Dive Brief:
- Mondelez International's earnings beat industry expectations for its second fiscal quarter of 2017, according to a company release. The CPG giant posted net income of $498 million, an uptick from $464 million in Q2 2016, but revenue dipped to $5.99 million from $6.30 billion in the year-ago period.
- The company also announced that Dirk Van de Put, president and CEO of Canada-based McCain Foods, will replace longtime CEO Irene Rosenfeld effective November 2017. Rosenfeld will continue to serve as chairman of the board until March 31, 2018, when she retires.
- "We delivered strong margin expansion and double-digit EPS growth in the quarter despite the revenue impact from the malware incident at the end of June," Rosenfeld said in a company release. "We're seeing improved trends in Europe and across many of our emerging markets, and our North America business is on track for a stronger second half. In addition, as a result of our improving free cash flow outlook, we're increasing our dividend payout."
Dive Insight:
The maker of Oreo cookies, Milka chocolate and Trident gum is raising its quarterly dividend to 16%, and maintains its 2017 guidance for double-digit adjusted EPS growth on a constant-currency basis.
The company also claims that a June malware attack shrunk organic revenue by more than 2%. This dip follows a revenue slide in Q1 2017, which the company attributed to "challenging market conditions." The manufacturer has struggled to drive sales in the North American market of late, but the company's high-performing power brands and investments in healthier products and convenient packaging are likely to improve performance.
Mondelez has also expanded its reach through e-commerce after it partnered with Alibaba last year, and has created a growth plan to hit $1 billion in e-commerce business by 2020. So far, selling through Alibaba and Amazon has been Mondelez's most successful e-commerce strategy.
It will be interesting to see how the company fares under an outside executive. Rosenfeld served as chief executive of the company for 11 years, joining Kraft in 2006 before taking over Cadbury in 2010 and later spinning off Kraft Foods from newly-created Mondelez.