Agri-services group Origin Enterprises has reported higher revenues after what it called "a satisfactory performance" in its seasonally important third quarter
In a trading update for the nine months to the end of April, Origin Enterprises said its revenues for the third quarter rose by 13% to €595.4m.
It said the underlying increase of 11.4% was driven by increased demand for agronomy services and crop inputs.
Revenues for the nine months to April rose by 16.5% to €1.297 billion from €1.113 billion the same time last year.
Origin Enterprises said its Latin America operations performed in line with pre-acquisition expectations.
It added that favourable trading in Ireland and the UK more than offset the impact of a challenging market backdrop in Continental Europe - mainly in Ukraine.
Third quarter revenues at its Irish and UK operations rose by almost 20% to €405.5m from €338.3m.
The company said this reflected the benefit of a more normalised demand pattern compared to 2018 when a delayed season resulted in the majority of input activity taking place in the fourth quarter.
It also noted that total autumn, winter and spring plantings for the 2019 growing season are forecast to be marginally ahead of last year at 4.5 million hectares.
But underlying revenues from Continental Europe declined by 1.6% to €157.9m in the third quarter due to challenging operating conditions - and especially a highly competitive trading backdrop in Ukraine.
Origin entered the Brazilian agri-services market for the first time with the acquisition of Fortgreen in August 2018.
Fortgreen is focused on the development and marketing of speciality inputs and value-added crop nutrition.
It said the Latin American performance was is in line with pre-acquisition expectations and integration is progressing to plan.
"Growth in volumes against the pre-acquisition period has been supported by good sales momentum in soluble nutrition technologies for grain and speciality crop applications," it added.
Origin Enterprises also reported a positive start to trading in the fourth quarter.
"The group expects to achieve full year adjusted fully diluted earnings per share in the range of 51.5 to 52.5 cent," it added.
