Cal-Maine Foods CALM FY2026 10-K: Revenue -31.7%, Q4 Net Loss, No Q4 Dividend
The Hook
Cal-Maine Foods $CALM closed its fiscal 2026 year with revenue down 31.7 percent and diluted earnings per share down 73.4 percent, from $24.95 to $6.63. That is the headline number, and it is the least interesting fact in the filing.
The interesting fact is what the fourth quarter did. Cal-Maine earned $199.3 million in the first quarter, $102.8 million in the second, $50.5 million in the third, and then lost $35.9 million in the fourth. Its first quarterly loss since 2021. And because Cal-Maine's dividend is a formula rather than a promise - one third of each quarter's net income attributable to the company - the 10-K says so in plain language: it will not pay a cash dividend for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, and it will not pay one for a subsequent profitable quarter until it is profitable on a cumulative basis again. Dividends payable on the balance sheet went from $114.2 million to zero.
So a company that reported $316.7 million of net income for the year exited that year losing money with its dividend switched off. Both things are true, and the gap between them is the whole story.
Company Snapshot
Cal-Maine Foods calls itself "the largest egg company in the United States" in Item 1 of this filing. Founded in 1957 and headquartered in Ridgeland, Mississippi, it ran a flock of 50.0 million layers plus 14.1 million pullets and breeders at year end, employed 4,909 people, and produced 92.1 percent of the shell eggs it sold. Walmart, including Sam's Club, accounted for 30.0 percent of net sales, down from 33.6 percent last year.
The numbers here come from the fiscal 2026 Form 10-K, filed July 22, 2026, covering the year ended May 30, 2026. Two things changed structurally during that year. Cal-Maine bought Echo Lake Foods on June 2, 2025 for approximately $289.5 million and Creighton Brothers on March 2, 2026, and it moved in the fourth quarter to a new three-segment reporting structure: Conventional Shell Eggs, Specialty Shell Eggs, and Prepared Foods. Both matter for reading the results.
The Financial Story
Start with what actually fell. Revenue went from $4,261.9 million to $2,911.6 million. Gross profit went from $1,850.9 million to $672.0 million, a gross margin of 23.1 percent against 43.4 percent. Operating income fell 77.2 percent to $350.2 million, an operating margin of 12.0 percent against 36.1 percent. Net income attributable to Cal-Maine was $316.7 million against $1,220.0 million. Diluted share count actually fell, from 48.89 million to 47.78 million, so none of the earnings decline is a dilution effect.
Now the part the MD&A is unusually clear about: this was price, not volume. In the Conventional Shell Eggs segment, net sales fell 51.1 percent to $1,348.1 million. The filing attributes essentially all of it to a 50.9 percent decline in the average conventional egg price per dozen, and states that conventional volumes were "relatively flat" against fiscal 2025. Specialty tells the same story more gently: prices down 9.5 percent took $112.6 million off net sales, partly offset by a 2.4 percent volume gain worth $28.1 million. Cal-Maine sold about as many eggs as it sold last year. It got roughly half as much for the conventional ones.
The margin damage comes from the gap between how fast price fell and how fast cost followed. Conventional egg prices fell 50.9 percent. Conventional cost per dozen fell 23.8 percent. Sell the same volume at half the price against costs that only came down by a quarter and the conventional segment's income falls 83.2 percent, from $1,290.0 million to $216.6 million, which is exactly what happened. Specialty is a sharper version of the same squeeze: net sales down 7.3 percent while cost of sales rose 8.4 percent, because cost per dozen rose 5.9 percent as the mix shifted toward more expensive specialty types. Specialty segment income fell 45.6 percent even though specialty prices barely moved.
| Segment (FY2026, $M) | Net sales | Change | Cost of sales | Change | Segment income | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conventional Shell Eggs | 1,348.1 | -51.1% | 1,059.2 | -24.0% | 216.6 | -83.2% |
| Specialty Shell Eggs | 1,070.5 | -7.3% | 777.9 | +8.4% | 181.5 | -45.6% |
| Prepared Foods | 244.8 | from 4.1 | 185.4 | from 4.5 | 33.9 | from -2.1 |
Selling, general and administrative expense went up while revenue fell $1.35 billion, from $314.4 million to $329.3 million, an increase of 4.7 percent. That reads like a cost-control failure and it is not one. The Prepared Foods segment added $23.9 million of SG&A because Cal-Maine bought it, and unallocated corporate SG&A actually fell 14.8 percent, from $127.1 million to $108.4 million, mostly on a lower employee bonus accrual. Conventional segment SG&A was essentially flat at $72.3 million. The company did not get sloppy. It got bigger in one place while the egg business shrank around it, and on a shrunken revenue base SG&A went from 7.4 percent of sales to 11.3 percent.
The quarterly walk is where the annual figures stop being useful. Revenue declined every quarter of the year, from $922.6 million to $552.6 million. Operating income went from $249.2 million to a $58.8 million loss. The full-year operating margin of 12.0 percent is an average of a very good first quarter and a loss-making fourth. Fourth-quarter figures below are derived by subtracting the nine-month year-to-date totals in the third-quarter 10-Q from the full-year totals in the 10-K.
| FY2026 quarter | Revenue ($M) | Operating income ($M) | Net income ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (ended Aug 30, 2025) | 922.6 | 249.2 | 199.3 |
| Q2 (ended Nov 29, 2025) | 769.5 | 123.9 | 102.8 |
| Q3 (ended Feb 28, 2026) | 667.0 | 35.9 | 50.5 |
| Q4 (ended May 30, 2026) | 552.6 | -58.8 | -35.9 |
The balance sheet did not participate in any of this. Cal-Maine ended the year with $107.2 million of cash and $816.8 million of available-for-sale securities, about $924.1 million combined, nothing drawn on its $250 million revolver, total liabilities of $467.0 million against $3,107.6 million of assets, and a current ratio of 7.7. Operating cash flow was $479.8 million against capital expenditure of $151.2 million. The company spent $427.8 million in cash on acquisitions, paid $231.6 million in dividends and repurchased $131.1 million of stock under the $500 million program its board approved in February 2025. Returns to shareholders of $362.7 million exceeded the $316.7 million it earned.
Two disclosures deserve to be read precisely rather than assumed. First, the $8.8 million gain on involuntary conversions is not avian influenza money. The filing says $7.5 million of it was a first-quarter business interruption insurance recovery tied to a weather event that occurred in fiscal 2021. Fiscal 2024's much larger $23.5 million gain was the HPAI-related one, from the Kansas and Texas outbreaks. Cal-Maine's actual fiscal 2026 bird flu event was small: an outbreak at a Maryland pullet facility on March 14, 2026 that led to the depopulation of approximately 352,000 pullets. Against a 64 million bird flock, that is a rounding error, and it is a useful reminder that the price collapse happened because the national flock recovered, not because Cal-Maine's did not. The filing notes the USDA put the layer flock at 312.0 million hens as of July 1, 2026 against a five-year average of 308.0 million, and cites an American Egg Board estimate of 340 to 347 million as of May 2026 that it describes as "indicative of abundant egg supplies."
Second, the antitrust overhang got smaller and larger at the same time. On or about June 25, 2026, after the fiscal year ended, Cal-Maine settled the Department of Justice antitrust investigation together with 17 state attorneys general. It denied all wrongdoing, no fines or penalties were assessed, and the terms were antitrust compliance and reporting measures, a donation of 30 million eggs to food banks, and a payment of $1.5 million to the settling states. That is a remarkably cheap resolution. But Washington State did not join and its investigation continues, and since November 2025 the company has been named in roughly a dozen private antitrust suits alleging conspiracy to inflate conventional egg prices, consolidated in February 2026 into the Western District of Wisconsin, where no discovery has yet taken place. Separately, the older Kraft, General Mills and Nestle egg-products case produced a $17.8 million jury award in December 2023 that became a $43.6 million judgment after trebling, joint and several with other defendants, against which Cal-Maine has posted a $23.9 million bond and continues to appeal.
Valuation: What It Is Worth as a Normal Business
Cal-Maine traded between $86.75 and $90.98 on July 26, 2026 according to public quote data, and this note uses $88 as the reference price. That is a market quote, not a figure from the filing. With 46.98 million shares outstanding, that is roughly $4.13 billion of market capitalization. Subtract the $924.1 million of cash and securities against no borrowings and the enterprise value is about $3.21 billion. On fiscal 2026 results that is 13.3 times earnings, 6.8 times EBITDA of $474.5 million, 1.4 times sales, and a free cash flow yield of 7.9 percent on $328.6 million of free cash flow.
The problem with every one of those multiples is that the denominator is a point on a cycle. Here is the five-year record:
| Fiscal year | Revenue ($M) | Operating income ($M) | Operating margin | Diluted EPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | 1,777.2 | 143.5 | 8.1% | $2.72 |
| FY2023 | 3,146.2 | 967.7 | 30.8% | $15.52 |
| FY2024 | 2,326.4 | 312.5 | 13.4% | $5.69 |
| FY2025 | 4,261.9 | 1,536.5 | 36.1% | $24.95 |
| FY2026 | 2,911.6 | 350.2 | 12.0% | $6.63 |
Read that table before reacting to the 31.7 percent decline. Fiscal 2026 revenue of $2,911.6 million came in 0.9 percent above the company's own five-year average of $2,884.7 million. The 12.0 percent operating margin sits just below the five-year median of 13.4 percent. Earnings per share of $6.63 is higher than fiscal 2024 and more than double fiscal 2022. The collapse everyone will write about is a return to the middle of Cal-Maine's own distribution from the best year it has ever had.
For an implied-value range, the honest input is normalized EBITDA rather than a spot multiple. The scenarios below are my assumptions, not company guidance, and Cal-Maine issues none.
| Scenario | Assumptions | Normalized EBITDA | EV/EBITDA | Implied value per share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bear | Conventional prices settle below fiscal 2026 averages, specialty mix cost creep persists, Prepared Foods holds | $330M | 6.0x | about $62 |
| Base | Mid-cycle pricing near the five-year median margin, full-year Echo Lake and Creighton contribution | $480M | 7.0x | about $91 |
| Bull | Partial price recovery on flock or cage-free tightness, plus the acquisitions annualizing | $730M | 7.0x | about $128 |
Each adds the $924.1 million of net cash, which is $19.67 per share and roughly 22 percent of the current price, to the capitalized operating value. The range runs from about $62 to about $128 with a base case near $91. At $88 the market is paying about 6.7 times my mid-cycle EBITDA estimate, which means it is pricing neither the trough nor another boom. It is pricing a normal year, which is defensible, and it is the reason the stock did not fall apart on a 73 percent earnings decline.
Framing note: these are implied values under stated assumptions. They are not price targets and this is not investment advice.
Risks
The specific risks in this filing are not the generic ones. The private antitrust litigation is the largest unquantified item: roughly a dozen consolidated suits with no discovery taken, a Washington State investigation that did not settle, and a live $43.6 million trebled judgment under appeal. The cost structure is the second: conventional cost per dozen fell only 23.8 percent against a 50.9 percent price decline, and if egg prices stay where they exited the year, the fourth quarter is a better guide to the run rate than the full year. Customer concentration is real, with the top three at 43.1 percent of net sales and Walmart alone at 30.0 percent, though both fell this year. Cage-free mandates covering states with roughly 27 percent of the US population phase in through January 2030, which forces capital spending regardless of where prices sit. And bird flu cuts both ways: an outbreak in Cal-Maine's own flock is a direct loss, while an outbreak in everyone else's is what produced fiscal 2025.
The Bottom Line
Cal-Maine is not a broken business. It is a commodity producer that just finished a round trip, and its fiscal 2026 revenue landed within one percent of its own five-year average with no debt, $924 million of cash and securities, and a balance sheet that funded $560 million of acquisitions and shareholder returns during the decline. The number to watch is not the annual one. It is whether the fourth-quarter loss was the bottom or the beginning, because the dividend formula answers that question mechanically: Cal-Maine cannot pay again until it is cumulatively profitable from the fourth quarter forward. The first quarter of fiscal 2027 is the tell, and it is a cleaner signal than anything management will say.
All financial data in this report is drawn from Cal-Maine Foods' Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 30, 2026, filed July 22, 2026, and from the fiscal 2026 quarterly Form 10-Q filings, via the RoboSystems SEC data repository. The share price reference is public market quote data as of July 26, 2026 and is labeled as such. Valuation scenarios are the author's assumptions, not company guidance.
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