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Key Takeaways
- Archer-Daniels-Midland shares rose Tuesday after the agriculture commodity company provided a much-anticipated update on an internal investigation and released a delayed fourth-quarter earnings report.
- The report was delayed due to an investigation into the company’s accounting practices at its nutrition division, which was announced in January.
- The audit revealed that some sales figures of goods sold between the nutrition division and some of ADM’s other divisions were not reported at market value, and ADM said it has created a remediation plan to fix the issues that led to the accounting errors.
- ADM’s board also approved an additional $2 billion under its existing 200-million-share buyback program through 2024.
Shares of agriculture commodity company Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) surged close to 4% in intraday trading Tuesday as the company provided a much-anticipated update on an internal investigation into the accounting practices of one of its divisions and released a delayed fourth-quarter earnings report.
ADM posted $720 million in adjusted net income and $1.36 in adjusted earnings per share (EPS), short of analyst estimates compiled by Visible Alpha, but the company’s update on its accounting investigation may have eased investors’ concerns.
In January, ADM’s stock tumbled after it announced an investigation into the accounting practices of its nutrition division and placed its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Vikram Luthar on leave. In a statement and SEC filing released Tuesday, ADM confirmed what it said earlier this month, that the probe revealed a “material weakness” in its accounting practices, but that the result of the investigation wouldn’t have a material impact on its earnings.
The audit revealed that some sales figures of goods sold between the nutrition division and some of ADM’s other divisions were not reported at market value, and ADM said it has created a remediation plan to fix the issues that led to the accounting errors. The remediation plan will fix “weaknesses” the company found in its control over segments of its financial reporting of sales between divisions, ADM said in an SEC filing.
ADM said its plan will improve its accounting policies and give the company more control over the pricing guidelines it uses for intersegment sales, but that the company may not know for certain whether the changes fixed the problem until they have been in place for a “sustained period of time.”
The probe led ADM to reduce the goodwill value of its nutrition division through a $137 million impairment charge.
ADM’s board also approved an additional $2 billion under its existing 200-million-share buyback program through 2024. Since the program started in 2015, ADM has repurchased $8.6 billion of its own stock.
Shares of ADM were 3.9% higher at $57.03 as of 2:15 p.m. ET Tuesday. They’ve lost over one-fifth of their value since the start of 2024.