OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2013. Agrium Inc. (TSX and NYSE: AGU) announced today consolidated net earnings (“net earnings”) of USD 76-million (USD 0.52 diluted earnings per share) for the third quarter of 2013, compared with net earnings of USD 129-million in the third quarter of 2012 (USD 0.80 diluted earnings per share). 

The 2013 third quarter results included a pre-tax share based payments recovery of USD 21-million (USD 0.11 diluted earnings per share), a write-down on our Hanfeng Evergreen Inc. investment of USD 12-million (USD 0.08 diluted earnings per share) and a loss of \\$ USD 2-million (USD 0.01 diluted earnings per share) on natural gas and other hedge positions. Excluding these items, net earnings would have been USD 73-million (USD 0.50 diluted earnings per share).

“Agrium’s Retail business unit had one of its strongest third quarters on record, with EBITDA of USD 147-million. This was driven largely by high usage of crop protection products and related application services in our North American market. The late growing season in North America, combined with uncertainty in the fertilizer markets caused many customers to delay crop nutrient purchases,” commented Mike Wilson, Agrium’s President and CEO.

“Additionally, unplanned lost production due to outages at our Redwater and Carseland facilities reduced product availability in the third quarter and will impact fourth quarter sales volumes. This is expected to impact fourth quarter earnings by approximately \\$0.20 per share,” added Mr. Wilson.

“Despite any short term factors or market fluctuations, we continued to demonstrate our confidence in the ability of the business to generate excess cash flow through the commodity cycle by substantially increasing the dividend in the third quarter and continuing to execute on our share buy-back program,” concluded Mr. Wilson.

Agrium is providing guidance for the fourth quarter of 2013 of USD 0.80 to USD 1.25 diluted earnings per share. This excludes gains or losses on foreign exchange and derivative hedge positions, Retail operating results for acquired Viterra assets and related integration costs and purchase price adjustments, and share-based payments expense in our estimated fourth quarter results.