Arden Hills, Minn.-Land O’ Lakes Inc. reported a loss of $2.7 million on sales of $2.1 billion for the third quarter ending Sept. 30, 2007, versus a year-ago loss of $16.7 million and sales of $1.5 million. The third quarter is traditionally a slow quarter for LOL. For the first nine months, net income was $156.6 million on sales of $6.3 billion, versus the year-ago $44.2 million and $5.2 billion. LOL reported that its agronomy business had $49.1 million in pretax earnings for the first nine months, up from the year-ago $28.1 million. Those earnings were generated primarily though the company’s 50 percent stake in Agriliance LLC, which was substantially repositioned Sept. 1, 2007. Agronomy reported a pretax loss of $6.2 million for the quarter, versus a year-ago $3.9 million pretax loss. LOL reported $94 million in crop protection sales through its Winfield Solutions LLC business since the Sept. 1 repositioning of Agriliance’s crop protection business to Winfield.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain