Any loyal Kraft Heinz Co (NASDAQ:KHC) shareholders counting on the company’s fortunes changing for the better as of last quarter are disappointed today. Kraft Heinz stock was down 5% on Friday following yet another lackluster quarterly report, taking shares to a 52-week low near $69. That translates into a one-year loss of 28%.

Is KHC stock a name to buy on the dip, scooping up what everyone else is erroneously throwing away? The recent market-wide weakness certainly presented some opportunities of that ilk. In the case of Kraft Heinz stock, though, there’s a good reason investors are steering clear. And would-be buyers might want to take the hint everyone else is not so subtly dropping.

Kraft Heinz Earnings Recap

For its fourth fiscal quarter ending in December, Kraft Heinz turned $6.88 billion worth of revenue into an operating profit of 90 cents per share. The top line was just a tad better than the year-ago figure, while per-share profits were down a penny. Analysts were collectively expecting sales of $6.91 billion and earnings of 95 cents per share of KHC stock.

Stripping out the benefit of currency-exchange volatility, sales would have been down slightly. In fact, organic sales were down 0.6% year-over-year despite a 1.0% increase in prices. Sales in the United States — the company’s biggest market — were off 1.1%, marking the seventh consecutive quarter U.S. sales had declined YOY.

CEO Bernardo Hees commented on the Q4 report: “There’s no question that our financial performance in 2017 did not reflect our progress or potential.” He countered, however, saying:

“We made significant improvements in many of our businesses, and were able to accelerate some important business investments at the end of the year. This, together with benefits from the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and additional investments in our capabilities, should help further advantage our brands and grow our business in 2018 and beyond.”

In a separate presentation made on Thursday, the company announced it had managed to cull $1.7 billion in annual expenses thanks to the 2015 union with Kraft Foods Group, when it was simply Heinz.

That’s a 5% reduction mostly in operating costs on a pro-forma basis, an improvement that was clear in the full-year income statement. Operating income widened from $6.1 billion in 2016 to $6.8 billion in 2017 despite a slight decline in total revenue.

It’s still not enough, however, to push the company through multiple headwinds.

Looking Ahead for Kraft Heinz Stock

Also in Thursday’s presentation, Hees alluded to more deal-making in the future. These plans will almost certainly be accelerated now, in light of the company’s disappointing fourth quarter report.

With changing consumer preferences that call for fresher foods and more variety, companies are forced to innovate and reconfigure. For example, in 2015, the company closed a Davenport, Iowa cold-cut production facility to open a more modern facility just a few miles down the road. Such measures don’t come cheap, however. That new production facility alone cost $255 million to build.

In that vein, CFO David Knopf noted:

“Since the HR-1 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law, we have already taken actions and are accelerating key business initiatives. This includes approximately $300 million in strategic investments to build our capabilities, our people skills and our brands; more than $800 million in capital expenditures to improve quality, safety and capacity; as well as $1.3 billion to pre-fund our post-retirement benefit plans.”

It remains to be seen, however, if this spending will meaningfully grow the top and bottom line as many shareholders have been expecting, or if it will merely slow down the pace of the business’ deterioration.

These and other similar investments necessitate cost-savings consolidations like the pairing of Kraft and Heinz three years ago. Thursday’s presentation didn’t offer any specific potential targets, nor did Friday’s earnings report. Unilever NV (ADR) (NYSE:UN), however, was once an acquisition target and could become one again.

Whatever deal — or deals — may be in the cards need to happen sooner than later, though. Sales growth is anemic when there is any, letting Kraft Heinz stock slide 28% lower since the year-ago earnings report.

In the meantime, Kraft Heinz is expected to earn $3.96 per share on sales of $26.85 billion this year. That’s slightly better than last year’s top line of $26.2 billion and bottom line of $3.55 per share.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.