CHS Inc. 8% Cumulative Redeemable Prefe Reports Operating Results (10-K)

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Nov 10, 2009
CHS Inc. 8% Cumulative Redeemable Prefe (CHSCP, Financial) filed Annual Report for the period ended 2009-08-31.

CHS Inc. is a diversified energy, grains and food company committed to providing the essential resources that enrich lives around the world. A Fortune 200 company, CHS is owned by farmers, ranchers and cooperatives, along with thousands of preferred stockholders, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest and from the Canadian border to Texas. CHS supplies energy, crop nutrients, livestock feed, grain, food and food ingredients, along with business solutions, including insurance, financial and risk management services. Chs Inc. 8% Cumulative Redeemable Prefe has a market cap of $251.5 million; its shares were traded at around $27.7922 . The dividend yield of Chs Inc. 8% Cumulative Redeemable Prefe stocks is 7.2%.

Highlight of Business Operations:

CHS Inc. (referred to herein as CHS, we or us) is one of the nations leading integrated agricultural companies. As a cooperative, we are owned by farmers and ranchers and their member cooperatives (referred to herein as members) across the United States. We also have preferred stockholders that own shares of our 8% Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock, which is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol CHSCP. On August 31, 2009, we had 10,976,107 shares of preferred stock outstanding. We buy commodities from and provide products and services to patrons (including our members and other non-member customers), both domestic and international. We provide a wide variety of products and services, from initial agricultural inputs such as fuels, farm supplies, crop nutrients and crop protection products, to agricultural outputs that include grains and oilseeds, grain and oilseed processing and food products. A portion of our operations are conducted through equity investments and joint ventures whose operating results are not fully consolidated with our results; rather, a proportionate share of the income or loss from those entities is included as a component in our net income under the equity method of accounting. For the fiscal year ended August 31, 2009, our total revenues were $25.7 billion and our net income was $381.4 million.

and other products. During fiscal 2005, our Board of Directors approved the installation of a coker unit at Laurel, along with other refinery improvements, which allows us to extract a greater volume of high value gasoline and diesel fuel from a barrel of crude oil and less relatively low value asphalt. The project became operational in April 2008, and had a total cost of $418.0 million. Refined fuels produced at Laurel are available via the Yellowstone Pipeline to western Montana terminals and to Spokane and Moses Lake, Washington, south via common carrier pipelines to Wyoming terminals and Denver, Colorado, and east via our wholly-owned Cenex Pipeline, LLC to Glendive, Montana, and Minot and Fargo, North Dakota. Primarily during fiscal 2008, we incurred approximately $28 million in capital expenditures to construct two product terminals, one of which is tied into the Yellowstone Pipeline. Both new terminals are complete and include rail capabilities. These investments were undertaken to preserve our long-term ability to participate in western U.S. markets.

Like many other refineries, our Energy segments refineries recently focused their capital spending on reducing pollution emissions and, at the same, time increasing production to help pay for those expenditures. In particular, our refineries have completed work to comply with the EPA low sulfur fuel regulations that were required by 2006, which lowered the sulfur content of gasoline and diesel fuel. We incurred capital expenditures from fiscal 2003 through 2006 related to this compliance of $88.1 million for our Laurel, Montana refinery and $328.7 million for NCRAs McPherson, Kansas refinery. The EPA has passed a regulation that requires the reduction of the benzene level in gasoline to be less than 0.62% volume by January 1, 2011. As a result of this regulation, our refineries will incur capital expenditures to reduce the current gasoline benzene levels to the regulated levels. We anticipate the combined capital expenditures for our Laurel, Montana and NCRA refineries to be approximately $134 million, of which $33 million has been spent through August 31, 2009.

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