Mosaic reports lower than expected first quarter earnings

Posted Oct 5th 2009 5:20PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Bad News, Market Matters, Agriculture

Agricultural manufacturer Mosaic Co. (NYSE: MOS) is trading slightly lower in after hours trading this afternoon after the company posted lower than expected earnings for its fiscal first quarter.

Going into this afternoon's release, analysts had been expecting to see the company show earnings of 35 cents per share, but the company came in well below this estimate, with actual earnings of just 23 cents per share. During the same period last year the company had earnings of $2.65 per share.

Revenues for the quarter were also lower than expected, with a reported $1.5 billion in revenue verse consensus estimates for $1.54 billion.

Compared with the same period last year the company noted a 66% drop in net sales, with $1.5 billion compared to $2.9 billion during its first quarter 2008.

So far, after hours trading has not been that tough on the company, only pushing shares down 0.7% despite its wide miss. We will see how the stock is able to hold up tomorrow when the market opens.

Tags: after hours, AfterHours, agriculture, agriculture stocks, AgricultureStocks, bad news, BadNews, earnings, MOS, Mosaic