THE PROTEIN PULSE — DRIVE TIME Thursday Margin Monitor | November 5th, 2026

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Thursday Margin Monitor, November 5th. From The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Stop managing your business by someone else's headline. Seaboard loses eighty million dollars in a quarter while a weekly model shows pork packers making nearly seventeen dollars a head. Sounds like somebody's numbers are wrong, doesn't it? They're not. They're measuring two different things. One is a company's actual quarterly performance. The other is an estimate of current packing economics. Confuse the two, and you'll make bad decisions. Beef is telling us the same story. Choice grade cutouts are sliding, yet ribs are near six seventy-seven while rounds are below two ninety. Same animal. Two very different markets. I don't care how attractive an industry average looks if the specific product I'm buying or selling tells a different story. Headlines tell you where to look. They don't tell you what your business is worth. The profit isn't in chasing the average. It's in knowing the cut, the cost, and what you can actually buy, sell, and deliver. The fun at MICA is over. Time to get back to work. Call me if you need help.

HOST: Choice grade cutout at three sixty-two fifty, down two seventy-three. Pork cutout at sixty-nine twenty-nine, down three fourteen. Fresh nineties at three sixty-eight. Imported nineties at three nineteen C-I-F. Domestic nineties F-O-B at three dollars. West Texas Crude at eighty-eight twelve. Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel at four twenty-one.

SHAWN: Headlines tell you where to look. They don't tell you what your business is worth. The profit isn't in chasing the average. It's in knowing the cut, the cost, and what you can actually buy, sell, and deliver. Stay disciplined.

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Shawn Sparks, The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Stay disciplined.