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Tyson Foods, Inc. (TSN)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 3, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Tyson Foods' Quarterly Investor Earnings Call. Participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference. This call is being recorded. If you object, you may disconnect now. I will now turn the call over to Jon Kathol, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Jon Kathol - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Tyson Foods' conference call for the third quarter of the 2015 fiscal year. On today's call are Donnie Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer and Dennis Leatherby, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our remarks today include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. I encourage you to read the news release issued earlier this morning and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of the risks that can affect our business. This morning, we will be referring to our third quarter adjusted operating income and EPS. The company uses non-GAAP results such as adjusted EPS, adjusted operating margin and adjusted operating income to provide investors with a better understanding of the company's operating performance by excluding the impact of certain nonrecurring items affecting comparability. Please refer to today's news release for a full reconciliation of our GAAP to adjusted results. As always, we'll have a Q&A session following our prepared remarks. To ensure we get to as many of you as possible, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and then get back in the queue for any additional questions. I'll now turn the call over to Donnie Smith. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Well, by now you've seen the results in our press release, so I'll start by saying that there were four areas where we over delivered and one that was a negative. The four positives are that synergies are ahead of expectations, Prepared Foods exceeded forecast, the Chicken segment exceeded…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, speakers. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question is coming from the line of Ken Goldman of JPMorgan. Sir, your line is now open.

Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Sir, your line is now open

Hi. I have one quick one and then a longer follow-up if I can. So, first one, are you still looking for, just to confirm, 10% plus earnings growth next year? I was a little confused by the phrasing in the printed document. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Ken, we are. So, here's the way I'm looking at it. So, even if we're a tick or two off this year, when you look at our 2016, nothing has really fundamentally changed and, hey, while it's early, I really expect that anything that we've given up this year would come back to us again next year as we deal with this acute issue in Beef. So that's where we're thinking about it.

Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Sir, your line is now open

And then, thinking of Beef, if the main issues were marketing delays by feedlots, which we can see in the data, right, and nonrecurring, I guess, port issues if we can, doesn't that suggest the problems are more temporary in nature? Not the Beef doesn't have longer-term issues, but you're getting cattle back next year. The port issues will be cleaned up, so I'm just curious, is that the right way to look at it? Is it really a temporary issue? At this point next year you should be back to slightly below normal, I guess. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Certainly, we're looking at it. I mean, if you look at the most recent cattle on feed data, we're going to have more cattle next year, the calf crop's up. Looks like it's going to be up about 1.2% this year, which portends a fed slaughter of about 1.2% to 1.5% next year. So more cattle are going to show up. The way we're looking at it is, once we get past and get through the – now what we're lingering – what's lingering are the supply issue now that we've dealt with the export issues. While it's still a little bit too early to tell, it feels like that if we go back and look at FY 2012 through FY 2014, our margins in Beef were about 1.5%, 2%, something like that, and it feels like, to me, that 2016 is setting up to be about like that range. And so, again, too early to say for sure, but it feels like to us today that these issues are temporary and that next year will be about like what we saw in 2012 through 2014, something like that.

Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Sir, your line is now open

I'm just confused about one thing. It's very helpful. But we knew that the feedlot issue, we kind of thought that marketing delays would be happening, you can see that build up. You still have price mix in Beef up 7% in the quarter. So when these issues, especially the port one that cropped up, was that at the very end of the period? Or was that more evenly spaced throughout the three months? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So let me give you more detail on exactly what happened. So late in May, several of our export customers began telling us that they could not take delivery on their orders. So if you'll remember about that time the cutout was at about $2.60-ish or so, and it felt really toppy to us. And so feeling weakness in the cutout, we made the decision frankly to just resell that product and not take a chance. So we sold it into other markets. And when we look at the price differential between what we had expected to receive and what we ultimately resold it for, it costs us about $84 million. Now I hasten on to say, I'm really glad we did it because looking back, pricing continued to deteriorate all through the month of June and has continued to deteriorate. You saw a little bump at 4th of July, but we didn't have very good sell-through at all at the 4th of July holiday, so the cutout has continued to erode. So I'm glad we don't have an inventory problem to deal with. Our inventory is in great shape. And as soon as these markets can respond, we'll be ready to do that. Maybe even a finer point, so you've got some items – I'll give you like a beef short rib or rib short rib or something like that, they command quite a premium in some of the export markets. And so these items today, though, we're having to roll those into our grinds. And so you can't really see it in the cutout, but that's a significant value decline on items like that. So that's what we're dealing with now. Again, we think this issue is acute and hopefully we'll get on through it throughout this quarter.

Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Sir, your line is now open

Thanks, Donnie. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Adam Samuelson of Goldman Sachs. Sir, your line is now open. Adam Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. So, Donnie, maybe just continuing on the last point – upon questioning on Beef, it sounds like the forward view for next year and beyond has not really changed. Is that actually... Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That is correct. Adam Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. So I wanted to just clear that up. In Prepared Foods, I mean, the margin performance in the quarter was very strong, well above our expectations and I believe the company's, can you help us think about the outlook where you're guiding? It seems like pretty healthy sequential margin decline in the fiscal fourth quarter and next year only at the low end of the range – of the 10% to 12% range despite about $100 million incremental year-over-year synergies. It looks like some healthy year-over-year cost tailwinds. Just help us think through what the spending environment in Prepared Foods that's only getting to low end of that margin range. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. So let's start with Q4. So we're launching two new platforms, the Hillshire Snacking and the Ball Park jerky, and we're fully supporting those launches. We're also going to have somewhere between $25 million and $30 million worth of AI impact lingering into Q4, so we'll deal with that. We are increasing net spending for back-to-school in two, three of our categories there. And then we're going to be lower in the price in a couple of categories to make sure that we've managed our price gaps versus our competition to make sure…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Farha Aslam of Stephens, Inc. Your line is open.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Dennis Leatherby - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Morning.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

Could we just switch to Chicken for a moment? You've had a very strong quarter guided up for this year. And going into next year, there's a fair degree of confidence in your guidance despite the weak pricing in dark meat. But your guidance is – previously was at least 9.5%. Is your guidance today a change or pretty consistent with what you were saying before? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, we've tried to stay really consistent at being at or above the top end of the range.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

Okay. So your guidance hasn't really changed? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's correct.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

So we could expect next year to be another strong year in Chicken? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We think so. Farha, if you think back over the last two years, three years in our Chicken business, we like the way that we balanced our portfolio across the various bird classes. We spend a lot of time adjusting our pricing strategies to be able to reduce volatility and stabilize our margins. We've been able to grow our value-added mix. Our tray pack business is just doing great. We've spent a lot of work and a lot of time and improved our cost structure. I think I said on the last call, we reduced our export exposure on leg quarters by 50% over the last five years and we'll continue to do that in the upcoming year. I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we've got an opportunity inside some of our Prepared Foods category to move some dark meat there. So the CapEx that we spend against our business is really paying off and making our plants very efficient. So when you combine all that up, it gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to stay at or above the top end of that range next year.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

That's really helpful. And then in Prepared Foods, this is a bigger, larger business for Tyson. So could you help us understand kind of your amount of marketing spend, you MAP spend, kind of how you're thinking about this for this year and next year, because clearly this is just not a commodity-related margin that we need to just look at. We need to understand how you market these products. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

Could you share with us how much your marketing expenditures are for this year and going into next year? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Farha, we target a spend about 5% on sales on MAP in our retail brands. That can fluctuate a little bit depending on the timing of innovation, if we're making some price changes and that type of thing. Well, a notable example of that would be this Q4. We're launching two new product lines. We're supporting those with MAP. We're increasing our MAP spend a bit this quarter for back-to-school. So, it'll fluctuate a little bit, but over the year, our target is 5%. And I think it's really important for investors to know that we're going to maintain our investment in brand building. And when a brand is ready for MAP spend we're not going to pull back from the brand-building commitment. And that's why going into 2016, we feel very good about moving from 8% return on sales in Prepared Foods this year up to about 10% plus or so next year, while maintaining a very good growth posture from that point forward. We've got a great innovation pipeline behind these brands that we'll continue to deliver to the marketplace over time. So that's kind of our whole view.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Inc. Your line is open

That's helpful. Thank you. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You bet.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of David Palmer from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

David S. Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open

Thanks. A question on Pork. Obviously you – the Street had your percentage margin in fiscal 3Q higher than where you came out. That shortfall might have been higher for the Street than what you're internally budgeting. But why was that margin down sequentially and from a year ago and you're saying 6% to 8% for 2016, how quickly can you get back within that range? Thanks. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I think the real change for us we saw more imported pork into the U.S., and frankly into other markets where we ship products. A bit more than we expected, and that caused our Pork margins to be a tad lower than what we thought. As we look at domestic disappearance though, when we look at the availability, you got quite a bit of availability on the domestic market. We think you got a lot of hogs coming to us as we move on into the fall, so we expect that margin to expand a bit. But I'd say the biggest impact on Q3 was probably AU or Canadian or other countries that export into pork markets had a little bit more pork on the market than what we expected.

David S. Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open

And how much was Pork, just the input benefit to the Prepared Foods segment itself? Obviously, that's a big segment for the synergies, but if you sort of tease out the implied Pork downstream benefit, how much was that do you think? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: David, repeat that question again? I want to make sure I got it right.

David S. Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open

There's a lot – there's presumably one of the benefits of a pressured pork market might be on the margins you get on Prepared Foods, was that a benefit there? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. We did see improvements in Prepared Foods due to lower raw material costs. However, just a quick reminder, so far our Prepared Foods business still has long-term commitments with other pork producers for our pork raw material. So, we did see a market – pork raw materials are down. It's a benefit through our Prepared Foods business. There's really not been any synergy capture yet from an end-to-end basis, because we'll maintain our commitment to the previous suppliers until those contracts run out and then we'll be able to have an additional synergy coming up. I hope that helps. Dennis Leatherby - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: But as we say in the earnings release in the Q, it's $170 million for Q3, $200 million year-to-date. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

David S. Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Michael Piken from Cleveland Research. Your line is open.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Yeah. Thank you. Just wanted to talk a little bit about within your Chicken business, maybe the profitability of some of the various businesses and kind of – with the pressure on leg quarters and maybe even kind of the big-bird deboning, if you could just sort of talk about the profitability of your various businesses and how you sort of see retail versus foodservice? That would be helpful. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So, the foodservice demand – if you look at traffic, traffic is flat to up slightly. But we do feel right now that with gas prices moderating, that will continue through the rest of the year. So, feel better about improved demand at foodservice. In retail, fresh chicken is still a clear winner against very, very high beef prices. Certainly, the increase of pork on the market recently has tamed a little bit of Chicken's growth, but it still feels really good at around 2% or so. At one point, we saw about 3% or so demand growth in Chicken. But the retail growth still feels good. It's relatively priced. It's a very cheap protein for consumers. When we look at our business, we don't – we tried over time to build some internal hedges within our business to where – if we have pricing exposure to parts markets like breast meat or whatever, we try to build into our production plans the ability to offset a good portion of that through purchases on the outside market. That way we don't succumb to the movement of those markets. If you look at our pricing versus the parts market, we don't correlate very well to the breast meat and that type thing. Probably the whole bird market is a better pricing indication of how our business will perform. So, if you look at our small bird business, business is doing great. We've moved to a lot more, what we would call whole body form sales, whether it's eight-piece cut up, at foodservice or at retail rotisserie. Those types of things continue to move the business forward there, it feels good. Tray pack, of course, is doing great. Our big bird business is fine. A lot of what we do is supply raw material through our big bird business into the value-added further processed items at both foodservice and at retail. As I mentioned in my script, in the last four weeks, our retail frozen business is now back up to a 55 share which is where we were before we had our production problems. So, we feel great being able to grow that business. Hopefully, that's a pretty good recap of how we view our segments inside Chicken.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Okay. And just as a quick follow-up, I mean, have you done any buy versus grow up with the weakness in leg quarters or is it still a cheaper feed cost more profitable for you to run your plants full out? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Absolutely. A big part of our – I'm going to say that this past quarter, we probably bought something on the order of 90 loads of breast meat a week. And what that does is, it allows us, of course, to fulfill the demand in our value-added further processing lines without having a leg quarter to sell. So, it's key to stabilizing our margins. When we build our production plans, we look at forward demand and then balance to the nearest whole bird increment and back that back in to our production plan. Might hasten on to say too that this year our production will be flat. And next year, we do not have a production increase in the plan. And so, we will continue to be able to buy raw material on the market and add value to it without the exposure to the leg quarter. Next question?

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Diane Geissler from CLSA. Your line is open.

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

Good morning. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

I wanted to ask on the Beef division, if you could give us an idea about where you were in terms of capacity utilization. And then, I think you've quantified the resale of the product that was expected to go to a certain export customers that had to be redirected due to the divergence, export, the pork issue, but could you just – is there a way to quantify the lower run rate within your plant in terms of what that might have done to the margin overall? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. If I look at the industry capacity utilization, we're probably on the low 70s and I think that's about where we are. We tend to have our plants in areas where there's a little bit higher concentration in the cattle, so we may be a point or two above that. In terms of quantifying the impact, I can't say – we know when we're running 34s and 36s a week in our plants that does cost us in – it raises the cost in our plant, makes us a lot less efficient. So it does have a cost to us. I don't know that I can quantify that right off the bat, but it does impact margin.

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

Okay. So you would say it's fair to say it's not only the diversion of this product into a less lucrative market, but the lower run rate within your plants that caused the headwind? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Diane, (40:50)

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

Both of those came into play in the quarter? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're right. That does have an impact.

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

Okay. And then, just as a quick follow-up. I mean, looking at the inventory report that came out, I guess, two weeks ago, it looks like 2016 is going to be more back-end loaded so as we look to model 2016, you've given some data in terms of like what you think you will be for the full year, but I would guess that the numbers are going to come on stronger in the second half and then really ramp into fiscal 2017, the numbers would indicate sort of mid-single digit increase in fiscal 2017 in terms of cattle supplies. Is that how – are you reading it the same way we are? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, very much so. When we look at the cattle on feed now, the feedlots have slowed turns down, but the cattle are still there. So, they're going to be coming into the market later on this fall, but when you look at calf crop that's building, that's really a latter part of 2016 and then on into 2017 issue. So I think we're modeling it exactly the same way. I would think that if you look out over time and so I'm going to go 2016 over 2015, you're probably looking at 1.5% or so increase in supply. Based on heifer retention we're seeing today kind of feels like something like a 1.5%, 2%, I feel a little bit better than that 2017 over 2016, but it's a little bit early to make that call. But, I certainly think you're right. You've got – it's going to be in the back half of 2016 and then incrementally better in 2017 in terms of beef supply.

Diane R. Geissler - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst · CLSA. Your line is open

Okay. Terrific. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Robert Moskow from Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Robert B. Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Thanks. Hey, Donnie, there's a lot of commentary today on the call and in the press release about bigger supplies, you're talking about it in Beef, particularly more cattle in 2017. And then, in the press release in Chicken, I sensed a little more conservatism or caution regarding supplies maybe exceeding demand. And then, in Pork you're talking about greater hog supplies too, and all this in a context of a much stronger dollar, which I think has kind of a more of a permanent impact on exports. So, I understand all of the benefits of the capacity utilization for Beef and Pork, but is there a concern that a year from now, you might be looking at an environment with a lot of backup of domestic supply because of weaker export and maybe just a much weaker domestic pricing as a result. Is that a concern? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, what we see in 2016, we look at protein availability or the per capita consumption, if you will, of protein up about 2.3%. We think that supplies are backing up here near term. But as we look forward, you've got increased demand for protein on a global basis. As we look at Pork, for example, in 2016, you're probably going to see less pressure from outside markets next year than you saw this year, which should improve Pork demand. If you look at what's happened in China, China has significantly reduced their sow herd. If you look at what day old pigs and pig replacement prices are doing and what Pork is doing,…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Ken Zaslow of Bank of Montreal. Your line is open.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

Good morning. Can you hear me? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

So, a couple of questions. One, just semantics, if you're seeing that nothing changed in 2016 and your language was previous to this – that you'd say at least 10% on 2015 numbers. Why not change your language to indicate that 2016 nothing has changed, because you're keeping the same thing of at least 10% growth on top of your long-term growth. Is there something to read into this? I just want to be perfectly clear here. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. It's just early, Ken. I mean, frankly, the situation in Beef has not changed through July. I want to spend a little bit more time looking at that. Hey, I'd like to get this crop in the bin. And so, we typically wait until this next quarter in Q4, before we get more clarity on that. It's just early.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

And what are the signs that you can point to over the next 36 months that would either give you more confidence or less confidence in the 2016 outlook? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, I feel great about Prepared Foods. And we are lowering prices in a couple of categories and I'm sure looking for the volume response to that. That would continue to give us – that would be the confidence we need there. So, I feel great about that. I feel good about Chicken. We obviously would love to see some of these export bans removed which – third quarter has particularly hurt us a bit in Arkansas. So, I'd love to see that improve. But there, again, that doesn't necessarily change the outlook for 2016. So, it really is this unexpected acute issue in Beef and getting a little bit more clarity on how that's going to turn out. That's the one. Synergy is still great. If you look at the things coming up, we've got, again, great brands and great categories. We're going to have a full year of our new tray pack operation in South Georgia. We've got plenty of fully-cook capacity now to be able to grow both foodservice and retail and fully-cooked. We're going to have plenty of hogs around us. That feels good. Certainly, it will help the raw materials in Prepared Foods. I think beef prices are going to continue to provide an umbrella. I mentioned synergies, we're generating a lot of cash, which gives us a lot of opportunity to pay, buyback stock or invest in the business. So, we've got a lot of things going for us. We just really want to see this beef thing play itself out for another month or two.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

And philosophically, as you shift away from commodities and take more of a valuated approach, what would it take for you to just put Beef and Pork on the market, and just say I'd rather just focus on Prepare Foods and Chicken, and that's what we're really trying to shift that portfolio towards. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, if you look at over the very, very long term, we still feel good certainly about Pork in our portfolio. We feel good about having Beef as a long-term business. So, we really look at this thing with a very, very long-term view, and so it still feels good to us for them to be in the portfolio.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

So no indication that you'd even think about that? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

And my last, very last question. Again as you said, we would buy a fairly significant amount of stock. How do I quantify that? Dennis Leatherby - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Again, Ken, the way we're looking at it is we're trying to keep net debt to EBITDA around that 2 times level. So, we de-levered to the point where we're pretty comfortable looking at first and foremost growth through CapEx, organic type of growth expenditures. But then, think about free cash flow. It's $1 billion. It's going to grow over time. So, that's going to – so to the extent we don't do much more deleveraging then it gives us more options in terms of buying back stock and working on dividends too.

Kenneth B. Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Tim Ramey of Pivotal Research Group. Your line is open.

Timothy S. Ramey - Pivotal Research Group LLC

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. Thanks. We've talked a lot about the export demand, and I assume that some of these specialty items were big into Korea. Are you just seeing weak economic activity in Korea and so that's backing up through the system for these otherwise high-price, high-value-added items that are now going into grind? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: By and large, that's right. I wouldn't necessarily limit the softness in demand we're seeing just to Korea. There is softness across broader Asia. And as you know, those are great markets for a lot of those items. So, a little bit broader than just Korea.

Timothy S. Ramey - Pivotal Research Group LLC

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group. Your line is open

And, Donnie, was any of this attributable to kind of the restart of Dakota City or did that really occurred just as expected? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. It has occurred as expected. I think we mentioned in our last call that we had some start-up issues that we were working through. That did not – the start-up issues that we worked through in Q3 did not impact earnings beyond what we would have expected them to. All that came as planned. It really was this acute issue of making the decision to get that moving off the West Coast so we wouldn't have to deal with it in even softer markets.

Timothy S. Ramey - Pivotal Research Group LLC

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group. Your line is open

And just finally on – always good to hear you managed for margin not market share. We love that. But does that mean that at least in maybe the 12 months' outlook there might be an opportunity to kind of trim back capacity utilization or improved capacity utilization by shutting a line here or there? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Tim, we look at a lot of those things constantly in our efforts to manage margins. Too early to say about any potential moves we might have inside the system but certainly we're working through the math on a lot of those issues. And as you know, we get that down to about the fourth decimal point to make that call. So, we're looking at all that, don't see the opportunity yet.

Timothy S. Ramey - Pivotal Research Group LLC

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group. Your line is open

Okay. Thanks a lot. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next one is coming from the line of Akshay Jagdale of KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Akshay S. Jagdale - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Your line is open

Good morning. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Morning. Dennis Leatherby - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Morning.

Akshay S. Jagdale - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Your line is open

So, first on Beef, I just want to be clear. So, we all calculate industry margin and based on, obviously, publicly available data, your Beef results underperformed that significantly, I think the first time in like seven or eight years. So, I understand the issue that you explained clearly but what I'm – I just want to understand if it's a company-specific issue like it looks like from the outside. And maybe if you can give us a little more color on what's company-specific, right? So, everything you were saying, the way you were saying it so far, seemed like the rest of the industry should be dealing with those issues too but the numbers that I'm looking at for the industry point to your performance being way worse. So, can you just help me clarify that? What could we be missing? I mean, maybe it's just that the cut out doesn't reflect some of these issues yet, perhaps? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think large – what you just said, Akshay, is largely correct. It's that you wouldn't be able to look at cut out and see the price differences between the revenue that we get from some of these export items and what we then get for it when we roll it into $50s (57:04). So that's part of the issue. I don't know – I don't want to comment on what the industry says or what they may show. But we felt like the right thing to do was to make sure that we didn't have an inventory problem because it felt like to us that going into Memorial Day to feel the cutout getting toppy like we did in Memorial Day, it felt like the right thing for us to do was to resell all that product. Now, that may have hurt us worse than what the cutout or what the industry indices would have indicated but it was the right thing to do for our business. We don't have excess inventory. If you look at Beef inventories, I don't what they're up 20%, 30% or so, ours is not and that feels really good because we'll be able to immediately respond when the market conditions give us an opportunity.

Akshay S. Jagdale - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Your line is open

So, overall, you'd characterize the beef issue as something impacting the industry equally, right? You've taken some strategic actions which you believe are putting you in a better position but overall this is an issue that everybody in the industry is dealing with. You're not dealing with it more so than anybody else, correct? Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Akshay, I don't know what other people are doing in the industry or how they're dealing with it. I think I can safely say that our market share in Asia is historically pretty large. And so, maybe we were impacted greater because of this issue based on that. But I don't have any comment about how it may be impacting us versus the rest of the industry or whatever. I'm just telling you what happened to our business.

Akshay S. Jagdale - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Your line is open

Okay. And then moving to Prepared Foods, is there any way you can give us a sense of how the businesses are doing on an organic basis. Obviously, you're still going through the first year of the deal. The numbers look good this quarter, but just help me, the way I'm thinking about it is you have $300 million in synergies, right, this year that is going to help in that business. You have now what you've quantified, which is very helpful, $320 million in lower raw material cost. That's a positive $600 million tailwind. And on my numbers your EBIT is increasing couple of hundred million. Now, you're investing a lot. So, can you give me a sense of, one, what's the base business doing like from a growth perspective, market share overall just broadly? And two, can you quantify some of these MAP investments? Give us some sense. Is it $50 million, $100 million, a couple hundred million, and what do you expect from a growth perspective next year to get a return on these investments you're making? Thanks. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, hopefully, this perspective will help, Akshay. So, if you look at our categories at retail – by the way, our foodservice business is great. If you look at QSR Mexican and some of the other growth in foodservice, that plays very well into our portfolio. So, we feel great about foodservice demand and our ability to continue to grow that part of our Prepared Foods business. At retail, if you look back over this last quarter, we grew sales in eight of our nine categories and grew share in five of nine. So, if you just look at the category growth, that gives you a good indication…

Operator

Operator

And our last question is coming from the line of Brett Hundley from BB&T Capital Markets. Your line is open. Brett Michael Hundley - BB&T Capital Markets: Hey, guys. Good morning. And thanks for fitting me in. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Sure. Brett Michael Hundley - BB&T Capital Markets: I wanted to ask you a question on Chicken, and get a more – maybe a more definitive sense, Donnie, of where things can fall out for you guys in that business next year, and maybe just how good Chicken can be? You've given a lot of talking points, but I want to understand, is there – in your mind really is a definitive floor at 7% if you can do another 12% next year, I want to understand that range of outcomes just given everything that you talked about, about maybe being a little bit more supply on the market relative to demand, Pork continuing to be an incremental competitor to Chicken at retail, but then your guys instituting buy versus grow, reducing your exposure to leg quarters. I thought it was really interesting. Your comment on dark meat utilization and Prepared Foods and maybe you can give us a sense of whether that can be sizeable or not for you? But anyway, just wanted to understand those different talking points. Donald J. Smith - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Brett, I think you've absolutely got the right list. I'll tell you and I'm probably going to frustrate you a little bit with my answer, I'm sorry, but it's just a little bit too early for us. Really, I'd like to get the crop in the bin before we can get more definitive. But I'm very comfortable saying that in FY…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, speakers. And that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.