Hormel Foods misses on revenue amid ‘volatile’ environment

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss earnings results from Hormel Foods.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Let's take a look at shares of Hormel Foods, which are down about 2% following its fourth quarter earnings report. It topped profit estimates, but missed on projected revenue. The company saw net sales decrease 5% on the quarter. The company calling out the success of Jennie-O turkey during the quarter as a driver of its profit growth, but elsewhere, of course, they are seeing a volatile environment, what the CEO, Jim Snee, called a volatile, complex, and high cost environment again next year as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, Jim, friend of the show, on numerous times. This guy just continues to get it done. Made that acquisition for Planters. That has started to infiltrate the financial statements of Hormel.

But the big call out here really continues to be two things. One, they're actually having success with higher end products when it comes to food, at least. Black Label bacon called out as seeing volume and sales growth. And then Spam, Spam has just been a hot product for this company, really, over the past five years. Continues to just be on fire in terms of sales seemingly every single quarter.

BRAD SMITH: They've also been going through an integration of the Planters business as well. And that really kind of dovetails into their six strategic priorities as part of this go forward initiative that they're also continuing to alert the Street of.

And that's just another instance where you're hearing more executives over the course of this earnings season try to point investors' attention towards what that three to five-year time horizon may look like, especially as they are going through some of these transformations. But as of right now, they're saying that they're able to successfully integrate at least the Planters business. We'll see where other parts of the business can at least hold steady right now.

JULIE HYMAN: The stock appears to be down, by the way, because the forecasts for 2023 are below estimates for both sales and profit.

BRIAN SOZZI: Want to have an amazing night? Fry up some Spam. Wow.

BRAD SMITH: An amazing night.

BRIAN SOZZI: So good. I mean, it's just so--

JULIE HYMAN: I've never had Spam, so.

BRIAN SOZZI: --good. I never had it, too, until the pandemic, and I opened up a can. I sliced it up and fried it up. I'm like, wow, this is really good. Really good. Very salty. Very salty.

BRAD SMITH: I'll fire up DoorDash and see if they can deliver it to me [INAUDIBLE].

BRIAN SOZZI: Oh, maybe. They have, like, 1,300 fewer employees now, so.

JULIE HYMAN: Not the people-- those aren't the people driving the-- making the deliveries, yeah.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

BRIAN SOZZI: Gotcha, OK.