Established 1999
     
8,000 companies from USA and India.  
   
Search over 25,500 news articles and 8,000 companies earnings    
 
Market Update : 
Kellogg Company Q4 Earnings Call Transcript
Author: 123jump.com Staff
123jump.com
Last Update: 1:28 AM ET February 16 2010


(Continued)

Email article | Print article

 
Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse

Thanks. I just wanted to know what your outlook is for commodity cost inflation. I don''t think I quite picked it up on the call. The fourth quarter came in a little lighter than we had expected, and yet you''re raising guidance for the internal operating income, so can you give us a sense of what degree that is just related to commodity costs or any kind of incremental cost savings that you''re getting. Why did you raise the guidance?

A. D. David Mackay

Well, just rather specifically on commodity costs, we''re expecting that our cost of goods for the year will rise about 3%, and when you look at that it''s driven by employee benefits and wages, some packaging costs, sugar is at a thirty year high. You know, some things are down, some things are up so you have a lot of offsetting components in there. But you know, pension and employee costs are also in that number, and that''s relatively consistent with what we saw through 2009. What was the second part of the question?

Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse

I think that was the whole question. But to what degree is this pension expense a benefit in 2010 on a comparison basis?

Ronald Dissinger

Pension expense is not a benefit as we move into 2010. This is Ron speaking. Actually we''re seeing our employee related costs and specifically benefit costs increasing including pensions.

Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse

So is it greater than 3% or is it around that same kind of basket level?

Ronald Dissinger

It''s included in the 3% cost structures.

Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse

Okay and then just finally. I think some of us were hoping that there would be a kind of easy comparison in the first quarter compared to trade inventory de-loading a year ago but it looks like you got a benefit from loading inventory in North America cereal in fourth. So can you just give it a sense of first quarter on the comparisons? Is it still an easy comparison or is it about neutral?

A. D. David Mackay

Well I think last year there were a number of companies that did see inventory reductions at the end of the year. I think on the call when we did this call a year ago we said we hadn''t seen that, our inventory levels were relatively stable, and where we expect them to be. This year however in the cereal business for a variety of reasons we did notice that in Q4 our shipments were 6% and consumption was probably around four-ish and as we looked at our inventories they were slightly higher than we believe our customers would like them to be. So on a shipment base we''ll see a couple percent of what we saw in fourth quarter come out in first quarter. It''s nothing more than that, making sure we manage our inventory levels to an appropriate level on behalf of our retail partners, and then the other impacts that you''ll see probably in the first, second quarter for us. As we mentioned the Eggo disruption which will impact through the first half, and food service probably because it started to hit us in the back half of ‘09, given we''re pretty much non-commercial, our food service versus the restaurant type trade, that''ll have an impact through the first half too. But that''s all balanced into the full year guidance of 2% to 3%.

Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse

Thank you very much.

A. D. David Mackay

Thanks Robert.


$50.02
0.42%
click on symbol for profile



  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12

 


 
Sources: Data collected by 123jump.com and Ticker.com from company press releases, filings and corporate websites.
Market data: BATS Exchange. Inc.

350 Fund Managers Interviews - 10-year Annual earnings on 4,600 U.S. companies - 20-quarter Earnings on 3,800 U.S. companies - 3,200 U.S. IPO Prospectuses
- 2,100 Economic data releases from U.S., EU, UK, India, HK and Australia. 10-year Annual reports on 3,500 U.S. companies -
U.S. Earnings Calendar with 4,800 companies - 90,000 10-K reports - 26,000 Global markets news archive - 2,200 Earnings Conference Call Summaries

Other Sites:
© 1999-2012 123jump.com. All rights reserved