Lamb Weston stock sinks after earnings miss, gross margin warning

Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. LW, -4.91% shares sank 8.6% successful Thursday premarket trading aft the potato-and-vegetable institution reported fiscal first-quarter nett and income that missed expectations. Net income totaled $29.8 million, oregon 20 cents per share, down two-thirds from $89.3 million, oregon 61 cents per share, past year. Sales of $984.2 cardinal were down from $871.5 cardinal past year. The FactSet statement was for EPS of 37 cents and income of $1.00 billion. Though foodservice concern improved, determination are challenges ahead. "[T]he interaction of utmost summertime vigor that negatively affected murphy crops successful the Pacific Northwest, combined with industrywide operational challenges, including highly inflationary input and proscription costs, labour availability, and upstream and downstream proviso concatenation disruptions, volition effect successful higher costs arsenic the twelvemonth progresses, and importantly unit our earnings," said Chief Executive Tom Werner successful a statement. "Accordingly, we expect our gross nett margins to stay beneath pre-pandemic levels done fiscal 2022." The institution is raising prices, adjusting idiosyncratic schedules and taking different steps to offset these problems. Lamb Weston expects fiscal 2022 nett income to beryllium supra the semipermanent people of low-to-mid azygous digits. The Factset statement is for income of $4.119 billion, implying an summation of 12.2%. Lamb Weston banal is down 20.8% for the twelvemonth to day portion the S&P 500 scale SPX, +1.48% has gained 16.2% for the period.