How has the Associated British Foods share price performed over the past year?

It has been 12 months of turmoil for UK shares, with the Covid-19 crisis crashing the economy and unsettling the stock market. Unsurprisingly, investors have been laser-focused on the share prices of some of the UK’s biggest companies - including Associated British Foods (LON:ABF).

Associated British Foods is one of just 200 UK-quoted stocks with a market capitalisation of more than £1.0 billion. In fact, the stock is currently valued at £13,973m. These top tier shares include some of the world’s best known companies. They have a huge presence in the investment funds and pension portfolios of millions of savers. They are also some of the biggest dividend payers.

So how have shares in Associated British Foods performed? Well, over the past 12 months, the stock has seen an absolute return of -28.4%.

But given the volatility of the market in 2020 - which has rocked some industry sectors very badly - it’s also worth looking at how the shares have performed in relation to the overall market.

On a relative basis, shares in Associated British Foods have moved by -13.1% over the past year and by -17.6% over the past six months.

But what now?

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Do analysts rate it as a buy, sell or hold?

Regardless of recent performance, the main concern for investors is what the future holds. In uncertain economic conditions, it's often difficult to get an accurate view. The good news when it comes to the market's biggest stocks is that analysts know these businesses better than most, so they are best-placed to make accurate predictions. That shows up in their Buy, Hold and Sell recommendations.

Among the analysts covering Associated British Foods, there are currently:

• 3 Buy recommendations

• 10 Hold recommendations

• 0 Sell recommendations

With this kind of information, it's possible to start forming a view about the outlook for any share. A combination of recent price performance and analyst recommendations gives you a flavour of whether the market is expecting a bright future - or whether there are causes for concern.

It's also worth looking at the profile of the stock to understand whether it has strong positive exposure to important factors like Value, Quality and Momentum. On that basis, Stockopedia currently classifies Associated British Foods as a style neutral. You can read more about what that means here.

What next?

There are all sorts of factors that could affect Associated British Foods's share price this year – we simplify them into easy to understand scores with our Stockopedia StockReport. Click here to take a look at the StockReport for Associated British Foods – you might discover some surprising things you didn’t know.