Urea sales recorded 21 per cent monthly decline to stand at 407,000 tons in the month of Feb 2013, while this figure is up by 155 per cent on annual basis.

The latest figures issued on Wednesday revealed that on 2MCY13 basis (Jan-Feb 2013), urea sale was up 20 per cent YoY, hence concluding a better start of CY13 in terms of off-take for the fertilizer sector.

FFC’s urea off-take dropped 15 per cent MoM to stand at 180k tons while Engro’s declined by 30 per cent MoM to 85k tons. FATIMA showed a massively positive 37 per cent MoM growth in urea sales, mainly owing to low base-effect of Jan-13 sales. NFML’s sales in the month of Feb 2013 was recorded at 122,000 tons, down 23 per cent MoM in Feb 2013, due to high base-effect of Jan 2013 sales (due to per bag price arbitrage available on NFML’s urea). Closing inventory of urea available with the local producers, as of 28-Feb-13, stood at 27k tons while total urea closing inventory (both local and imported) was recorded at 169 k tons.

AHL analysts observed that like urea, DAP’s sales also declined by 64 per cent MoM in the month of Feb 2013, however, on a YoY basis, DAP sales were significantly up 58 per cent YoY, to stand at 19k tons during Feb. FFBL could only sell 11k tons of DAP in the month of Feb-13, translating into a massive decline of 67 per cent MoM while this figure stood still up a huge 619 per cent YoY. This massive YoY growth was due to the low base-effect of last year when FFBL faced complete shutdown of gas during 1QCY12.

ENGRO’s DAP sales also decreased by 35 per cent MoM while sales were up 88 per cent YoY to stand at 7k tons. The closing inventory of DAP as of 28-Feb 2013, stood at 195k tons (FFBL holds approximately 86k tons).Topline securities researchers observed that fertilizer sector kicked off 2013 on a positive note as sales number during 2M2013 showed robust growth

In 2012, the worst ever gas supply situation in the country prevailed, this resulted in fertilizer sector producing 4.15m tons of urea against the name plate capacity of 6.77mn tons. However, with Engro choosing to run Enven on old plant’s Mari supply, experts foresee urea production for 2013 to be around 4.25m tons, up 2 per cent versus 2012. Moreover, estimation can be revised upwards if any short term gas supply to fertilizer plants on SNGP network comes into play.