(Reuters) — U.S. fertilizer producer CF Inådustries Holdings Inc. reported a big drop in adjusted quarterly profit on Wednesday as nitrogen sales fell during a colder than usual winter.
Adjusted net earnings, excluding a one-time gain from the sale of CF’s phosphate business, fell to $247.5 million, or $4.51 per share, in the first quarter from $406.5 million, or $6.47 per share, a year earlier.
Including the $1.4 billion sale of the phosphate business to Mosaic Co. in March, net earnings were $708.5 million, or $12.90 per share.
Net sales for the Deerfield, Illinois, company dipped 15 percent to $1.13 billion. Net sales of CF’s nitrogen fertilizers totalled $987.5 million, down 10 percent from the year-before quarter.
Analysts had on average expected CF to earn $4.53 a share on sales of $1.189 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
Shares of CF, the world’s No. 2 nitrogen fertilizer maker after Norway’s Yara International ASA, were flat after normal trading hours in New York.
