Since the demand for food and desire for better results per acre remain in place, it may be time to take a closer look at Potash, as the lack of performance in the midst of the high-flying market may signal the stock is poised to jump.

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World Potash Supply and Demand

The first element that must be looked at with Potash Corp. is the supply and demand equation. You can see in the chart below that expectations

We track quarterly 13F filings from hedge funds and other notable investors, and use this information in a couple of different ways. First, the information in 13F filings (which disclose many of a fund's long equity positions as of the end of the previous quarter) can be useful in formulating investment strategies; we have found, for example, that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds outperform the S&P 500 by an average of 18 percentage points per year. A more common use of these filings, of course, is as a source of free investment ideas from top fund managers. We have gone through the most recent filing for value and activist investor Barry Rosenstein's JANA Partners (see the full filing on the SEC's website) and here are our thoughts in its largest holdings by market value were at the end of March (or

Agrium's Advanced Technologies business also produces and sells wholesale agricultural products and services, such as specialty fertilizers, to the North American market. Agrium Advanced Technologies mainly produces controlled release fertilizer technologies that are environmentally friendly, such as specialty products and micro-nutrients for professional turf, consumer use, as well as other agricultural and horticultural markets.

In 1931, Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company Limited (Cominco Fertilizers, Limited for short) was founded and then the name was changed to Agrium, Incorporated in 1995. The company's U.S. subsidiary,

Higher leverage

Mosaic's capital becomes flexible after May 26, which is the two-year anniversary of the Cargill split-off transaction. The top priority for the management is to maintain an investment grade rating and financial flexibility for Mosaic's balance sheet. For liquidity, the management set a target of $2.25 billion, with one-third of cash and two-thirds credit line. Management also wants to maintain a targeted leverage ratio (or adjusted debt-to-EBITDA) of 1.5 times, which means the management can issue additional $3 billion of debt on top

Q1 2013 Earnings Call

May 09, 2013 11:30 am ET

Executives

Richard Downey - Vice President of Investor/Corporate Relations

Michael M. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

Charles Victor Magro - Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President

Richard L. Gearheard - Senior Vice President and President of Retail Business Unit

Ronald A. Wilkinson - Senior Vice President and President of Wholesale Business Unit

Thomas E. Warner - Vice President of Retail Distribution and President of Crop Production Services Inc

David J. Tretter - Executive Vice President of Procurement and Executive Vice President of wholesale sales of UAP Holding corp

Analysts

Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets Canada

Kevin W. McCarthy - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Ben Isaacson - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division

Jacob Bout - CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division

Michael Picken - Cleveland Research Company

Adam Samuelson - Goldman

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If you are a value player, look at the green zone, and ask where trends are over-discounted. Yes, things are bad, but are they all that bad? Perhaps there is room for mean reversion.

My candidates from both categories are in the column labeled "Dig through."

You might notice that this time, I have no industries from the red zone. That is because the market is so high. I only want to play in cold industries. They won't get so badly hit in a decline, and they might have some positive surprises.

I consider that besides dividend yield, the consistency and the rate of raising dividend payments are the most crucial factors for dividend-seeking investors. Of course, it is also essential that a company has enough earnings growth prospects to maintain increasing dividend payments.

I have elaborated a screening method, which shows stock candidates following these lines. Nonetheless, the screening method should only serve as a basis for further research. All the data for this article were taken from Yahoo Finance and finviz.com.

The screen's formula requires all stocks to comply with all following demands:

1. The forward dividend yield is greater than 2.20%.
2. The dividends per share TTM are greater than the five years' dividends per share average.
3. The payout ratio is less than 65%.

Editor's Note: There were no bullish calls on Monday's program.

Bearish Calls:

SunPower (SPWR): "The Chinese have pulled back from solar."

Sandstorm Gold (SAND): "These companies help fund the development of gold and now we have

Investors in pursuit of stocks with capacity for strong long-term total returns should examine undervalued stocks with consistently strong profitability. Sifting through stocks with forward earnings multiples below 15, debt-to-equity ratios below 50%, and positive earnings growth over the past five years along with a forecast long-term earnings growth above 5% per year, we selected five stocks with superb historical profitability as measured by the Return on Equity (ROE). Below is a closer look at stocks of five undervalued companies paying dividend yields above 2% that have proven their consistent capacity to earn amply on each dollar of invested equity capital. These stocks boast potential for strong total returns, including income from dividends, over the long run.

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (ITW), an industrial products and equipment maker, is an S&P Dividend Aristocrat with exactly 49 consecutive years of annual dividend increases. The company has a

Recently, Potash (POT) released its latest market data update for the month of March. The figures for potash demand are relatively encouraging. Since the start of the fiscal year 2013, potash production by the North American producers is on the rise. The monthly production increased by 37% compared with the previous year level.

Domestic Sales and Exports

Potash exports for the month are high. March exports increased from around 0.8 metric tonnes in February to approximately 1.3 million metric tonnes. This is up by 59%, and a staggering 183% growth over the same period of last year.

Although the exports were doing well, the domestic sales suffered a notable fall by 13%. The North American producers' domestic potash sales weakened from 0.78 million metric tonnes in February to only 0.69 million tonnes. But in spite of the decline, March 2013 potash sales were still 7%

With a growing global population, the world needs more food. Growing good food requires healthy soil, which means more fertilizers are needed.

2012 Net Sales

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From the pie charts, we see that most of Potash's sales come from potash, with nitrogen and phosphate

Let's review major public US Nitrogen product producers.

Fertilizer stock traders and investors have probably been wondering why the nitrogen fertilizer stocks have been weak this year, in spite of a record number of corn acres being planted in the US.

CF Industries (CF), the largest US producer of nitrogen products, is a good example of the poor stock performance YTD.

It's down 26% since hitting a high of $233.43 on January 30.

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The fertilizer MLP's have fared even worse.

Rentech Nitrogen (RNF) is down 36% since hitting $49.18 on February 1.

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Some have probably attributed the weakness to the rising price of natural

Since my last article about Potash Corp (POT) on January 11, 2013, the price of muriate of potash has declined by about 10% and is currently under $400 per ton. Similarly, Potash Corp stock price is down by 7.9% during the same period. This price performance is significantly below that of the S&P 500 index but not as severe as that in the stock prices of major competitors CF Industries (CF), Agrium (AGU) and Intrepid Potash (IPI) and worse only than that of Mosaic (MOS) (see graph).

While lower potash prices are not an ideal situation for Potash Corp, there are a few positives including higher demand and new potash mines becoming more difficult to develop, thus, further increasing demand for this fertilizer. Potash Corp controls about 20% of the world potash production and even at current prices of potash, its current production profitability is at a nice

General Meeting - JANA Partners

During Agrium's annual general meeting in early April, Barry Rosenstein, JANA Partners' managing partner, said that JANA had pushed the management to improve significantly, including the company's first large share repurchase in years, dividend increase, and disclosure improvement. However, JANA Partners had requested an independent Chairman be appointed for the meeting on March 28, 2013, and that request was denied.

JANA claimed that the company had received 59 million votes for one or more of its nominees, including, it appeared, enough

April 09, 2013 1:00 pm ET

Executives

Victor J. Zaleschuk - Chairman, Member of Corporate Governance & Nominating Committee and Ex-Officio Member of Special Committee

Presentation

Victor J. Zaleschuk

Good morning. Sorry for the slight delay. Now we're ready to go. So fellow shareholders, proxy holders and guests, welcome to the 2013 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders of Agrium. I am Vic Zaleschuk, Chairman of the Board of Directors and pursuant to Agrium's bylaws, I will chair this meeting. [indiscernible]

Unknown Executive

I confirm that the meeting and the proxy cutoff have not been waived or extended. Is there any [indiscernible]. Go ahead Alex.

Unknown Shareholder

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. My name is Alex Moore [ph], I'm a proxy holder with respect to common shares of Agrium. This is a few preliminary points before the formal business of the meeting. First, I'd just like to inform the

With current bond yields low, many investors feel they are not properly being compensated for the risks they are taking to own bonds. In response, these investors are looking toward dividend stocks as an alternative to bonds to generate current income. This strategy often entails a focus on the highest-yielding dividend stocks.

Total Return Strategy

An alternative strategy for dividend investors to consider is a "Total Return" strategy that factors in both dividend income and price appreciation. Using this strategy, the focus is less on dividend yield and more on dividend growth, the idea being that stronger dividend growth will engender stronger price appreciation, and perhaps better overall total return.

It Worked with MLPs

Several months ago I wrote an article on the Great Eight of MLPs. During the research for that post I discovered that lower yielding faster dividend growing MLPs had dramatically outperformed

Fertilizer Overview

Fertilizers

There are several value stocks among Canadian equities listed on the U.S. stock exchanges. Some of them boast upside potential for the long-run, which makes them good starting points in research of stock candidates with the capacity

The company has three main reporting segments: retail, wholesale, and advanced technologies. The retail segment accounted for 69% of Agrium's 2012 total sales, whereas 28% of the remaining 31% was contributed by the wholesale segment. The crop protection products and crop nutrients provide the majority of revenue in the retail segment, whereas nitrogen accounts for the majority of wholesale segment revenue.

Investment Case

We have a buy rating on Agrium. We believe AGU offers diversification through its production of the three major nutrients and will benefit, in particular, from its high leverage to nitrogen fertilizer sales. The company's retail segment provides a