General Mills History

General Mills began as a simple flour mill in 1866, on the banks of a Mississippi
River. It was powered by St. Anthony Falls and was opposite the Pillsbury flour mill.
Although catastrophe struck in 1878 when one of the flour mills exploded, killing 18, it did not deter the mill’s founder, Cadwallader Washburn, who had already built a second mill at that time. He was determined to improve the safety of flour milling to avoid a repeat disaster, and began researching and innovating in earnest. His team researched not just flour milling procedures, but nutrition and innovative food design as well. During the Depression, General Mills debuted two products still familiar to us today: Bisquick and Kix. Cheerios, originally called Cheeri-Oats, was

After the war ended, the company continued in its new market of government research and development by pursuing contracts with the Navy the develop the flight recorder (now called the black box) and also balloons that would travel the upper atmosphere gathering information.
The company did not lose its domestic side of the business, however; it developed small kitchen appliances and in 1954 first expanded internationally by selling Bisquick and Cheerios in Canada. Why stop now? General Mills saw no reason to limit itself, and so it expanded into toys next, even purchasing Parker Bros., known for the Monopoly board game. The acquisitions continued through the years, leading up to the great
GENERAL MILLS: SUMMARY AND EXPANSION PROPOSITION 3 merger between General Mills and Pillsbury in 2001. Pillsbury had a larger international presence that General Mills had previously, so this gave the company a bigger global footprint. It also acquired several natural food brands and a controlling interest in
Yoplait, while divesting itself of its non food companies (“A look back”, n.d.).
General Mills’ long history shows a willingness to innvoate, take risks

This is to indicate that we accounted for the possibility of interest expense, but there was no amount to add.
Net Income:
Net income can be simply defined as all revenue minus all expenses, or the “bottom line”. We add the expenses not yet accounted for in our previous calculations, including income tax.
Formula: Net income = all revenue - all expenses
Calculation: $1,657,500,000 = $15,619,800,000 - $13,962,300,000
● Revenue found from selected financial data (pg. 14 ‘net sales’)
● Expenses found by adding expenses from selected financial data (pg. 14)
Earnings per share:
Formula: Earnings per share = total earnings / outstanding shares
GENERAL MILLS: SUMMARY AND EXPANSION PROPOSITION 5
● Note: Total earnings is not the same as revenue, it’s actually defined as: net income - preferred dividends. Because General Mills did not pay preferred dividends, instead we divide net income by outstanding shares:
Calculation: $2.77 = $1,657,500,000 / 598,000,000
● Net income calculated above
● Number of shares taken from selected financial data (pg. 14 ‘average shares outstanding’) Retained earnings:
● Note: This is the money that is reinvested in the company.
Formula: Retained earnings = (TY net income + LY retained earnings) -