Based on the aggregated intelligence of 165,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, food distributor SYSCO (NYSE: SYY) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at SYSCO's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

SYSCO facts

Headquarters (Founded)

Houston (1969)

Market Cap

$17.7 billion

Industry

Food distributors

Trailing-12-Month Revenue

$36.0 billion

Management

CEO William DeLaney, III (since 2009)
CFO Robert Kreidler (since 2009)

Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years)

32.2%

Cash/Debt

$652.8 million / $2.5 billion

Dividend Yield

3.3%

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 97% of the 1,158 members who have rated SYSCO believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include FinancialSteward and tekennedy.

Just a couple weeks ago, FinancialSteward tapped SYSCO as a tasty way to profit: "dominant position in industry, should have good growth when economy begins to improve, nice dividend."

In fact, CAPS tekennedy pitched SYSCO late last year:

Sysco is an amazingly run company which is by far the market leader in a highly fragmented market (there is no company close to it and they only have roughly 17% market share) with strong competitive advantages. The company earns spectacular returns on capital with a highly scalable operating structure, leading to the ability to profitably grow for some time. I hope to see them opportunisticly use the billion or so dollars they have to continue their acquisition of smaller companies which has historically earned high returns. The 2 concerns which I would potentially have would be 1) a general reduction in eating outside the home, 2) increasing number of chain restraunts as a percentage of total restraunts.

A switch to a larger percentage of chain restraunts would lead to lesser profitability. Sysco serves these customers through their SYGMA segment, which has been a drain on profitability as these customers have much greater bargaining power resulting in much lower margins (losses in some years).

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