Dean Foods Shares Plunge 14% On Earnings Miss (DF)

Dean Foods Company DF released financial results on Tuesday morning that missed Wall Street earnings estimates. Dean Foods Company announced that its 3rd quarter net income fell to $24.3 million, or 13 cents per share, down from $49.7 million, or 28 cents per share, a year earlier. The company's revenue rose to $3.05 billion, up from $2.76 billion a year earlier. According to a poll of analysts by Thomson Reuters, the average Wall Street estimate called for earnings of 21 cents per share, on revenue of $3.04 billion. Chairman and chief executive officer Gregg Engles said, “These results are clearly disappointing for us and reflect continued significant challenges in our largest business, Fresh Dairy Direct-Morningstar. Despite our poor consolidated performance, WhiteWave-Alpro continued to perform exceptionally well and delivered significant top and bottom line growth. However, given the relative size of the business, it was not enough to offset substantially weaker results in our Fresh Dairy Direct-Morningstar segment. In addition to ongoing adverse conditions in the conventional milk business, weak consumer spending led to soft volumes in conventional fluid milk and other beverage and cultured products within our Fresh Dairy Direct-Morningstar business. Our results were also impacted by much higher than anticipated butterfat costs. In response to a weak trading environment and our on-going poor performance, we continue to take aggressive steps to improve our results, including accelerated cost reductions and the recent realignment of our management and organizational structure.” Dean Foods Company (DF) finished the previous trading day at $10.36 per share and fell 14.1% to $8.90 in pre-market trading. The consensus price target of analysts covering the company's stock is $12.35 per share. Read more from Benzinga's Company news.