OVERVIEW: Pork and meat producer Smithfield Foods spent much of its second quarter dealing with an outbreak of swine fever at several of its Romanian hog farms in August. The disease led to the death of at least 36,000 pigs. The company said its quarterly earnings would be affected and had to write down inventory at a cost of at least $4 million to $5 million.

Also in August, Smithfield signed a deal to export 60 million pounds of pork to China by the end of the December.

Late in the quarter, Smithfield filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has attempted to organize workers at the company's hog slaughterhouse in rural North Carolina for more than a decade.

The lawsuit, filed in October, accused the union of engaging in a public smear campaign, including seeking frivolous regulatory investigations and providing false statements to analysts to try to lower the company's stock price.

BY THE NUMBERS: Smithfield has not offered guidance for the quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect earnings per share of 24 cents on revenue of $3.28 billion.

ANALYST TAKE: Deutsche Bank analyst Eric Katzman said in a note to investors he expects Smithfield to report earnings per share of 17 cents. He said he expects the company's cost of goods, lower hog prices and more competition in the beef sector to pressure profit.

Sales will likely grow by between 19 percent and 20 percent, Katzman said, with most of the increase coming from sales in the newly acquired Premium Standard Farms and ConAgra Foods Inc. meat businesses.

Stephens Inc. analyst Farha Aslam also predicts earnings per share of 17 cents and expects sales to rise 21 percent to 22 percent to about $3.4 billion, with sales in its hog production group up 28 percent to 29 percent.

STOCK PERFORMANCE: Shares fell 11 percent in the quarter, but climbed 4 percent during the past 52 weeks.