(Reuters) -Bunge Global missed Wall Street’s expectations for fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday, after a global glut in crop prices took a hit on the grain trader’s margins.
Shares of the company fell 3.4% before the bell.
Corn, soybean and wheat prices hit four-year lows in 2024 as global stocks ballooned to multi-year highs, whittling down margins for agribusinesses.
Bunge and its peers make money by processing, trading and shipping crops around the world. On Tuesday, rival Archer-Daniels-Midland narrowly missed expectations for quarterly profit amid a slowdown in demand for staple crops.
Bunge’s agribusiness segment, which represents over 80% of its total revenue, saw adjusted core earnings decline to $364 million in the fourth quarter from $639 million a year earlier.
Gross profit at its Refined and Specialty Oils segment fell 19.5% to $275 million in the fourth quarter.
Bunge forecast adjusted earnings to be $7.75 per share in 2025, missing analysts’ expectations of $8.71.
The Missouri-based company posted an adjusted profit of $2.13 per share in the fourth quarter, compared with analysts’ estimates of $2.24 according to data compiled by LSEG.
(Reporting by Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
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