Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Amy Tu: Ken thank you for the question and pointing out profitability, our non-profitability over the last few years. I think Donnie is absolutely right. This is our growth strategy. We’ve talked about in the past where global population growth will happen and will happen outside the United States. And so we’re taking our existing footprint right now. We’re putting in place the kind of execution fundamentals that we need to have. And then we’re also discussing with our other segments, the opportunities that lie before us, given the raw materials that we have here in the United States. But Donnie just put forward exactly what we have outside the United States with our strong brands. We are launching smart factories. We are able to do things more quickly outside the United States which will give us ultimately a benefit for the entire company. So more to come, but we are very excited about what we see right now.

John Tyson: Hey, Ken, Also, this is John. And I think it’s just worth pointing out. The business has been profitable over the last few years. And on an EBITDA basis, we look at something in the high single digits for that. So I think there is financial performance to support the continued investment there, but at the right…

Ken Goldman: Yes, there is more to do it. Okay, perfect. Thank you, John.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Ben Bienvenu with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Donnie King: Hi, Ben.

Ben Bienvenu: Hey, good morning. I want to ask a follow-up on chicken. Donnie, I think you characterized the underperformance in the first quarter as two-thirds of the market, one-third Tyson-specific as you look forward, understanding that your view is, and I think we would agree that recovery is underway in kind of commodity chicken fundamentals, what is the critical path from an internal standpoint to improve that business from here? I think last year, the focus was hatchability, that was a big opportunity around growing capacity utilization what are the focus points as we move through fiscal €˜23?

Donnie King: Thanks, Ben. I will make a few remarks, and then I’ll pass it to Wes for a little more detail. As I said in my opening comments to €“ also in the first question, we still feel really good about our chicken business. We think we have a good plan. Yes, we got hitting the mouth in Q1 because of all the protein on the market in Q1. And our tray pack, our fresh chicken business did materialize as we had expected. And so we kind a created €“ we created our own issue with that because of what happened in the market. But I would tell you, we still have tremendous opportunity and upside as we execute this business. And it’s nothing exciting, but it’s the fundamentals of labor and yield and spend and just maintaining growing this business to fill up our capacity and service the needs that we have.

And I would remind you that you and everyone else that we place chickens based on what our demand plan looks like is in service of our demand plan. So as we go back and look at what happened in Q1 and think about the future, in Q1 strategically, the only thing that went awry was the fact that the demand didn’t materialize in the place at retail in which we thought it would. And so that triggered a number of other inefficient moves and activities. But again, we think Q1, you’ve seen the numbers, Q2 is seasonally softer. But as we start getting towards the to that Q3 time period, we feel good about it, and we don’t have something that’s broken here that like a hatch issue and a genetics issue, the time horizon for fixing this is much shorter than many of those things.

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