Top-rated food company Pilgrim's Pride stock has been serving up some luscious gains lately, despite the lousy market. On Monday, the Relative Strength (RS) Rating for Pilgrim's Pride stock climbed to 93, approaching a near-best 99 rating.
The new 93 RS Rating means that Pilgrim's Pride stock has outperformed 93% of all stocks, regardless of industry group, in terms of stock price performance. Market research shows that the market's biggest winners tend to have an 80 or higher RS Rating as they launch their largest climbs.
Pilgrim's Pride Stock At 2-Year-Plus High
Monday afternoon Pilgrim's Pride stock shot up 4.5% to 30.75, its highest point since January 2020. It's more than recovered from a drop to a 14.06 low at the end of September 2020 amid Covid market crash constraints.
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Among its other key ratings, Pilgrim's Pride stock has a superb 99 IBD Composite Rating. It also carries an 80 EPS Rating, putting it in the top 20% of companies for recent and long-term profit growth. And it has an outstanding A- Accumulation/Distribution Rating, on an A+ to E scale with A+ best. The A- A/D Rating indicates that large institutional investors are heavy buyers of its stock. Due to the recent severe market correction, and the heavy selling it entailed, very few stocks can say they have a rating that high.
Greely, Colo.-based Pilgrim's Pride is one of the world's largest chicken producers. It supplies a wide variety of retail and wholesale companies including Yum Brands' Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets. Also big box discount giant Costco, which sells them at a very low price to entice customers to its food section, and Walmart, Wendy's restaurants and others.
The IBD 50 stock remains within a buy zone after clearing a 29.80 buy point in a consolidation. The buy zone for Pilgrim's Pride stock goes up to 5% above the entry point.
Strong Sales, Profit Growth
Pilgrim's Pride reported 181% earnings growth last quarter, to $1.18 per share. Sales increased 30% to $4.24 billion, its fourth quarter in a row of year-over-year sales growth ranging from 24% to 30%.
Pilgrims's Pride stock holds the No. 1 rank among its peers in the Food-Meat Products industry group. Sanderson Farms and Tyson Foods are also among the group's highest-rated stocks.
When looking for the best stocks to buy and watch, one factor to watch closely is relative price strength. IBD's unique RS Rating measures market leadership by using a 1 (worst) to 99 (best) score that identifies how a stock's price performance over the trailing 52 weeks matches up against all other stocks in our database.
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