Monsanto misses estimates on declining corn sales

Agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto (MON) missed Wall Street profit forecast for its second quarter, while reporting a 6.6% growth in earnings, attributed mainly to newest soybean technologies, lower taxes and improved glyphosate pricing. Profit grew to $1.45 billion or $3.27 per share from the year ago profit of $1.36 billion or $3.09 per share. On an ongoing basis, EPS was $3.22, up 0.9% year-over-year.

Sales of the agricultural products company fell marginally by 1%, impacted by declining volumes and prices of its corn products, along with lower planted acerages. Monsanto reported revenue of $5.01 billion compared to $5.07 billion a year earlier. Shares of Monsanto increased slightly when the market opened today.

Bayer Merger

The St. Louis, Missouri-based company continues to be confident on closure of the merger with Bayer as both companies’ are on course to secure the required approvals within the second calendar quarter of 2018.

Outlook

For fiscal 2018, the company expects pricing for glyphosate and the increased adoption of new technologies in Seeds and Genomics to drive growth.  Monsanto is also confident of completing restructuring and cost savings initiative the company initiated a couple of years ago and expects its expenses to be down year-over-year. The company continues to expect pre-tax income growth for fiscal year 2018.