Pilgrim’s Pride shares slide on 2015 earnings report

GREELEY — Chicken-processing giant Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Nasdaq: PPC) on Wednesday announced that the company is doubling the size of its previously announced share-repurchase program to try and help boost shareholder value.

The announcement came as the company reported a decrease in earnings for 2015.

Greeley-based Pilgrim’s Pride, which is majority-owned by JBS, said its stock repurchase authorization — to be carried out over the next 12 months — has been increased from $150 million to $300 million. The company said in its earnings report that it had bought back $99.2 million in shares during 2015.

The price of Pilgrim’s Pride shares has increased some since October, but is still down by roughly a third from just less than a year ago. The company’s share price, which had increased 34 cents to close at $22.44 Wednesday, plunged nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading after the earnings and repurchase program announcements.

Pilgrim’s Pride posted net income of $645.9 million, or $2.50 per share for 2015, down from $711.6 million, or $2.74 per share in 2014. Revenue for the year was $8.2 billion, down from $8.6 billion.

For the fourth quarter, earnings decreased from $167.2 million, or 64 cents per share in 2014, to $63.1 million, or 25 cents per share in 2015. Revenue slid from $2.1 billion to $2 billion.

“Our case-ready and small-bird operations continued to deliver strong results in spite of challenges in the export markets, while the weakest chicken cutout in the past five years continued to impact the commodity segments of our business, as well as our Mexico operations,” Pilgrim’s Pride CEO Bill Lovette said in the earnings report. “Despite the headwinds, our team managed to deliver margins that are above periods when prices were at similar levels.”

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