The Andersons said Feb. 15 that the company’s Plant Nutrient Group has begun to see signs of improvement in fertilizer orders and price stability in the early weeks of 2017. This follows a couple of quarters of hesitant buying from customers, lower prices, margins and sales.
While the group reported a fourth-quarter pretax loss attributable to The Andersons of $3.8 million on sales of $136.4 million, compared to the year-ago loss of $8 million on sales of $187.9 million, both current and year-ago quarters reflected one-time items, with the recent quarter affected by the $3.3 million closing of a cob production and storage facility in Mount Pulaski, Ill.
Full-year group pretax income was up at $14.2 million on sales of $725.2 million from 2015’s $121,000 and $848.3 million, respectively.
Company-wide, The Andersons were back in the black for the fourth-quarter with income of $11.3 million ($0.36 per diluted share) on sales of $1.11 billion from the year-ago loss of $46.7 million ($1.68 per share) and $1.18 billion, respectively. Full-year income was $14.5 million ($0.41 per share) on sales of $3.92 billion up from 2015’s loss of $11.3 million ($0.46 per share) on $4.2 billion, respectively.