United Natural Foods Inc, (NASDAQ:UNFI) saw its shares slip in premarket trade, despite upping its annual financial guidance and reporting a higher-than-expected first quarter sales.
The food distributor, whose largest customer is Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Whole Foods Market had unveiled a 4% hike in profit to US$30.5mln, or 60 US cents a share on Thursday.
READ: United Natural Foods shares higher after full year results
Sales in the quarter rose by 7.9% to US$2.46bn, against market consensus for US$2.39bn in sales.
The company is now guiding earnings per share to come in between US$2.72 to US$2.80 on sales of US$9.84bn to US$10bn, against its previous guidance of US$2.67 to US$2.77 a share and sales of US$9.63bn to US$9.81bn.
Gross margin, however, narrowed to 14.9% from 15.3% a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
"We are pleased with our strong start to the fiscal year which reflects broad-based growth across all of our significant sales channels for the fiscal first quarter," said chief executive Steven Spinner.
In premarket trade, its shares eased 0.29% at US$49.39.