Industry+Overview

The industry that General Mills, Inc. falls under is the **//Processed & Packaged Goods category.//** This industry has a high value to the overall market. It includes products that are essential to everyday life, and that consumers are forced to buy in order to maintain a good quality of life. No matter what, people need to eat, and this industry is known to do well even during hard economic times for this reason.

For more in detail information on the industry, here is a link to show the up-to-date news and industry market summary (Finance.Yahoo.com, 2011): [|Processed & Packaged Goods]

As stated before, General Mills belongs to this industry. The company ranks real high within the industry because it provides top #1 selling cereals, as well as stable operations that make shareholders trust and maintain loyalty with the company (Finance.Yahoo.com, 2011).

General Mills has many competitors within the industry, but its' main and top competitors are: Kraft, Kellogg Company, ConAgra Foods, Seneca Foods Corporation, and Danone. (Finance.Yahoo.com, 2011).

Other food services competitors within the industry are as follows, ranked in terms of its' food sales:



In a more direct comparison, GIS is compared to Danone, Kellogg Company, and Seneca Foods Corp. Within this comparison General Mills represents about 7.86% of the total industry market cap.

But overall, General Mills represents one of the top industry performers that most analysts are saying is one of the more stable ones operating. This figure below shows the top and less competitive companies in the industry. As seen in the chart below, General Mills is one of the leaders in the industry, in terms of profit. The link to obtaining this information is as follows: [|Processed & Packaged Goods Industry Leaders & Laggards] This link allows you to change the criteria of viewing the rankings, such as by market cap, profit, pricing, etc.

Additionally, this following link will take you to the website where it shows the up-to-date look at how GIS is doing in comparison to how the overall industry market is doing: [|GIS vs. Industry] This following chart shows just this, but as only for the day of November 8, 2011:



In addition, as an interesting fact, General Mills ranks among the top 50 “World’s Most Admired Companies,” according to FORTUNE. The company ranks No. 45 (Forbes.com, 2010).

(Sources: Yahoo! Finance and Forbes.com).