Playing Chicken

As we kick off a long weekend to recognize the achievements of American workers, celebrating our nation's 110th Labor Day, most of us will be spending the weekend over barbeques and lawn games. But while hamburgers, hot dogs and even steaks have traditionally been menu mainstays, this year we'll probably be eating a lot more chicken.

Severe drought conditions across much of the U.S. in 2012 caused feed prices to skyrocket, forcing many ranchers to sell off my cattle they otherwise would have that year. As a result beef herds are thinner than they have been in years, and the ongoing drought means the herds that are left aren't growing fast enough to keep up with demand, causing beef prices to soar.

Pork isn't much cheaper this year, either. A new pig illness, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, began sweeping across farms last December, killing more than 7 million piglets in the past year. That's caused pork prices to surge as well, and now pig farmers are getting paid more per pound of pork, just like the cattle ranchers.

Data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that pork and beef prices are up more than 11 percent over the past year. Prices are up 47 percent since 2009 as beef now fetches and average $5.56 per pound in grocery stores, a new record high. Chicken prices have remained relatively stable though, with USDA data showing that chicken is fetching only about $1.50 per pound.

Thanks to high beef and pork prices and the fact that Americans are trying to eat healthier, more chicken was eating in the US last year than any other meat. That's the first time in more than a century that we ate more chicken than beef. That's been a boon for Sanderson Farms (NSDQ: SAFM), the third-largest poultry producer in the US.

Fully integrated, producing, processing, marketing and distributing fresh and frozen chicken products, revenue at the company has grown an average 11.7 ! percent annually over the past three years. Earnings growth has been lumpier given the swings in corn prices, but shot up 141.7 percent last year thanks to the perfect storm of falling feed prices and higher chicken demand.

Fiscal 2013 sales totaled $2.7 billion with a net profit of $130.6 million, or $5.68 per share, and the company brought its long-term debt down from $150.2 million last year to $29.4 million. That full-year performance handily beat median analyst expectations and has sent the company's shares soaring.

Despite that appreciation, the company is still an excellent value. Its price-to-earnings-growth ratio is currently just 0.8, meaning even the better than 40 percent gain the company's shares have made over the trailing year, it is still well behind earnings growth. The company also commands much smaller premiums to earnings and book value that its larger peers and is trading to just 0.8 times trailing twelve month sales.

Sanderson has been actively expanding over the past few years, adding a deboning facility in Texas capable of processing about 1.25 million birds per week. It has also implemented a high degree of automation in its facilities, helping to keep labor costs down and maintain the consistent quality of its product. Thanks to those efforts, Sanderson expects poultry production to increase by between 2 percent and 3 percent this year.

Ironically, the current conflict in Ukraine could also work to the benefit of Sanderson Farms relative to other major producers. After the U.S. and Europe hit Russia with sanctions for its role in the crisis, Moscow retaliated by imposing a total ban on poultry, beef and pork imports from the US and the European Union. While Russia typically consumes about 15 percent of Sanderson Farms exports, the company's largest export destinations are Central Asia and Mexico at about 25 percent of the company's exports each. At the same time, China is also a major destination at 14 percent of export production.

Those ! other maj! or customers should pick up most of the company's export slack as a result of the Russian ban, particularly since Sanderson Farms exports less product to Russia than most of its competitors. Sanderson also has an advantage in that it is totally devoted to poultry; its leading competitor, Tyson Foods (NYSE: TSN), was recently banned from exported a significant amount of pork to China due to the use of a barred feed additive at six of its plants. As a result, while analysts currently forecast that Tyson Foods' 2014 full-year earnings should grow by 34 percent, Sanderson Farms' are forecast to grow by more than 60 percent.

Enjoy your chicken this weekend!