Food maker Sara Lee said Wednesday its fiscal first-quarter profit dropped 40 percent due to higher commodity costs and an increase in marketing and advertising spending.
For the quarter ending Sept. 29, net income fell to $200 million, or 28 cents per share, from $333 million, or 44 cents per share in the prior year quarter.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings per share of 27 cents.
Sara Lee said its profit was hurt by "a very challenging input cost environment" as prices rose for commodities such as wheat, poultry, pork and green coffee.
There is no need to look any further, because we all know that those silly and meaningless price fluctuations from agricultural prices are unimportant and should play no role in interest rate policy. In fact, just ignore the following chart because it has no effect on anything.
For those of you who looked, notice the Goldman Sachs agricultural price commodity index has risen almost 90% in three years. But remember -- it's not part of core inflation, so it doesn't matter....unless you're a Sara Lee stockholder.
Can anyone at the Federal Reserve read a damn price chart?
