No letup foreseen for surging potash prices
No letup foreseen for surging potash prices
ANGELA BARNES
From Friday's Globe and Mail
June 20, 2008 at 6:56 AM EDT
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and Agrium Inc. shares have soared this year and judging from projections for potash prices from Bank of Nova Scotia, those fertilizer stocks should smell even sweeter to investors down the road.
Patricia Mohr, commodity market specialist and vice-president of Scotia Economics, expects that potash prices at the Port of Vancouver will climb to at least an average of more than $800 (U.S.) a tonne later this year, and "then perhaps stabilize at that very high level for a while." Potash prices averaged $525 in May, $316 in January and $302.50 at the end of last year and $183 in May, 2007.
Belarusian Potash Co. and International Potash Co. have already sold cargoes of potash at $1,000 a tonne, which she says points to further substantial increases for Canpotex, the marketing and distribution company owned by the Saskatchewan potash producers.
Ms. Mohr doesn't think the massive flooding in the U.S. corn belt will materially affect the outlook for potash over the balance of the year. She says the outlook "has more to do with strong demand for palm oil production in Malaysia and Indonesia and sugar cane in Brazil." But, she added, the flooding will make the corn situation for the 2008-09 crop year tight in the U.S., which in turn "will encourage U.S. farmers to plant more corn in the spring of 2009 and set up another year of exceptionally high potash prices."
All of that is good news for Potash shares, which have already surged 64.7 per cent so far in 2008, and for Agrium whose shares have advanced 53.7 per cent. But it isn't necessarily a bad news story for farmers, she said. She maintains that potash prices at the $1,000 mark "are affordable for most farmers, given lucrative crop prices."
She pointed out that when U.S. corn prices were around $7 a bushel, potash prices at $1,000 a tonne would only account for 3.6 per cent of revenue, assuming normal crop yields and the application of 35 kilograms of potash per acre. "It goes without saying that palm oil producers in Malaysia/Indonesia can also afford $1,000 U.S. potash prices, given record prices for biodiesel," she said.
But she admitted that escalating fertilizer prices could cause hardship for some farmers in developing countries where the governments prevent crop prices from rising to world levels and don't subsidize fertilizer costs.
Potash is one of the 32 Canadian commodity exports included in the Scotiabank commodity price index, which set its fifth consecutive record in May. The all-items index was up 3.9 per cent from April, buoyed by rising oil prices and metals and mineral prices. It has now increased by 208.8 per cent since the cyclical bottom in October, 2001, and 29 per cent since late 2007.
"Measured over the same period - six years and seven months - the current upswing ... is closing in on the huge expansion in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo," Ms. Mohr said.