Just in time for Easter: Egg prices tumbled 70%, and here's how people responded

By Tomi Kilgore

Cal-Maine Foods' stock rallies after the egg seller beat profit expectations by the widest margin in five years

Cal-Maine's stock jumped after a big earnings beat, despite a 70% drop in prices of conventional white eggs.

Shares of Cal-Maine Foods climbed Wednesday after a sharp drop in egg prices didn't stop the largest U.S. egg company from posting a blowout earnings report.

The company's sales and profits did fall sharply from a year ago, as prices for conventional white eggs were 70.1% lower than at that time, but they still beat Wall Street expectations as customers flocked to more premium egg varieties.

The stock (CALM) jumped 5.5% on Wednesday after falling 9.1% in March. The rally has turned the stock positive for the year - up 4.8% in 2026 - compared with the S&P 500 index's SPX 4% decline this year.

As Cal-Maine explained, the drop in egg prices isn't necessarily because of weak demand. What has helped is that the threat of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, has faded. Supplies have recovered, with the number of chickens culled during the last fiscal quarter down 70.6%, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Egg prices had reached record highs a year ago as bird flu caused a sharp drop in supply.

It's good news for Easter egg buyers, as the average price of a dozen conventional eggs fell to $1.423 in the fiscal third quarter from $4.766 a year ago. The company said sales for the quarter were down 72.1% to $283.2 million, due to the drop in selling prices and 6.7% lower sales volumes.

The lower egg prices led people to buy more specialty eggs, which includes the premium varieties of cage-free, organic, brown, free-range, pasture-raised and nutritionally enhanced eggs. The price for those eggs fell 16.9% to $2.313 per dozen, from $2.784 per dozen. That helped boost the share of specialty egg sales to 50.5% of total egg sales from 24.4% a year ago.

With that boost, total net sales were down 53% to $667 million, but that beat the average analyst estimate compiled by FactSet of $642.5 million.

And while net income sank 90% to $50.46 million, earnings per share of $1.06 was well above the FactSet EPS consensus of 70 cents. The margin of that beat - results were 51% above expectations - was widest since the same quarter of 2021, according to FactSet data, when EPS of 28 cents beat expectations of 8 cents.

"Periods of price softness can create noise around near-term performance, but they also provide an opportunity to demonstrate that our results are not simply a function of spot market conditions," said CEO Sherman Miller, according to an AlphaSense transcript of the post-earnings call with analysts.

-Tomi Kilgore

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04-01-26 1640ET