This from The Rude Awakening:

Demand for food never wavers, even when times are tough. This fact is only one of the reasons to like Viterra (TSE:VT), a Canadian agri-business company. Viterra, an amalgamation of “vital” and “terra,” meaning “life from the land,” is the new name for a very old business new. The old name, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, better reflects the company’s raison d’etre.

Viterra is in the grain-moving, storing, processing and cleaning business. You would think, based on the recent sell-off, that Viterra was selling the stuff. But Viterra is not a straight-up commodity play in the sense of selling grains. You would do better to imagine a toll road. Volume is the name of the game. Volume and efficiency, not grain prices, dictate the profit profile here.

Its largest business is grain handling, chipping in 65% of sales. Viterra has lots of those tall grain elevators you may have seen in grain country. About two-thirds of Viterra’s grains eventually head west by rail and ultimately wind up in the Asia-Pacific region. In this way, it’s a fine backdoor play on the booming demand in Asia and its peoples’ rapidly evolving diets. The falling Baltic Dry Index, which measures shipping costs, bodes well for Viterra. Cheaper shipping costs make Western Canadian grain cheaper for Asian buyers.

Viterra’s second largest business is as a retailer and distributor of agri-products such as fertilizers, seeds and crop protection products. The company has 276 retail locations across the Canadian prairies. Viterra is the biggest dog on the block, with 45% market share in Western Canada.

In the big-picture sense, Viterra’s profits tie more closely with seeded acreage and the mix of crops so planted. These variables do not vary much from year to year.

And just to juice up the mix a bit, Viterra has a 34% interest in Canadian Fertilizers Ltd. (CFL), a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Here CFL earns a spread on the difference between fertilizer prices and natural gas. This business is not particularly significant at the moment, but it is an interesting asset, nonetheless.

The recent market crash has been rude to Viterra’s share price, but it is a gift for investors who want to buy more. Just yesterday, the company announced surprisingly strong earnings for the fourth quarter, thanks to robust demand for agricultural products like fertilizer. “Viterra blew the lights out in the fourth quarter,” one Canadian analyst cheered.

For all of 2008, Viterra earned C$1.25 per share. And yet, as I write, the share price is a mere $9.25 per share – or only about seven times earnings. Moreover, book value is nearly $10 per share. The financial position is strong, with net debt less than 8% of capital and loads of cash.

There are rough comparables out there that may help in arriving at a valuation for Viterra, such as Archer Daniels Midland on the grain handling side and Agrium on the retail side. Using a blended valuation of these two companies, I get a value for Viterra around $15 per share. And all of these agricultural companies are trading at somewhat depressed valuations.

Though it has little bearing on the share price, Viterra may be the only publicly traded enterprise run by a former NFL wide receiver. Mayo Schmidt, CEO of Viterra, played wide out for the Miami Dolphins in a brief stint. More importantly, though, Schmidt deserves credit for making many great moves – such as the acquisition of Agricore in 2007 – and proving a savvy chieftain.

There are more moving parts here, so I am simplifying somewhat, for the sake of brevity. The bigger picture is what I want you to focus on. In Viterra, we have a well-financed and well-managed company trading at attractive levels. The company also has big winds in its sails. To repeat; Viterra is like a toll road for grains. And I don’t see any decline in the traffic of that toll road over the next several years.

I expect Viterra will be a good investment over the years. At a minimum, I expect Viterra to exceed its old high of $15, as the grain markets enjoy another push next year.

Source: Investing In Food

This from Investment U:

What do a Wall Street analyst and a corn farmer have in common?  They both know that fertilizer prices have fallen off of a cliff.

Last year, a big increase in the demand for nitrogen-based fertilizers led the price of fertilizer and the value of the companies that make it, to triple-digit gains.

But when the commodities market cooled, fertilizers were no exception. Since then, the prices of fertilizer – and the companies that produce them – have dropped straight back to Earth.

Take a look…

That’s why CF Industries’ (NYSE:CF) recent announcement made such big news. Amid collapsing share prices and notoriously tight credit for mergers and acquisitions, CF Industries announced Friday an offer to buy out smaller-player Terra Industries (NYSE: TRA).

Terra Industries popped 27% on the news, and CF Industries rose 2.73%.  Normally, a buyer taking on a pile of debt to finance a deal that may or may not work out will see a little bit of a decline.

But two things are at play here:

1) The market thinks this is a good fit.

CF Industries expects to save $100 million over two years by combining forces. That’s nothing to sneeze at for a company that would have combined revenues just over $6 billion. This puts CF in position to maintain a much more competitive position over bigger players like Potash Corp. (NYSE: POT) and Terra Nitrogen (NYSE: TNH).

2) The future for fertilizer will be like the past.

Unfortunately, food production is going to be a major global problem for the next few decades. It will quite possibly be the biggest problem our species will ever face. And one of the only ways currently available to increase production is to load up on powerful nitrogen fertilizers. And since supply is finite, long-term prices have only one way to go.

Fortunately for CF Industries and other fertilizer companies, this spells profits. And for CF, the purchase of Terra Industries has likely improved their position to compete in that niche.

Source:  Stock of the Day: CF Industries (NYSE: CF)

Energy investor T. Boone Pickens says “natural gas is the fuel of the future.” He also says water will become an increasingly scarce commodity with major implications for the agricultural sector.

Chris Mayer agrees with Pickens. He says once the financial crisis ends natural gas and water stocks will attract big bucks.

This from the Rude Awakening:

T. Boone Pickens’ new memoir, The First Billion is the Hardest, is better than I thought it would be. Based on reviews I’ve read, I thought it would spend a lot of time on Pickens’ plan to reduce U.S. oil dependency. I always find such discussions a bore. But that part of the book was only 10 of 250 pages.

Mostly, it’s memoir material, with some peeks into the future as T. Boone sees it evolving. The most interesting parts, to me, were some nuggets from his career, his views on natural gas and his large investment in water.

Pickens is 80 years old now, and he’s accomplished an awful lot in his career. He started Mesa Petroleum with $2,500. Five years later, he took it public, and Mesa earned $435,000 in profits on revenues of $1.5 million. Not a bad start at all. After only eight years as a public company, Mesa generated $92 million in sales and $15 million in profits. It helped make him a rich man.

Along the way in the book, Pickens offers various “Booneisms” such as: “Chief executives who themselves own few shares of their companies have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.” (That’s one reason why the “O” — owner-operators — in CODE is important.) Or this: “As my father used to say, ‘There are three reasons we can’t do it. First, we don’t have the money, and the other two reasons don’t make a damn.’”

He complains about the bureaucratic nature of Big Oil and its track record for dumb deals. “I’ve said that giving the good old boys of Big Oil excess cash flow,” Pickens writes, “is like handing a rabbit a head of lettuce for safekeeping.”

Pickens points to Mobil buying Montgomery Ward as part of its plans to diversify. What a bust! In 1984, Fortune focused on the seven worst mergers of the decade. Four of them involved oil companies. I think big oil companies have gotten smarter since – or maybe just less dumb.

Gains of 9,095%!

He also talks about his career in deal making, finding deep values in the oil patch and making millions taking them over. He eventually gets out of the oil business and starts BP Capital in June 1997. What follows is an incredible ride. By May 1998, the fund lost $24 million and had only $13 million left. By January 1999, it was down to $2.7 million — down 90%.

It was practically out of business. No one would’ve blamed Pickens for changing things or giving up. Some investors left him, but most stuck with him. It paid off big for those who stuck to their guns.

In 2000, he rung up one of the best years anybody has ever had anywhere – up $252 million, a 9,095% gain! I love Pickens’ grit and determination in all this, sticking it out and coming back.

Plus, Pickens offers peeks into the future. A couple of topics piqued my interest: natural gas and water.

The Fuel of the Future

“Natural gas is the fuel of the future,” Pickens writes. I agree with him. Natural gas is our second largest resource, behind only coal, and it burns a lot cleaner than coal does. Pickens’ big vision for natural gas is as a transportation fuel. The logic is pretty simple. “[Natural gas] is the highest-priced fuel in the United States when used for power generation, but it’s cheaper than gasoline or diesel when used for transportation.”

Pickens is talking his book, as they say. He owns Clean Energy, which runs fueling stations for natural gas and builds more every year. Even so, he makes a good case. I was not aware, for example, that there are already 8 million natural gas vehicles on the road worldwide already. He also points out that 25% of all transit buses burn natural gas – a use that’s growing 25% annually.

I had a hard time imaging who would want to own a natural gas vehicle when fueling stations are so sparse. It’s kind of like being one of the first people to buy a telephone. But I recently read a review of the only natural gas-powered car in America at the moment: the Honda Civic GX.

It was a positive review.

Though the range is limited to only 200-220 miles, the car comes with a GPS locator to find the nearest fueling station for you. Refilling also costs about half of what it would cost you for gasoline, though the car itself sells for a third more than a gasoline-powered Civic.

Tax credits help offset that somewhat, and the EPA estimates the payback is about 21/2 years. Meaning after that, you’re even with the conventional gasoline vehicle. There are also home fueling systems that go for about $5,000 and let you tap into your gas lines at home (assuming you have gas). You get tax credits for that too.

Anyway, this is the way these things get started. Pricey in the beginning, but as technology improves and more people adopt, the price will go down. I think there is a good future in natural gas-powered vehicles.

There Is Profit in Scarcity

In addition to his stance on natural gas, Pickens writes that he is a large owner of permitted groundwater in the U.S. His investment here follows the same key principle he’s used throughout his career: There is profit in scarcity.

Pickens owns land in Roberts County, Texas, a place so rich in water, he jokes it’s the only place he couldn’t drill a dry hole. It’s not difficult to pump 1,000 gallons per minute. This land lies above the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest in the U.S., covering over 174,000 square miles across eight states.

Pickens plans to sell water to parched regions in Texas, like Dallas or San Antonio, where water supply is becoming an issue. “We can deliver water faster and more cheaply than any other option on the table,” he writes. “It’s not a matter of if, but when, and I’m betting it’s soon.”

I’m thinking along the same lines as Pickens on water, too. This all ties back to the agriculture theme, as well. In fact, The Economist recently ran a story called “Running Dry: The World Has a Water Shortage, Not a Food Shortage.”

It’s a simple idea.

As world populations and incomes rise, expect to see meat consumption also rise. Meat takes more grain and water to produce – exponentially more.

In a post-finance world, where the mortgage gravy train is dead in its tracks, these are the kinds of ideas — essentials like grain and water — that will attract new money.

Source: The First Billion Is the Hardest

Other factors are at play in the volatile agricultural industry. According to Chris Mayer, “Fertile soil – good dirt – may become more important to land values than oil or minerals in the ground.”

Chris says fertile farmland has been in decline since the 1980s due to urban sprawl and soil erosion. This makes it a lucrative asset. And it makes companies like Cresud (NASDAQ:CRESY), which owns large swathes of farmland in Argentina, a great stock play.

More from Chris on MoneyWeek:

The mainstream press focuses on issues such as population, dietary shifts, and the impact of biofuels. One thing that doesn’t get talked about much may be the most important thing of all: a growing shortage of quality topsoil. Call it the topsoil crisis…

Quality soil is loose, clumpy, filled with air pockets, and teeming with life. It’s a complex microecosystem all its own. On average, the planet has little more than three feet of topsoil spread over its surface. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls it “the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food.”

The problem is that we’re losing it faster than we can replace it. And replacing it isn’t easy. It grows back an inch or two over hundreds of years.

This is not lost on certain far-seeing investors. Jeremy Grantham, the curmudgeonly head of the money manager GMO, wrote about soil depletion in his last quarterly letter. “Our farmers are in the mining business! Yes, the soil is incredibly deep, but it is still finite.” For every bushel of wheat produced, we lose two bushels of topsoil.

[...] In any case, it seems safe to say that good dirt is in short supply. The obvious investment conclusion: Buy farmland. That’s hard to do as an individual investor, although there are at least a few options. One is Cresud (NASDAQ:CRESY), which owns a million acres of farmland in Argentina. It trades on the Nasdaq. Another way into the idea is to own farming assets in grain-exporting countries, like Canada.

This from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the topsoil crisis facing the planet:

The planet is getting skinned.

While many worry about the potential consequences of atmospheric warming, a few experts are trying to call attention to another global crisis quietly taking place under our feet.

Call it the thin brown line. Dirt. On average, the planet is covered with little more than 3 feet of topsoil — the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth.

“We’re losing more and more of it every day,” said David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington. “The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture.”

“It’s just crazy,” fumed John Aeschliman, a fifth-generation farmer who grows wheat and other grains on the Palouse near the tiny town of Almota, just west of Pullman.

“We’re tearing up the soil and watching tons of it wash away every year,” Aeschliman said. He’s one of a growing number of farmers trying to persuade others to adopt “no-till” methods, which involve not tilling the land between plantings, leaving crop stubble to reduce erosion and planting new seeds between the stubble rows.

Source: Cash in on the Rush to Secure Quality Farmland

The Daily Reckoning’s Bill Bonner says that, even if only a small portion of this land was managed properly, Russia could transform global food production. And with the current de-collectivization of Russian farm land underway, proper farm management is now possible.

Bill says this spells disaster for the US agriculture sector.

“You know, everybody thinks we farmers are making a killing this year,” began a friend over dinner. “Prices are the highest we’ve ever seen. Grains are about 70% higher than a year ago. But we’re not getting rich. Because the prices we pay for fertilizers and other inputs are also through the roof. Besides, farming is always a boom and bust business. When prices are good, we use the extra money to replace our worn-out tractors and other equipment. When they are bad, we just hunker down. We never end up with a lot of free cash.”

One of the ideas, recently very popular, is that farm prices are destined to rise as more and more people compete for food. We have said so ourselves. But now, we’re not so sure. There is huge untapped capacity for food production.

“Land rush transforms rural Russia,” is a headline in today’s International Herald Tribune. The accompanying article describes how Russia’s collectivized farms are being taken over by agricultural enterprises. Russia is an enormous place, but its collectivized farming system has been a disaster. More than 86 million acres of farmland has been allowed to go fallow. And even where the land is farmed, the yields are pathetic. Were its farms managed correctly, Russia could quadruple today’s output per acre…while putting millions of more acres into production.

From a purely economic point of view, the collapse of communism was one of the worst things to happen to American. As long as China and Russia were red, the U.S. had no significant economic competition. Their crackpot agricultural ideas lowered farm output so dramatically that Russia – which had been a major grain exporter under the Tsar – practically starved under the commies. And China, while it was under the spell of Marx and Lenin, exported nothing but trouble. Now, it is the world’s leading exporter of finished products.

We mentioned last week that Russia – after being broke and defenseless 20 years ago – is getting back on its feet. With money and energy to burn, it is asserting itself in Ossetia.

And soon, Russia – with 7% of the world’s arable land – could not only be one of the world’s greatest energy exporters, it could also be one of the world’s leading exporters of food.

Source: Economics is a Battlefield

In our last update on corn, on July 10, we were betting that $6.50 would be the main target but that a breakdown of the 100-day moving average would give some further bearish momentum. This is what happened, as the price action posted a low at $5.04 last week. It has however already slightly rebounded. Technical indicators show that the current rebound should drive the prices higher.

Corn prices yesterday fell recently to the lowest level this year after the US Department of Agriculture revealed that farmers were able to boost the country’s corn crop in spite of the damage generated earlier in the season by the worst flooding in 15 years.

The USDA forecast the 2008-09 season would see the second largest corn crop on record, triggering further selling of agriculture commodities futures. That’s why the prices declined from a high of $7.99 a bushel last June to the recent low at $5.04, which is a 37%-fall. This cooled down the concerns about global food inflation.

Nevertheless, food prices are still 44% higher than last year and almost double the level of 2006.

Yields and harvests were expected, thanks to new plantations in the US, to increase significantly the offer, driven by food demand and bio-fuel consumption. However price will remain sensitive to weather conditions that may affect the expected production.

Prices countertrends are then likely. Technical indicators help us to identify them.

The prices have already retraced 23.6% of the bearish trend initiated in late June (between points A and B on the chart). They should go higher. MACD has triggered a bullish signal when it crossed its above signal line, as well as the RSI that indicates that an obvious oversold configuration was reached. The price oscillator also shows that volume is building up on the short-term. Consequently a momentum is building up too on the upside.

The main target is therefore likely to be the 50% Fibonacci retracement. It also corresponds to the 100-day moving average, around the level of $6.50. It would become a solid resistance to this rebound.

Source: Corn Prices on the Rebound

If prices causes ethanol plants in the Midwest to close, it could flood the market with unused corn, says Tom Dyson. Expect to see a big fall in corn prices in the near future…

Even without ethanol plants closing corn prices are already starting to fall…

A friend of mine owns a farm in Iowa. He first invited me to visit in November 2006. At the time, I was interested in grains. Corn was trading at $3.30 a bushel… and soybeans were at $6.50 per bushel. I knew they had to rise.My friend grew corn and soybeans on his farm. He explained to me how corn and soybean prices hadn’t gone anywhere for 10 years… And many of his neighbors and the locals in the town had long since given up on making any money growing crops.

He took me to see an ethanol plant a few miles from his farm. We stood and watched a bulldozer raking a huge pile of corn. Every few minutes, another semi would pull up and deliver another trailer load of corn.

This ethanol plant had just popped up. The year before, the government had banned MTBE – a poisonous chemical – from gasoline. Refiners had used MTBE in gasoline to prevent engine knocking. Ethanol also prevents engine knocking. So oil refiners started adding ethanol to gasoline instead.

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Then George Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This new law required refiners to mix 4 billion gallons of ethanol into the gasoline supply in 2006… and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Energy security was the reason. Oil prices spiked in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. President Bush wanted to develop a new source of energy to protect America from future supply disruptions. He chose corn ethanol.

But the U.S. didn’t have enough ethanol. So in the first months of 2006, the ethanol price jumped, and dozens of new ethanol plants materialized to profit from the increase.

When I saw how much corn this ethanol plant was consuming and how many ethanol plants were under construction, I knew a major bull market was about to kick off in the grain markets.

Today, corn is at $7.20, and soybeans are at $16.20.

The sudden high grain prices are causing major shifts in the commodity markets. I wrote about hogs in my last column. Hog farmers can’t afford to feed their pigs. They’re selling their pigs for whatever money they can get for them. Piglets go on the farm dump.

Hog farmers aren’t the only ones hurt by these high grain prices. Expensive corn kills ethanol plants, too. I heard from my friend in Iowa recently. He told me there’s a rumor moving around the Midwest farming communities: 16 ethanol plants are about to go bankrupt. He says it will release 500 million bushels of corn onto the market.

The corn story is all over the media. There’s no one left to buy. And my friend says the corn on his farm is so green and healthy, it makes his “eyes hurt.” If all this corn floods the market at one time, the price of corn will plummet.

I’m not going to make any short bets on corn. The corn market is rising in a parabola, and there’s no telling how high it could go. But I am going to switch my attention to other sectors of the agriculture market. Like meat. Agriculture will be in a bull market for many years to come. There’s going to be a shortage of meat. Hogs and cattle are my favorite plays right now.

Good investing,

Tom

P.S. In the latest issue of International Strategist, I show readers the best way to invest in hogs… and profit from the fall in corn. I think we’ll double our money in the next 18 months. Click here to learn more.

Source: Why Corn Prices Are About to Fall… And How to Profit

Today, though, I’m going to talk about another beneficiary of the commodity boom… one you’ve probably never considered a commodity play: Thailand.

For starters, Thailand has large reserves of iron ore and rubber. China’s construction and automobile industry have driven the price of these two commodities through the roof in the past several years.

Thailand is also the world’s largest exporter of rice, responsible for 26% of all rice exports. Rice has tripled in price in the last four years. It climbed 175% in the first five months of 2008.

This is part of the reason Thai stocks have done so well lately. The Datastream Thailand Index has climbed 23.7% in the last year.

However, despite their recent gains, Thai stocks are still well below the all-time high they reached in 1996, more than 12 years ago.

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Out of all the countries effected by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Thailand is the only one that hasn’t fully recovered. Take a look:

As you can see, Thai stocks soared in the ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, Thailand was a “tiger” economy, growing by more than 9% per year. However, by 1997, the economy became overheated, and the Asian Financial Crisis began…

So, is Thailand a good investment today?

From a trend standpoint, Thailand looks great. Thai stocks have steadily appreciated since 2002.

Thailand is also moderately free. It’s the 54th freest country in the world (out of 157), according to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of economic freedom. This is a measure of how much government control businesses face in a country.

However, Thailand has had some trouble lately…

Two and a half years ago, Thailand’s president was ousted while addressing the U.N. in New York. Coups are never good for business, although this one was bloodless and generally supported by the people.

However, the new military-imposed government started off on the wrong foot. It installed controls on foreign capital, which immediately sent the Thai stock market into a tailspin. Fortunately, these restrictions were partially lifted, and the stock market has since recovered (aided by the commodity boom).

Finally, Thailand is relatively cheap. Its price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) is 11.4, 12.3% below its median level of 13 (the U.S. market carries a P/E of about 21).

You’ll need specialized knowledge (and a specialized broker) if you want to buy individual Thai stocks. There are also three Thai ETFs. You can investigate them at www.etfconnect.com. Type “Thai” or “Thailand” into the search box on the top right-hand corner of the web page.

Asia’s phenomenal growth will eventually produce a new bull market in the region’s stocks. If you’re looking for a unique way to play it, keep this commodity producer on your radar.

Good investing,

Ian Davis

Source: A Small Asian Commodity Play Your Broker Won’t Mention

According to the report: “A large loss of acreage could slash U.S. corn production and push next season’s year-end stocks to the lowest level since just after World War II, some analysts said.” If bad weather continues in July and August, corn prices could rise to $10 a bushel, said Shawn Hackett, president of agriculture futures brokerage Hackett Financial Advisors.”

On Thursday, Jennifer Yousfi told Money Morning readers three ways to profit from record meat and dairy prices — both of which are closely connected to the price of corn.

The first is Tyson Foods (TSN). Although Tyson continues to struggle to make money with its domestic chicken business, Jennifer says the company is looking to capitalize the BRIC emerging market economies of Brazil, Russia, China and India.

Last week Tyson announced it had acquired a 51% stake in India’s Godrej Foods Ltd., which sells retail fresh chicken, chicken nuggets and patties — a joint venture the company says will generate $50 million in annual sales.
And Jennifer says Tyson’s shares have plenty of room to rebound…  Last week they closed at $14.35 each, down almost 40% from their 12-month high.

Read on here for Jennifer’s full report on how to profit from high dairy and meat prices.

According to the report, US farmers will harvest almost 9% less corn this year than last. Offsetting the flood damage is the more than 1 million additional acres of corn planted in March.

Corn futures, which were about $7.60 last week, dropped to about $7.25 yesterday on the Chicago Board of Trade.

“The World Bank estimates that worldwide food prices have risen a scorching 83% over the past three years,” says Jason Simpkins in Money Morning. “And the president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, estimates that the spike in food prices could push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty, as food costs cut into already meager earnings.

“The biotech industry claims it can help. Research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that one variety of genetically modified corn yielded 9% more than conventional corn. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, which encourages developing countries to adopt GM technology, says GM cotton has increased yields by 50% in India.”

Is it time to consider investing in so-called “Frankenfoods?”

Jason thinks it may be….

Monsanto Co. (MON), whose insect resistant crops have gained widespread popularity among U.S. farmers, has pledged to double yields on corn and soy by 2030.

Genetically modified crops have become so popular in countries like the United States that they are actually cheaper and more readily available than their non-GM counterparts.

“We cannot get hold of non-GM corn nowadays,” Yoon Chang-gyu, director of the Korean Corn Processing Industry Association, told the International Herald Tribune.

According to Yoon, non-modified corn costs Korean millers about $450 per metric ton, up from $143 a metric ton in 2006. Genetically engineered corn costs about $350 per metric ton.

In 2007, 75% of the corn grown in the United States was genetically modified, up from 40% in 2003.

MON’s profit jumped 42% in 3Q thanks to a strong performance by its controversial herbicide Roundup. The company has upped its earnings guidance for the year.