Soren W. Schroder
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Well, let's maybe start with the last part first. I think relative to where we were in the early part of December, we did as we expected with the exception of roughly $30 million or $50 million. As I mentioned, the Chinese inventory adjustment was something that happened towards the end of December that we couldn't have foreseen. So that's really the surprise, I would say, from -- or the disappointing part from my perspective for the quarter. If you add the $80 million of mark-to-market back in, which flowed into 2015, you would have had a $400 million Agribusiness quarter, which was reasonable, but again, $30 million to $50 million short of what I would have expected at that time. But in the quarter, I would say that we did better than I thought we would have. In North America, it went from being a very good quarter to a very, very good quarter and probably, a little bit less so in European softseeds. But on balance, we came out more or less as we expected with the exception of the adjustment in China. Looking into 2015, I think on balance, everything is more or less as we expected. Maybe a little bit of an extension of the U.S. crushing season. I think we are now looking -- you see export sales week on week continue at a brisk pace. So maybe we would have said march is when things change and shift to South America. Now we're talking probably more like April, so the U.S. might have bought itself another month of good run rate, so good margins, so that's an improvement. But other than that, I think everything else is as we outlined: big crops in South America, good margins in Brazil. Argentina, obviously, will be a bit of a question mark until we get there for the reasons of the financial volatility in that market. But our belief is that farmers will sell a fair amount of beans at harvest. And in Europe, we didn't really expect softseed crush to be anything substantial in terms of contribution until we get into the new crop with rapeseed in May-June and sunseed in August-September. So on balance, I think it is more or less as we expected. Maybe the U.S. has bought itself 1 more month of good run rates.