Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (CALM) Q3 2026 Earnings: Revenue $540M (-41.5%)
CALM — Q3 2026 Financial Report Analysis
Q3 · Fiscal year 2026 · Published by Pham Hop
Cal-Maine swung to a $58.6M loss ($1.26/share) in the June–August 2026 quarter as conventional egg prices fell 59.3% with the US hen flock rebuilt after bird flu; sales fell 41.5% to $539.6M.
Revenue
$540M
-41.5% YoY
Net income
-$59M
-129.4% YoY
Diluted EPS
$-1.26
-130.6% YoY
Operating margin
-15.2%
This period vs a year ago
Same period last year
This period
Revenue▼-41.5%
≈$922M
$540M
Year-ago figures (≈) are worked out from the growth rate the company reported. Each row has its own scale.
Egg prices fell 59% and Cal-Maine swung to a $58.6 million loss
Cal-Maine Foods, the largest US egg producer, lost money in the 13 weeks from June 1 to August 29, 2026. Net sales fell 41.5% to $539.6 million, and the company booked a net loss attributable to shareholders of $58.6 million ($1.26 per share), against a $199.3 million profit ($4.12 per diluted share) a year earlier. The cause is almost entirely one number: the average price Cal-Maine received for a dozen conventional (standard, caged) eggs fell 59.3% year over year. The US laying-hen flock has rebuilt after the bird-flu losses of 2024–2025, and egg supply now runs above normal, so the scarcity pricing that inflated last year's results has gone.
Period note: Cal-Maine's fiscal year ends on the Saturday closest to May 31, so this is the first quarter of its fiscal 2027. We label it Q3 2026 because two of its three months (July and August 2026) fall in calendar Q3. Source: the company's Form 10-Q filed September 30, 2026.
At a glance
Gross profit: $0.4 million, down from $311.3 million. After paying for feed, hens, packing and freight, almost nothing was left from $540 million of sales. Every expense below that line turned into a loss.
Conventional egg segment: a $71.0 million loss vs a $168.2 million profit. The business that made the most money a year ago is now losing the most.
No dividend, possibly for a while. Cal-Maine pays one-third of each profitable quarter's earnings as a dividend, but only after any losses are earned back. It has $94.5 million of cumulative losses to recover before it pays again, after a loss last quarter too.
The numbers
Metric
Q1 FY2027 (Jun–Aug 2026)
Q1 FY2026 (Jun–Aug 2025)
YoY Change
Net sales
$539.6M
$922.6M
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-41.5%
Gross profit
$0.4M
$311.3M
-99.9%
Gross margin
0.1%
33.7%
-33.6 pts
Operating income (loss)
-$82.2M
$249.2M
-133.0%
Operating margin
-15.2%
27.0%
-42.2 pts
Net income (loss) attributable to Cal-Maine
-$58.6M
$199.3M
-129.4%
Diluted EPS
-$1.26
$4.12
-130.6%
Avg. conventional egg price per dozen
—
—
-59.3%
Avg. specialty egg price per dozen
—
—
-10.7%
Prepared foods sales
$63.0M
$72.4M
-13.0%
Operating cash flow
-$101.4M
$278.6M
n/m
Operating margin is the share of sales left after running the business, before interest income and tax. The filing gives price changes for eggs as percentages only, not dollar prices per dozen.
What drove the swing: price, not volume
Cal-Maine now reports three segments: conventional shell eggs, specialty shell eggs (cage-free, organic, brown, pasture-raised and branded eggs such as Eggland's Best), and prepared foods (egg patties, omelets, waffles and wraps).
Segment
Sales
YoY
Segment income (loss)
Year ago
Conventional shell eggs
$201.7M
-59.5%
-$71.0M
$168.2M
Specialty shell eggs
$236.9M
-14.0%
$14.9M
$64.2M
Prepared foods
$63.0M
-13.0%
$7.8M
$13.2M
Other (egg products, hard-cooked, co-pack)
—
—
-$8.4M
$12.2M
Segment sales include sales between segments; segment income is before $24.6 million of unallocated corporate costs.
Conventional eggs. Sales fell $296.8 million, and the filing attributes $293.3 million of that to the 59.3% price drop; volumes were "relatively flat." About half of Cal-Maine's conventional egg sales are priced directly off wholesale market quotes, so a collapse in the wholesale price lands on revenue almost immediately. Costs did not fall nearly as fast: cost of sales fell only 19.8%, mainly because eggs bought from other farms got cheaper (their price fell 53.9%) and Cal-Maine needed 30.6% fewer of them. Feed, hens and labor for its own flocks don't fall when egg prices do, so the segment spent $250.5 million to produce $201.7 million of sales.
Specialty eggs. These are mostly sold on cost-plus contracts (price set from production cost plus a margin), so they cushion swings — price fell only 10.7% and the segment stayed profitable. But volume fell 3.8%, and cost per dozen rose 11.3% on higher feed and production costs, cutting segment income by 77%. Management explains that last year conventional eggs were so expensive that shoppers moved up to cage-free and other specialty eggs; with conventional eggs cheap again, that temporary demand has unwound.
Prepared foods. Pounds sold fell 19.3%, partly offset by 7.9% higher prices. The company says volumes were cut temporarily while it expands and reworks production lines, a project begun in mid-fiscal 2026; cost per pound rose 12.1% as a result. This segment was meant to make Cal-Maine less dependent on egg prices. At 11.7% of sales and $7.8 million of segment income, it is still far too small to offset a $71 million conventional-egg loss.
Bird flu and the supply cycle
Egg prices swing on hen supply, and the biggest supply shock is highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI, "bird flu"), where infected flocks are destroyed. According to figures cited in the filing, 40.2 million commercial laying hens and young hens (pullets) were destroyed in 2024 and 45.2 million in 2025, which drove last year's high prices. In 2026 through September 28, the figure is 19.2 million. HPAI also hit Cal-Maine's own flocks in March 2026. Management says the rebuilding of the national flock "appears to be outweighing the impact of depopulation":
The USDA put the US laying flock at 318.7 million hens on September 1, 2026, above its five-year average of 312.1 million.
The American Egg Board estimates the flock at 336–343 million hens as of June 2026, well above the USDA figure.
Egg-type chicks hatched in August 2026 were 50.8 million, down 12% from August 2025.
That last point is the first sign of a supply response: when prices are low, producers hatch fewer replacement birds, which eventually tightens supply. The filing also notes that retailers and food-service buyers no longer stockpile eggs as they did when supply was scarce, and that retail shelf prices have come down more slowly than wholesale prices.
What the headline numbers hide
Cash went out, not just profit. Operations used $101.4 million of cash, almost twice the $56.2 million net loss. Part of the gap is non-cash (a $18.0 million deferred tax benefit) and part is working capital: trade receivables rose $19.4 million and inventories $19.4 million from May 30, while accrued wages and benefits fell $17.8 million. The company paid for the loss and the $26.6 million of capital spending by selling investment securities ($211.8 million of sales and maturities against $49.6 million of purchases).
There's no "adjusted" figure to flatter it. Cal-Maine reports only GAAP results here, so the loss is the loss.
One-offs cut both ways, but they're small. Last year included a $7.5 million insurance gain from a 2021 weather event, so this year's comparison is slightly harsher than the operating trend. This year, specialty SG&A was helped by a $3.2 million marketing reimbursement, and corporate costs by a $2.5 million cut in an acquisition earn-out liability. None changes the picture.
Corporate overhead rose 53% to $24.6 million, driven by higher insurance costs and legal and professional fees. The legal load is real: in June 2026 Cal-Maine settled a Justice Department and 17-state antitrust investigation into egg pricing without admitting wrongdoing and without fines, paying $1.5 million to the states and agreeing to donate 30 million eggs and add compliance measures. Washington State did not join and is still investigating, and private class actions alleging price-fixing during the 2022 bird-flu outbreak are consolidated in federal court in Wisconsin.
Buybacks don't help per-share results in a loss. Diluted shares averaged 46.7 million versus 48.4 million a year ago, so fewer shares make the per-share loss slightly larger, not smaller. Cal-Maine bought back $5.1 million of stock in the quarter and another $14.9 million by September 24, with $315.7 million of its $500 million authorization left.
Tax rate is not a factor. The effective rate was 24.2%, against 24.4% a year ago.
Interest income is shrinking — $8.3 million vs $13.0 million — because cash and investments are lower after a year of acquisitions, dividends and buybacks.
The balance sheet is not in danger. At August 29, Cal-Maine held $113.5 million of cash and $654.1 million of investment securities, had no borrowings, and on August 31 replaced its credit line with a new five-year, $250 million unsecured revolving facility. Total equity is $2.58 billion.
Takeaway: Cal-Maine's outsized profits a year ago were a payment for scarcity caused by bird flu, and that scarcity is over: with the US flock above its five-year average, conventional egg prices fell 59% and the conventional business now spends more producing a dozen than it sells it for, on average. Specialty eggs and prepared foods stayed profitable, but at $22.8 million of combined segment income they cover less than a third of the conventional loss — the diversification strategy reduces the swings, it doesn't yet offset them.
Outlook
Management gives no earnings or price guidance. The filing's own statements that matter for the next few quarters:
Seasonality should help. Cal-Maine says its fiscal first and fourth quarters (summer and late spring) are typically its weakest, and that egg prices usually rise with the school year and peak before Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. The September–November quarter should therefore look better than this one even at the same point in the supply cycle.
Supply is still heavy. Two flock estimates above the five-year average argue against a quick price recovery. The 12% drop in chick hatchings points to tighter supply later, but hens hatched now take months to start laying.
Investment continues. Capacity projects in prepared foods and cage-free production are expected to run through mid-to-late fiscal 2027, and Cal-Maine added the Eggland's Best franchise territory in the Northeast for $25 million on July 10, 2026.
Our read: the next quarter's result depends mostly on whether holiday demand lifts wholesale prices enough to cover production costs, which this quarter's figures show are far stickier than prices. A new bird-flu wave is the main upside risk to prices and the main downside risk to Cal-Maine's own flocks. Until conventional eggs return to profit, the dividend stays off: the $94.5 million of losses has to be earned back first.