There is no doubt that 1999 was a most difficult and disappointing year for Hershey Foods
Corporation. While the year got off to a slow start due to excessive retail inventories, we fully
expected a strong finish in the second half of the year. Instead, the implementation of the Jinal
phase of the Corporation's enterprise-wide information system created problems in the areas of
customer service, warehousing and order fulffillment. These difficulties were exacerbated by our
growth in recent years which hd resulted ín shipping capacity constraints. As a result,
Hershey's sales and earnings fell well short of expectation for the year