Hormel 4th-qtr profit jumps despite sales decline
Hormel Foods Corp
The company, which also makes Spam luncheon meat, Dinty Moore canned stew and Jennie-O turkey, raised its annual dividend by 10.5 percent to 84 cents per share.
Hormel earned $103.9 million, or 77 cents a share, for the fourth quarter ended October 25, up from $67.8 million, or 50 cents a share, a year earlier.
Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 68 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Sales fell 10 percent to $1.68 billion, falling short of analysts' forecast of $1.82 billion. Hormel said the sales shortfall stemmed from lower pork and turkey prices, a planned drop in production of Jennie-O turkey products, the continued weak consumer environment and other factors.
Hormel forecast fiscal 2010 earnings of $2.63 per share to $2.73 per share, up from a fiscal 2009 profit of $2.53 per share. Analysts' average forecast has been $2.59 per share.
(Reporting by Jessica Wohl, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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