Will these mark an inflexion? Last year, egg prices in the United States literally exploded in the wake of a new episode of avian flu that decimated poultry farms.

Clearly, the extraordinary financial performance achieved in 2023 will not be repeated this year. A return to the Group's average valuation is therefore more or less inevitable.

Excluding the 2023 episode, Cal-Maine has, after all, experienced only very modest growth - even negative if we adjust the figures for inflation - over the 2012-2022 cycle. Margins, meanwhile, have remained uneven.

Cal-Maine boasts an excellent balance sheet, with no net debt and an appreciable cash reserve. However, its current enterprise value of $1.6 billion represents a generous multiple of eighteen times average annual profit - based on the group's history between 2012 and 2022.

Is this justified for a company with no growth and, all in all, a poor dividend payer? In a context of rising interest rates, it's more a question of compressing multiples.