Reuters — Privately held U.S. agribusiness Cargill said on Wednesday it will no longer issue public releases on quarterly earnings, halting the disclosures that the company has provided since 1996.
Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States, said it will continue to publicly disclose annual revenue and the percentage of operating cash flow that is reinvested back into the company.
The decision to halt the quarterly releases, which provided insight into Cargill’s segment-by-segment performance, was made to limit costs and to focus resources on long-term strategic priorities, spokeswoman April Nelson said.
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As the harvest in southern Alberta presses on, a broker said that is one of the factors pulling feed prices lower in the region. Darcy Haley, vice-president of Ag Value Brokers in Lethbridge, added that lower cattle numbers in feedlots, plentiful amounts of grass for cattle to graze and a lacklustre export market also weighed on feed prices.
Volatile commodities markets can also skew quarterly results and inaccurately reflect company performance, she said.
The company will continue to regularly report its performance to its lenders and investors, she said.
Cargill canceled its third-quarter earnings release in March amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic, the first time such a release was canceled since the company began reporting quarterly earnings in 1996. The company will disclose annual revenue next month for the latest fiscal year.
Cargill’s publicly traded rivals Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge are required to report quarterly results.
— Reporting for Reuters by Karl Plume in Chicago.
