Tyson Reports 2nd-Quarter Profit Up 4.4%

Tyson Foods Inc. posted earnings of $166 million, or 44 cents per share, on Monday for the quarter that ended March 31.

That’s up 4.4 percent from last year’s second quarter, when the Springdale-based meat processor reported earnings of $159 million, or 42 cents per share.

The company beat the average earnings estimate of 38 cents per share from 15 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 3.38 percent to $8.27 billion.

“Our multiprotein business again proved advantageous, producing solid earnings for the fiscal second quarter,” Tyson’s president and CEO Donnie Smith said in a news release. “We were pleased with the rate of improvement in our chicken business. The chicken, pork and prepared foods segments all were in or above their normalized operating margin ranges, while beef essentially broke even despite extremely challenging market conditions.”

Smith said he expects the company to gain momentum in the third and fourth quarters, with potential earnings of $2 per share for the year.

On Thursday, Tyson declared a quarterly dividend of 4 cents per share of Class A common stock and 3.6 cents per share of Class B common stock, payable Sept. 14 to shareholders of record at the close of business Aug. 31.In mid-morning trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, Tyson’s shares were at $18.61, up 57 cents or 3.17 percent from Friday’s close. Shares have traded between $15.60 and $21.06 in the past year.