Is This the End of the Great Fertilizer Rally of 2017?
By Shruti Singh
7 november 2017 19:26 CET
Is this the end of the great nitrogen-fertilizer rally of 2017? That’s certainly the view of RBC Capital Markets analyst Andrew Wong, who cited India’s decision to scrap a tender for urea, a commoditized form of the crop nutrient.
India surprised the market earlier this year with a larger-than-expected purchase that boosted prices for urea. Shares of nitrogen-fertilizer producers such as CF Industries Holdings Inc., the largest U.S. producer, rose on the back of those gains.
The country will likely issue another tender shortly, but by then, prices may be lower as several new plants begin production, Wong said in a note. CF plunged as much as 7.1 percent in New York on Tuesday. Yara International ASA, the world’s largest publicly traded supplier of nitrogen fertilizer, declined 2.2 percent in Oslo, while Dutch producer OCI NV dropped 5.2 percent in Amsterdam.