Prices I paid for fertilizer materials for the 2009 growing season:
- NH2: $850/tne
PO4: $1450/the
K2O: $1100/tne
- NH2: $380/tne
PO4: $450/tne
K2O: $600/tne
[Edited] date corrections
Perhaps I did, but I know I'm not alone. The problem is that once retailers locked in their costs in 2008, they passed it along. It doesn't do a grower much good to buy fertilizer at a discount in July or August when you needed it in April and May.kumquat wrote:Without knowing the timing of your purchases I'd guess that you may have paid top dollar for 2009 inputs.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. (POT-N143.05-4.27-2.90%) shares sank Thursday amid growing signs that a takeover attempt by BHP Billiton Ltd. could be squashed by government concerns.
If the takeover bid is holding back the stock price, and if there are concern it may be blocked by the government, then shouldn't stock price go up today (instead of down)?Potash Corp. BHP's bid is holding back its stock, and that without it the price would be trading in a range of $155 to $180, according to sources familiar with the matter. It believes the company is now valued at around $170 per share, not including a takeover premium.
Yeah, I don't understand either. Why on earth are the politicians making so much noise and squawking, when the market price of the shares indicates that the takeover bid has been largely rejected?kenwood wrote:If the takeover bid is holding back the stock price, and if there are concern it may be blocked by the government, then shouldn't stock price go up today (instead of down)?
There is a growing possibility the deal would fall apart, and this may be remembered in the same ballpark with Microsoft failed attempt of taking over Yahoo. I don't follow these guys too closely, but resent characterizations such as "completely inappropriate offer" -- there is no better one on the table, and if the deal falls through, back to $100 is not out of the question, IMO.pitz wrote:Who is dumb enough to tender into a $130 offer, when the current market trading price is significantly above that?
Am I missing something here, or have the politicians gone completely nuts in the rhetoric concerning this low-ball and completely innappropriate offer?
I've wondered about that too, and once asked a relative who worked in the agriculture industry (at large, not a farmer) about it. He said one of the problems with raw sewage is that, surprize!, it's not clean enough. IOW, there's going to be a lot of drano, household chemicals and whatnot in it that would have to be removed first.newguy wrote:do you really want to invest in something you can literally pull out of your ass? How long will it be before people overcome their aversion to a cheap, sustainable fertilizer?
A geologist sitting on a bush toilet in a remote part of the Northern Territory has discovered a potentially lucrative mineral deposit.
Rum Jungle Resources chief executive David Muller said the company was already looking for phosphate on a site near Barrow Creek, north of Alice Springs, but it was not expecting to find anything of value where it had set up its camp toilet.
"One observant geologist was sitting on it one day and kicking the rocks around and he suddenly identified some nodules and he thought, 'Oh we better assay this'," he said.
"And they put the hand-held spectrometer over it and sure enough it was full of phosphate, which is what we were looking for
And is still being shown on Rich find under outback dunny NIGEL ADLAM | April 2nd, 2011kenwood wrote:^ the article was published on Apr 1st.
Since the US has reported record levels of planting, and so far it is looking as though a bumper harvest is coming, it would seem to make some sense to wait until that harvest causes corn and wheat prices to fall (it already has, but a record harvest could trigger a crash), which would likely drag POT down with them. That might be a better entry point, no? Another idea is to hedge the investment with something like AFN, which works the opposite way, rising with higher yields and falling when the harvest is poor and / or planting acreage drops.like_to_retire wrote:
Then I saw that AltaRed owned them, but subsequently Scomac poo-poo'd them. I just wanted to hear what he had to say about the subject, and I admit he does make a lot of sense.
ltr
There's nothing wrong with either company; they're not going out of business any time soon. My issue is where do I as an owner fit in the grand scheme of things and it would appear to be well below the demands of replacement and growth. In that scenario, it strikes me that I'm likely going to have to rely on capital gains, not dividend growth to make an acceptable rate-of-return. If that's the way it's going to be, then we may as well shoot for a capital gain and avoid these things until they get to the point that they are a screaming buy. I'm thinking 2008 for example when TCK was trading for less than the working capital. Now that was cheap! The trade-off was that there was a wall of debt staring at them that they had to roll over at favourable terms or they would have been effectively cooked. Such is the way of an ill-timed acquisition.
I doubt that POT is anywhere near that cheap. There's still far too much feel good out there in the whole resource complex and agriculture in particular with the bloom still not entirely off of the China Rose. As far as alternatives to digging rock out of the ground to grow food, we could simply resort to spreading some of that endless supply of human feces that is getting "processed" each and every day. That "resource" is renewable and it won't have to be transported half way around the world.
If I could remember it well enough to do a synopsis I would but I read these in the local library and its hard enough to remember what I had for breakfast.scomac wrote:Perhaps you could provide a synopsis of those analyses for those of us who don't subscribe to those publications.BRIAN5000 wrote: For a complete opposite view of scomac's (not saying he's wrong he may be right, not saying articles are right or wrong) read the Investment Reporters take on POT and TCK and also the Successful Investors.
I'm not sure if anyone is saying its cheap certainly not myself.Nor in my view is the stock especially cheap, as scott has said.
I think it is perhaps more a question of whether, from current levels, this stock might provide, on average, 6-8% total return in the future. If one wants only to buy 'cheap', then I'd' say that would be more like a $25-30 stock price, perhaps yet to come in a temporary stumble, or maybe not.BRIAN5000 wrote:I'm not sure if anyone is saying its cheap certainly not myself.
Careful what you wish for, Uralkali Breaks Potash Cartel to Grab Market Share on Price Drop - Bloomberg. According to Premarket: Potash plunges as Russia quits cartel - The Globe and MailAltaRed wrote:If one wants only to buy 'cheap', then I'd' say that would be more like a $25-30 stock price, perhaps yet to come in a temporary stumble, or maybe not.
Might want to check any outstanding limit orders before the markets open today.U.S-traded shares of Potash Corp. fell 18.2 per cent before the opening bell and shares of Mosaic Co. tumbled 17.7 per cent after Russia’s Uralkali dismantled one of the world’s largest potash partnerships by pulling out of a venture with its partner in Belarus, a move it expects will cause global prices to plunge by 25 per cent.