logo
Smithfield Foods expects growth in sales, profit on strong packaged meats demand

Smithfield Foods expects growth in sales, profit on strong packaged meats demand

Yahoo25-03-2025

(Reuters) - Smithfield Foods forecast growth in annual sales and adjusted operating profit on Tuesday, helped by strong demand for its packaged meats at grocery stores and benefits from its cost-cutting measures.
The company reported its first quarterly results since going public in January, having been spun-off from the world's largest pork producer WH Group.
Smithfield has shifted toward buying more of the hogs it processes, rather than owning them, which helped in reducing input costs at a time when global demand tempered and costs of raising livestock went up.
The Virginia-headquartered company told Reuters in January it does not plan to close more U.S. pork plants, after it closed its facility in Vernon, California and another in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2023.
It also stands to benefit from focusing on its packaged meats portfolio instead of its hog production business as consumers look to make more nutritious meals at home.
Sales in the packaged meats segment, which accounts for nearly 59% of the company's total sales, rose 2.2% from a year earlier in the fourth quarter.
The company expects fiscal 2025 adjusted operating profit to be between $1.10 billion and $1.30 billion, the mid-point of which is above the $1.12 billion it reported for the 12 months ended December 29, 2024.
While Smithfield warned of tariff risks in its initial public offering prospectus, President Donald Trump's administration said last week it plans to permanently allow U.S. pork and poultry plants to operate more quickly after some were previously given waivers to increase processing line speeds.
Smithfield expects total annual net sales to rise in the low to mid-single-digit percentage range, compared with a 3.4% fall reported in fiscal 2024.
In the fourth quarter, the company's total sales fell 1.2% to $3.95 billion and the company reported a profit per share of 54 cents compared with a loss of 25 cents a year earlier.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

House advances Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID to House-wide vote
House advances Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID to House-wide vote

Fox News

time13 minutes ago

  • Fox News

House advances Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID to House-wide vote

President Donald Trump's $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week. Trump's proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS. The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a "rule vote," which passed mostly along party lines. The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote. But it's not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill. That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process. By dropping the Senate's threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules. House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate's "Byrd Bath," when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines. Whereas that deals with the government's mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year. It's called a "rescissions package," which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year. Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected. Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach. And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would "dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans." Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding. "I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut," he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.

Potential US-China Trade 'deal'highlights US dependence on China's rare earth minerals
Potential US-China Trade 'deal'highlights US dependence on China's rare earth minerals

Forbes

time18 minutes ago

  • Forbes

Potential US-China Trade 'deal'highlights US dependence on China's rare earth minerals

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. has reached a trade deal with China, subject to final approval by Chinese President Xi Jinping. A central component of the deal, reportedly includes expanding U.S. access to Chinese rare earth minerals, in exchange for concessions allowing more Chinese students to attend American universities and the export of sensitive products to China. Though the full details of the deal are still unfolding, the U.S. is at a disadvantage in the negotiations. Reportedly Beijing is only offering a concession that it had already offered a month ago to lift the blockade on shipments of rare earth minerals. The current deal may be a short-term solution for a much larger, long-term problem. Much attention has been given to the importance of rare earth minerals for electric vehicles, electronics, robots and wind turbines. But rare earth minerals are not just important to the global economy and energy supply. They also play a critical role in defence. Syracuse University Professor Sean McFate claimed that 'what oil was to the 20th century, rare earth minerals are to the 21st." Rare earths minerals are used in almost every form of advanced defence technology. Tanks, lasers, missiles, fighter jets, submarines, and warships all rely on rare earth minerals. Just one F-35 fighter jet uses about 900 pounds of rare earth minerals. Consisting of a group 17 metals (and ranging from heavy to light), each rare earth mineral offers distinct properties and uses. Minerals such as neodymium is a key component in missile guidance systems, such as the Tomahawk cruise missile, helping it to be more precise and manoeuvrable. Yttrium is used to coat jet engines to ensure that they don't melt mid-flight due to high temperatures. Gadolinium is crucial for sonar and radiation detection systems and radiation shielding, especially in nuclear-powered submarines. Though there is an abundance of rare earth minerals with 110 million tonnes of deposits across the world, China dominates the market, producing more than 70% of the total supply. While the US is the second largest producer generating 14% of the total, 70% of U.S. rare earth minerals imports come from China. Worldwide China maintains a near monopoly-accounting for 61% of rare earth production and 92% of their processing. China's dominance is even greater in heavy rare earth minerals—which are more critical to the production of defence equipment . It processes nearly 100% of heavy rare earth minerals. At one point Vietnam also had some capacity to process these types of minerals, but its facility was shut down in 2024 and is no longer operable. China is also the world's sole producer of samarium, a light rare earth metal that is vital for military hardware including building fighter jets, missiles, electric warfare systems, and radar and sonar applications. Samarium magnets are essential for signal generation and play an important role in navigation, target tracking and threat detection. Samarium magnets are also valued because they can tolerate high temperatures without losing their magnetic force, which is critical to withstanding the heat created by fast moving motors. Currently the U.S. is lagging far behind in production capacity—and has only has two domestic rare earth mining centers located in the state of Georgia and in Mountain Pass, California. But the U.S. hadn't always trailed China in this area. From the 1960s until the 1990s, the U.S. was the global leader in rare earth production. This all changed in 1998 when Molycorp, then the only U.S. rare earth producer, shut down its chemical processing operations after a radioactive wastewater leak. At the same time, production had already shifted to China due to low labour costs and lax environmental standards. Since then concerns over rare earth dependency have circulated in Washington for years. By 2010 policymakers were raising the alarm that the U.S. was losing its rare earth production capacity to produce minerals that are critical to national security just as China was tightening export controls. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Defence earmarked more than $439 million to build a domestic 'mine to magnet' supply chain. Additionally, in 2022, the company MP Materials was awarded a $35 million contract from the Department of Defence to build a facility that could process heavy rare earth elements in Mountain Pass. Biden also tried to issue a large contract to construct two samarium production facilities, but this plan never materialized. As part of Trump's ongoing trade war with China, Beijing strategically applied export restrictions (requiring domestic producers to apply for export licences from the Chinese government) in April on seven medium and heavy earth metals including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, which are all important to the defence industry. Trump's announcement of a deal may mean that these export restrictions on rare earth minerals have been reversed. But knowing how important these minerals are to U.S. national security, there are no guarantees that China won't rescind this offer in the future and use its rare earth dominance to push for a deal that's even more favorable to its own terms.

House passes Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID
House passes Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID

Fox News

time33 minutes ago

  • Fox News

House passes Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID

President Donald Trump's $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week. Trump's proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS. The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a "rule vote," which passed mostly along party lines. The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote. But it's not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill. That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process. By dropping the Senate's threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules. House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate's "Byrd Bath," when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines. Whereas that deals with the government's mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year. It's called a "rescissions package," which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year. Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected. Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach. And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would "dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans." Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding. "I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut," he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store