Shares of Cal-Maine Foods (NASDAQ: CALM) were down by 8% through 10:51 a.m. Wednesday after America's largest producer of chicken eggs reported a huge earnings miss Tuesday night.

Ahead of the report for its fiscal Q1 2024, which ended Sept. 2, analysts had forecast that Cal-Maine would earn $0.33 per share on $479.5 million in sales. Not only did the company miss that sales target, reporting only $459.3 million, its earnings were the merest fraction of what Wall Street had forecast -- just $0.02 per share.  

Needless to say, this came as quite a surprise to investors. After all, as Cal-Maine itself admitted, feed costs for the company's chickens are declining, and "customer demand has been favorable" as conventional egg prices have generally fallen as chicken populations have rebounded in the wake of the most recent bird flu outbreak. What's more, Cal-Maine has raised the average prices of its specialty eggs (organic, cage-free, grass-fed, etc.) by more than 8% since the year-ago quarter -- all of which should have added up to robust profits.  

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Source Fool.com