After two straight years of sales declines and a flat FY 2018, sales for General Mills' fiscal 2019 (ended May 26) grew by more than a billion dollars, to $16.865 billion. That's still nearly a billion dollars below the 2015 level of $17.630 billion.
Operating profit was up a bit, $2.5 billion vs. 2018's $2.4 billion, but net earnings were down 18 percent to $1.753 billion, which was in line with nets in 2017 and 2016.
Capital expenditures of $538 million were the lowest in at least four years.
A big sales bump came from the acquisition of Blue Buffalo pet foods.
"In fiscal 2019 we executed well and met or exceeded each of our key full-year financial targets, including organic net sales growth and constant-currency growth in net sales, adjusted operating profit, and adjusted diluted EPS," the company wrote in its 10-K annual report filing.
"Relative to fiscal 2018, we improved our net sales performance in U.S. Yogurt and our emerging market businesses, we increased our contributions from innovation, we stabilized our distribution trends in the U.S., and we generated greater benefits from net price realization and mix through our Strategic Revenue Management capability. These results were partially offset by challenging performance for U.S. snack bars, leaving our organic net sales growth at the low end of the range outlined in our initial annual targets."
