Jim Cramer on How to Navigate Wednesday’s Tough Tape: 7 Stocks in Focus

2. General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS)

General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) is one of Jim Cramer’s latest stock calls as he shared how to navigate Wednesday’s tough tape. Cramer mentioned the stock during the episode and said:

I thought that General Mills might bottom on a good quarter, big yield. Sadly, the quarter wasn’t good enough. Management tried to turn minuses into pluses, but the crowd wasn’t buying it, even with that 6.5% yield.

General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) provides branded foods, including cereals, snacks, meals, baking products, frozen items, ice cream, and pet food. Cramer evaluated the stock during the March 12 episode, as he remarked:

This is not the only example. When General Mills spoke at CAGNY, a key industry conference, they told a slightly better story. When Mills reports next week, I bet pet food will shine. But there’s heavy discounting in cereal, and management doesn’t seem to recognize that the stock’s turned into a very suboptimal situation. Their review, they say, is “resulting in significantly improved competitiveness.” They do have eight leading brands, each generates a billion dollars in sales. But in the end, General Mills, a justifiably proud company, had to cut its earnings forecast, and it was the talk of the whole conference. Why? “Weak consumer sentiment, heightened uncertainty, and significant volatility have weighed on category growth and impacted consumer purchase patterns, resulting in a slower pace and higher cost of volume recovery than initially expected.” That doesn’t sound all that positive.