Kraft Foods Group has posted higher quarterly underlying operating profit and sales, although the top line narrowly missed Wall Street expectations.
The US grocery company saw one-off items boost its profits in the fourth quarter of 2013 and for the year as a whole.
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In the fourth quarter of 2012, Kraft had booked expenses of $133m from cost-savings initiatives. It also recorded $225m of costs related to market-based impacts of certain post-employment benefit plans.
The fourth quarter of 2013 had lower charges, meaning net earnings was up ten-fold, while operating income more than quadrupled.
Excluding the post-employment benefit plan charges, operating income increased more than 50% from a combination of lower spending on cost-savings initiatives, volume/mix gains, favourable marketing costs and productivity savings.
Volume and mix gains helped Kraft’s top line. Revenue for the quarter rose to 2.3% to $4.6bn. However, Wall Street analysts were expecting revenue to be $4.63bn, according to the WSJ, citing Thomson Reuters data.
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By GlobalDataFourth-quarter organic net revenues were up 3.2%, driven by a four percentage point gain from volume/mix partially offset by a 0.8 percentage point impact from lower pricing that reflected lower costs for ingredients such as raw nuts and coffee beans.
Shares in Kraft were up 0.18% at 12:30 ET today.
