THE PROTEIN PULSE — DRIVE TIME

Thursday Margin Monitor | September 17, 2026

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Thursday Margin Monitor, September seventeenth. From The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Feedlots lost three hundred seven a head last week. Beef packers made one hundred seventy-seven. Across a five-thousand-head yard that’s about one point five million underwater. Domestic nineties are four twenty-eight. Fifties under eighty-seven cents. South American nineties still around three ten to three twenty. Those numbers change blend math. The Fed hiked another quarter point. On twenty million dollars that’s fifty thousand a year. If you’re still costing fall business on summer assumptions, sharpen the pencil.

HOST: Packers have reason to run. Positive margins don’t create cattle. Slaughter is down seven point seven percent year-to-date — about one point six million fewer head.

SHAWN: Futures broke. Cash and boxed beef did not confirm it. A fifty-fifty blend of nineties and fifties puts theoretical seventy C L raw material around two fifty-seven before yield and freight. Summer grind assumptions are done.

HOST: Pork producers at thirty-eight a head — less than half a year ago. Packers near two dollars. Retail pork has not followed wholesale lower.

SHAWN: Chicken is two markets. Tyson sees foodservice softness. Amylu is up one hundred seven percent at retail. Corn ratings at fifty-seven percent. Meal and energy still matter. S and P thinks the import window may deliver as little as one hundred twenty thousand tons. Price the arrival, not the headline. Stay disciplined.

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

SHAWN: Stay disciplined.