Kraft Heinz, KHC -5.54% like its packaged-food friends, bought an enormous gross sales bump from Covid-19. However its elementary challenges stay unresolved.
This was underscored Thursday as the corporate reported robust underlying numbers however took yet one more multibillion-dollar write-down of its manufacturers and different intangible belongings, leading to a $1.65 billion internet loss for the three months ended June 27. Kraft Heinz shares, which have been up about 11% this 12 months earlier than the announcement, fell by round 3% in early buying and selling Thursday.
The inventory is a sharply debated one on Wall Road. Bulls will concentrate on the quarter’s 7.4% natural gross sales development, which strips out the affect of mergers and forex results, powered by each robust volumes and worth will increase. Bears will level to the $2.9 billion of impairment costs within the quarter, together with write-downs of Oscar Mayer, Maxwell Home and 7 different manufacturers. These costs echo Kraft Heinz’s large $15.Four billion of write-downs in February of final 12 months, which additionally included Oscar Mayer.
In fact, each units of numbers are largely irrelevant. The true challenge for the inventory, as JPMorgan analyst Ken Goldman places it, is that Kraft Heinz “has but to show it could thrive in a non-Covid-19 world.”
