美国牛肉供应紧张，泰森食品利润前景恶化

Tyson has really been a very interesting story over the last couple years. We've definitely seen a lot of slimming down in terms of their capacity. Basically, The US's beef packers are in the situation where because we are so short on cattle, they've been paying very high prices for the animals that they process. And they've been able to pass on some of those price increases to their customers, which are largely large retailers, but we've seen significant drops in those volumes.

And so quarter after quarter, since pretty much the start of 2024, they've been reporting significant operating losses. And with this latest batch of quarterly earnings that they just reported, I think people had been hoping to see some of the benefits of closing that one plant in Nebraska earlier this year, but it really seems like that wasn't enough. They cut their profit outlook, and deepened their estimate for their beef segment operating losses.

And so I think they decided that there were just more actions that still needed to be taken. Well, prices just keep going up, Ilena. I was looking at this. It's not just the the prime rib eye that, you know, you wanna put on the grill later today. Ground beef up 25% since the beginning of 2025. Beef prices overall up 12% year over year. Should we expect them to go higher? It's really hard to say. I think right now, we are sort of in, like, what is described as, like, the peak of grilling season, which runs from, like, Memorial Day to Labor Day.

So this tends to be a very strong period for seasonal demand, but some of the early data that we've seen coming out from July 4 has actually revealed a little bit more pushback from consumers than the industry expected. Not that consumers aren't buying beef, but it seems like this may be the highest price point they're willing to pay. That being said, even if demand, like, flatlines a little, supply still remains fundamentally tight.

The latest data we saw from the USDA really still shows the cattle herd very close to the it's near five five decade low, and the process of rebuilding takes several years and also actually requires supplies to be a little bit tighter before they get better. So I don't think we'll see a significant drop in in prices soon. We're gonna get to why there might be some relief when it comes to supply in just a moment. But Tyson versus some of the other companies and the other producers, how are they handling the shortage?

Kind of the same. Pretty much everyone has done some sort of pullback in capacity just to make it a little bit easier to operate. JBS did a similar move earlier. All of these businesses so far have been really relying on other segments of their business to stay profitable. So their chicken business, in particular, has been doing pretty well just because consumer demand there has been very strong sort of allowing for continued year over year growth.

Mhmm. We've had a couple of sort of oddball impacts that like, the the screwworm was a big story earlier this year. I hate to do that while you're eating breakfast on Sunday, but also the lack of imports from Mexico. Both of those could turn. Could could that bring some relief for the months ahead? Yeah. The meatpackers have been talking for a long time about that source of supply from Mexico as, like, the biggest immediate thing Mhmm.

That could help ease supplies. So we basically used to import a million head of cattle. And to be clear, those are live cattle as opposed to, like, beef imports. Okay. And those are brought into The US. Those animals are raised in The US for some time before being processed into meat. But that trade has been pretty much on and off, like, largely off since, like, November 2024 or so Mhmm. Just due to the spread of this, like, new world screwworm, which, like, if it gets to animals, it infects wounds and can be very deadly if not treated.

Yeah. It did finally make its way to The US earlier this year in June. And so I think the risk calculus was we have been able to manage the spread. There are very few active cases currently in Texas now. So those imports from Mexico are expected to start in, the end of this month with one port in Arizona. It's not the biggest port, so hopefully, that reopening goes well such that the USDA will open other ports and we'll see more significant flows.

But that one port alone, I don't think necessarily will make a large national difference, though definitely I think regional meat packing plants should hopefully start to see some reprieve soon. Ilena, before we wrap up here, you know, they're shutting down plants. Is it though with the anticipation that eventually they'll reopen them, or I am curious that once you shut them down, do they stay down and what that means for overall future, meat supply here in The US?

Yeah. That's the really difficult thing. The US cattle herd is super cyclical. So, like, a decade ago when we went through a similar cycle, we also saw meat packing plants close. It's largely the case that, unfortunately, they don't come back, which tends to have a very large community economic impact. The meat packers tend to offset that by making their existing plants more efficient. But the USDA, also very conscientious of this, has announced, like, a $500,000,000 investment into midsized beef process processors specifically so that they might be able to weather these high cattle costs for a little longer instead of folding.

Makes you think about the community impact, though. I I think as we count down to the midterms, all of these things. Right? You shut down plants, people potentially lose jobs and Just another inflationary input. Right? Yep. And another economic impact.