What happened
Shares of Bunge Ltd. (BG +1.93%) rose 10% on Wednesday after the agribusiness and food company released strong fourth-quarter 2016 results.
So what
Quarterly revenue grew 8.6% year over year, to $12.1 billion, and translated to 14.1% growth in adjusted earnings per share, to $1.70. Analysts, on average, were only expecting Bunge to report revenue of $11.4 billion and adjusted earnings of $1.57 per share.
IMAGE SOURCE: Bunge Ltd.
Bunge CEO Soren Schroder elaborated:
Bunge had a solid fourth quarter to end a challenging year. Higher Food & Ingredients and Sugar & Bioenergy results in 2016 reflect our team's hard work to drive structural improvements to increase the underlying competitiveness of our businesses. Agribusiness faced a very competitive global market environment, but finished strong.
Now what
Looking forward, Bunge CFO Thomas Boehlert also stated that the company's full-year 2017 outlook "remains largely consistent with the assumptions that we provided at our December investor day." More specifically, Bunge expects full-year earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to be $895 million to $1.05 billion in agribusiness, $270 million to $290 million at food and ingredients, $100 million to $200 million in sugar and bioenergy, and $30 million in fertilizer.
In the end, this was a strong performance for the company despite operating in a difficult industry environment. Management provided an encouraging reiterated outlook with no big surprises. So it's no surprise to see Bunge shares trading higher today.
