Monument Circle Acquisition Corp (MON)

[Democritus_of_Abdera]

Re: Absence of VT Triple Pro RIB…

Is the bolded sentence in the following quote by Hugh Grant (from the June 30 CC) willful misdirection? …….. or is Dew’s contention false, i.e. that “MON implicitly revealed that farmers’ cheating on the refuge requirement for corn is commonplace—at least in the Southern US cotton belt where the required corn refuge (for VT Triple Pro) is 50% (#msg-50939526)?”

<Hugh Grant in his prepared remarks:> Going forward, we expect our differentiated products will become even more differentiated with Refuge in a Bag or RIB. The reality is these products would represent the industry’s only single-bag RIB option. In fact, I’m happy to be able to say that in the last few days, we’ve submitted an application to the US EPA for a 5% RIB for VT Double PRO in the Corn Belt. That means pending EPA approval, we expect to make the leap from refuge reduction to RIB in both SmartStax and Double PRO beginning in 2012. That’s important because the refuge matters to farmers and it ensures the durability of the technology. Planting and managing the refuge is complex and it’s inconvenient. But we’ve just completed new market research that indicates that 97% of growers who use insect protected corn do plant refuge acres in some configuration. And maybe more importantly, almost half of the farmers indicated that they would be likely to switch brands to get a 5% RIB product because of the simplicity of a single-bag solution.

Dew has argued that “the real reason MON is not offering VT Triple Pro in a Bag is that such a product would implicitly force Southern US corn growers who are illicitly using a <50% refuge to increase the refuge to 50%, thereby reducing the growers’ overall yield. (#msg-51033222).”

Hugh Grant’s statement has been worded in such a way that he does not actually contradict Dew’s contention; i.e. “some configuration” accommodates partial compliance even if it does not meet the 50% requirement.

My concern centers around Hugh Grant’s inclusion of a fudge factor when a straight forward statement of fact would be more appropriate (or, no statement at all). Up until now, I had focused on Carl Casale’s (CFO, Mon) tendency to use imprecise language subject to misinterpretation (a bad trait for a CFO in my opinion). If willful misdirection is part of the company culture, my decision to invest in the stock comes into question.

It may be worth noting that, in the CC, Hugh Grant stated that Monsanto plans to introduce their drought-tolerant traits onto the double-stack RIB product. This makes sense to me because the double stack corn is favored in the Western US where drought tolerance is of central concern but the third trait found in VT Triple and SmartStax (root-worm protection) is not of much importance.