Despite increased operating income from its Plant Nutrition North America business, Compass Minerals reported that weaker results from its Salt and Plant Nutrition South America businesses moved the company into the loss column for second-quarter 2017.
“Despite a strong performance this quarter in our Plant Nutrition North America business, our results were pressured by increased costs in the Salt segment and sluggish plant nutrition sales in South America,” said Fran Malecha, Compass Minerals’ president and CEO. “While this has been a challenging period, I am pleased with the progress we have made in positioning our plant nutrition business for growth and in aggressively identifying areas across the company for cost reductions. Because of the expected benefits of these efforts, our full-year earnings-per-share guidance remains unchanged.”
Compass reported a second-quarter net loss of $6.4 million on sales of $228 million, down from the year-ago income of $6.3 million and $169.5 million, respectively.
Second-quarter Plant Nutrition North America operating earnings were up at $7.6 million on sales of $50.5 million from the year-ago $4.7 million and $47.8 million, respectively. Fertilizer volumes were up at 78,000 st from 74,000 st, though average sales prices per ton were off at $642/st from $651/st.
Second-quarter Salt operating earnings dropped to $10.7 million from the year-ago $23.3 million, while those for Plant Nutrition South America were $800,000 down from $2.6 million. Total volumes for the South American unit were also down at 151,000 st from 283,000 st, with average prices down at $439/st from $451/st.
Compass reported six-month net income of $15.1 million on revenues of $615.8 million, down from the year-ago $56 million and $515.2 million, respectively.