General Mills Inc.'s (GIS) fourth-quarter profit exceeded Wall Street's forecast and the cereal maker hiked its guidance for the coming fiscal year, citing moderating raw material prices and internal efforts to cut costs.

General Mills is one of the first of the large consumer product makers to report earnings and its results highlight the benefits these manufacturing companies could see to their profits margins if commodity costs stay off their peaks.

The maker of Cheerios cereal and Yoplait yogurt now expects earnings of $4.20 to $4.25 a share for the new fiscal year, topping forecasts. Earlier this month, General Mills said it was comfortable with analysts' mean estimate of $4.15 a share. General Mills shares were recently up 2.4% to 57.34.

On a conference call, the company also said it expects new products - like its Progresso High Fiber soups - to drive strong results in its U.S. retail business in the coming year as consumers eat more of their meals at home.

"The results provide more evidence that [General Mills] can maintain pricing in a deflationary commodity cost environment," said Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow. "Lower commodity costs are driving the story."

Still, the company said its bakery and foodservice business remained under pressure due to weakness in the restaurant industry. For fiscal 2010, the company expects sales and volume for its foodservice business to stay below its 2009 levels.

For the quarter ended May 31, the company posted income of $358.8 million, or $1.07 a share, up from $185.2 million, or 53 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items such as hedging gains and losses, earnings rose to 86 cents from 73 cents.

Revenue increased 5% to $3.65 billion, with currency fluctuations hurting sales results by three percentage points. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of 81 cents and revenue of $3.69 billion.

The company said it isn't seeing any negative impact to the baking category and its Pillsbury baking products from a recall of Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough. General Mills said retailers were ordering more of its products to fill up shelf space in the category.

-Anjali Cordeiro, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2200; anjali.cordeiro@dowjones.com

(Mike Barris and Kerry Grace Benn contributed to this article)