Update Potash of Saskatchewan (POT)
Potash of Saskatchewan (POT) has been telling investors for more than a month that it believes that demand is picking up and that prices for potash fertilizer would start to climb in the first quarter of 2010.
I guess the company really meant it.
Yesterday, March 11, after the close of trading Potash raised earnings guidance for the first quarter to a range of $1.30 to $1.50 a share. That is a huge leap from prior guidance of 70 cents to $1 a share set only on January 28. The Wall Street consensus had been for earnings of 94 cents a share. The company said it would make any revisions to guidance for the full year when it reported first quarter earnings on April 29.
The increase in guidance follows hard on the heels of news from Canpotex, the export arm of Canada’s fertilizer producers, that it was increasing export prices for potash. The price increase, effective immediately on all new sales, took prices to $415 a ton for standard and $430 a ton for granular grade.
In the January 28 guidance that accompanied fourth quarter earnings, the company had projected potash prices of just $365 a ton for 2010. At the time I called first quarter 2010 guidance laughably low. “The numbers don’t make a whole lot of sense except as a reaction by the company to seeing its guidance get smashed to the downside in quarter after quarter,” I wrote.
The jump to $415 to $430 a ton in March, however, is a bigger increase than I’d expected this early in the year. Read more
Update Potash of Saskatchewan (POT)
Potash of Saskatchewan (POT) has been doing a lot of talking recently at private dinners with Wall Street analysts and Wall Street conference calls.
The picture that emerges is of a company a lot more confident that it can see the turn in the fertilizer market. Read more
Update Yara International (YARIY.PK)
Norwegian fertilizer maker Yara International (YARIY.PK), already the biggest publicly-listed fertilizer maker in the world, just bought itself a big hunk of the North American market.
In an all-cash deal Yara agreed yesterday, February 15, to buy Terra Industries (TRA) for $4.1 billion. Terra had been the object of a hostile bid from CF Industry Holdings (CF) that had valued the company at $3.88 billion.
The price certainly can’t be called cheap–Yara is paying a 24% premium to the February 12 price for Terra–and there aren’t a lot of synergies in the deal—Yara has pegged cost savings post-acquisition at just $60 million in the first year.
But buying Terra will give Yara a 30% share in the North American market. And access to cheap U.S. natural gas. With natural gas, a major fertilizer feed stock, projected to stay cheaper in the United States than in Europe for at least the next few years, the deal gives Yara a big low-cost manufacturing base. In addition using company estimates and discounting for some inefficiencies in older and smaller Terra plants, it looks like Yara is adding capacity for about 20% less than it would cost to build new plants from scratch.
Yara management has set a goal of 10% global market share; this deal brings Yara to about 8%.
Whether the deal is good for Yara shareholders or not depends on your view of fertilizer demand. Read more
Update Bunge (BG)
Brazilian iron ore giant Vale (VALE) said on January 15 that it’s in talks with Bunge (BG) to buy that company’s fertilizer assets in Brazil.
The deal, for as much as $3.8 billion, would relieve Bunge of a unit that showed a loss of $127 million in the third quarter, and give the company cash to pay down debt that stood at $4.1 billion at the end of September 2009.
For Vale, the deal would give the company, which already produces potash fertilizer at Taquari-Vassouras in northeast Brazil and is developing new projects in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and Peru, additional scale in the short-term and in the longer-run a potential path to dominating Brazil’s fertilizer market. Read more
Update Yara International (YARIY.PK)
Do Norwegian’s grin? Surely that was a trickle of a smile at Yara International’s (YARIY.PK) annual update for investors on December 10.
The Norwegian fertilizer company reported that the nitrogen fertilizer market was headed for demand-driven price increases in the first half of 2010. Urea supply, a major form of nitrogen fertilizer, should remain tight in 2010 with only three projects likely to come on line. Supply (ex-China) in 2010 will increase by 3%, according to Deutsche Bank, while demand will climb 5%, the bank projects. Chinese exports are likely to remain limited in 2010 as higher production costs limit the competitiveness of Chinese urea. Yara International plants ran at about 63% of capacity in 2009 and these scenarios should result in a pickup to near 80% of capacity.
Time to up my targt price, I believe. Read more
