Tyson's fiscal Q3 adjusted EPS rose 9% to $0.99 on flat $13.9B sales as Chicken's margin reached 11.2%, but a deepening Beef loss led management to cut full-year adjusted operating income guidance to $2.1–2.3B.
Revenue
$13.9B
-0.1% YoY
Net income
$182M
+198.4% YoY
Diluted EPS
$0.52
+205.9% YoY
Operating margin
2.6%
How TSN compares with Consumer Staples peers
Figure
TSN
Peer median
Rank
Revenue growth (YoY)
-0.1%
+5.0%
23rd of 30
Operating margin
2.6%
14.2%
29th of 30
EPS growth (YoY)
+205.9%
+9.0%
3rd of 27
Rank 1 = fastest revenue growth, highest operating margin, fastest EPS growth. Peers are the other Consumer Staples companies with a 2026 report on this site, each at its latest period we've analyzed; fiscal calendars differ, so periods are not always the same months.
Tyson Foods' fiscal third quarter (the 13 weeks to June 27, 2026) had two stories, and they pull in opposite directions. Sales were flat at $13.87 billion. GAAP earnings per share tripled to $0.52 from $0.17, but mostly because last year's quarter carried a $343 million beef goodwill write-down. On the company's adjusted basis, which strips out one-off items, operating income rose 8% to $547 million and EPS rose 9% to $0.99. Chicken did most of the work. Beef is still losing money, and management now expects it to lose more this year than it thought in May. That is why Tyson cut its full-year profit outlook in the same release that called the quarter "strong."
At a glance
Adjusted EPS of $0.99, up 9%. The GAAP figure of $0.52 is lower because of $185 million of pre-tax charges this quarter: a $98 million accrual for chicken price-fixing lawsuits, $73 million of CEO/COO transition costs and $14 million of restructuring.
Chicken's adjusted operating margin was 11.2%, up from 10.6%. Tyson's largest profit engine made $488 million on an adjusted basis, helped by better live-bird and breeding-stock performance and higher volume.
Full-year adjusted operating income guidance was cut to $2.1–2.3 billion, from $2.2–2.4 billion. The whole cut comes from Beef, where the expected adjusted loss widened to $500–650 million from $350–500 million.
The numbers
Tyson's fiscal year ends around the start of October, so this is fiscal Q3 2026 even though it covers April to June. Figures are in millions of US dollars except per-share amounts.
Metric
Q3 FY2026
Q3 FY2025
YoY Change
Sales
$13,868
$13,884
-0.1%
Gross profit
$921
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For a meat company, the useful view is by segment. Each protein has its own cost cycle: cattle, hogs, feed grain. Operating margin here means the share of each segment's sales left as profit after its production, selling and overhead costs. Since fiscal 2026, Tyson no longer charges corporate overhead to the segments, so these margins are before corporate costs.
Segment
Sales Q3 FY26
Sales Q3 FY25
Op. income GAAP (FY26 / FY25)
Op. income adjusted (FY26 / FY25)
Adj. margin (FY26 / FY25)
Beef
$5,391
$5,603
$(142) / $(459)
$(138) / $(116)
(2.6)% / (2.1)%
Pork
$1,580
$1,506
$60 / $50
$60 / $50
3.8% / 3.3%
Chicken
$4,255
$4,220
$389 / $475
$488 / $448
11.2% / 10.6%
Prepared Foods
$2,557
$2,515
$312 / $390
$321 / $334
12.6% / 13.3%
International
$601
$557
$48 / $65
$48 / $45
8.0% / 8.1%
Corporate expenses
—
—
$(251) / $(197)
$(178) / $(197)
—
Segment sales include $516 million of sales between Tyson's own segments, which is eliminated in the company total.
Segment by segment
Beef: fewer cattle, higher prices, still losing money. Beef sales volume fell 15.9% while the average selling price rose 12.1%. The 10-Q attributes the volume drop to "lower head harvested related to reduced cattle availability and network optimization." The US cattle herd is small, so Tyson is processing fewer animals and paying more for each one, and it has closed a harvesting plant and moved another to a single shift. Higher beef prices did not cover the higher cattle cost. The company cites "compressed beef margins," a $40 million lower-of-cost-or-net-realizable-value inventory adjustment (a write-down taken when inventory is worth less than it cost to produce), higher freight costs and $21 million of hedging losses against a $12 million gain a year earlier. The GAAP loss shrank from $459 million to $142 million only because last year's figure included the $343 million goodwill impairment. On an adjusted basis the loss grew from $116 million to $138 million. Management also notes "uncertainty exists regarding the timing of the cattle herd rebuilding," so it is not forecasting when this cycle ends.
Chicken: the engine, with a legal charge hiding its quarter. Volume rose 1.0% "primarily due to increased domestic production" and price rose 2.2% on mix. The segment benefited from "improved live and breeding stock performance," meaning better growing and feed efficiency in Tyson's own flocks, and from feed costs that the 10-Q describes as moderating. Reported segment income fell from $475 million to $389 million for two reasons. First, Tyson booked a $98 million legal accrual for the Broiler Antitrust Civil Litigation (lawsuits alleging chicken producers fixed prices from 2008) as a direct reduction of sales. Second, last year's quarter included part of a one-time gain on selling cold-storage warehouses. Without those items the segment earned $488 million, up 9%. Management says this is Chicken's seventh straight quarter of growth.
Prepared Foods: higher volume, thinner margin. This segment (Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park and similar brands) grew volume 0.1% and price 1.6%. The 10-Q attributes the price increase to "the pass-through of increased raw material costs." Adjusted margin slipped to 12.6% from 13.3% because of "higher raw material, freight and transportation costs and increased marketing, advertising and promotional spend." The 10-Q says the segment is facing higher raw material costs "primarily due to higher meat costs," and those costs rose faster than Tyson raised prices. The reported drop from $390 million to $312 million is larger mainly because last year included the warehouse-sale gain.
Pork: a small improvement. Pork volume rose 5.2% on more hogs processed and heavier carcasses. Adjusted segment income rose to $60 million from $50 million. The 3.8% margin shows how thin margins are in this business.
International grew sales 7.9% on higher prices and foreign-exchange translation. Volume fell 3.5%. Adjusted income was about flat at $48 million.
Takeaway: Tyson's profit now depends almost entirely on Chicken and Prepared Foods. Together they produced $809 million of adjusted segment income this quarter, while Beef lost $138 million. The group can report "strong" chicken-led results while still cutting its full-year guidance, and the reason is the same both times: a cattle shortage with no end date that management is willing to forecast.
What the headline numbers hide
The tripled GAAP EPS mostly reflects an easy comparison. Last year's $0.17 included a $343 million goodwill impairment worth $0.96 per share. The impairment was also not tax-deductible, which pushed last year's tax rate to 64.5%. On an adjusted basis the tax rate was about 24% in both years, so the underlying growth is the 9% adjusted figure.
This quarter's adjustments are recurring in type. Tyson excluded $98 million of chicken antitrust accruals, $73 million of executive transition costs ($41 million of one-time cash payments and $32 million of severance) and $14 million of restructuring. Legal accruals have been excluded in almost every recent period: $269 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2026 and $343 million in the same period of fiscal 2025, across beef, pork and chicken. Tyson pays these in cash. Treating them as "non-core" every year makes adjusted earnings look better than the cash the business keeps. At June 27, Tyson still had $139 million accrued for chicken, $215 million for beef and $83 million for pork cases, and it says losses beyond those amounts are not "reasonably estimable." On July 16, 2026 a federal court granted some of the class-certification motions in the beef antitrust case, so that exposure remains open. Another $29 million of executive transition charges is expected in fiscal Q4.
Cash conversion is solid but falling. Operating cash flow for the nine months was $1,469 million against $540 million of net income, a large gap mostly explained by $1,055 million of depreciation and amortization, which is a non-cash charge. Cash flow was down $151 million from last year, mainly because Tyson paid out more on legal settlements: $245 million on pork, $193 million on beef and $23 million on chicken claims so far this year. A $240 million increase in accounts payable helped offset this; the 10-Q says it came from "an increase in days payable outstanding," meaning Tyson is taking longer to pay suppliers. That source of cash does not repeat indefinitely. Free cash flow (operating cash flow minus capital spending) was $913 million versus $929 million.
Working capital looks normal. Inventories rose 2.8% since fiscal year-end, in line with 3.1% nine-month sales growth, and receivables fell. The $40 million beef inventory write-down is the one warning sign on inventory.
Share buybacks did not drive EPS growth. Tyson repurchased only $33 million of stock under its buyback program this quarter, so EPS growth came from operations. Lower net interest expense helped a little ($92 million net versus $98 million), because the company reduced total debt by $824 million this fiscal year.
Nine-month adjusted results are down. Adjusted operating income for the first nine months was $1,616 million, down 4%, and adjusted EPS was $2.83, down 5%. The Q3 improvement came after a weaker first half, mostly because of Beef, whose nine-month adjusted loss was $483 million versus $223 million a year earlier.
Guidance: what changed since May
Tyson updated its fiscal 2026 outlook (on a comparable 52-week basis, although fiscal 2026 has 53 weeks):
Item
Outlook now (Aug 3)
Previous outlook (May 4)
Total adjusted operating income
$2.1–2.3B
$2.2–2.4B
Beef adjusted segment result
$(650)M to $(500)M
$(500)M to $(350)M
Chicken
$1.90–2.05B
$1.9–2.05B
Prepared Foods
$1.30–1.35B
$1.25–1.35B
Pork
$250–300M
$250–300M
International
$150–200M
$150–200M
Sales growth
+2.5% to +3.5%
+2% to +4%
Free cash flow
$1.3–1.7B
$1.2–1.8B
Capital expenditures
$0.7–0.9B
$0.7–1.0B
The $150 million cut to Beef accounts for the whole $100 million reduction in total guidance. The low end of Prepared Foods rose slightly and the other segments did not change. Tyson also lowered its forecast for US beef production to a 3% decline this year, from 2%.
Outlook
The guidance implies a wide range for fiscal Q4. Subtracting the nine-month adjusted operating income of $1,616 million from the new $2.1–2.3 billion range leaves roughly $480–680 million for the final quarter on a 52-week basis, compared with $547 million in Q3. For Chicken, the unchanged $1.90–2.05 billion range implies about $430–580 million in Q4 after $1,470 million so far. This quarter's $488 million sits inside that range, so management is not forecasting a slowdown there. Beef's new range implies a Q4 adjusted loss of roughly $20–170 million.
The main question for the rest of fiscal 2026 and into 2027 is whether Chicken can keep earning above an 11% margin while USDA expects chicken production to rise about 3%. More supply usually puts pressure on chicken prices, and Tyson's gains have come partly from cheaper feed. Beef will keep losing money until the cattle herd rebuilds, and management does not say when that will happen. Prepared Foods is the segment to watch. It buys meat as a raw material, meat costs are rising, and its margin has already dropped 0.7 points.
Other items to watch in the fiscal Q4 report and 10-K (expected mid-November): the remaining $29 million of leadership-transition charges, a roughly $23 million gain expected on the sale of beef assets, whether new antitrust accruals follow the partial class certification in the beef case, and how much the 53rd week of fiscal 2026 adds to reported sales and profit compared with the 52-week guidance.
Adjusted figures are Tyson's own non-GAAP measures as reconciled in its August 3, 2026 earnings release. All other figures come from the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 27, 2026.