Tyson Foods Cuts Profit Outlook, Asks “Where’s the Beef?”

Tyson Foods Cuts Profit Outlook, Asks “Where’s the Beef?”

Mon, August 3, 2026 at 4:44 PM GMT+3 2 min read

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There's a special flavor of corporate pain reserved for companies whose raw material also moos.

Tyson Foods just cut its annual profit forecast primarily because cattle now cost more to buy than steaks and burgers can sell for. Shares dropped about 3% premarket as investors digested that these new numbers aren't pretty. Fiscal 2026 adjusted operating income is now guided to $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion, trimmed from $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion. The beef segment alone is expected to lose $500 million to $650 million, a meaningfully uglier hole than the $350 million to $500 million Tyson was bracing for last quarter. Beef volumes fell 15.9% even as prices jumped 12.1%, the kind of math where selling less at a higher price still somehow adds up to worse.

Blame the cows, or really, the shortage of them. America's cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size in 75 years, a drought-driven casualty of scorched pastures and pricier feed. Washington's ban on Mexican cattle imports, aimed at a flesh-eating pest with a name straight out of a horror movie, hasn't helped, though relief is supposedly coming this month.

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But chicken is saving the day. As beef prices spook shoppers, they're trading down to poultry, and Tyson's chicken business grew margins 11.2% while volumes ticked up 1%, quietly propping up a company whose flagship protein has turned into a liability.

Total revenue landed at $13.87 billion, missing the $14.12 billion Wall Street wanted, with full-year growth now guided to 2.5% to 3.5% instead of the 4.3% analysts expected. Board member Jeff Schomburger takes over as CEO in October, inheriting a company where the chicken wing is doing the heavy lifting the steak was supposed to handle.