Earnings Beat The Perfect Spice As Darling Ingredients Inc (DAR)’s Shares Soar

That’s exactly what ended up happening, as Darling’s initiative to shutter under-performing plants and improve performance in other segments by cutting jobs and securing cheaper raw materials helped improve its bottom line results, even as revenue declined sharply, by 14.9% year-over-year to $859.3 million. The revenue dip was almost equally felt across both the food ingredients and feed ingredients segments, which declined by 14.5% and 14.9% respectively. The much smaller fuel ingredients segment declined by 40% to $46.5 million.

The mixed reaction among funds earlier this year has essentially played out with the stock, which is up only marginally since the end of March, despite the big gains today. That mixed reaction appears to have continued throughout the second quarter, based on the funds that have filed for the June 30 reporting period. Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management has reported a position of 2.22 million shares, down slightly from the beginning of the quarter. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies slashed its holding by 67% to 183,000 shares, and several funds have closed positions, including Bryn Mawr, Third Avenue, Balyasny Asset Management, and LionEye Capital, which was previously one of the only food stocks in its portfolio. On the other hand, we see notable new positions from Breton Hill Capital, Peak6 Investments, and Ken Grossman and Glen Schneider’s SG Capital Management, which has a new 684,626-share position.

We’ll continue to monitor the smart money activity in Darling Ingredients Inc (NYSE:DAR) as the remainder of 13F filings pour in to see if we can get a clearer consensus on the smart money’s sentiment for the future.

Disclosure: None