1 hour ago
(This post was last modified: 59 minutes ago by Dividend Watcher.)
Here's my spreadsheet on General Mills (NYSE: GIS).
General Mills has been in business for over 150 years and could be a premier example of the Consumer Staples sector of the market. Some of their product lines are snacks, ready-to-eat cereal, convenience meals, natural pet foods, refrigerated and frozen dough, baking mixes and ingredients, yogurt, and ice cream.
If you've ever done some grocery shopping you've probably seen some of their brands:
I know what you're thinking -- "who in their right mind would consider an investment in General Mills?
The Consumers Staples sector has been buffeted over the last 6 years with Covid, tariffs, rising interest rates, the GLP-1 drugs, and inflation. HRL, PEP, CPB, CLX, among others have also felt the effects.
I have been holding GIS for over 16 years and, frankly, I haven't paid much attention to it until lately. Every quarter, the dividend shows up and I hadn't paid much attention. It either got re-invested or added to my cash to invest in other sectors. Now that I've completed my spreadsheet, I've noticed a troubling trend. In the late teens, the dividend was frozen for a year and then cut in 2019 and I didn't notice. Mea culpa! It's been increasing every year since so it's back to a five year streak.
Now that I've begun the retirement phase of life and need to keep the cash flowing, I've found it hard to replace its current 7% yield and my Yield On Cost (YOC) of a little over 5% without over concentration on some other high yielders I also own. Thankfully, the payout ratio has remained in the 50-60% range for years, cash flow has easily covered it and the debt load hasn't gotten too onerous yet.
Attached to this post is the spreadsheet with data from 2007 onward. I highly recommend downloading their latest annual reports and browse some of their press releases.
In the spreadsheet, I've added more graphs including one on the 'Price History' tab which I modeled off FASTgraphs. It's nowhere near as detailed as FASTGraphs, nor is it interactive, but should give you some hint as to it's valuation. As usual, it's a work in progress.
If there are any questions, find an error, or have problems opening it, please leave a post here. As mentioned in an earlier thread, the spreadsheet is in Open Document Format (LibreOffice) but Microsoft Office (Excel) should have no problems opening it. The attachment is a zip file as the board software forbids certain formats for security reasons.
Disclosure: GIS is in my IRA.
General Mills has been in business for over 150 years and could be a premier example of the Consumer Staples sector of the market. Some of their product lines are snacks, ready-to-eat cereal, convenience meals, natural pet foods, refrigerated and frozen dough, baking mixes and ingredients, yogurt, and ice cream.
If you've ever done some grocery shopping you've probably seen some of their brands:
- Cheerios
- Chex
- Blue Buffalo
- Betty Crocker
- Pillsbury
- Nature Valley
- Old El Paso
- Haagen-Daz
- Totino's
- Annie's
- Gold Medal
- Progresso
- Yoplait
- and many others
I know what you're thinking -- "who in their right mind would consider an investment in General Mills?
The Consumers Staples sector has been buffeted over the last 6 years with Covid, tariffs, rising interest rates, the GLP-1 drugs, and inflation. HRL, PEP, CPB, CLX, among others have also felt the effects.
I have been holding GIS for over 16 years and, frankly, I haven't paid much attention to it until lately. Every quarter, the dividend shows up and I hadn't paid much attention. It either got re-invested or added to my cash to invest in other sectors. Now that I've completed my spreadsheet, I've noticed a troubling trend. In the late teens, the dividend was frozen for a year and then cut in 2019 and I didn't notice. Mea culpa! It's been increasing every year since so it's back to a five year streak.
Now that I've begun the retirement phase of life and need to keep the cash flowing, I've found it hard to replace its current 7% yield and my Yield On Cost (YOC) of a little over 5% without over concentration on some other high yielders I also own. Thankfully, the payout ratio has remained in the 50-60% range for years, cash flow has easily covered it and the debt load hasn't gotten too onerous yet.
Attached to this post is the spreadsheet with data from 2007 onward. I highly recommend downloading their latest annual reports and browse some of their press releases.
In the spreadsheet, I've added more graphs including one on the 'Price History' tab which I modeled off FASTgraphs. It's nowhere near as detailed as FASTGraphs, nor is it interactive, but should give you some hint as to it's valuation. As usual, it's a work in progress.
If there are any questions, find an error, or have problems opening it, please leave a post here. As mentioned in an earlier thread, the spreadsheet is in Open Document Format (LibreOffice) but Microsoft Office (Excel) should have no problems opening it. The attachment is a zip file as the board software forbids certain formats for security reasons.
Disclosure: GIS is in my IRA.