Topic: How To Invest

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline Friday, October 2, 2020

Article Excerpt

CONAGRA BRANDS INC., $36.88, New York symbol CAG, is a buy. Through your shares, you tap the maker of some of North America’s most popular food brands. They include Chef Boyardee canned pasta, Hunt’s tomato sauce, Peter Pan peanut butter, Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Reddi-wip whipped cream. In October 2018, Conagra acquired foodmaker Pinnacle Foods Inc. (New York symbol PF) for $8.03 billion (64% cash, 36% stock). If you consider Pinnacle’s debt, the price rises to $10.9 billion. Pinnacle’s top brands include Duncan Hines (cake mixes), Vlasic (pickles) and Wish-Bone (salad dressings). Conagra continues to benefit from consumers stocking up on packaged foods as more and more people eat at home due to COVID-19. That offsets lower sales to restaurants. Overall sales in its fiscal 2021 first quarter, ended August 30, 2020, rose 12.1%, to $2.68 billion from $2.39 billion a year earlier. That beat the consensus forecast of $2.61 billion. If you exclude the businesses that Conagra recently sold and foreign exchange rates, sales…