Chicago, 28 July, 2008 - Kraft Foods Inc posted higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday as price increases and hedging positions offset rising costs for energy and commodities like wheat.
The largest North American food maker also raised its full-year earnings and sales forecast and its shares rose 3.6 percent in pre-market trading.
The maker of Oreo cookies, Kraft cheese and Oscar Mayer lunch meat said second-quarter profit rose to $732 million, or 48 cents a share, from $707 million, or 44 cents a share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, Kraft earned 58 cents a share, up from 50 cents a share a year earlier.
Analysts on average forecast 50 cents a share on that basis, according to Reuters Estimates.
Kraft, like most food companies, has been hit by soaring commodity costs as it pushes to develop new products and take other steps to boost sales.
The company has raised prices to offset some of the costs, just as other food companies have. But some analysts note that Kraft is vulnerable to losing market share to lower-priced competitors because of the price increases.
Sales rose 21.4 percent to $11.2 billion, with 9.6 percentage points of the increase coming from an acquisition and 5.6 percentage points due to the weaker dollar, which boosts the dollar value of overseas sales.
Organic sales, which excludes the effects of currency changes, acquisitions and divestitures rose 6.9 percent due to higher prices.
But volume, a measure of products shipped, fell 1 percent as some customers were pushed away by the price increases.
For the year, the company expects earnings before one-time items to be at least $1.92 a share, up from its previous forecast of $1.90. It also forecast an organic sales increase of at least 6 percent, up from its previous forecast of 5 percent.
Kraft shares traded at $30.43 Monday in pre-market electronic trading, up from Friday's new York Stock Exchange close of $29.38.