By Tom Polansek and Vallari Srivastava
(Reuters) - Bunge (NYSE:BG) Global missed Wall Street expectations for second-quarter profit on Wednesday, sending its shares down 8% as the world's largest oilseed processor suffered from lower crushing margins.
Ample global supplies of soybeans and corn are keeping crop prices near four-year lows and discouraging farmers from selling their previous harvests, squeezing global merchants and processors which make soy meal and oil for livestock feed and biofuels.
Buyers are reducing the inventories they keep on hand due to falling prices, while farmers have boosted their supplies in storage, Bunge CEO Greg Heckman said.
"The market is much more spot," he told analysts on a conference call. "It puts pressure on the margins until we get back in balance. I think we're getting pretty close there now."
Bunge still raised its full-year adjusted profit forecast to $9.25 per share from $9.00, citing improving crush margins late in the second quarter and better market conditions in some regions. UBS projected Bunge will deliver $9.50 in 2024.
Bunge posted an adjusted profit of $1.73 per share for the April-June quarter, compared with an average analysts' estimate of $1.80, according to LSEG data.
Rival trader Archer-Daniels-Midland on Tuesday also reported lower-than-expected quarterly profits.
Adjusted quarterly earnings in Bunge's agribusiness segment, its largest by revenue and volume, fell 56% from a year ago to $298 million. Bunge's processing business suffered from lower results in North and South America and Asia.
In the merchandising business, which includes grain trading and purchasing, quarterly adjusted earnings sank by 78% from last year to $33 million. Lower margins canceled out higher volumes, the company said.
Bunge had obtained most of the global approvals needed for its proposed $34 billion merger with Glencore-backed Viterra but is still engaging with regulators in the EU, China and Canada, Heckman said. The company expects to complete the deal in the next several months, he said, after previously predicting it would close by midyear.
The deal, which would put Bunge closer in global scale to leading rivals ADM and Cargill, is heading toward conditional EU antitrust approval, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said last week.
"Based on ongoing discussions, we see no issues that would be material to the economics of the deal," Heckman said.