Cargill says its $4.5B chicken bet should pay off in next year

Shortly after crop trader Cargill Inc. made its multibillion-dollar bet on U.S. chicken in 2021, the industry plunged into its worst downturn in years. Now, after a bracing introduction, the sector is on the verge of a much-needed turnaround that a top executive says is "months, not years" away.

"Sometimes the timing is just unlucky when you make a purchase," said Hans Kabat, the president of company's North American protein business, referring to the company's $4.5 billion takeover of chicken producer Sanderson Farms Inc. with joint-venture partner Continental Grain Co.

As prices slowly rebound from the lowest levels in at least a decade, the industry is beginning to point in the right direction. "We would believe that 2024 is going to be better," he said.

When Minnetonka-based Cargill first announced the deal, it had reasons to be optimistic. Fueled by a host of factors — from pandemic-formed grocery habits to the American fried-chicken craze — soaring chicken demand was at times outstripping supplies, with prices for popular cuts through the roof.

Cargill already owned poultry operations on multiple continents, but the U.S. was looking like a prime market for expansion and diversification for the nation's third largest beef producer. The joint-venture partners paid a 15% premium to Sanderson's highest-ever price in a sign of their high expectations.

But it took almost a year to close the deal amid a laborious Justice Department review, and during that time, the market soured. As chicken producers across the country raced to bring on more supply, consumers — faced with the highest inflation in four decades — pared back purchases of costly meat. That left a glut of birds whose feed costs had skyrocketed amid the war in Ukraine.

Over the past few months, those pressures in the domestic chicken sector have started to abate. Some companies have begun breeding fewer birds in an effort to rebalance the market, with Tyson Foods Inc., the largest poultry producer in the U.S., announcing the closure of six chicken plants.

The challenging poultry situation faced by Cargill and others lately "hasn't slacked our optimism about the business even 1%," Kabat said in an interview at the unit's headquarters in Wichita, Kan. "It's an area that we needed to be in. We made that very significant move and are very happy to have."

Protein is big business for America's largest private company, owned by the descendants of the founding Cargill and MacMillan families. Although the agricultural giant does not publicly disclose all financial details, Fitch Ratings estimated that more than 50% of Cargill's 2022 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization came from the animal nutrition and protein segments.

In fact, the protein unit is so important that when David MacLennan stepped down as chief executive, the former boss of Cargill's protein division, Brian Sikes, took his place in January.

In fiscal 2023, Cargill's profits tumbled 43%, investor documents from last month showed. Still, it was the company's the fourth-best year in history.

The chicken industry has the ability to right-size itself relatively quickly because of the short life-cycle of birds. It takes only a couple of months for a broiler to reach market weight, meaning it doesn't take too long to re-balance supply.

For many meatpackers, processing beef is just barely profitable today. That's because high feed costs and droughts forced more ranchers to slaughter their heifers in recent years, shrinking herd sizes and in turn driving up cattle prices to all-time highs — ultimately eroding meat processors' margins. Even now, many ranchers may not be ready to start investing to grow their herds again, Kabat said.

"We know that we are not in the end of this cycle of liquidation," he said, adding that it could take another three years until beef supplies begin to grow again.

In the meantime, Cargill is trying to meet the customers where they are, expanding its supplies of case-ready cuts, marinated meats and tray packs. And despite all the recent challenges, it's still bullish long term on both chicken and beef.