Smithfield Foods loses $72 million in second quarter due to COVID-19 expenses

Smithfield Foods, Inc. says it spent $350 million to protect its team members and the American food supply during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing adjusted operating results to swing to a loss in the second quarter of 2020. Smithfield Foods, owned by China-based WH Group, is the largest U.S. pork producer with 930,000 U.S. sows in the 2019 Pork Powerhouses ranking. The first half of 2020 was “a tale of two tapes”: prepandemic and pandemic, said Smithfield in a news release. Prior to the onset of COVID-19 in the U.S., Smithfield delivered record results in the first quarter of 2020, which were 190% higher than 2019. However, the impact of the pandemic weighed heavily on the company’s second quarter, pushing adjusted operating results 140% below a year ago to a $72 million loss. Smithfield incurred both direct and indirect incremental expenses related to COVID-19 totaling $350 million during the second quarter. This included $195 million in people-related costs, $125 million in facility-related costs, and $30 million in community-related costs...MORE