Pilgrim's Pride Corp. more than doubled its earnings in the second quarter of 2013 with net income of $190.7 million, or 74 cents per share, compared to $69.4 million, or 27 cents per share, reported in the second quarter of 2012. Pilgrim's Pride is a subsidiary of Sao Paulo, Brazil-based JBS S.A.
The company posted net sales of $2.2 billion, an increase from $2.0 billion in the comparable year ago period. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were $264.6 million compared to the $125.1 million reported in 2012, the company said.
“Our second quarter results continue to validate our strategy. Our focus on our key customers and ability to adapt to changing market conditions has helped us gain significant business in strategic channels to improve our sales mix, enabling us to take advantage of strong industry fundamentals,” said Bill Lovette, Pilgrim's CEO. “We continue to reap the benefits of operational excellence in areas of yield improvements and plant cost and efficiency gains, all of which contributed to our positive results, while our export and Mexico business continue to operate more favorably.
“We're also pleased to announce that we have substantially completed an amendment to our US Credit Facility,” Lovette added. “With this amendment we will refinance the Revolver and the Term Loan B-1through 2018 with reduced interest costs and more favorable covenants. We view this amendment as further confirmation of the progress we have made in optimizing our capital structure, supported by strong operations and our effective management of working capital, which enabled us to reduce our net debt to $834 million at quarter end, a leverage of 1.5 times our EBITDA of the last 12 months.”
