Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE:HRL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Moskow: Okay. And could you help us a little bit just on your outlook for Turkey in fiscal 2023, because it must be a pretty wide range of outcomes given the uncertainties around AI. And is your outlook different for commodity than it is for value-add? Is it still very positive for commodity and weak for value-add? How should we think about it?

Jim Snee: Yeah. You’re opening statement is correct. Again, Rob, is that there’s a lot of uncertainty as we think about the jobs business going forward. On our last quarterly call, we had talked about us being back to more normalized levels after the first quarter. Now, we’re talking about the back half of the year. And then everything that you just described really all depends on the meat availability in our system and then what’s available elsewhere. So there is just a lot of uncertainty in the jobs business throughout 2023.

Robert Moskow: Can I assume that you’re assuming flat profits in Turkey just as a starting point for 2023, or how should I think about it?

Jim Snee: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a good starting point. We’ve got feed costs. You’ve got breast meat markets, you’ve got supply. There’s just so many variables there as we progress throughout the year. We’ll certainly be keeping you well-advised.

Robert Moskow: Okay. Thanks.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Tom Palmer at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tom Palmer: Thanks for the question. I wanted to get some clarity maybe on the expected earnings cadence for the year. You made mention, for instance, of certain pork cuts rolling over. It sounds like maybe we see more of a flow-through of that in the first quarter than we did in the fourth quarter. At the same time, there’s some operational changes underway. Maybe those present some initial cost headwinds. So how does this shake out just as we think about earnings progression for the year?

Jim Snee: Good morning, Tom. As we’re thinking about the earnings growth that we described, I mean we expect it to be fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, half one and half two. Clearly, we’ve identified the major impacts that are out there in terms of feed and the pension costs that we’ve already talked about several times. And as we go throughout the year, we we’ve talked about the need to really now find some supply chain savings. We’ve talked about the fact that we expect fill rates to improve — continue to improve as we progress. We’ve got some pricing that will continue to roll forward. International, we expect to moderate and improve throughout the year. And so there are some things that will happen sequentially, but as we’re looking at the business, we do expect it to be pretty evenly distributed between half one and half two.

Tom Palmer: Understood. Thank you. And then I just wanted to ask on the cash balance approaching $1 billion. You highlighted that there’s really not any near-term debt due, and it’s pretty low cost. So how should we think about deploying this? I mean is this — you’ll retire some debt in the coming year? Or is it more — this is put aside as a way to effectively fund M&A without having to go to capital markets and maybe a higher interest rate environment? And then just with regards to that M&A side, I think you talked about international being an opportunity at the Investor Day. Is that still the priority, or just given macro uncertainty, should maybe domestic be more of a priority?