Investors Pour A Bowl Of General Mills Following Q1 Results, Outlook

General Mills, Inc. GIS reported better than expected adjusted earnings for the first quarter. The company also reaffirmed its full year forecast.

The company reported net earnings of $409 million, or $0.67 a share, for the first quarter. This represented 3 percent drop from $0.69 a share recorded in the year-ago quarter. On an adjusted basis, the company would have earned $0.78 a share topping the Street estimates of $0.75 a share.

General Mills' net sales dipped 7.1 percent from $4.21 billion to $3.91 billion and came in line with the analysts' expectations.

Chairman and CEO, Ken Powell, commented, "Our net sales performance did not meet our expectations due to the challenging macro environment, a difficult year-over-year comparison, and a slower start to the year on certain businesses. We are taking actions to improve our net sales performance going forward, leveraging our Consumer First focus."

Moving ahead, the company reiterated its fiscal 2017 adjusted EPS growth of 6–8 percent from $2.92 earned in fiscal year 2016. The company expects organic sales to witness flat to down two percent in the same period.

Analysts are looking for an EPS of $3.10 on revenue of $16.11 billion for fiscal year 2017. While earnings outlook represented 6.2 percent growth, revenue forecast suggests a drop of 2.7 percent.

The stock traded up by $0.30, or 0.46 percent, to $65 in the pre-market trading.