Dive briefs:
- Egg manufacturer Carmain Foods, the nation’s largest egg producer, posted record quarterly sales of $801.7 million last quarter, up 110% year-over-year, the company said in its latest report. Cal-Maine’s net average selling price of 12 eggs rose to $2.88 in the fourth quarter.
- The company attributes its earnings to the ongoing HPAI (bird flu) epidemic and continued consumer demand for eggs, and limited availability has led to price is rising. Despite record earnings, Cal-Maine’s earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations and the stock fell, according to Seeking Alpha.
- Whether or not consumers will continue to buy eggs will continue to be tested in 2023, but there are signs that prices may have fallen, or at least peaked, as the new year begins.
Dive Insight:
According to the CDC, the effects of the ongoing bird flu epidemic have killed 57 million flocks in the United States, strained egg supplies, and pushed prices to new heights. That not only saw record sales for Cal-Maine, the nation’s largest egg producer, but also a drop in second-quarter earnings.
In a press release accompanying its earnings, Cal-Maine said the net average selling price of its eggs was up 24.9% compared to the same period last year, meeting demand for protein.
Egg prices rose 49.1% year-on-year in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index for November. And some scientists fear the current bird flu outbreak will continue for some time because it’s mutating faster than previous iterations, Vox reported in his December report.
But the USDA’s latest egg market report shows that egg prices are “starting to drop into the new year” and supply is starting to improve, suggesting that prices may already have peaked. is shown. Cal-Maine was more alarmed in its report about the prospect of egg supplies returning to normal levels. The company cited LEAP Market Analytics forecasts that chicken stocks won’t return to normal levels until December 2023.
Cal-Maine CEO Sherman Miller said:
In a report last September, the agricultural research group CoBank predicted that egg prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, as egg prices have already tripled since early 2022.According to the disease in 2014-2015 CobankCal-Maine said in its report that as of December 28, no chickens at its facility had tested positive for bird flu.
As egg prices continue to rise, producers are looking for new ways to cut costs. Huminn, an Israeli-American biotech company, announced last December that it had succeeded in producing only hens using its gene-editing technology. Adopting technology from egg producers could end culling of male chicks in the egg production process, potentially saving the industry billions of dollars, the company said.
