Kraft has released the results of its second quarter for the fiscal 2015 year, the report in which the company successfully completed the merger of Kraft and Heinz.
"The company is focused on the difficult and challenging process of integrating our two businesses," Bernardo Hees, Kraft Heinz CEO, said in the report. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us as we continue to design our new organization, always putting our consumers first."
Kraft saw an operating income of $923 million and diluted EPS of $0.92 included $56 million ($0.06 per diluted share) in spending on cost savings initiatives, according to the report, with $37 million ($0.04 per diluted share) in merger-related costs, a $21 million ($0.02 per diluted share) gain on the sale of assets, and $20 million ($0.02 per diluted share) in unrealized gains from hedging activities.
The company also stated that through the first six months of 2015, Free Cash Flow was $802 million, up from $454 million for the same period for 2014. The company attributed this to a representation of working capital improvements that more than offset an increase in capital expenditures.
Financial highlights for the second quarter included:
“The company remains confident in its ability to deliver against its initial financial expectations for the merger of Kraft and Heinz, including its expectation to generate aggressive, run-rate cost savings of $1.5 billion by the end of 2017, inclusive of savings from productivity and cost savings initiatives contemplated prior to the merger,” Kraft stated in the report.
It added that as a matter of practice, Kraft Heinz does not expect to issue or update earnings guidance going forward.
