Monsanto CEO: Company to Aim for Smaller M&A Deals

Posted by Jackie Pucci|7 April 2016

Big mergers and acquisitions are currently off the table for Monsanto, following the company’s failed bid for Syngenta last year, said Hugh Grant, the ag giant’s chairman and chief executive. Instead, the company plans to use smaller-scale M&A deals to boost its growth in the crop protection space.

“We will not and we would not have done an overpriced deal. So, I think, now, we are looking at how we get to the same destination, but using a different path,” Grant said on a conference call following Monsanto’s second-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. “And I think the way of getting there is going to be driven more on a product-by-product basis. It’s going to be driven by collaboration, bringing other people’s chemistry up on that acre. And I think it’s going be driven by some of the work that we underscored this morning like the new nematicide from Nemastrike and frankly some of the new smaller companies out there like Nimbus Therapeutics.”

Grant said he continues to see opportunities expanding in data science.

“We still believe there’s an opportunity for the integrated solutions. We still think there is an opportunity in bringing chemistry and biology together on that acre and using data science as the glue that holds that together. So, that’s been unwavering.”

Monsanto earlier on Wednesday posted weaker second-quarter sales and earnings from a year ago, on glyphosate declines in the Agricultural Productivity segment, increased discounting in the United States in corn and soybeans, lower soybean volumes with the slower start to the U.S. season and expected lower acres, as well as higher corn cost of goods sold resulting from smaller production plans in the prior year.