Cal-Maine Foods Drops on Downgrade
(Cal-Maine story updated with stock-price movements and additional analyst comments.)
NEW YORK (
) -- Eggs producer and distributor
Cal-Maine Foods
(CALM) - Get Report
stock dropped by as much as 3.8% Tuesday after brokerage firm Jesup & Lamont downgraded the stock to hold from buy.
Cal-Maine stock has fallen 2.8% to $34.90 in afternoon trading.
The call was made after Cal-Maine reported third-quarter earnings that triggered some caution among investors. Although the the third-quarter earnings themselves blew past analysts' estimates, Cal-Maine provided a cautionary look-ahead. Also, its earnings in the quarter seemed to be driven more by lower feed costs than by sales.
"We continue to see a favorable balance between egg supply and egg demand for the coming year. However, feed costs could continue to be volatile," Cal-Maine Foods CEO Fred Adams said in a statement on March 29. The company will pay a cash dividend of about 48 cents a share to holders of its common and Class A common stock for the third quarter.
Stephens analyst Farha Aslam maintained a $33 price target and equal-weight/volatile rating on Cal-Maine subsequent to the company's report.
For the third quarter, Cal-Maine reported net income of $34.5 million, or $1.45 a share, compared with net income of $30.8 million, or $1.30 a share, in the year-ago period, beating the Wall Street consensus estimate of $1.34 a share amid lower feed costs for the quarter.
Net sales for the third quarter were $271.2 million compared with net sales of $270 million for the same quarter the year before, falling below the Wall Street consensus estimate of $284.6 million, as restaurant and other food service sales continued to reflect weak demand.
Cal-Main said that consumers hadn't been dining out as frequently in this economic environment, though egg sales were fairly good.
Still, in his research note, Jesup & Lamont analyst Stephen Share said that while "egg prices were better than we expected . . . egg volumes declined 2.7%." He added that "light customer demand" caused the company to cut outside purchases by 13.5% to 48.7 million dozen eggs.
-- Reported by Andrea Tse in New York
Follow TheStreet.com on
and become a fan on
Copyright 2010 TheStreet.com Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.