# Dear Fellow Pilgrim's Shareholders

_Source: `DeepSeekOCR_Ardian_pruned_1k/consumer-defensive-packaged-foods/NASDAQ_PPC_2019/NASDAQ_PPC_2019.mmd` · pages 58-64_

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Dear Fellow Pilgrim's Shareholders:

During 2019, our team members continued to deliver on our strategy, generating growth and a significant increase in relative performance compared to 2018 and to our industry competition. Our diverse global footprint contributed to well-balanced and more consistent results, limiting the impact of challenging specific market conditions. We continue to maintain our approach to the successful Key Customer strategy, which is the basis for our strong growth. While our product portfolio is already differentiated, we are investing to innovate further, and increase our capacities and capabilities to evolve with customer demand. We expect value added, specialty products to account for a meaningfully larger portion of our total results over the next few years as we continue to differentiate our sales mix, and improve our margin profile. In the U.S. we are continuing to improve our operational performance, and the market in our fresh business also improved compared to the year before. Our Prepared Foods business continues to evolve, reflecting the investments made in the past few years. We adapted our legacy European operations to better mitigate future input cost challenges. Integration of the newly acquired Europe operations is on track, and the business is already producing positive EBITDA. In Mexico, the market was in-line with seasonality and results for the full-year 2019 also increased versus the year before.

Revenues from Key Customers have more than doubled over the last nine years, reducing our relative dependency on pure commodity sales while strengthening our margin structure. We continue to leverage our Key Customer strategy in all geographies, to earn more business and accelerate growth beyond just the underlying market conditions. As an example of how the strategy is supportive of our growth, we will convert another one of our U.S. commodity big-bird deboning facilities to small-bird deboning. And in early 2020, we are expanding the list of partnerships by adding another Key Customer as more companies recognize our leadership and trust our ability to reliably supply them with differentiated, innovative products.

The integration of the newly acquired European assets is tracking well to expectations. Over the next few years, we expect to generate an EBITDA improvement from the new European operations to achieve a level that is competitive with leading companies with similar portfolio. We are leveraging resources available through both our legacy and newly acquired operations in Europe in conjunction with our global team, in order to further strengthen our competitive advantage. We are increasing our ability to offer Key Customers a much wider selection of highly differentiated, innovative products to fulfil the growth in consumer demand.

For fiscal year 2019, we achieved Net Revenues of \(11.41 billion while generating Net Income of \)456 million, and a GAAP EPS of $1.83. Our adjusted EBITDA* (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes Depreciation and Amortization) was $974 million, or an 8.5% margin.

The strategy we implemented nine years ago have made a measurable difference – the result is evident in all regions and segments we operate. For the long term, we expect our competitive advantage to sustain, supporting our vision to become the best and most respected company, creating the opportunity of a better future for our team members.

Thank you for your continued support.

![](images/58_0.jpg)

Jayson Penn

Chief Executive Officer and President
March 27, 2020

* As defined in our reconciliation to GAAP within our annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 29, 2019 and supporting 8-Ks.

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# UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

☒ ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended December 29, 2019

OR

☐ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from ___ to ___

Commission File number 1-9273

![](images/60_0.jpg)

PILGRIM'S PRIDE CORPORATION
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

Delaware

75-1285071

(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)

(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.)

1770 Promontory Circle

80634-9038

Greeley CO

(Address of principal executive offices)

(Zip code)

Registrant's telephone number, including area code: (970) 506-8000
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class

Trading Symbol

Name of each exchange on which registered

Common Stock, par value $0.01 per share

PPC

The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T ( \( §232.405 \)  of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of "large accelerated filer," "accelerated filer," "smaller reporting company," and "emerging growth company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Large Accelerated Filer

Non-accelerated Filer

Accelerated Filer

Smaller reporting company

Emerging growth company

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of the registrant's Common Stock, $0.01 par value, held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of June 30, 2019 was $1,344,353,655. The number of shares of the registrant's Common Stock outstanding as of February 20, 2020 was 249,572,119.

## DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the Company's Proxy Statement for the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this annual report.