One by one over the past month, the first-quarter financial reports of the top food and beverage companies expanded the story their 2020 full year reports told: The pandemic continues to be financially good to them.
“Land O’Lakes sees best quarter in a decade” was one of the headlines. “Beating analysts expectations” and “prompting the company to raise its annual sales forecast” were commonly used phrases from many of the companies. Even Coca-Cola, which had been one of the few companies to suffer during the pandemic, surprised analysts with “a return of global unit case volume to pre-pandemic levels.”
Dirk Van de Put, chairman and CEO of Mondelez, could have been speaking for most of the food and beverage industry when he summed his company’s performance: “Our first quarter results demonstrate that we are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger, as we continue to build upon our track record of robust growth, profitability and cash generation.”
Very briefly, following are some of the first-quarter (or similar time period) financial reports:
- More about Mondelez: Net revenues increased 7.9%, driven by organic net revenue growth of 3.8%, favorable currency factors and acquisitions. Notable was North American revenue growth of 4.3%. “We saw continued improvement across emerging markets [and] healthy demand in developed markets,” Van de Put said.
- More about Coca-Cola: Sales increased 5% for the first quarter. “We are encouraged by improvements in our business, especially in markets where vaccine availability is increasing and economies are opening up,” said Chairman and CEO James Quincey.
- McCormick & Co.’s sales grew 22% for its first quarter, which ended Feb. 28, compared to the same period of 2020. As a result, officials raised their annual sales growth forecast to 8-10%, raising profit expectations, too. Factors included the continued trend toward in-home cooking and the November acquisition of the Cholula hot sauce brand.
- Conagra Brands was another company with a different fiscal year and similar thanks for in-home consumption. Sales grew 8.5% for its fiscal third quarter ended Feb. 28, fueled by 11.7% and 10.8% increases in sales for frozen foods, and grocery and snacks, respectively.
- An increase in treating occasions is behind Hershey’s sales increase of 12.7% for the first quarter, prompting the company to raise its annual sales forecast range by two points to 4% to 6%,
- Keurig Dr Pepper’s sales grew 11.1%, buoyed by sales increases of 13.7% in its coffee pod business and 7.4% in its beverage business.
- Nestle’s first-quarter organic sales growth of 7.7% is more than double the increase projected by analysts, with coffee, dairy and pet care units contributing. Sales growth for the Americas hit 7.2%.
- Also surpassing analysts’ expectations was PepsiCo’s 6.8% sales growth.
- Kraft Heinz, too, beat expectations with first-quarter sales increasing 3.9%, with strong results across business units.
- Unilever was up 5.7% for the quarter, although its beauty and personal care units drove most of the growth.
Back to Land O’Lakes: Year-over-year first-quarter net sales grew 4%. Earnings for its dairy foods unit increased due to retail sales growth and rapid recovery in the foodservice market.