Kraft Earnings: Here’s Why Shares are Down Now

Kraft (NASDAQ:KRFT) delivered a profit and beat Wall Street’s expectations, BUT came up short on beating the revenue expectation. The revenue miss is a negative sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are down 1.08%.

Kraft Earnings Cheat Sheet

Revenue: Kraft delivered $4.49 billion.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: reported adjusted EPS income of $0.57 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $0.23. It missed the average revenue estimate of $4.75 billion.

Quoting Management: “We continue to make important changes to re-make Kraft into an industry leader that delivers steady, growing shareholder returns,” said Tony Vernon, CEO of Kraft. “While we weren’t satisfied with our revenue in the fourth quarter, our innovation, productivity and overhead cost reduction programs are paying off. This enabled a double-digit increase in advertising, solid profit from operations and sizable cash flow. We’re off to a strong start so far this year and we remain well-positioned to drive profitable growth in 2013 and beyond.”

Key Stats (on next page)…