Greek Yogurt Investment - General Mills Inc

Greek yogurt is a growing market with leader Chobani Greek Yogurt getting 246% increase in sales in a year.  Therefore major food giants have turned their attention to this new growing market.  Yesterday we talked about food giant Kraft Foods which enters into the Greek Yogurt market in September by selling Athenos brand Greek yogurt at Wal-Mart.  Today lets talk about another food giant General Mills(NYSE:GIS) who is known by yogurt lovers as Yoplait.   

General Mills's Yoplait is the leading yogurt brand with roughly 40% of the market share.  However its orginal yogurt saw 2% decline last year while rival Greek yogurt saw rapid sales increase from 57% to 246% according to Bloomburg BusinessWeek.  Therefore in March General Mills introduced Yoplait Greek yogurt to try to maintain its lead in the yogurt industry.


Shares of General Mills (NYSE:GIS) have not been doing well since end of October and have lost 10% so far.  With market cap of $22.6 billion and dividend payment of 3.17% the stock is more of a defensive investment.  The $3.5 billion in revenue plus $472 million in net income per quarter makes GIS a type of buy-and-hold worry free investment.  Now that General Mill is in the Greek Yogurt market, maybe this could spark some interst in the stock.