Marrone Bio Inks Regalia Maxx Distribution Deal With Disagro

Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBII) has inked an exclusive deal to distribute and market its biofungicide, Regalia Maxx with Disagro, the leading supplier of agricultural inputs in Central America.

Regalia Maxx, which is registered in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, stimulates the plant’s intrinsic ability to fight diseases and delivers improved harvest quality and better yield. It is used for the control of a wide variety of fungal and bacterial diseases across a range of agricultural crops.

Regalia can offer residue management benefits to many key export crops grown in Central America. Per the Central America Data, exports in the region aggregated $6.75 billion in 2016, including key crops like bananas ($2.39 billion), coffee ($2.38 billion), sugar cane ($1.02 billion) and pineapple ($950 million).

Marrone Bio stated that its unique product Regalia Maxx and Disagro’s focus on operational excellence and technical innovation along with market knowledge will provide the farmers in Central America with effective solutions for yield enhancement and disease control.

Shares of Marrone Bio have declined 11% in the past three months, underperforming the industry’s 5.9% growth.

Marrone Bio, during third-quarter earnings, said that it has made significant progress in penetrating the United States and overseas markets and also remains positive on the long-term outlook of its business. The company also expects its ongoing manufacturing process improvement initiatives in R&D to continue to contribute to an improvement in margins moving ahead.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Marrone Bio currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the basic materials space are Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE:WLK) , Daqo New Energy Corp. (NYSE:DQ) and Kronos Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:KRO) , each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Westlake Chemical has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 10.6%. Its shares have risen 84.9% year to date.

Daqo New Energy has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 7%. Its shares have surged a whopping 148.8% year to date.

Kronos Worldwide has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 5%. Its shares have rallied 119.4% year to date.

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