General Mills' Fiscal Year Off to a Good Start

General Mills Inc. (NYSE: GIS) this morning reported fiscal first quarter 2013 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.66 on revenue of $4.05 billion. In the same period a year ago, the packaged food giant reported adjusted EPS of $0.64 on revenue of $3.85 billion. First-quarter results compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.63 and $4.08 billion in revenue.

General Mills reiterated its full-year adjusted EPS guidance of approximately $2.65, a penny less than the consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

The company’s chairman and CEO said:

Results for the first quarter were broadly consistent with our plans, and included sequential improvement in our volume and gross margin trends from the fourth quarter of 2012. …

In our core U.S. market, we are seeing slow improvement in price and volume trends across our retail food categories. As we move into the second quarter, we’ll be putting full advertising support behind our new items, and we have planned strong levels of in-store merchandising across our product categories.

The first quarter includes two months of results from General Mills’ acquisition of Yoplait International and three months worth of results from other acquisitions.

Gross margins were up 10% year-over-year, but adjusted to include mark-to-market effects, margins actually decreased by 0.4%.

The company’s shares are up more than 2% in premarket trading this morning, at $40.16 in a 52-week range of $36.75 to $41.06.

Paul Ausick