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

General Mills (GIS) closed at $72.91 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.75% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 2.02%. At the same time, the Dow added 1.34%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.27%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the maker of Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and other packaged foods had gained 3.7% over the past month. This has outpaced the Consumer Staples sector's loss of 1.03% and the S&P 500's loss of 8.64% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from General Mills as it approaches its next earnings release. On that day, General Mills is projected to report earnings of $1.01 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 10.99%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $4.79 billion, up 5.87% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $3.83 per share and revenue of $18.89 billion. These totals would mark changes of +1.06% and +4.21%, respectively, from last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for General Mills should also be noted by investors. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. General Mills is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that General Mills has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.17 right now. This valuation marks a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 18.7.

It is also worth noting that GIS currently has a PEG ratio of 2.56. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Food - Miscellaneous industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 2.56 as of yesterday's close.

The Food - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 215, putting it in the bottom 15% 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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