Trade-Ideas LLC identified

Hormel Foods

(

HRL

) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Hormel Foods as such a stock due to the following factors:

  • HRL has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $63.4 million.
  • HRL has traded 44,138 shares today.
  • HRL is trading at a new lifetime high.

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More details on HRL:

Hormel Foods Corporation produces and markets various meat and food products worldwide. The company operates in five segments: Grocery Products, Refrigerated Foods, Jennie-O Turkey Store, Specialty Foods, and International & Other. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 1.5%. HRL has a PE ratio of 27. Currently there are 2 analysts that rate Hormel Foods a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 2 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Hormel Foods has been 1.0 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Hormel has a market cap of $17.9 billion and is part of the consumer goods sector and food & beverage industry. The stock has a beta of 0.96 and a short float of 6.2% with 9.05 days to cover. Shares are up 31.4% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.

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TheStreetRatings.com

Analysis:

TheStreet Quant Ratings

rates Hormel Foods as a

buy

. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, growth in earnings per share, good cash flow from operations, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and notable return on equity. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows low profit margins.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

  • The stock has not only risen over the past year, it has done so at a faster pace than the S&P 500, reflecting the earnings growth and other positive factors similar to those we have cited here. Turning our attention to the future direction of the stock, it goes without saying that even the best stocks can fall in an overall down market. However, in any other environment, this stock still has good upside potential despite the fact that it has already risen in the past year.
  • HORMEL FOODS CORP has improved earnings per share by 5.9% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, HORMEL FOODS CORP increased its bottom line by earning $2.23 versus $1.94 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($2.61 versus $2.23).
  • Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 104.89% to $244.51 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, HORMEL FOODS CORP has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -23.54%.
  • HRL's debt-to-equity ratio is very low at 0.15 and is currently below that of the industry average, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels. Although the company had a strong debt-to-equity ratio, its quick ratio of 0.73 is somewhat weak and could be cause for future problems.
  • The return on equity has improved slightly when compared to the same quarter one year prior. This can be construed as a modest strength in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Food Products industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, HORMEL FOODS CORP has underperformed in comparison with the industry average, but has exceeded that of the S&P 500.

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