Lindsay Corporation (NYSE:LNN) Q4 2024 Results Conference Call October 24, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Randy Wood - President & CEO
Brian Ketcham - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Nathan Jones - Stifel
Ryan Connors - Northcoast Research Partners
Tyler Hutin - William Blair
Brett Kearney - American Reber Opportunities
Jon Braatz - Kansas City Capital
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Lindsay Corporation Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call.
[Operator Instructions]
This event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Randy Wood, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Randy Wood
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. With me today is Brian Ketcham, our Chief Financial Officer. We are pleased with our fourth quarter and full year performance as our teams executed extremely well during the fiscal year. This allowed us to deliver profitable operating performance amidst challenging market fundamentals, particularly in our irrigation business. In North America in Irrigation, we were pleased to see volume up slightly in the quarter versus last year, driven by carryover storm damage that shipped early in the quarter.
In international irrigation, market softness in Brazil due to lower grower profitability and poor customer sentiment continues to persist. This headwind has been partially offset by the large project in the MENA region that started shipping in the fourth quarter. Turning to our irrigation market outlook. While net farm income projections in North America have improved slightly versus earlier forecast, much of that good news impacted the livestock sector, and we still see major headwinds for the cropping segment more closely associated with our irrigation solutions. And recent customer sentiment surveys indicate some of the lowest ratings ever recorded. While we have tougher year-over-year comparisons in the first half of the year, we would expect to see a slightly down market overall, unless there is a significant improvement in net farm income in 2025. These projections won't be visible until we get into the next growing season.
We are seeing some storm damage replacement demand in the Southeast connected to the tragic hurricane activity, but it's too early to quantify that volume and most growers have a window between now and next spring to make those decisions. We are working closely with our dealers to ensure that we support recovery in the region. We expect temper demand to continue in Brazil and Latin America until farm profitability and credit availability improved. Historic droughts in parts of the country may support stronger grain prices, but it's also delayed soybean planting, which could carry forward to delays in the [safrina] or second crop corn planting. We will continue shipping the large MENA project through fiscal year 2025. The project funnel remains active, and we continue to advance other projects forward that support food security and other developing international irrigation markets. We look forward to sharing more on these projects in the future.