded food products to the North American foodservice and commercial baking industries; and manufactures and markets pet food products, including dog and cat food. The company markets its products under the Annie's, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Blue Buffalo, Blue Basics, Blue Freedom, Bugles, Cascadian Farm, Cheerios, Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, EPIC, Fiber One, Food Should Taste Good, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, Gardetto's, Go-Gurt, Gold Medal, Golden Grahams, Häagen-Dazs, Helpers, Jus-Rol, Kitano, Kix, Lärabar, Latina, Liberté, Lucky Charms, Muir Glen, Nature Valley, Oatmeal Crisp, Old El Paso, Oui, Pillsbury, Progresso, Raisin Nut Bran, Total, Totino's, Trix, Wanchai Ferry, Wheaties, Wilderness, Yoki, and Yoplait trademarks. It sells its products directly, as well as through broker and distribution arrangements to grocery stores, mass merchandisers, membership stores, natural food chains, e-commerce retailers, commercial and noncommercial foodservice distributors and operators, restaurants, convenience stores, and pet specialty stores, as well as drug, dollar, and discount chains. The company operates 466 leased and 392 franchise ice cream parlors. General Mills, Inc. was founded in 1866 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms have weighed in on GIS. Citigroup upped their price objective on shares of General Mills from $82.00 to $88.00 and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a report on Thursday, June 30th. BMO Capital Markets upped their target price on shares of General Mills from $66.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a "market perform" rating in a research note on Thursday, June 30th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft upped their target price on shares of General Mills from $75.00 to $81.00 and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a research note on Thursday, June 30th. Morgan Stanley upped their target price on shares of General Mills from $56.00 to $66.00 and gave the stock an "underweight" rating in a research note on Friday, July 1st. Finally, Credit Suisse Group set a $74.00 target price on shares of General Mills in a research note on Tuesday, July 19th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $72.73.

General Mills Price Performance

GIS opened at $76.36 on Tuesday. The firm has a market cap of $45.60 billion, a P/E ratio of 17.28, a PEG ratio of 2.54 and a beta of 0.35. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $72.24 and a 200 day moving average of $69.75. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.85, a quick ratio of 0.40 and a current ratio of 0.63. General Mills has a fifty-two week low of $56.67 and a fifty-two week high of $76.94.

General Mills (NYSE:GIS - Get Rating) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, June 29th. The company reported $1.12 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.01 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $4.89 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.81 billion. General Mills had a net margin of 14.25% and a return on equity of 23.74%. The firm's revenue for the quarter was up 8.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $0.91 earnings per share. On average, research analysts expect that General Mills will post 4 EPS for the current year.

General Mills Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 7th. Shareholders of record on Friday, July 8th were given a dividend of $0.54 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, July 7th. General Mills's dividend payout ratio is presently 48.87%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other General Mills news, CAO Mark A. Pallot sold 2,255 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, June 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $74.66, for a total transaction of $168,358.30. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 17,087 shares in the company, valued at $1,275,715.42. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. In other General Mills news, insider Dana M. Mcnabb sold 10,993 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $76.16, for a total transaction of $837,226.88. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 14,884 shares in the company, valued at $1,133,565.44. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CAO Mark A. Pallot sold 2,255 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, June 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $74.66, for a total transaction of $168,358.30. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 17,087 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $1,275,715.42. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 58,422 shares of company stock worth $4,397,556 over the last quarter. 0.53% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.