Monument Circle Acquisition Corp (MON)

[Democritus_of_Abdera]

Re: MON’s seque from fact to projection...

Dew,

The problem regarding RR2Y data in slide #13 that you refer to in #msg-47858225 is consistent with Monsanto’s apparent effort to down-play RR2Y’s slow start. (By-the-way, I had not caught that segue from fact to projection that you saw).

As I mentioned in #msg-46578556, I believe that Monsanto’s disappointing results with RR2Y to date has been due to limited hybrid diversity and that this will resolve itself as hybrid number increases... I expect that every new trait introduction will be compromised by the logistical delay required to integrate the trait into sufficient varieties of germ plasm to meet the specific needs of different farmers that have different soils, average temperatures, growing seasons, etc.

It bothers me that Monsanto, rather than stating that delays in developing hybrid diversity is a fact of life and moving on, tries to diminish its significance with oblique phraseology. For example in the Goldman Sachs forum on Feb 10, Brett Begemann’s explanation regarding RR2Y performance is:

Last year, we had 15 varieties to spread across the marketplace in Group 2 and Group 3. This year, we’ll over 60 varieties to position across the marketplace and we’ll position them in more areas than what we could last year because we have more varieties available that fit. And yes, that noise in the marketplace has made it more challenging this year to position Roundup Ready 2 Yield than maybe we would have anticipated. However, at the same time, when I look at what we’re accomplishing in the marketplace and I look at the eight to 10 million acres that we anticipated before, I feel comfortable that we’re going to be at the lower end of that range, which I feel very good about given the challenges that we came out of last year.

where, I interpret “noise” to refer to the highlighting of RR2Y’s poor relative yield by competitor sales teams (but it could mean something else).