Latest news with #B&G
Agriland
10-08-2025
- Business
- Agriland
Watch: Using local grain to produce quality whiskey
In 1979, Loughran's Stores Ltd was founded just outside of Dundalk, in Haggardstown, Co. Louth, but the Loughran family has been farming the land since 1908. The company's managing director, James Loughran, the third generation of his family to farm the land, explained to Agriland that originally, it was an "old Land Commission" farm - 40ac and a farmhouse. In the 1970s, the grain store was built, and trading began with farmers in the local area, a number of which Loughran's still trade with today. Loughran joined the business in 2002, with the goal of doing something "slightly different, but still within our skill set", especially with the company's wheat, oats, and barley. In the early 2010s, while on holiday in Canada, Loughran became interested in Vancouver's craft beer scene, and the city's intake of malt barley per year. Back home, he recognised that the Irish brewing and distilling industries were growing for smaller, independent businesses. However, Loughran felt that there was limited opportunities for Irish brewers to access local malt - crushed, in 25kg bags - simply because the facilities were not there. In 2014, the company started crushing a small amount of malt barley, and supplied it to breweries around Ireland. Crusher at Loughran's Storehouse, Co. Louth Over the years, the company has diversified what it distributes, to offer brewers a full range of base malt, specialty malts, and hops. The company continued to expand and followed a simple, but effective, business model - provide brewers and distillers with all the ingredients they need: a "one-stop shop", as Loughran himself puts it. The Old Carrick Mill Distillery is 30km away from Loughran's Storehouse, just across the county border, in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. The distillery was founded by Steven Murphy, a Monaghan native, and is supplied by Loughran's. Murphy founded Old Carrick Mill 14 years ago, on the site of an old mill which leads back to the world-famous B&G vineyard in Bordeaux, France, and the Barton family. Having traced the mill's roots all the way south of France, B&G gifted Murphy 50 of its finest red wine barrels, which he filled them with whiskey. Despite its continental history, Old Carrick Distillery is rooted firmly in south Co. Monaghan. Throughout the premises, Murphy has links to the local area proudly on display. A local expression is proudly etched into the bottles of whiskey: "From Carrickmacross to Crossmaglen, there are more rogues than honest men." Whiskey produced at Old Carrick Mill Distillery However, gin was Old Carrick Mill Distillery's first product. Murphy explained that the only "law" in making gin is that the main botanical is juniper, and it has to be 40% alcohol. As a result, Murphy began growing junipers on site in Carrickmacross so that he could produce 100% Irish gin further down the line. He planted the trees "eight or nine" years ago, with mixed results. According to Murphy, junipers are a "lazy" tree, and it could be 10 years before they put out a berry. Once harvested, Murphy intends to use his junipers to make gin along with other Irish products, such as apples and blackberries. "Who is to say gin has to taste a certain way?" Murphy asked. "It has to have junipers in it, but everything else can be different."
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS) Has Some Way To Go To Become A Multi-Bagger
There are a few key trends to look for if we want to identify the next multi-bagger. Firstly, we'd want to identify a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and then alongside that, an ever-increasing base of capital employed. Put simply, these types of businesses are compounding machines, meaning they are continually reinvesting their earnings at ever-higher rates of return. However, after investigating B&G Foods (NYSE:BGS), we don't think it's current trends fit the mold of a multi-bagger. We've found 21 US stocks that are forecast to pay a dividend yield of over 6% next year. See the full list for free. For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for B&G Foods: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.073 = US$200m ÷ (US$3.0b - US$229m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2025). Thus, B&G Foods has an ROCE of 7.3%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Food industry average of 10%. Check out our latest analysis for B&G Foods Above you can see how the current ROCE for B&G Foods compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering B&G Foods for free. There hasn't been much to report for B&G Foods' returns and its level of capital employed because both metrics have been steady for the past five years. It's not uncommon to see this when looking at a mature and stable business that isn't re-investing its earnings because it has likely passed that phase of the business cycle. So unless we see a substantial change at B&G Foods in terms of ROCE and additional investments being made, we wouldn't hold our breath on it being a multi-bagger. On top of that you'll notice that B&G Foods has been paying out a large portion (113%) of earnings in the form of dividends to shareholders. Most shareholders probably know this and own the stock for its dividend. In a nutshell, B&G Foods has been trudging along with the same returns from the same amount of capital over the last five years. It seems that investors have little hope of these trends getting any better and that may have partly contributed to the stock collapsing 74% in the last five years. All in all, the inherent trends aren't typical of multi-baggers, so if that's what you're after, we think you might have more luck elsewhere. On a final note, we found 2 warning signs for B&G Foods (1 doesn't sit too well with us) you should be aware of. While B&G Foods may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Crisco owner B&G Foods sells tomato brands amid efforts to reshape portfolio
This story was originally published on Food Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Food Dive newsletter. B&G Foods sold two of its tomato brands to a private equity company as the Crisco owner looks to offload some of its portfolio and reduce debt. Violet Foods, a newly formed portfolio company of Amphora Equity Partners, will acquire B&G's Don Pepino and Sclafani brands for an undisclosed amount. Don Pepino makes sauces used in pizza shops across the East Coast, while Sclafani is known for its tomatoes, tomato puree and whole peeled tomatoes. The sale included the manufacturing facility in Williamstown, New Jersey where the products are produced. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Built through a series of acquisitions, B&G Foods is taking a far different approach these days. The New Jersey company has been actively slimming down its portfolio to streamline its focus and reduce its overall debt load. B&G sold Green Giant canned business to Seneca Foods in 2023 and snacks brand Back to Nature a year earlier to Barilla. The company is also looking to sell the Green Giant frozen business. Don Pepino and Sclafani are smaller offerings within B&G's portfolio of more than 50 brands that also include Ortega, Cream of Wheat and Crisco. Don Pepino and Sclafani make sauces and tomato products, categories that face significant competition from brand names and private-label offerings. This headwind is unlikely to abate as inflation-weary consumers cut back on spending and look to save money when they can. During the company's first-quarter earnings call, CEO Casey Keller said reshaping B&G's portfolio 'is a very high priority for the company and critical to our future strategic direction and risk profile.' The CEO said his goal includes creating 'a more highly focused B&G' that can be a foundation for M&A growth in its core business lines, principally spices and seasonings, Mexican meal preparation and baking staples. Recommended Reading B&G Foods exploring sale of Green Giant frozen, canned vegetable businesses
Forbes
03-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 Low-Volatility Dividend Stocks Yielding Up To 11.1%
Businessmen Characters Investors Riding Roller Coaster on Red Chart, Fall on Uncertainty, Volatile ... More Up and Down Arrow Profit Graph, Trading Risk, Invest Economy Panic Cartoon People Vector Illustration Dividends over drama, please. Like these five low-volatility dividend stocks that yield 7.2%, on average. Back in school they taught us that to increase returns, investors had to take on additional risk. This was a financial engineering class at Cornell University, by the way. The prof should have known better, but he didn't, because he was a researcher and not an actual investor. It's a common mistake in academia, and those who try to invest 'buy the book.' The book says more beta means more returns. Well, this text is often wrong! Big dividends and low volatility are a beautiful combination. Volatility can be measured several ways. I find that 'beta' is one of the best ones for regular investors because it's easy to understand, and because it's widely available from just about every market data provider. Beta measures an investment's volatility against a benchmark. The benchmark (for instance, the S&P 500) will always have a beta of 1. So: Importantly, the reverse tends to be true—high-beta stocks generally fall more sharply than the market, while low-beta stocks often decline by less. So if we want some peace of mind, especially in a market like this, we want low-beta stocks. And if we really want to improve our chances of enjoying upside in downturns, we also want high yields. That's in part because of the income return potential itself, but also because that income tends to attract more buyers during market scares. So let's review several stocks that … Let's start with B&G Foods (BGS, 11.1% yield), which we've discussed very recently, because it serves as a perfect warning about the dangers of relying on headline numbers alone. A stock can look like a perfect candidate in a screener, only to fall apart after just a little bit of scrutiny. B&G Foods is a consumer staples stock whose brands include pantry regulars like Crisco and Cream of Wheat. It has an 11% yield. Its 5-year beta is 0.8. Its 1-year beta is negative 0.6, which implies that when the market zigs, it zags—exactly what we want in a down market. And B&G is killing it in 2025. The market is off about 10% since its Feb. 19 high; BGS shares are up by more than 10%. What's not to love? BGS Total Returns It's arguable that the only reasons BGS has defied the market's gravity lately are its yield and positioning in the staples sector. Past that, though, B&G earned less than it paid out in dividends last year, and it's projected to do so this year and next. It's also just a couple months removed from having to write down the worth of several of its best brands. Great headline metrics, but it's downhill from there. Clearway Energy (CWEN/CWEN.A, 5.8% yield) is a different story. CWEN owns a portfolio of non-regulated clean energy generation assets representing 11.8 gigawatts of gross capacity—9 gigawatts from wind, solar, and battery energy storage systems, and 2.8 gigawatts of conventional dispatchable power capacity. So while it's technically in the utility sector, its operations aren't the same as our garden-variety power-or-gas 'ute.' However, like utilities, Clearway is enjoying a surge in demand from data centers. It's already developing traditional data center agreements, but it's also beginning to scope 'behind-the-meter' agreements, where data centers generate energy on-site using renewables rather than tapping into a traditional utility grid. CWEN has also been re-contracting its gas portfolio, which takes some important question marks off the board for the next few years. Clearway seems to have plenty of firepower to support its 5%-8% annual dividend growth goal. That's a fine level for a stock that's already yielding nearly 6%, and better still, shareholders have been enjoying those raises on a quarterly basis for years. In addition to the dividend, shareholders have enjoyed relative stability of late—CWEN's five-year beta of 0.9 is a hint less volatile than the market, but its shorter-term beta of around 0.4 reflects much smoother sailing over the past year. W.P. Carey (WPC, 5.8% yield) is another quarterly dividend raiser, but its smooth path has quite the hiccup in it. WPC Total Returns W.P. Carey is a massive, diversified net-lease real estate investment trust (REIT) that boasts more than 1,600 properties leased out to more than 360 tenants in 90 industries. More than a third of its portfolio is made up of industrial real estate, another quarter is warehouses, about 20% is retail, and the remainder is scattered across other property types including self-storage. What's missing there is office properties, which W.P. Carey exited in September 2023 by spinning them off into Net Lease Office Properties (NLOP). Alongside that plan was a necessary 'reset' of the dividend policy to account for the shift in assets. In other words, WPC's dividend 'cut' was merely a technicality—the dividend itself is quite healthy. That's in part because virtually its entire portfolio (99.6%) includes rent escalators; high occupancy of 98%-plus helps, too. Five- and one-year betas of 0.8 and 0.3, respectively, reflect W.P. Carey's status as a historically cool cucumber, too. Another REIT, LTC Properties (LTC, 6.4% yield), offers up the gold standard in dividend delivery: monthly payments. LTC, which stands for 'long-term care,' boasts 190 properties in 25 states, with its investments split roughly 50/50 between assisted living properties and skilled nursing facilities. These were promising businesses until COVID ruptured the space; operations are recovering, though. The stock actually managed to hit its pre-COVID high back in 2023, but that was short-lived. But its second attempt, which started six months ago, is looking better—and shares are stabilizing while the rest of the market falters. LTC not only boasts a five-year beta of 0.7 (good), but an extremely low one-year beta of just over 0.1 (great). That said, LTC is walking into a whirlwind of uncertainty—though possibly for the better. The company plans on pivoting to a RIDEA structure, which stands for the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act. Without getting too far into the weeds, this act lets REITs participate in net operating income, and it's where LTC believes the majority of external growth opportunities in assisted living remain. Specifically, the company expects to convert $150 million to $200 million of gross investment assets to RIDEA-structured contracts by Q2 2025. It's a potentially transformative structure, but also a complete unknown. One vital sign to look out for? A long, long-needed increase in its dividend, which has remained stagnant for nearly a decade. Sabra Health Care REIT (SBRA, 6.9% yield) is similar to LTC in that it's a senior-focused healthcare play. Roughly half of Sabra's portfolio is in skilled nursing and transitional care facilities, though it also has large allocations to managed senior housing (20%), behavioral health (14%) and leased senior housing (11%). A big signal of improvement in Sabra's operational health came a little more than a year ago when it provided full-year guidance. Yes, that guidance missed estimates, but it actually released guidance—something it wasn't able to do a year before that. That said, like LTC, while we're seeing improvement in the underlying business, we need to see that improvement in our pockets, too. Still, SBRA ended up returning more than 30% in 2024, crushing the VNQ and its piddly 5% advance. Shares have cooled off in 2025 but are still up a few percentage points since the Feb. 19 market peak. They also offer a high yield of nearly 7%, and extremely low volatility—a beta of 0.9 over the past five years isn't much to look at, but it has registered a nearly unconscious beta of 0.2 over the past 52 weeks. And health care REITs could continue to be defensive if the economic environment continues to worsen. Brett Owens is Chief Investment Strategist for Contrarian Outlook. For more great income ideas, get your free copy his latest special report: How to Live off Huge Monthly Dividends (up to 8.7%) — Practically Forever. Disclosure: none
Boston Globe
25-02-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
From law school to lo mein: Ted Woo launches Mimi's Chūka Diner in Somerville
My first job ever was washing dishes at my uncle's restaurant. It was a way to keep me [busy] when I visited my family in Japan during the summertime. I'm originally from the West Coast, from the San Francisco Bay Area, and my mom's family lives in Japan. I'm mostly Chinese, although there's a little bit of Japanese heritage on my mom's side. My uncle actually owns Chinese restaurants over there now; my cousin runs them. Food's always been a big part of that side of the family. Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up But then you went to law school at BU. What drew you back into restaurants? Advertisement It was your typical story of needing to do the 'right' thing and choosing a more professional career path. My friends from law school knew that I loved food and restaurants. Long story short, a friend of a friend from law school wanted to open up a fast-casual concept in New York City and [put us in touch]. I made plans to partner with them in the future. To get experience — because I didn't have any experience managing restaurants, other than serving and washing dishes — I got a job with the Barbara Lynch Gruppo as a very junior manager at B&G Oysters. I was working for the chief justice of Massachusetts Land Court at the time. Toward the end of my term, I started to apply for clerkships elsewhere — but, when I was approached about the fast-casual concept, it swirled into my leaving the law. Advertisement The fast-casual plans fell through, but I was already working for the Barbara Lynch Gruppo. I dove deeper into working my way up, and that's where I met my business partner, Jon. Barbara Lynch: What was that like? There's been a lot written about her. There certainly has. I mean, honestly, it went amazingly at B&G. It was kind of unique because it was really busy and a pretty dynamic place already when I got there. All we really had to do was either sustain or grow what was going on there. We had a lot of autonomy. As a junior manager, I was pretty hungry to do a lot. I grew quickly there and became the general manager after about two years. Jon and I helped to resurrect the Oyster Invitational, a block party in the South End with about 350 people and 20 different restaurant vendors. We did a Halloween Haunted House fund-raiser on the patio at B&G. Our staff at the time was just so good — both back and front of house — and they all got along amazingly. For us, it was a golden age of … doing fun things at work that were just beyond food and cooking, and really more about the community. Let's talk about Mimi's. How did that start? Our first pop-ups were in January and February 2020 at Stir in the South Ed. We're all pretty familiar with what happened after that. The pandemic hit, I got furloughed, and it's now April or May. One of my fatal flaws is not being able to sit still. The unemployment checks were enough to live on. We were like: 'Why don't we pour this energy into something?' So we started folding dumplings by hand, freezing them, and delivering them around metro Boston. That summer was a pretty good time for us, in terms of getting some attention from the press and getting our dumplings in the hands of a lot of people in the South End. We did that, chugged through until restaurants finally reopened, and then we started doing pop-ups again. Advertisement Who's Mimi? Mimi is my mom's name, actually. I don't recall exactly how we landed on it. We both agreed that it's a nice-sounding name. It sounds like a warm person. How did you land a permanent home at Aeronaut? During that pop-up period, I was basically taking any opportunity we were offered to get exposure in different neighborhoods. We were popping up everywhere. We would put together something that was essentially 90 percent prepped, write some fun instructions and how to cook it, basically like those Blue Apron boxes. We did that with Aeronaut a couple times, and I had a connection with one of the owners. We were the food partners at Artifact Cider Project, and we had about 180 square feet of kitchen space, including storage and one little convection oven, where we were pushing out as much food as we could. Unfortunately, Artifact closed in May 2023. That was one month after we learned of the Aeronaut space opening through a chef friend of ours — it was a little bit of insider info through an industry connection and then basically cold-calling them before the space went on the market. For the uninitiated, what's the concept of chūka? The way I like to analogize it is basically: Chinese food is adapted to whatever locality it gets brought to. In New England, there are some pretty staunch supporters of New England-style Chinese food: lobster sauce and crab rangoons, and certain things that are a lot more popular here than, for example, on the West Coast — dinner rolls and chicken fingers at a Chinese restaurant, which I had never heard of coming over here. Advertisement Chūka is Japanese-adapted Chinese food. There's not a lot of spicy food in Japanese cuisine. And so certain dishes that had Sichuan origins were mellowed out and not as spicy, not as numbing, a little sweeter, using Japanese ingredients like mirin or miso. It's still evolving. It's probably one of the more popular, if not the most popular, casual cuisine in Japan. Where do you like to eat when you're not working? That depends on the occasion. If it's something quick, Tsurumen in Davis Square. It's fantastic. For a fancy occasion, I love Pammy's. Everything's great: the food, the cocktail program, the ambiance. It's so cozy and warm and inviting inside, especially with the fireplace right in the middle. I always try to sit at the a bar whenever I go. How would you describe the food scene here versus the West Coast? The food scene here right now is really exciting because there's a lot of growth. There's a lot of previously — I don't know if untapped is the right word — but definitely previously unexplored cuisines that are popping up and getting a lot of recognition. I feel like Thai food in the Boston area is having a huge boom, and more regional Chinese cuisines, as well as more specific Japanese cuisines and Greek food, too. A ton of new Greek restaurants have opened, and they're not just gyros. Advertisement Working at B&G, we had a nice early introduction to Kava; they were really friendly and would come to B&G a lot. I haven't tried it yet, but Kaia over in the South End looks beautiful inside. I love large-format foods, so whole fish and stuff like that. It's exciting. I feel like there was a time just before the pandemic when every single restaurant that was opening was either tacos, a steakhouse, seafood, or pasta. And I love all those foods, but there's definitely more than that. Would you ever encourage anyone to go to law school? Anyone? Yes. Everyone? No. Everybody's personal journey is very different. If you're going to go to law school because you think it's a good paycheck, absolutely not. I don't recommend going to law school. Law school's expensive. And then you went into restaurants. Was that a financial conundrum? I mean, I still owe a lot of money to my law school loan servicers. But, at the end of the day, my debt is just a responsibility that I have to fulfill. It's not the end of the world. I feel blessed that I found something that I love to do and that I can do it well enough to make a living. My thoughts were, if I'm going to work hard doing something for however many years, then I should do something I love. Not everybody gets to do that. Last but not least: What's your favorite snack? There's a reason why French fries are on our menu. I like McDonald's fries. I like Red Robin's fries. I like seasoned curlies; I like waffle-cut fries. Craigie on Main's fries were amazing. I never get tired of fries. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
