It hardly seems a surprise that McCormick (MKC) has pulled back sharply. By any reasonable fundamental metric, the stock looked overvalued at recent highs. As attractive as the bull case is - and I owned MKC until just a few months ago - 20x+ EV/EBITDA and 30x+ P/E and P/FCF multiples appeared awfully stretched for what still was, and still is, a relatively low-growth consumer packaged goods play.

Since touching an all-time high at $156 in December, MKC has pulled back about 22%. Roughly half the declines came amid the broad market sell-off in December, which finally interrupted a huge bull run in McCormick's shares (which had risen over 50% in a little over six months). The second half came last week, when an apparently disappointing Q4 report led McCormick's stock to drop 10.5% in trading on Thursday.

Back at $121, I'm a little intrigued - again - by MKC. As I wrote in November, I sold my shares at $135 not long after the Q3 report in September. But I've backed MKC ever since the company acquired Frank's Red Hot and French's from Reckitt Benckiser (OTCPK:RBGLY) in 2017, and argued as recently as July that the stock deserved to be priced at a premium to the CPG space as a whole.

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