Syngenta Group third quarter sales at previous year’s level
Published: Wednesday, Oct 30th 2024, 09:10
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Syngenta maintained sales and earned slightly more in the third quarter. The agrochemicals group suffered from the bad weather in the summer quarter, but now expects the markets to gradually stabilize.
The Syngenta Group's sales remained unchanged at 6.8 billion US dollars from July to September, as the crop protection and seeds manufacturer announced on Wednesday. At constant exchange rates, sales would have increased by 4 percent.
In the first nine months, turnover amounted to 21.4 billion US dollars. That is a drop of 12 percent. At constant exchange rates, turnover would only have fallen by 9 percent.
The Group reported that unfavorable weather conditions in key markets had impacted the use of crop protection products. This was compounded by persistent price pressure, which impacted farmers' incomes and depressed demand for the Group's products.
In addition, prices for agricultural commodities fell, which reduced the income of many farmers and impacted demand for agricultural inputs. Syngenta has therefore taken further measures to improve productivity, operational efficiency and cash flow. According to the press release, this also includes the optimization of working capital.
This appears to be paying off in the earnings figures: The operating result before depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) improved in the third quarter to USD 0.7 billion (previous year: USD 0.3 billion). In the first nine months, however, EBITDA fell by almost a quarter to 3.5 billion dollars. At constant exchange rates, it would have fallen by only 12 percent.
Signs point to recovery
Looking ahead, the crop protection market is showing the first signs of recovery, according to Syngenta, as inventories are already almost back to normal levels. The company therefore assumes that the market will continue to recover after the first half of 2025 and will be less affected by low prices and overcapacity.
The Syngenta Group is based in Switzerland and is Chinese-owned. It comprises the business units Syngenta Crop Protection (crop protection) based in Switzerland, Syngenta Seeds (seeds) based in the USA, Adama based in Israel and Syngenta Group China.
The group, which belongs to the Chinese state-owned conglomerate ChemChina, was founded in 2020 and originally wanted to go public on the Shanghai stock exchange. The company withdrew its listing application in the spring. Syngenta was previously listed on the Swiss stock exchange, but was acquired by ChemChina in 2016 for 43 billion dollars.
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