HRLHormel Foods
Is the business good?
The checks split: earnings fully cash-backed (2.9×), but margins compressing.
Mixed fundamental signals. Nine pass/fail tests of year-over-year health from the filings.
Operating profit is fully backed by cash. Conversion is improving vs a year ago.
Operating margin has narrowed over the past few years, profitability per dollar of sales is eroding.
A balanced mix of margins, efficiency, and leverage. ROE 6% = margin × turnover × leverage.
Unless marked, from derived.
Against the whole market›
Percentile against every name Ryufin tracks. Higher is better; the tick marks the middle of the market. Context, not one of the checks above.
Where this answer is blind. The F-score rewards improvement, so an already-elite company can score mid-pack.
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.
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 7.6% · 12 months to Q3 2026
- Cash conversion
- 2.90×
Cash conversion · 1.18× a year ago · operating cash flow covers the operating profit after tax
- 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 is operating cash flow over operating profit after tax.
Packaged Foods
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