Attention Investors: What Is Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL) Really Doing?

Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE:HRL) price is hovering higher on Tuesday, November 21, jumping 0.95% above its previous close.

A look at today’s price movement shows that the recent level at last check reads $32.19, with intraday deals fluctuating between $32.155 and $32.48. The company’s 5Y monthly beta was ticking 0.27 while its P/E ratio in the trailing 12-month period read 20.35. Taking into account the 52-week price action we note that the stock hit a 52-week high of $49.73 and 52-week low of $30.70. The stock added 4.96% on its value in the past month.

Hormel Foods Corp., which has a market valuation of $17.76 billion, is expected to release its quarterly earnings report Nov 29, 2023. The company stock has a Forward Dividend ratio of 1.09, while the dividend yield is 3.35%. It is understandable that investor optimism is growing ahead of the company’s current quarter results.

Revisions to the company’s EPS highlights a short term direction of a stock’s price movement, which in the last 7 days came up with no upward and no downward reviews. On the technical perspective front, indicators give HRL a short term outlook of 50% Sell on average. Looking at the stock’s medium term indicators we note that it is averaging as a 100% Sell, while an average of long term indicators are currently assigning the stock as 100% Sell.

Here is a look at the average analyst rating for the stock as represented on a scale of 1.00 to 5.00, with the extremes of 1.00 and 5.00 suggesting the stock is strong buy or strong sell respectively. Specifically, 12 analysts have assigned HRL a recommendation rating as follows: 8 rate it as a Hold; 0 advise Buy while 0 analyst(s) assign an Overweight rating. 2 analyst(s) have tagged the Hormel Foods Corp. (HRL) stock as Underweight, with 2 recommending Sell. In general, analysts have rated the stock Underweight, a scenario likely to bolster investors out for an opportunity to add to their holdings of the company’s shares.

The overview shows that HRL’s price is at present 0.34% off the SMA20 and -6.46% from the SMA50. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) metric on the 14-day timeframe is pointing at 43.34, with weekly volatility standing at 1.48%. The indicator jumps to 1.67% when calculated based on the past 30 days. Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE:HRL)’s beta value is holding at 0.25, while the average true range (ATR) indicator is currently reading 0.61. Considering analysts have assigned the stock a price target range of $29.00-$42.00 as the low and high respectively, we find the trailing 12-month average consensus price target to be $34.24. Based on this estimate, we see that today’s price at last check is roughly 10.74% off the estimated low and -29.27% off the forecast high. Investors will no doubt be excited to see the share price fall to $33.00, which is the median consensus price, and at that level HRL would be -1.57% from recent price.

Turning out attention to how the Hormel Foods Corp. stock has performed in comparison to its peers in the industry, here’s what we find: HRL’s stock is 0.95% on the day and -33.22% in the past 12 months. Turning out attention to how the Hormel Foods Corp. stock has performed in comparison to its peers in the industry, here’s what we find: HRL’s stock is 0.95% on the day and -33.22% in the past 12 months. As for Hormel Foods Corp., the P/E ratio stands at 20.35 lower than that of Nestle S.A.’s at 27.45 and PepsiCo Inc.’s 27.88. Elsewhere in the market, the S&P 500 Index has stumbled -0.37% in today’s early trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial also seeing a negative session so far with -0.22%.

An analysis of the Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE:HRL) stock in terms of its daily trading volume indicates that the 3-month average is 2.98 million. However, this figure increases on the past 10-day timeline to an average of 3.1 million.

Current records show that the company has 546.24M in outstanding shares. The insiders’ percentage holdings are 47.24% of outstanding shares while the percentage share held by institutions stands at 42.26%. The stats also highlight that short interest as of Oct 30, 2023, stood at 12.99 million shares, which puts the short ratio at the time at 3.37. From this we can glean that short interest is 2.38% of company’s current outstanding shares. Notably, we see that shares short in October rose slightly given the previous month’s figure stood at 11.11 million. But the -28.66% downside, the stock’s price has registered year-to-date as of today’s value, will likely reignite investor interest given the prospect of it rallying even higher.