Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Trouble in the Heartland: ADM follows rival Cargill in unveiling job cuts (ADM; BG)

It's not really the heartland, these guys are the picture you see when you look up the word multinational.

The inclusion of  Bunge's symbol is not gratuitous. They are smaller than the headline companies at $55 Bil. ttm revenues (vs $85B and $124B respectively) but with a market cap of only $8.5 Billion they could be bought out by a (very) well heeled individual much less someone like Glencore or even the smaller Louis Dreyfus commodities division ($35B est.).
From Agrimoney:
Archer Daniels Midland has followed rival Cargill in unveiling sizeable job cuts, two months after it warned of "a difficult and challenging market environment" as it unveiled lower profits.
The agribusiness giant, whose operations span grain trading to ethanol production, said it would axe about 1,000 positions in a drive "to ensure that we can continue to compete effectively in our global markets".
"These actions will help us enhance our productivity and earnings power," Patricia Woertz, the ADM chairman and chief executive, said.
She added that the shake-up would "streamline our organisation and achieve significant, sustained cost reductions", with ADM expected to save $100m a year from the cuts, a financial benefit which would start to be felt in the April-to-July quarter.
The full benefit would be realised by March 2013.
The programme will see ADM take a pre-tax charge of $50m-75min in its results for the April-to-July period, when Wall Street expects the group to report earnings, excluding one-off charges, of $524m, down some 9% year on year...MORE