Drought pushes revenue lower at New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra but it says demand is robust + MORE Sep 24th

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A drought shrank yearly revenue at New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, but the company said Wednesday that Chinese demand for milk powder remains robust.
Fonterra is New Zealand’s largest company and a bellwether for the fortunes of the South Pacific nation’s farming-driven economy.
The company announced that in the fiscal year ending July 31, revenue was down 6 per cent at 18.6 billion New Zealand dollars ($15.3 billion) after a drought dried fields and lowered milk volumes. Profit before tax was down 3 per cent at NZ$1 billion while profit after tax was up 18 per cent at NZ$736 million.
Fonterra’s reputation was dented last month when it triggered a global recall of infant formula due to fears that it was contaminated with botulism bacteria. Further testing showed it was likely a false alarm. Any financial fallout from the scare will be reflected in next year’s results.
However, any impact appears to have been short-lived with international dairy prices remaining at elevated levels…

No indication of any wrongdoing by the executives or the company

DECATUR, Ill. – To Decatur, the loss of Archer Daniels Midland’s global headquarters is about more than a hundred jobs: The small central Illinois city will be losing the top layer of an economic titan that for half a century has given it significance beyond its size.
The agribusiness giant’s announcement Monday that it plans to move its headquarters out of Decatur to a destination with easier access to the rest of the world made some residents nervous. The company plans to leave the bulk of its local workforce — 4,400 jobs — in the town of about 75,000, and promised continued financial support to the community.
Still, the notion that ADM would outgrow Decatur — a prospect some in town had discussed for years — seemed to be coming true.
The state’s immediate concern: Where will ADM’s global headquarters, including about 100 of the company’s top executives and another new 100 IT workers, land? And how much could it cost in possible incentives?
The company will only say the list of places it’s considering is short…

Investors often wonder why Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) distributions fluctuate even when the securities held by the fund and the distributions of the holdings change very little. To better understand the issue, let us take a look at the cash distributions from the iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT ETF (TSX: XRE) in the table below.

Year
XRE Distributions

2012
$0.74

2011
$0.74

2010
$0.68

2009
$0.64

2008
$0.86

2007
$0.88

2006
$0.77

2005
$0.78

2004
$0.77

The distributions from XRE dropped 26 percent in 2009 from the year before. What could explain such a steep drop?
Changes in Fund Holdings
XRE’s holdings changed very little in 2009. The fund held 11 REITs in 2008 and eliminated one of its holdings — InnVest REIT — in 2009. InnVest REIT made up just 2.9 percent of XRE’s total assets in 2008, so the change in fund holdings would not explain the big drop in distributions from XRE in 2009.
Changes in Distributions from Holdings
H&R REIT (TSX: HR.UN) cut its monthly distributions in half in January 2009…

This GIC rate is offered by Outlook Financial and was updated on 2013-09-16. Click on the link above to get more details or apply online.