...The company's broad diversification should mitigate continued near-term operating challenges, while a rebound across many of its core businesses appears likely. The company operates across more than 70 different industrial segments, which helps mitigate earnings volatility. Still, the company suffered EBITDA declines across all four of its reporting segments in fiscal 2019 primarily because of the trade war between the U.S. and China and weak U.S. farmer profitability that hurt several businesses last year, including origination and processing in Asia-Pacific, global grain trading, animal nutrition, and poultry operations outside the U.S., among others. The decline was not unexpected given current geopolitical risks and a difficult comparison to a record 2018 during which animal nutrition and protein segments well exceeded expectations and origination and processing benefitted from strong soybean crush margins from cheap U.S. soybean inputs after China stopped importing from the U.S. We...
