GIS General Mills Inc

By Micah Maidenberg 

General Mills Inc. struggled to lift sales in the latest quarter in its business serving retail stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The Minneapolis-based company on Wednesday said organic sales, a metric that excludes the effect of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and asset sales, fell 1% in its fiscal fourth quarter, reflecting lower volumes.

In the North America business, the company's largest by sales, General Mills reported a weaker performance from its snacking products in the U.S. Sales of other products, such as cereal and yogurt in the U.S., were in line with a year earlier. Sales were down 2% to $2.34 billion in the unit.

Overall, the company reported $4.16 billion in sales in the quarter ended May 26, short of the $4.24 billion analysts predicted, according to FactSet.

The maker of Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and Nature Valley granola bars posted a profit of $570.2 million, or 94 cents a share, up from $354.4 million, or 59 cents a share, a year earlier.

After adjustments, the company's profit of 83 cents a share was more than analysts' targets.

For its fiscal 2020 year, General Mills said it expects organic sales to rise between 1% and 2%. It forecasts its adjusted profit to increase 3% to 5% versus the prior fiscal year.

General Mills reported an adjusted gross profit margin of 35.3% for the latest quarter, down compared with a year earlier due to higher input cost.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 26, 2019 08:13 ET (12:13 GMT)

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