PepsiCo Stock: Buy, Sell, or Hold?

You probably know the names Pepsi and Frito-Lay, even if you live outside the United States. (NASDAQ: PEP), the company behind both brands, is every bit as iconic as Coca-Cola, one of its biggest rivals. If you're a long-term investor with a growth and income approach, you might want to consider adding the salty-snack giant (and second-place soda maker) to your portfolio. Here's why.

Right up front, it's important to recognize that a company with a $220 billion market cap isn't likely to be an exciting company to own. It's well beyond the size at which it can grow its business rapidly, so growth investors will probably want to look elsewhere. But that doesn't mean PepsiCo is a bad company, just a mature one. It's the type of company you buy when it's reasonably priced, or cheap, and hold it for decades.

The biggest highlight of the company's long-term success probably shows up in its dividend record. The company is a highly elite Dividend King, with over five decades of annual dividend increases behind it. That's a streak you simply can't build by accident. It takes consistently strong execution in good economies and bad. The average annualized dividend increase over the past decade, meanwhile, was around 8%. That's a solid number, well above the historical growth rate of inflation, but not massive. In other words, slow and steady is basically what investors have been rewarded with over time.

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Source Fool.com