Tyson Foods (TSN) Q2 Earnings & Sales Beat; EPS View Up

Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) posted second-quarter fiscal 2016 results, wherein earnings and revenue beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

In the second quarter, adjusted earnings of $1.07 per share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 96 cents by 11.45% and improved 42.7% from the year-ago tally of 75 cents, backed by higher margins.

Revenues and Margins

Net sales slipped 8.1% to $9.170 billion due to lower sales across most of the segments like chicken, beef, pork and prepared foods segments. Sales, however, inched past our estimate of $9.16 billion by 0.1%. Sales volume declined 0.9%, while average sales price (ASP) went down 7.3%.

Tyson's adjusted operating income increased 27.3% to $704 million due to lower feed costs. Adjusted operating margin rose 220 basis points (bps) to 7.7%.

Segment Details

Chicken: Sales at this segment decreased 3.25% year over year to $2.73 billion, as a 1.7% increase in sales volume was offset by a 4.9% reduction in average price. Volumes grew on the back of stronger demand for chicken products and mix of rendered product sales. Meanwhile, the reduced pricing was a result of a drop in feed ingredient costs, partially offset by mix changes.

Beef: Sales at this segment declined 11.9% year over year to $3.7 billion, as 2.8% increase in sales volume was offset by a 14.2% dip in average price. ASP declined due to higher domestic availability of fed cattle supplies, while sales volume was hurt by reduction in live cattle processed.

Pork: Pork segment sales plunged 1.16% year over year to $1.19 billion as 3.1% increase in sales volume was offset by a 4.1% drop in average price.

Prepared Foods: Sales at Prepared Foods fell 3.6% to $1.80 billion due to a 0.3% decline in volumes and 3.3% fall in ASP. Adjusted sales volume slipped due to a change in sales mix in addition to the avian influenza impact on turkey operations. Adjusted ASP slipped primarily due to a decline in input costs, partially offset by a change in product mix.

Other: In the first quarter, the company’s International segment was shifted under ‘Other’ following the sale of the Mexico and Brazil chicken operations in fiscal 2015. The Other segment also includes the foreign operations related to raising and processing live chickens in China and India and third-party merger and integration costs.

Sales nosedived to $86 million from $222 million in the year-ago quarter.

Fiscal 2016 Guidance

For fiscal 2016, Tyson maintains sales guidance at approximately $37 billion, lower than the year-ago level due to declines in beef, pork and feed prices.

The company expects an increase in overall domestic protein production (chicken, beef, pork and turkey) of roughly 2–3% year over year.

The company projects annual earnings in the range of $4.20 to $4.30 per share compared to a range of $3.85 to $3.95 expected earlier.

Tyson carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Other favorably ranked stocks in the consumer staple sector include Estee Lauder Inc. (NYSE:EL) , Altria Group Inc. (NYSE:MO) and Sysco Corporation (NYSE:SYY) , all carrying the same Zacks Rank as Tyson.