Canadian agribusiness Viterra announced its revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 has increased C$64.6 million to C$1.4 billion, with sales increases in its agri, livestock and financial products units.

 

EBITDA was a loss of C$6.4 million for the quarter, which included a fertiliser inventory write-down of C$28.1 million.

 

Excluding the write-down, consolidated EBITDA was C$21.7 million, which compares to C$81.3 million in the same quarter of 2008. A decision by farmers to defer fertiliser purchases to the spring and lower fertiliser margins, together with the impact of a decline in grain margins and volumes in the first quarter were the main reasons for the variance.

 

Viterra's first quarter net loss was C$33 million compared to net earnings of C$41.2 million in same three-month period of 2008. Excluding the fertiliser inventory write-down, Viterra's net loss for the quarter was C$13.6 millio.

 

Viterra's grain shipments for the first quarter reached 3.8 million tonnes, down from 4.2 million tonnes in the same period in 2008. However, Viterra expects shipments to pick up substantially throughout the rest of 2009, due to the size of the 2008 crop and an increase of about 1 million tonnes of grain receipts that are expected to be made available to the industry.

 

Viterra's market share in the grain segment has also increased to 44.1 percent from 41.5 percent last year.

 

In Viterra's Agri-products segment, sales and other operating revenues were C$186.2 million compared to $166 million for the same three-month period of 2008, reflecting sales improvements in seed, crop protection products and equipment.

 

Sales in the Agri-food Processing segment for the quarter were C$48.4 million, up C$5.3 million from the comparable period of 2008, reflecting higher average sales prices offset partially by lower sales volumes.

 

The Livestock Feed and Services segment generated sales of C$193.7 million for the three months ended January 31, 2009. The increase is primarily due to the contributions from feed manufacturing plants that Viterra acquired during fiscal 2008.

 

Viterra is a vertically integrated Canadian agri-business engaged in a number of distinct but interrelated businesses. The company has extensive operations and distribution capabilities across Western Canada as well as operations in the US, Japan and Singapore.