Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale said Monday that second-quarter earnings rose 4.4 percent to $166 million, or 44 cents per share, as growth in chicken, pork and prepared foods made up for a loss in its beef segment.
The company beat the average earnings estimate of 38 cents per share from 15 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 3.38 percent to $8.27 billion.
"Our multiprotein business again proved advantageous, producing solid earnings for the fiscal second quarter," Tyson’s president and CEO Donnie Smith said in a news release.
"We were pleased with the rate of improvement in our chicken business. The chicken, pork and prepared foods segments all were in or above their normalized operating margin ranges, while beef essentially broke even despite extremely challenging market conditions."
Smith said he expects the company to gain momentum in the third and fourth quarters, with potential earnings of $2 per share for the year.
During the quarter, Tyson’s beef business reported an operating loss of $1 million, having been hit with "volatile market conditions and reduced demand for beef products" in the first sixth months of year.
"The difficult margin conditions we experienced in the second quarter of fiscal 2012 continued into the early part of the third quarter, but we expect them to recover throughout the remainder of the of the second-half of the fiscal year due to improved cattle supplies and typical seasonal demand," the company said. "For fiscal 2012, we believe our beef segment will be profitable, returning to our normalized range in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012."
Other food segments picked up the slack, with chicken reporting operating income of $145 million, or 5 percent of sales. Pork had operating income of $115 million, or 8.4 percent of sales. Prepared foods had operating income $44 million, or 5.5 percent of sales, the company said.
On Thursday, Tyson declared a quarterly dividend of 4 cents per share of Class A common stock and 3.6 cents per share of Class B common stock, payable Sept. 14 to shareholders of record at the close of business Aug. 31.
In mid-morning trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, Tyson’s shares (NYSE: %%TSN%%) were at $18.61, up 57 cents or 3.17 percent from Friday’s close. Shares have traded between $15.60 and $21.06 in the past year.
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