Urea sales likely to show 35pc YoY decrease in Dec 2020

LAHORE: The country’s urea sales for December 2020 are expected to decline by 35pc YoY, clocking in at 869k tonnes, taking CY20 urea sales to 6,028k tonnes as compared to 6,228k tonnes, down 3pc YoY.

Sequentially, urea sales are up by 63pc MoM.

According to Topline Securities Limited Research Analyst Sunny Kumar, urea sales during December 2019 were significantly up by 89pc YoY amid pre-buying by dealers in anticipation of a price hike due to potential increase in gas prices.

However, he said that sales were up by 4pc as compared to Pakistan’s 5-year average annual sale of 5,802k tonnes.

“Urea production in December 2020 is expected to decline by 3pc YoY to 498k tonnes. This will take its closing inventory to around 297k tonnes,” Kumar predicted. 

He maintained that amongst fertiliser companies, Fatima Group is expected to post an increase in sales by 50pc YoY, to 225k tonnes, while sales of Engro Fertilizer (EFERT), Fauji Fertilizer Bin Qasim (FFBL) and Fauji Fertilizer (FFC) are likely to decline by 57pc YoY, 52pc YoY and 39pc YoY, respectively. 

He added that total DAP sales are anticipated to clock in at around 280k tons, up 45pc YoY. This is likely to take full year 2020 DAP sales to 2,246k tons, up 11pc YoY. FFC is likely to record DAP sales of 45k tons (up 179pc YoY) followed by FFBL’s sales of 80k tons (up 68pc YoY), while EFERT is likely to record sales of 0.5k tons (down 99pc YoY) in December 2020. 

The research analyst added that FFBL’s DAP production is expected at 70k tons, taking the closing inventory of DAP to around 40k tons.

 

Hassan Naqvi
Hassan Naqvi
The writer is a staff reporter and can be reached at [email protected]

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