Pilgrim’s Pride posts slightly higher sales in FY 2018

GREELEY — Pilgrim’s Pride (Nasdaq: PPC), a Greeley-based poultry producer, had sales of nearly $10.94 billion for fiscal year 2018, up from about $10.77 billion the previous year.

While the company’s yearly revenues improved in 2018, fourth quarter results were down compared to the same period in 2017. Sales in the final quarter of 2018 were about $2.66 billion, down more than three percent from the $2.74 billion sales figure posted in the fourth quarter of 2017.

“In the U.S. we endured a very challenging environment in commodity chicken, slower than expected recovery from weather disruptions at some complexes, partially offset by an improvement in operating results from Prepared Foods,” Pilgrim’s Pride CEO Bill Lovette said in a prepared statement.

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Quarterly operating income margins for the company were higher in Mexico (5.3 percent) and Europe (3.8 percent) than in the United States (0.3 percent).

“In Europe we improved the performance through expected synergies but were impacted by higher feed inputs as a result of a drought that will be passed to our prices in coming quarters,” Lovette said. “Our Mexican operations produced a very strong first half, a weaker than seasonal (third quarter), followed by a rebound in (the fourth quarter of 2018). The diversity of our portfolio of bird sizes, geographical market exposure, our culture and our people, are what fundamentally differentiate us from the competition, giving us the potential to reduce volatility and generate higher margins over time, and the results for 2018 represented the power of that strategy.”