Hormel Foods Corp vs BIO-TECHNE Corp — how do they compare? Hormel Foods Corp trades at $25.06 (market cap $13.91B), while BIO-TECHNE Corp trades at $71.63 (market cap $11.16B). The key difference: Hormel Foods Corp is the larger of the two by market cap, and Hormel Foods Corp pays the higher dividend (4.63%). Which is the better fit depends on your goals.
| HRL | TECH | |
|---|---|---|
Market Cap | $13.91B | $11.16B |
Sector | Consumer Staples | Health |
52-Week High | $29.52 | $72.12 |
52-Week Low | $19.74 | $43.31 |
Enterprise Value | $15.91B | $11.24B |
Dividend Yield | 4.63% | 0.45% |
Signals from Pluang's Aura AI — not financial advice
Hormel Foods (HRL) trades at $25.31, down 0.33% on the day, with a bullish technical outlook and consistent earnings beats. The stock shows a P/E of 29.87 and net income margin of 3.82%, supported by a recent dividend of $0.29. Revenue for 2025 was $12.11B, though net income declined to $478.20M. Analysts maintain a mixed consensus with a $26.33 price target, while the company focuses on portfolio streamlining, such as the sale of its Ceratti business in Brazil (PRNewsWire, 2026-06-29).
HRL offers a stable dividend yield and is near multi-year lows, presenting a value opportunity amid sector weakness. Risks include margin pressure from input costs and competitive threats in the consumer staples space. Institutional sentiment is cautious with 57% hold ratings, but technical indicators suggest potential upside if earnings momentum continues.
Bio-Techne (TECH) trades at $71.64, down 0.67% today, near its 52-week high following Merck KGaA's $73 per share acquisition offer. The stock shows bullish technical signals with strong moving averages, though RSI indicates overbought conditions. Recent earnings have been mixed, with Q4 2025 beating expectations but Q1 2026 missing. The company maintains solid gross margins of 64.96% but faces declining net income margins, down to 6.01% in 2025 from 25.09% in 2023.
The outlook is heavily influenced by the pending acquisition, offering a clear exit near current levels. Risks include shareholder litigation over deal fairness and fundamental profitability pressures. With a high P/E of 103.03, the stock's upside appears capped without the deal, while the $73 bid provides a near-term floor. Investors should weigh acquisition completion probability against operational challenges.
Trailing returns across standard periods
Hormel Foods is a protein-focused branded food company. Its brands include its namesake Hormel, Spam, Jennie-O, Dinty Moore, Applegate, Wholly Guacamole, and Skippy. The vast majority of the company's revenue is U.S.-based: 64% U.S. retail, 28% U.S. food service, and 8% international. By product type, in fiscal 2021, 23% of revenue was shelf-stable foods, 18% was poultry (branded and commodity), 55% was other perishable food, and 3% was other, primarily nutritional products. The company holds the number-one market position in shelf-stable meat, shelf-stable ready meals, pepperoni, natural/organic deli meat, and guacamole and the number-two position in turkey, bacon, chilled ready meals, and peanut butter.
Read more on HRL →Based in Minnesota, Bio-Techne is a life sciences manufacturer supplying consumables and instruments for the pharma, biotech, academic, and diagnostic markets. The company reports in two segments, protein sciences (75% of revenue), and diagnostics and genomics (25%). The protein-focused segment makes equipment and associated consumables for protein characterization and analysis and sells antibodies for research and clinical purposes. In diagnostics, Bio-Techne provides controls and calibrators for diagnostic manufacturers and has a portfolio of diagnostic oncology assays. The United States accounts for about 55% of revenue, and the firm also has operations in EMEA (20% of sales), the U.K. (5%), and APAC (15%), with the rest of the world accounting for the remaining 5%.
Read more on TECH →