Tyson Foods, Inc. (TSN)

Tyson Foods produces chicken, beef and pork — three businesses with cycles that do not coincide.

Meat processing earns on the spread between the price of live animals and the price of the finished product. Chicken gains when feed gets cheaper; beef depends on the cattle herd, which farmers shrank for years because of drought and which rebuilds slowly, because raising a cow is measured in years.

That divergence is the point of the portfolio: when one meat loses money, another usually does not. The company is shifting toward branded prepared foods, where the mark-up is higher and price depends less on commodity markets. Risks: feed prices, herd size, avian disease outbreaks and plant labour costs. A dividend is paid.