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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (PPC) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-23): Designation Watch · Gem Score +21 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 52 · Value -5 · Sentiment -59 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $61.17 vs $27.36 at analysis
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profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
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Pilgrim's Pride Corporation
PPC NASDAQPilgrim's Pride Corporation is a multinational food company specializing in chicken and pork products. Headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, it operates integrated production and processing facilities across the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and selected European markets. The company focuses on producing, processing, marketing, and distributing fresh, frozen, and value-added poultry and pork items, including prepared, fully cooked, and convenience-oriented foods for retail, foodservice, and industrial customers. Pilgrim’s Pride offers a broad portfolio that spans commodity poultry, branded meats, snacking products, sausages, and chilled and frozen convenience foods, supplying major retailers, foodservice distributors, and restaurant chains, as well as export channels in more than 100 countries. As part of the JBS USA family of companies, Pilgrim’s Pride plays a significant role in global protein supply, leveraging large-scale, vertically integrated operations to serve consumer and institutional demand for meat and prepared food products.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 4.54
Total Equity: $3.69B
Shares: 238,449,000
Total Debt: $924,000
Cash: $640.24M
EBITDA: $2.07B
Total Debt: $924,000
Cash: $640.24M
Revenue: $18.50B
Revenue: $18.50B
Revenue: $18.50B
Total Equity: $3.69B
Tax Rate: 27.9%
Equity: $3.69B
Total Debt: $924,000
Cash: $640.24M
Current Liabilities: $2.89B
Long-Term Debt: $0.00
Total Debt: $924,000
Total Equity: $3.69B
Shares: 238,449,000
Shares: 238,449,000
CapEx: -$718.50M
Shares: 238,449,000
Stock Price: $27.36
Net Income: $1.08B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 2, 2026 2:09pm (21d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $14.8B | $17.5B | $17.4B | $17.9B | $18.5B |
| Cost of Revenue | $13.4B | $15.7B | $16.2B | $15.6B | $16.1B |
| Gross Profit | $1.4B | $1.8B | $1.1B | $2.3B | $2.4B |
| Operating Expenses | $1.2B | $635.2M | $596.1M | $806.7M | $744.6M |
| Operating Income | $211.2M | $1.2B | $522.3M | $1.5B | $1.6B |
| Net Income | $31.0M | $745.9M | $321.6M | $1.1B | $1.1B |
| EBITDA | $592.0M | $1.6B | $942.2M | $1.9B | $2.1B |
| EPS | $0.13 | $3.11 | $1.36 | $4.58 | $4.56 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $0.13 | $3.10 | $1.36 | $4.57 | $4.54 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 2, 2026 1:44pm (21d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $427.7M | $401.0M | $697.7M | $2.0B | $640.2M |
| Total Current Assets | $3.3B | $3.9B | $4.2B | $5.1B | $4.2B |
| Total Assets | $8.9B | $9.3B | $9.8B | $10.7B | $10.3B |
| Current Liabilities | $2.4B | $2.6B | $2.5B | $2.6B | $2.9B |
| Long-Term Debt | — | — | $3.3B | $3.2B | — |
| Total Liabilities | $6.3B | $6.4B | $6.5B | $6.4B | $6.6B |
| Total Equity | $2.6B | $2.9B | $3.3B | $4.3B | $3.7B |
| Retained Earnings | $1.0B | $1.7B | $2.1B | $3.2B | $2.2B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 2, 2026 2:09pm (21d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $326.5M | $669.9M | $677.9M | $2.0B | $1.4B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$381.7M | -$487.1M | -$557.8M | -$458.5M | -$718.5M |
| Free Cash Flow | -$55.2M | $182.8M | $120.1M | $1.5B | $653.2M |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$966.8M | -$9.7M | $0 | $0 | — |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | $945.5M | -$25.8M | $151.9M | -$152.1M | -$115.2M |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | $0 | $0 | -$2.0B |
| Stock Buybacks | — | — | — | — | — |
| Net Change in Cash | -$98.3M | -$15.4M | $296.5M | $1.3B | -$1.4B |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 2, 2026 2:09pm (21d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +18.2% | -0.6% | +3.0% | +3.5% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +32.7% | -38.3% | +106.8% | +2.0% |
| Operating Income Growth | +457.2% | -55.6% | +188.4% | +7.1% |
| Net Income Growth | +2,306.2% | -56.9% | +237.9% | -0.4% |
| EBITDA Growth | +166.8% | -40.4% | +105.9% | +6.7% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 2, 2026 1:45pm (21d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-08-20 | $2.10 | — | — | — |
| 2025-04-03 | $6.30 | — | — | — |
| 2016-05-06 | $2.75 | — | — | — |
| 2015-01-28 | $5.77 | — | — | — |
| 2008-09-10 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2008-06-11 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2008-03-12 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2007-12-12 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2007-09-12 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2007-06-13 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2007-03-14 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2006-12-13 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2006-09-13 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2006-06-14 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2006-03-15 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2005-12-14 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2005-09-07 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2005-06-08 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2005-03-09 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
| 2004-12-08 | $0.02 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — if the last quarter repeats
Live · as of 2026-08-19 10:57Recovery pays +206%; another quarter like the worst recent one costs 49%. Ratio 4.2:1.
| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($27.36) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +1% | 9.2% | $83.64 | +206% |
| Base — stabilizes | +1% | 8.0% | $71.99 | +163% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +0% | 6.8% | $60.67 | +122% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | -3% | 1.5% | $13.88 | -49% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Claude Reading
The most important number in this file is the Q1 2026 print: revenue $4.53B (still +1.6% YoY vs Q1'25's $4.46B) but net income collapsed from $296M to $101M, a margin compression from 6.6% to 2.2%. Q4 2025 already flashed the warning at 1.9% net margin. That's not a "cyclical peak" thesis — that's the cycle rolling over in real time. The trailing four quarters now include two ~2% margin prints and two ~7% prints; run-rate net income is drifting toward $700-900M, not the $1.08B TTM the P/E of 6x is anchored on. On a forward basis, if margins mean-revert to the 4-5% range (which is still above the disastrous 2021-2023 average of ~2-4%), you're looking at $18.5B × 4.5% ≈ $830M NI, or ~$3.50 EPS, putting the forward P/E closer to 8x — cheap, but no longer absurd.
The synthesis verdict of $63-70 fair value is, frankly, a math exercise that hasn't metabolized the two most recent quarters. It's extrapolating from a 2024-mid2025 margin regime that has visibly ended. The Market Forces model ("current margins likely represent a cyclical peak") is the one that read the tape correctly, and the Narrative Economics layer's "fragile durability" call is right for the wrong reason — the fragility isn't covenant risk (debt is literally $924K, essentially zero; D/E of 0.0003 makes the "overleveraged from JBS acquisition" bear story factually wrong), it's earnings fragility. This is a fortress balance sheet ($640M cash, $3.69B equity, negligible debt) attached to a commodity P&L that just halved. Those are two very different investment questions being conflated.
A careful contrarian pushes back on my bearishness thus: chicken cycles are chicken cycles, and PPC has demonstrably survived worse (2021 NI of $31M on $14.8B rev — a 0.2% margin — and the balance sheet still compounded). ROIC of 38% and ROE of 29% on the trailing year are genuinely elite for packaged foods, and even normalized ROIC in the mid-teens justifies well above book value ($16.50/sh equity per share vs $27.36 price = 1.66x P/B, not the "40% of book" the narrative layer claims — that number is wrong). EV/EBITDA of 2.8x is the kind of multiple that gets acquired; JBS owns ~80% and could take the rest private at $40+ and still steal it. The insider signal is noise — nine identical 1,927-share awards on the same day is a board grant, not conviction; the lone S-Sale is trivial. Payout ratio of 1.84 flags that the $1.5B special dividend already returned capital, so don't expect a repeat catalyst.
I land at partial agreement with the synthesis direction but strong dissent on magnitude. Fair value is not $63-70; that requires believing 6-7% net margins are the new normal, and Q4/Q1 say otherwise. On normalized $800M-$900M NI (4.5-5% margins, mid-cycle), a 9-10x multiple gives $7.2-9.0B market cap, or roughly $30-38/share. Add optionality for a JBS take-private bid and the balance sheet cushion, and $35 is a reasonable 12-month anchor — meaningful upside from $27.36 (+28%), but nowhere near +155%. The stock is cheap, not mispriced by a factor of 2.5x. Buy on further weakness below $25, trim into $35-38, and don't confuse a strong balance sheet with a durable earnings stream in a commodity protein business where the last two quarters already showed you what mean reversion looks like.
GPT Reading
What jumps out first is how clean the balance sheet is relative to how cheap the equity is. A $6.51B market cap business generated $1.08B of net income in 2025, $1.37B of operating cash flow, and $653M of free cash flow after a very real $719M of capex, yet it carries effectively no debt: $924K against $640M of cash. That immediately invalidates a big chunk of the prior narrative stack. This is not a levered restructuring or covenant story; it is a cyclical protein processor with an unusually de-risked capital structure. On trailing numbers, 6.0x earnings, 0.35x sales, and 2.8x EV/EBITDA are plainly low for a company that has delivered two straight years around $1.1B of net income and high-20s ROE. Even if one haircut those profits materially, the starting valuation is hard to call demanding.
The more important question is whether 2024-2025 earnings were peak-cycle aberrations. The quarterly data says yes, but not to the extent the current price seems to imply. Revenue has held in a fairly tight band from $4.37B to $4.76B over the last eight quarters, so this is not a volume-collapse story. What changed is margin: net margin ran 7.2%-7.6% through mid/late 2024 and mid/late 2025, then dropped sharply to 1.9%-2.2% in the last two quarters, with net income falling from $343M-$356M to $88M-$101M. That is a real deterioration, and if you annualize the last two quarters you get roughly $380M-$400M of earnings power, not $1.1B. But even on that depressed run rate, the stock is around 16x earnings for a debt-free staple-adjacent business, not an obvious short; and if normalized earnings are anywhere between the 2023 level of $322M and the 2024-2025 level of $1.08B-$1.09B, the current price is discounting something close to a lower-mid cycle outcome already. My read is that the market is anchoring on the margin collapse correctly, but over-penalizing it because commodity processors are rarely given credit for balance-sheet strength.
The annual progression supports that view. Revenue rose from $17.36B in 2023 to $17.88B in 2024 and $18.50B in 2025, while operating income jumped from $522M to $1.51B to $1.61B. Gross margin moved from a weak 6.5% in 2023 to 12.9% in 2024 and 12.8% in 2025, so 2024 and 2025 were not a one-quarter fluke; they were two years of structurally better profitability versus the prior trough. The issue is that the most recent quarters imply this strength is fading fast. Still, with book value at $3.69B, the stock at 1.77x book is not pricing in a franchise, only a processor. For a company earning a 38% ROIC in the latest annual period and converting more than half of operating cash flow to free cash flow despite heavy capex, I think fair value is above today’s $27.36 even after applying a cyclical discount. I would not underwrite the model-driven $63-$70 fair value range; that looks like mechanically capitalizing peak earnings. But I also do not think a business with this balance sheet and this recent cash generation should trade as if sub-$500M net income is the durable ceiling.
The strongest bear case is straightforward and data-backed: the market may not be cheapening PPC on stale fears, but on a live earnings reset. The last two quarters are ugly enough to suggest 2024-2025 was the peak and 2026 is the new reality. Net income went from $296M in Q1 2025 to just $101M in Q1 2026 on only modestly higher revenue, and from $236M in Q4 2024 to $88M in Q4 2025 on nearly identical revenue, meaning pricing/input/labor dynamics are crushing profitability despite stable demand. If 2% net margins are the new normal on roughly $18B of sales, annual net income is only about $360M, which makes today’s market cap closer to 18x earnings than 6x. Add the fact that this is a capital-intensive commodity business with only 12.8% gross margin even in a good year and a payout ratio over 180%, and a smart skeptic would say the “cheap” multiples are backward-looking traps. I weigh that differently because the absence of leverage dramatically reduces the downside from being wrong on cycle timing, and because the earnings collapse has already shown up in the stock rather than being ignored.
What would change my mind is simple: if the next two quarters stay around 2% net margin despite revenue remaining near $4.5B-$4.8B, I would conclude the 2024-2025 earnings base was indeed transient and that fair value is closer to the low $20s than the mid-$30s. Conversely, if margins recover even partway toward 4%-5% while sales stay flat, that implies annual earnings power of roughly $700M-$900M, and the stock should not remain under 8x that level for long. I also want to see whether free cash flow remains solid after the recent margin compression; if FCF can still hold near $400M-$500M in a weaker year, the current valuation looks too low.
Grok Reading
The numbers tell a story of a completed earnings peak, not a bargain still forming. Pilgrim’s printed $1.08B and $1.09B of net income in 2025 and 2024 on roughly $18B of revenue, with operating margins near 8–9% and free cash flow of $653M after $718M of capex. That run produced a 29% ROE and 38% ROIC and left the balance sheet in fortress condition: $640M cash against essentially zero debt ($924K) and $3.69B of equity. Yet the two most recent quarters show the cycle already turning—net margins collapsed from 7.5% and 7.2% in mid-2025 to 1.9% and 2.2%, with net income falling to $88M and $101M on still-stable revenue of $4.5B. Annualizing the current run-rate puts earnings power near $360–400M, not the $1.1B the trailing multiples embed. At $27.36 the stock trades at 6× trailing earnings and 0.35× sales, but closer to 16–18× the earnings now being delivered. The valuation models that spit out $63–70 fair value are simply capitalizing peak-cycle profits that have already evaporated; the market’s 6× multiple is a deliberate bet on mean reversion that the income statement is confirming in real time.
What the models and the “fallen-angel / overleveraged” narrative both miss is how clean the capital structure actually is. Debt-to-equity of 0.0003 and a net-cash position render the entire refinancing-risk and covenant-stress story obsolete; that narrative is fighting the last war. The real risk is pure commodity cyclicality—feed costs, chicken pricing, and industry supply—not balance-sheet fragility. Revenue CAGR of only 3.2% and decelerating quarterly trends underscore that this is a volume-stable, margin-volatile processor, not a growth compounder. Even so, $650M of FCF in a peak year and a still-positive cash-generation profile at trough margins give the equity a tangible floor that pure P/E screens undervalue. Mid-cycle earnings of $500–700M on this asset base would justify something closer to $30–40, not a double.
The strongest counter-argument is that the margin collapse is temporary and already priced. A smart opponent points to the 2021–2023 trough (net income as low as $31M then $322M), the subsequent operational recovery that produced two straight billion-dollar years, and the fact that gross margins still sit at 12.8% annually—well above the 2023 disaster. If feed costs ease and protein demand holds, a snap-back to 5–6% net margins would make today’s 6× trailing multiple look absurdly cheap and the $63 model value less fantastical. They would also note that EV/EBITDA of 2.8× and EV/sales of 0.32× leave almost no room for permanent impairment once you subtract the net cash. I weigh this less heavily because two consecutive quarters at ~2% margins are not noise; they are the cycle asserting itself, and poultry oversupply plus labor/feed inflation have longer half-lives than optimists admit. The market is not pricing permanent zero profits—it is pricing exactly the $350–500M range that recent quarters imply, which is rational.
I would flip to decisively undervalued if the next two prints show net margins stabilizing above 4.5% with FCF holding above $400M annualized, or if management signals sustained pricing power in value-added mix. I would flip bearish if margins grind toward 1% or negative and working-capital absorption turns FCF negative while revenue stagnates.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
PPC's trajectory shows a decisive step-change: revenue grew from $14.8B (2021) to $18.5B (2025), but the real story is margin expansion — gross margin went from 9.2% to 12.7% and operating margin from 1.4% to 8.7%, driving net income from $31M to $1.08B. FCF of $653M in 2025 (after a huge $1.53B in 2024) funds the business easily, with $640M cash and only $0.9M net debt — essentially unlevered on a net basis. Altman Z of 3.35 places it in the safe zone. Earnings quality is genuinely clean: OCF/NI of 3.33x, accruals at -3.5% of assets, and Beneish M of -2.43 all indicate cash-backed earnings with no manipulation flags. Diluted share count has actually shrunk at -0.6% CAGR from 244.1M to 238.4M, and SBC is a trivial 0.2% of revenue — per-share value is being protected, not eroded. The insider tape shows only routine awards and one small $303K sale from the CFO; nothing directional. The concerns are structural to the industry: this is a commodity chicken/protein processor where 2021 and 2023 showed how quickly margins compress (6.4% GM, 3% OpM in 2023). The 2024-2025 result may reflect a favorable point in the poultry cycle rather than a permanent reset. Majority ownership by JBS (Batista family names dominate the insider list) is a governance factor worth verifying.
Verify before trusting this (6)
- JBS ownership percentage and related-party transaction disclosures in the 10-K
- Customer concentration among top retailers/QSR partners
- Whether recent margin strength reflects structural mix shift (prepared foods, Europe) or transient poultry cycle
- Capital return policy: special dividend history and any authorized buyback program
- Feed cost hedging policy and exposure to grain volatility
- Any active or pending antitrust/price-fixing litigation reserves
The e2e composite fair value of $63.02 (signal-adjusted $69.70) implies 155% upside from $27.36 — a gap that large in a commodity poultry processor almost always means the methods are extrapolating cycle-peak margins. The EPV floor of $53.26 and the anchored P/E of $74.72 both lean on 2024-2025 earnings power that the quality lens explicitly flags as likely near-peak, not normalized. Haircut those inputs to mid-cycle and deserved value probably lands closer to $35-45, not $60+.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Normalized mid-cycle EBITDA margin assumption in the DCF — is it using 2024 peak or a blended 5-year average?
- Chicken commodity price and feed cost curves — how close are we to the next down-leg?
- JBS-related-party transaction terms and any minority protection language
- Capital return policy — special dividends have been the historical playbook; is another one likely?
The active narrative here is a fragile 'fallen-angel' story of deleveraging and margin recovery, and the Q2 print released in the last 24 hours cuts directly against it: adjusted EBITDA margin compressed to 7.8%, EPS collapsed from $1.50 to $0.06, and sales fell year over year. That is the exact data point the bear thesis (commodity cycle, no pricing power, permanent margin compression) needs to gain narrative control, and it landed while the story was already tagged low-durability and low-cult. Expect the headline tape and analyst tone to lean bearish into the next few sessions regardless of book-value math. The macro tape is only mildly supportive (+22, VIX 16), and with a 0.3 beta the broad market barely matters here - this is an idiosyncratic, narrative-driven press. Because poultry is a defensive-adjacent packaged-foods name, PPC is not getting swept by risk-on flows either; sector rotation is not offering a cushion. The dominant force right now is a bad print reinforcing the bear script on a fragile story.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Sell-side target revisions and rating changes in the 1-2 weeks after the Q2 print
- Whether management commentary on covenants and refinancing reassures or spooks credit watchers
- Poultry cutout prices and feed cost trend - a firming commodity backdrop could restore the deleveraging story
- Any activist or value-fund 13F disclosure that could re-anchor the bull narrative
This lens hasn't been run for this ticker yet.
When we made this prediction on Jul 5, 2026, PPC was $28.76. We expect it to be $38.41 by Jan 2027, and we consider it great value under $32.00. This is an early model (v0.3.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Jul 5, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.