Agricore United reports CPS bookings up 44 percent

Winnipeg-Agricore United reports that pre-sale booking at its Crop Production Services segment, were up $41 million or 44 percent to $135 million as of Feb. 15, 2007, compared to $94 million for the same time last year. Fertilizer sales make up the bulk of the CPS unit. These bookings will not be recorded as revenue until products or services have been delivered. While these are positive, AU notes that most of these earnings improvements will not be realized until its third quarter, which represents 70-75 percent of its CPS sales. CPS sales for the first quarter ending Jan. 31, 2007, were up, but only slightly to $52.6 million from the year-ago $51.1 million, mainly due to increased nutrient sales. AU touted its company-wide EBITDA improvement for the quarter to $8.3 million from the year-ago negative $2.9 million. AU saw a 27.6 percent improvement on earnings, which were still in the loss column at $14.9 million from the year-ago $20.6 million. Total revenues were up 14.3 percent to $91 million from the year-ago $79.6 million. AU announced that it paid a total of $4.9 million for recent acquisitions-Green Acres Fertilizer Services (Major) Inc., Green Acres Chemical Ltd. and Kerrobert Agro Services Ltd.