The Hershey Company reflects attractive technical aspects that could allow investors to expect a trend reversal over the medium term.
Summary
● The company has strong fundamentals. More than 70% of companies have a lower mix of growth, profitability, debt and visibility.
● The company's Refinitiv ESG score, based on a ranking of the company relative to its industry, comes out particularly well.
Strengths
● The company's EBITDA/Sales ratio is relatively high and results in high margins before depreciation, amortization and taxes.
● The company returns high margins, thereby supporting business profitability.
● Consensus analysts have strongly revised their opinion of the company over the past 12 months.
● Predictions on business development from analysts polled by Standard & Poor's are tight. This results from either a good visibility into core activities or accurate earnings releases.
● Historically, the company has been releasing figures that are above expectations.
Weaknesses
● The company's enterprise value to sales, at 3.99 times its current sales, is high.
● In relation to the value of its tangible assets, the company's valuation appears relatively high.
● Over the past four months, analysts' average price target has been revised downwards significantly.
● The average consensus view of analysts covering the stock has deteriorated over the past four months.
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The Hershey Company specializes in producing and selling chocolate-based products and candies. The group is involved in producing and selling snacks, beverages, garnishing and cooking products, chewing gum, etc. Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- chocolate-based products and confectionery (93.6%): Jolly Rancher, Almond Joy, Brookside, barkTHINS, Cadbury, Good & Plenty, Heath, Kit Kat, Lancaster, Payday, Rolo, Twizzlers, Whoppers, Scharffen Berger, Dagoba, etc. brands;
- snacks (6.4%): Hershey, Reese, Heath, Krave, Popwell, SkinnyPop, Pirate's Booty, Oatmega, Paqui, etc. brands.
At the end of 2020, the group has 9 production sites in the United States (6), Mexico (2) and Malaysia.
Net sales break down geographically as follows: the United States (86.4%), North America (4.6%) and other (9%).