12:10 AM EDT, 05/03/2024 (MT Newswires) -- CFRA, an independent research provider, has provided MT Newswires with the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows:

We lower our target by $6 to $77, 7.6x our 2025 EBITDA view, in line with peers' EV/EBITDA average. We expect EBITDA to notch $2.25B in 2024 and $2.30B in 2025. We cut our 2024 EPS forecast to $6.12 from $6.45 and 2025's to $5.98 from $6.77. Q1 adj-EPS of $0.91 missed by $0.59 on revenue of $1.47B, a beat of $10M. CF's sales declined 27% Y/Y primarily due to lower average selling prices driven by lower demand, India's tender Urea cut, and increased supply from some producers. Also, despite higher sales volume in Ammonia (+40% by product tons), Granular Urea saw a significant volume reduction (-17% by product tons). Management noted plant outages and unplanned downtime resulted in production loss and higher maintenance expense ($75M higher vs. a year ago). CF lost the opportunity to upgrade Ammonia to its higher-margin Urea and UAN products due to constraints impacting volumes. In our view, CF's earnings prospects are lackluster in the short term, but we suspect the nitrogen market to start easing in 2025.