CONAGRA FOODS INC. $37 (New York symbol CAG; Income Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 431.0 million; Market cap: $15.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; Dividend yield: 2.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.conagrafoods.com) bought Ralcorp Holdings, the largest private-label food maker in the U.S., for $4.75 billion in January 2013.
The company has had trouble integrating this business. Ralcorp also faces strong price competition that has hurt its sales and earnings. In response, ConAgra has adjusted the prices of its private-label products. That should help improve Ralcorp’s market share. Efforts to streamline Ralcorp should also help it adjust to rising ingredient costs and improve its profitability by 2016.
ConAgra is a buy.