Kellogg beats by $0.07, reports revs in-line, reaffirms guidance for "currency neutral" EPS, Operating Profit, and Cash Flow
- Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $1.06 per share, $0.07 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.99; revenues fell 4.2% year/year to $3.25 bln vs the $3.28 bln Capital IQ Consensus.
- Comparable operating profit increased 0.5% to $518 mln.
- Outlook: Company reaffirms guidance for currency neutral operating profit, EPS, and cash flow. For EPS, company still expects to generate growth of 8-10% off a 2016 base that excludes after-tax $0.02 from deconsolidated Venezuela results, to $4.03-$4.09. Capital IQ Consensus is for EPS of $3.93. Still expects comparable operating profit to grow 7-9% y/y. Co also affirms cash flow guidance of $1.6-$1.7 bln.
- Commentary: "While our Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions and parts of our North America region performed largely as expected, our U.S. Morning Foods, U.S. Snacks, and Europe region got off to a soft start to the year. It was in these businesses that we saw a meaningfully lower-than-trend net sales and operating profit performance. While this weighed down overall results, as previously indicated, many of their underlying negative factors were largely concentrated in Q1