Why Mosaic Company Stock Just Crashed 14%

Shares of The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MOS), which produces phosphate, potash, and nitrogen fertilizers for agriculture, collapsed in early morning trading Tuesday after reporting earnings last night. Mosaic actually met analyst predictions for Q3 2020 sales at $2.38 billion. And the company beat on earnings, reporting $0.23 per share in pro forma profit versus analysts' expectation of $0.17. And yet, Mosaic stock was down 14.2% at 9:45 a.m. EST today.

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Partly, I suspect, the reason is that Mosaic's numbers weren't nearly as strong as those headlines suggest. Although the company met sales expectations, its sales for the quarter were nonetheless down 13.5% year over year. And although the company beat analyst projections for pro forma profit, its earnings when calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) showed a loss of $0.02 per share.

Source Fool.com