Monsanto's Tech Improvements To Boost Innovation Platform

Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON) is all set to equip growers with more state-of-the-art crop-yield enhancing solutions over the long run.

The company’s subsidiary — The Climate Corporation — recently announced the inclusion of advanced data-connectivity enhancements and additional features to its non-imitable Climate FieldView digital agriculture platform for the 2018 crop season. The company noted that its new Climate FieldView Plus stand would help cultivators manage data more efficiently. This would aid in managing and identifying field variability, maximizing profitability, and optimizing usage of productive inputs.

The new FieldView platform will include advanced seed-scripting developments that will ensure availability of more efficient seed-scripting services to famers in newer geographies. Also, this platform will comprise more detailed corn disease insights, enabling growers to protect crop yield from in-seasonal threats. Apart from this, FieldView’s 2018 version will offer advanced Yield Analysis tool and enlarge equipment, as well as data connectivity to a larger number of farmers.

One-year subscription of the advanced version would be available for $999. However, until Oct 15, 2017, the same would be available at a discounted price of $749.

In addition to the FieldView progression, Monsanto launched the NemaStrike technology for the 2018 planting season. The company stated that this will act as a game-changing solution to combat nematode problem, which is responsible for more than 10% yield loss in soybeans, cotton and corn.

Additionally, Monsanto and its allied licensed partners anticipate to supply Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans to almost half of the entire soybean acreage in the United States. The company mentioned that demand for its unique XtendiMax herbicide with the VaporGrip technology has been gradually shooting up. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend system helps growers control weeds prevalence, with a much more flexible and consistent approach.

Existing Scenario

There is an ongoing trend of consolidation in the contemporary seed, trails and agricultural chemical industry. While E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (NYSE:DD) and The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) inked a $140-million merger deal (likely to close on Aug 31, 2017), ChemChina successfully acquired Syngenta AG (NYSE:SYT) for $43 billion (closed on Jun 28, 2017). This drift has been making matters worse for Monsanto, increasing competitive pressure for the company. Furthermore, dismal pricing conditions in the agricultural market and foreign currency translation impact remain major causes of concern.

Nevertheless, elevating demand for crop-yield enhancing products, strong innovation and the success of Bayer AG’s (OTC:BAYRY) buyout deal, likely to close by the end of this year, are anticipated to bolster Monsanto’s top- and bottom-line performance in the quarters ahead.

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock yielded a return of 9.5% compared with 7.7% growth recorded by the industry, in a year’s time.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks (Strong Buy) here.

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