Monogram Assembled Foods to add 400 Tennessee jobs
Monogram Assembled Foods LLC , which owns Monogram Foods, has taken over a former ConAgra facility in Dickson, Tennessee, and will create nearly 400 jobs with its $53.5 million investment.
In an announcement Thursday, Monogram Foods said the new Dickson operations will operate similarly to its other 10 U.S. manufacturing facilities, which offer a full range of meat snacks, appetizers, assembled sandwiches, fully cooked and raw bacon, corn dogs, USDA baked goods and other convenience products.
As part of Monogram Foods’ acquisition, the Conagra facility, which was to close, never shut down, and Monogram officials said they offered employment to Conagra’s existing employees.
“Our team members at Monogram Foods in Dickson will allow us to bring even more of your favorite convenience foods and appetizers to stores across the country,” Monogram CEO Karl Schledwitz said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing more jobs to the community and serving the Dickson area in many ways.”
Amazon profits, fees going up
Amazon’s profits in the fourth quarter nearly doubled, beating analysts’ expectations, even as the online behemoth continues to contend with surging costs tied to a snarled supply chain and labor shortages.
The company, based in Seattle, also raised its annual Prime membership fee on Thursday to $139 per year from $119. This is the first time Amazon has raised the price of Prime membership since 2018.
“As expected over the holidays, we saw higher costs driven by labor supply shortages and inflationary pressures, and these issues persisted into the first quarter due to omicron,” said Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in that role last July. “Despite these short-term challenges, we continue to feel optimistic and excited about the business as we emerge from the pandemic.”
Amazon was one of the few retailers that has prospered during the COVID-19 outbreak: As physical stores selling non-essential goods temporarily or permanently closed, homebound people turned to Amazon for everything from groceries to cleaning supplies.
Chip shortage cuts Ford car production
Ford Motor Co. reversed a loss and rode some big accounting changes to post a $17.94 billion net profit last year, even as it battled computer chip shortages that caused factory slowdowns and vehicle shortages.
U.S. sales for the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker fell 7% for the year over depressed 2020 numbers. But customers paid record prices of nearly $51,000 per vehicle in Ford’s most lucrative market, according to Edmunds.com.
Excluding the one-time items such as the $8.2 billion reclassificaton of Ford’s investment in electric vehicle startup Rivian, the company made $1.59 per share, falling short of analyst estimates of $1.86, according to FactSet. Revenue rose 7.2% to $136.34 billion. That was short of analyst estimates of $137.61 billion.
The company said it expects full-year pretax profits this year to rise 15% to 25% over 2021 numbers, to a range of $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion.
Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said Ford is seeing high demand for its products, but its factory output was constrained last year by the semiconductor chip shortage and other supply-chain disruptions.
The problems cost Ford about 250,000 vehicles of production last year, Lawler said.
“It’s the supply chains that limit what we could produce, what we could provide,” he told reporters Thursday.
— Compiled by Dave Flessner
