Investopedia: With Scale, Flowers Foods Has Built A New Future For Itself

Tech investors may turn their noses up at consumer staples companies as hopelessly low-growth and boring, but Flowers Foods (NYSE:FLO) is a good example of what a prudently aggressive management team can accomplish. In 2000, the company served about one-third of the country; now that figure is up over 75% and the company has yet to focus on the Midwest and Pacific Northwest regions.

Along the way, Flowers blend of organic and acquired growth, scale, and operating leverage has produced nearly 9% compound revenue growth and almost 15% free cash flow growth. That, in turn, has fueled one-year, five-year, and 10-year stock appreciation of almost 70%, 100%, and 500%. While I'm not calling for an end to Flowers gaining share or growing its business, I do wonder if the shares aren't in need of a little rest, as the valuation no longer seems quite so compelling at these levels.

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Investopedia: Unlike Twinkies, Hostess Proves Very Perishable

For many companies, bankruptcy is an opportunity to gain some breathing space, refinance debt and move on. Most airlines have been through bankruptcy at least once, and many other companies in operation today once had to seek protection from their creditors. It's not often that major companies choose the route of liquidation, but on Thursday, Hostess, the maker of well-known baked goods like Wonder Bread and Twinkies, announced that it was doing precisely that.

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Investopedia: ConAgra And Ralcorp - If You Can't Beat Them...

Everybody knows the old expression, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Apparently ConAgra (NYSE:CAG) is taking a different strategy - "if you can't beat 'em, quit and try something else". With ConAgra publicly making a bid for Ralcorp (NYSE:RAH), it would seem that this large Nebraskan packaged food company is content to cede the field to the likes of Kellogg (NYSE:K), Heinz (NYSE:HNZ), Kraft (NYSE:KFT) and General Mills (NYSE:GIS) in branded foods and focus much more closely on private label and value-oriented products. 


The Deal That May Be
A deal between ConAgra and Ralcorp has been running through the rumor mill for a little while now, with Ralcorp recently mentioning that it had declined an unsolicited proposal while also preannouncing better-than-expected quarterly results. Clearly there was a not-so-subtle message here - namely, "we're improving quite well on our own, thanks".

Nevertheless, ConAgra has decided to go public with an offer of $86 per share in cash for Ralcorp. Not only does that represent a 32% premium to the pre-speculation price of Ralcorp, it also represents a sweetening of $4 per share from ConAgra's prior offer. 



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