Source: Unsplash 

The portfolio of stocks I started building on September 8, at a one stock per week pace for the next year, is named Vista. I will select its twelfth stock this weekend. Vista is the sixth portfolio I've built (at a one dividend dog per-week pace) since 2014. Six portfolios = VI for Vista!

Vista is planned to Look Ahead for Outstanding, Proven, Dividend Winners. (Like Aristocrats)

Today I'll review the fourth of five consumer defensive sector stock candidates vying to be that thirteenth selection in the Vista portfolio.

My subject today is a mid-cap packaged food company named Flowers Foods Inc. Its trading ticker symbol is FLO. This is my first report on Flowers Foods Inc for Vista and while I reviewed it for my Volio DOTW portfolio, I did not choose it even though it was in a previous one.

Flowers Foods Inc is an American company producing bakery food for retail and foodservice across the United States. The product portfolio includes fresh bread, buns, rolls, snack cakes, and tortillas. 

The company distributes to supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants. The operating segments are divided into direct store delivery, which provides fresh bread, tortillas, cakes, and rolls; and the warehouse segment, which distributes fresh snack cakes and frozen bread and rolls. 

The key brands are Nature's Own, White wheat, Cobblestone Bread, Wonder, and Tastykake.

The company was formerly known as Flowers Industries and changed its name to Flowers Foods, Inc. in 2001. 

Flowers Foods, Inc. was founded in 1919 and is headquartered in Thomasville, Georgia.

I use three key data points to gauge dividend equities or funds like Flowers Foods Inc:

(1) Price

(2) Dividends

(3) Returns

Those three basic keys best tell whether a company has made, is making, and will make money. 

FLO Price

Flower's price per share closed at $22.12 today. A year ago its price was $21.53. Price is up $0.59 or 2.74% on the year.

If Flower's stock trades in the range of $18 to $26 this next year, its recent $22.12 price might rise by $2.78 to reach $25.00 by December 3, 2021. 

FLO Dividends

Flower's most recently declared quarterly dividend was $0.20 payable December 11th. Dividends are estimated to total $0.80 per share annually and yield 3.62% at yesterday's $22.12 closing price.

FLO Gains?

Adding the $0.80 annual anticipated dividend to my $2.78 optimistic estimate of Flowers Foods Inc's price upside shows a $3.58 potential gross gain, per share, to be reduced by any costs to trade the shares.  

Put little over $1,000.00 today in Flowers Foods Inc at $22.12 and we would buy 45 shares of FLO stock.

A $10 broker fee (if any) paid half at purchase and half at sale could cost us   $0.22 per share.

Subtract that maybe $0.22 brokerage cost from my estimated  $3.58 gross gain per share results in a net gain of $3.36 X 45 shares = $151.12 for a 15.1% net gain on a $995.40 investment.

So it goes that Flower's Foods Inc shows a possible 15.1% net gain including a 3.62% dividend yield. It could be more, it could be less.  

All of the estimates above are speculation based on the past history of  Flower's Foods Inc. Only time and money invested in this stock will determine its worth.