Dean Foods Clobbers EPS Estimate, Announces Spinoff

Dean Foods Co. (NYSE: DF) reported second-quarter adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.36 and $3.1 billion in revenue after the markets closed last night. EPS for the same period a year ago were $0.18, and last year’s revenue totaled $3.4 billion. The most recent results compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.26 and revenue of $3.3 billion.

The grocery store operator raised third-quarter EPS guidance to $0.25 to $0.30 and full-year EPS guidance to $1.18 to $1.28. The current consensus estimate for third-quarter EPS is $0.26 and for the full year is $1.16.

The company’s chairman and CEO did a little crowing:

In addition to each of our businesses executing well against their stated plans, we also continued to benefit from disciplined expense control across the organization. As a result of these efforts, we reported a 37 percent increase in consolidated adjusted operating income and a 100 percent increase in adjusted diluted earnings per share.

Dean Foods has filed for a spinoff IPO of its WhiteWave-Alpro segment into a new company to be called The WhiteWave Foods Company. Dean Foods plans to offer up to 20% of the new company’s stock in the initial public offering, and will use the proceeds from the offering and an additional $800 million to $925 million from WhiteWave’s new credit facility to reduce outstanding debt of $3.55 billion.

The proposed IPO has been expected, but Dean Foods appears to have bumped up the timetable. This quarter’s earnings are a big turnaround from the same period a year ago when the company booked a $131 million charge to settle litigation with dairy farmers in Tennessee.

Macy’s shares are up about 28.3% in premarket trading, at $15.93. The current 52-week range is $7.83 to $17.25. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of $16.83 before today’s results were announced.

Paul Ausick