Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Could I please have your thoughts on Hanfeng Evergreen? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Hanfeng Evergreen, $7.56, symbol HF on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 61.4 million; Market cap: $464.2 million), makes and sells fertilizers in China, though the company’s headquarters are in Toronto. To grow, plants need three main nutrients: nitrogen, phosphate and potash. Hanfeng makes two basic groups of products: sulphur-coated urea and NPK-compound fertilizers (N, P and K are the chemical symbols of nitrogen, phosphate and potash, respectively). Urea is a nitrogen-based fertilizer. To make sulphur-coated urea, Hanfeng covers the nitrogen with a sulphur coating that slows the nitrogen’s release. This allows the fertilizer to meet plants’ nutritional needs over a longer period of time. NPK-compound fertilizers, as the name suggests, contain all three required nutrients and give plants balanced nutrition. China is the world’s largest fertilizer consumer, using more than an estimated 50 million tonnes a year. And the Chinese market is growing, as the country’s citizens demand higher crop yields, better-quality food and greater crop variety. This, in turn, is fuelling the…