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Is the business good?
How good a business is HRL?
Hormel Foods earns 4.6% on the capital it employs against a 9.0% cost of capital, so growth costs more than it returns.
4.6%
Return on invested capital · cost of capital 9.0% · 4.4 points below what the capital costs: growth destroys value
- Operating margin
- 4.7%
Operating margin · Packaged Foods median 8.4% · 12 months to Q3 2026
- Cash conversion
- 2.28×
Cash conversion · 0.83× a year ago · every dollar of reported profit arrived as cash, and more
- Share count, year on year
- +0.06%
Share count, year on year · flat: no meaningful dilution
| Year | Operating margin |
|---|---|
| FY2020 | 11% |
| FY2021 | 9.9% |
| FY2022 | 11% |
| FY2023 | 8.8% |
| FY2024 | 9.0% |
| FY2025 | 5.9% |
Details›
- Gross margin12 months to Q3 2026
- 16%
- Operating margin12 months to Q3 2026
- 4.7%
- Net margin12 months to Q3 2026
- 2.8%
- Free cash flow margin
- 6.4%
- Revenue, trailing twelve months
- $12.1B
- Free cash flow, trailing twelve months
- $781M
- Net income, trailing twelve months
- $343M
- Return on invested capitaloperating profit after tax ÷ debt + equity − cash
- 4.6%
Margins, capital and share counts from the statements as filed with the SEC; cash conversion from the cash flow statement.
Packaged Foods
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