One-glance verdict
Undervalued
$27.24 our estimate vs market $6.00
Wall Street consensus: $7.90 (-71.0% lower than our fair-value estimate)
78% below our estimate, below the bear case
Fundamentals snapshot
Flowers Foods, Inc.
FLO · NYQ · Consumer Defensive · Packaged Foods
Current price
$6.00
52-week range
$5.96 - $13.83
Market cap
$1.27B
Balance sheet
Watch
4.25x Stretched
Net debt $1.21B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
2 Risks
3 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Returns 5.4% on equity, ahead of 66% of its peers.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
- Risk Net debt grew 101.6% over 3 years.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 8.0% (peer median: 18.3%).
What this company does
Flowers Foods, Inc.
Flowers Foods is the company behind common grocery store brands like Nature's Own bread, Wonder bread, and Tastykake snack cakes. They make money by baking and distributing these products to a massive network of supermarkets, restaurants, and schools across the country. Because bread and simple snacks are household staples, the company's sales can be more consistent and predictable, even when the economy is uncertain.
How the company got here
Flowers Foods began in 1919 when the Flowers brothers opened a small family bakery in Thomasville, Georgia. [7, 8, 9] For decades, it grew by buying other bakeries across the southern United States, eventually becoming a public company in 1968 to raise money for more expansion. [7, 9] A major turning point was a series of acquisitions (the purchase of other companies) that added famous names to its lineup, including Tastykake snack cakes in 2011, Wonder Bread in 2013, and the fast-growing organic brand Dave's Killer Bread in 2015. [2, 8] These purchases transformed it from a regional baker into the second-largest producer of packaged bakery foods in the country. [1, 10]
What it actually does
Flowers Foods bakes and sells a wide variety of packaged bakery goods that you would find in almost any grocery store in the United States. [2, 7] Their products include fresh breads, buns, rolls, and snack cakes. [7] You would likely recognize their most popular brands, such as Nature's Own, Dave's Killer Bread, Wonder, and Tastykake. [8] The company operates dozens of bakeries across the country and uses two main methods to get these products onto store shelves: a direct-to-store delivery system and shipping to retailer warehouses. [2, 7]
Branded Retail
This is the largest and most important part of Flowers Foods' business, making up the majority of its sales. [4, 13] This segment includes all the products sold under the company's own well-known brand names, like Nature's Own, Dave's Killer Bread, and Canyon Bakehouse gluten-free breads. [4] Consumers and grocery stores pay for these products because they recognize and trust the brand names for their quality and specific features, such as being organic or gluten-free. [2] The company focuses heavily on this area because branded products can often be sold for higher prices and earn better margins (the amount of profit made on each sale). [2]
Store-Brand and Foodservice
This part of the business, which is smaller than the branded segment, involves baking products for other companies to sell under their own names. [4] This includes making store-brand bread for a grocery chain or supplying buns and rolls to foodservice customers like restaurants, schools, and hospitals. [4] In this case, the customer is the retailer or institution, not the end consumer, and they are paying for the baked goods themselves, not the Flowers Foods brand name. This business provides a steady stream of sales by using the company's large bakery network to supply high-volume customers. [2]
What management is betting on now
Management's main focus is on selling more of its premium and specialty brands, like Dave's Killer Bread and Canyon Bakehouse, which are growing faster and are more profitable. [2, 3] They are also investing in innovation to meet new consumer trends, such as demand for healthier, organic, and gluten-free options. [16] The company is also constantly working to improve its margins (the percentage of each dollar in sales that the company keeps as profit) by making its bakeries and supply chain (the entire process of making and delivering products) more efficient. [1, 3, 6] Finally, they continue to look for smart acquisitions (buying other companies) that fit well with their existing brands and help them enter new, growing markets. [1, 3]
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2025 Q3
$88.58M
FY2025 Q4
$84.83M
FY2026 Q1
$110.08M
FY2026 Q2
$100.02M
FY2026 Q3
$30.42M
FY2026 Q4
$78.57M
FY2027 Q1
$87.23M
FY2027 Q2
$109.83M
Revenue
$1.19B
Net income
$40.66M
Diluted EPS
0.19
Operating cash flow
$133.69M
Free cash flow
$109.83M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.57B
Net income
$42.05M
Diluted EPS
0.20
Operating cash flow
$107.86M
Free cash flow
$87.23M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.23B
Net income
$-67.07M
Diluted EPS
-0.32
Operating cash flow
$125.38M
Free cash flow
$78.57M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.23B
Net income
$39.53M
Diluted EPS
0.19
Operating cash flow
$54.36M
Free cash flow
$30.42M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.24B
Net income
$58.37M
Diluted EPS
0.28
Operating cash flow
$130.83M
Free cash flow
$100.02M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.55B
Net income
$53.00M
Diluted EPS
0.25
Operating cash flow
$135.63M
Free cash flow
$110.08M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.11B
Net income
$43.12M
Diluted EPS
0.20
Operating cash flow
$130.29M
Free cash flow
$84.83M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$1.19B
Net income
$64.98M
Diluted EPS
0.31
Operating cash flow
$113.95M
Free cash flow
$88.58M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $27.24 vs current price $6.00
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $7.90 (-71.0% lower than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $27.24 a share — about 354.1% above today's price of $6.00, so the stock currently looks cheap (undervalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Watch
Net debt $1.2B. Interest coverage 4.3x.
Net debt
$1.21B
Interest coverage
4.25x
Flowers Foods, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 4.3 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here and 1 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Watch
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
FLO
BASELINE
Flowers Foods, Inc.
Total debt $1.47B Interest coverage 4.25x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $1.03B Interest coverage 0.25x -94% vs FLO Carries about 17.2x less debt cushion than FLO.
Total debt $191.91M Interest coverage 67.00x +1,475% vs FLO Carries about 15.8x more debt cushion than FLO.
Total debt $7.14B Interest coverage 3.92x -8% vs FLO Has roughly the same debt cushion as FLO.
Total debt $7.48B Interest coverage 3.23x -24% vs FLO Carries about 1.3x less debt cushion than FLO.
Total debt $0.00 Interest coverage 4.93x +16% vs FLO Carries about 1.2x more debt cushion than FLO.
What you should know
The case for and against FLO
3 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Returns 5.4% on equity, ahead of 66% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 8.2% with 40-year payout history.
Risks
-
Net debt grew 101.6% over 3 years.
-
Insider ownership is only 8.0% (peer median: 18.3%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
23.08x
Forward P/E
8.40x
P/B
0.96x
P/S
0.24x
EV/EBITDA
4.89x
PEG ratio
6.10x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
48.7%
Operating margin
8.3%
Net margin
1.4%
ROE
5.4%
ROA
5.3%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
1.11x
Current ratio
0.77x
Quick ratio
0.42x
Total debt
$1.47B
Total cash
$252.68M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$5.22B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
5.0%
EPS TTM
0.26
EPS 5Y CAGR
-28.1%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$421.29M
Free CF TTM
$319.09M
FCF margin
6.1%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
8.2%
Payout ratio
333.6%
Last ex-div date
2026-09-11