It seems like Monsanto's (NYSE: MON) changes in financial guidance have come so regularly this year that you can set your clock to them. Today, we got another one, which fortunately continued the upward trend.
Technically, Monsanto actually lowered guidance, but that's because its previous forecast didn't include charges for in-process research and development from its acquisition of vegetable-seed producer De Ruiter. Excluding those charges, a one-time payment from its spinoff Solutia (NYSE: SOA), and income from Posilac, the cow hormone Monsanto sold to Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), adjusted guidance rose to $3.58 to $3.60 per share, from previous guidance of $3.37 per share.
It seems rather odd that the company is increasing the range of its guidance as it gets closer to the end of its fiscal year. Still, will investors really complain about an 80% increase in ongoing EPS?
The increase mostly comes from better-than-expected seed sales. Monsanto expects to make $100 million more off sales of its seeds this fiscal year -- putting it 25% ahead of last year. There's no slowdown in sight for the seed business, either; Monsanto is hoping for 25% to 30% increase in gross profit from its corn seed sales next year.
I like seeing Monsanto increasing the profits coming from seeds, rather than its herbicide Roundup, because the latter has a definitive cap on its growth. Just like fertilizer producers Agrium (NYSE: AGU) and PotashCorp (NYSE: POT) are limited by the number of acres farmers plant, sales of Roundup can only grow so much until further growth is tied directly to the price of commodities.
Seeds, on the other hand, have comparatively unlimited growth potential. By increasing the yield of the seeds, Monsanto can charge more, even if no additional acres are planted. The fact that Monsanto is selling more seed than expected is a good sign that it's taking market share from competitors Syngenta (NYSE: SYT) and DuPont (NYSE: DD), thus increasing its competitive moat.
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