Cargill's fiscal first-quarter profit was more than cut in half, landing at $927 million for the period through Aug. 31, based on accounts reviewed by Bloomberg on Monday. The year-ago quarter was unusually strong because of a tax provision connected to US President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill. The Minneapolis-based company is the largest private business in America.
Input costs decide whether a food giant makes money, regardless of volume. Market Briefs tracks agricultural markets free every morning.
Costs ran hot in two big places. In beef, packers including Cargill are vying for animals from the smallest US cattle herd in five decades. Cargill is one of four companies that together handle over two thirds of US processing. Profitability in beef packing has only lately started to pick up as cattle prices have cooled, based on one gauge of potential returns.
In cocoa, Cargill cited "mark-to-market losses" for the quarter. Futures for the beans whipsawed this year, climbing more than 70% from early June through the end of August. Following multiple years of high prices, demand was wiped out and has been sluggish to return across major consumer markets. Such mark-to-market losses arise when input costs and the prices of finished goods are misaligned.
The bright spot: record margins in soy and canola, helped by higher US targets for biofuel blending. Better results in North America, though, were partly offset by weaker grain trading and bioenergy performance across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Cargill has been reshaping itself for more than a year, consolidating its operations into three from five and recording $876 million in pretax charges since the overhaul began. The company stopped making its earnings public during the Covid-19 pandemic and declined to comment.
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