ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss agrichemicals and seeds group Syngenta on Wednesday reported a 25% drop in fourth quarter earnings resulting from greater uncooked supplies and vitality prices.

Syngenta, which plans to checklist inside the subsequent few months, additionally spent extra on reorganising its enterprise and set money apart to cowl macro-economic uncertainties comparable to additional uncooked materials spikes or potential dangerous money owed by prospects.

The Chinese language-owned firm mentioned its earnings earlier than curiosity, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped 25% to $900 million within the three months to the top of December.

Gross sales rose 4% to $7.5 billion boosted by sturdy progress in its seeds enterprise.

“As beforehand indicated, farmers accelerated their purchases earlier within the 12 months resulting from provide considerations, moderating fourth quarter progress,” the corporate mentioned.

“The group continued to take care of greater costs essential to offset elevated uncooked materials and different prices,” it added.

Throughout 2022 Syngenta’s gross sales elevated 19% to $33.4 billion whereas EBITDA rose 20% to $5.6 billion.

A lot of the expansion got here from China, the place the corporate added 136 extra MAP coaching and gross sales centres to take its complete to 628 websites.

Syngenta, which competes with U.S. firm Corteva (NYSE:) and Germany’s BASF and Bayer (OTC:), was purchased in 2017 for $43 billion by ChemChina, which was folded into Sinochem Holdings Corp in 2021.

The father or mother firm plans to maintain a majority stake after its $10 billion flotation, which is predicted to worth Syngenta at round $50 billion.