Update Monsanto (MON)

It’s hard to keep earnings growing when competitors cut the price you can charge for your signature product in half.

That’s the reality that’s finally put an end to Monsanto’s (MON) run of eight consecutive years of earnings growth.

On September 10, the company, a member of the Jubak Picks 50 portfolio, told Wall Street that earnings for the fiscal year that ends in August 2010 would be just $3.10 to $3.30 a share.

Wall Street analysts had projected earnings of $4.26 a share, according to Zacks Investment Research. For the fiscal year that ended in August 2009, analysts had projected earnings of $4.41 a share, a 21% increase from the $3.64 reported for fiscal 2008.

The problem is the company’s herbicide Roundup. Read more

Monsanto speaks: When is a price increase not a price increase?

Monsanto (MON) has taken exception to the way that a lot of journalists–myself included–treated its announcement that its newest generation of seeds would cost up to 42% more than the last generation. (See my August 14 update on Monsanto http://jubakpicks.com/2009/08/14/update-monsanto-mon/)

What stuck in the company’s craw was language that said that the new prices actually constituted a price increase.

Here’s what the company wrote in an e-mail it sent me (and a lot of other journalists): Read more

Update Monsanto (MON)

I think the recent huge  price increase from Monsanto (MON) is pretty much like putting a sign on the company’s back saying “Kick me.”

I wonder if hiking seed prices by as much as 42% when much of the developing world is on the edge of a food crisis is really the best strategy to follow to maximize long-term shareholder value.

 Monsanto  is one of the stocks in the long-term Jubak Picks 50. My policy has always been that readers are adults capable of applying their own individual moral compass to decide  what they will and will not buy.

Here’s what Monsanto said on August 13. You decide. Read more