It has been one year since the Russian Ukrainian conflict broke out on February 24, 2022. During the year, natural gas and fertilizer were the two most affected petrochemical commodities. From the current situation, although the price of fertilizer is returning to normal, the impact of the energy crisis on the fertilizer industry is still difficult to end.
Since the fourth quarter of 2022, the major price indexes of natural gas and fertilizer prices around the world have dropped, and the whole market is returning to normal. According to the fourth quarter financial report of fertilizer industry giants in 2022, although the sales and net profit of these giants are still considerable, the financial data are generally lower than market expectations. For example, Nutrien's revenue in the current quarter increased by 4% year-on-year to US $7.533 billion, slightly higher than market expectations, but the year-on-year increase was lower than 36% in the previous quarter. The net sales of CF Industry in the current quarter increased by 3% year-on-year to 2.61 billion US dollars, less than the market expectation of 2.8 billion US dollars. Meisheng also experienced a decline in profits. These enterprises generally believe that under the economic environment of high inflation, farmers have reduced the use of fertilizer and controlled the planting area, which is an important reason for their relatively average performance. On the other hand, it can also be seen that the global fertilizer in the fourth quarter of 2022 was indeed cold, and exceeded the original market expectations.
However, even though the price of fertilizer has fallen, and even affected the profits of enterprises, the market's concern about the energy crisis has not abated. Recently, senior executives of Yara said that market participants did not know whether the industry had come out of the global energy crisis. From the root, the problem of high natural gas prices is far from being solved. The nitrogen fertilizer industry still needs to pay high natural gas costs, and the natural gas price costs are still difficult to digest. In the potash fertilizer industry, the export of potash fertilizer from Russia and Belarus is still a problem. The market has predicted that Russia's potash fertilizer export will decrease by 1.5 million tons this year. It is not easy to fill the gap. In addition to the rise of energy prices, the fluctuations of energy prices also make enterprises very passive. Due to the uncertainty of the market, it is difficult for enterprises to carry out production planning, and many enterprises need to control production to cope with it. In 2023, these are potential unstable factors in the fertilizer market.
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