Price hikes hurt Maple Leaf’s sales

Article Excerpt

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. $13 (Toronto symbol MFI; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 140.0 million; Market cap: $1.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.4; Dividend yield: 1.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.mapleleaf.ca) recently increased the prices of its meat products to offset rising costs of animal feed after last year’s drought in the U.S. The recent drop in the value of the yen has also made its pork products more expensive in Japan. As a result, Maple Leaf’s sales fell 4.1% in the first quarter of 2013, to $1.1 billion from $1.2 billion a year earlier. If you exclude the cost of a major restructuring, which includes building new plants and eliminating unprofitable products, Maple Leaf lost $0.06 a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $0.06 a share. Due to new accounting rules for pensions, Maple Leaf has cut its gross margin (gross profits as a percentage of sales) target for 2015 to 11.7% from 12.5%. That’s still a big…