Fertilizer Stocks and Commodity Prices: Week Ending March 24
The week ending March 24, 2017, was broadly negative for agricultural fertilizer stocks. The VanEck Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO) fell 0.98%.
Dec. 4 2020, Updated 10:53 a.m. ET
Sector performance
The week ending March 24, 2017, was broadly negative for agricultural fertilizer stocks. The VanEck Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO) fell 0.98% during the week, while the S&P 500 (SPY) fell 1.2% during the week. Let’s take a look at the weekly and YTD (year-to-date) performances of eight major publicly listed agricultural fertilizer companies.
For an in-depth overview of the agricultural fertilizer industry, read Agricultural Fertilizer Industry: Your Comprehensive Overview.
Fertilizer stock performance
Last week remained mostly negative for fertilizer stocks. Out of the eight stocks in the above chart, one ended the week in the positive territory. Intrepid Potash (IPI) emerged as the top gainer. It rose as much as 5.8% to $1.65 per share.
On the other hand, Terra Nitrogen (TNH) stock fell 0.76% to $92.59 per share. Israel Chemicals (ICL) fell 0.91% to $4.43 per share, while Agrium (AGU) fell 1.0% to $97.49 per share.
PotashCorp (POT) fell 1.1% to $17.43 per share, while Mosaic (MOS) fell 1.7% to $29.19 per share. CF Industries (CF) and CVR Partners (UAN) ended last week at the bottom. CF Industries fell 4% to $29.42 per share, while CVR Partners fell 4.3% to $4.55 per share. Let’s look at how these stocks performed YTD.
YTD performance
Israel Chemicals is still the top performer with a 6.4% return YTD. In contrast, CVR Partners was the biggest loser last week. It fell 26.2% YTD, while Intrepid Potash fell 21.2% YTD.
Terra Nitrogen fell 9.5%, while CF Industries Holdings fell 8.4% during the same period. PotashCorp stock fell 6.1% YTD, while Agrium fell 5.4% and Mosaic fell 2.6%.
The VanEck Vectors Agribusiness ETF is up 3.7% YTD, while the S&P 500 Index is up 3.8%.
Series overview
Fertilizer prices are key to these companies’ performance metrics. In this series, we’ll provide an update on fertilizer price movements for the week ending March 24, 2017.
We’ll start by looking at last week’s price movements for nitrogen, phosphate, and potash fertilizers. Toward the end of the series, we’ll discuss fertilizer affordability.