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Strategies & Market Trends : YEEHAW CANDIDATES -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ken W who wrote (854)	1/4/2003 11:27:05 AM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23958

Ken, thx for the input on organic farmed sugar prices. 30% premium for "organics" - that's a start. Would it also be possible for you (or someone else) to provide a sample of the "pure brand" pricing differential of commodity white good sugar (or private label sugar) vs. Dixie, Holly, Spreckles etc. for equal weights ?? that could give us an indication of the success potential of IPSU's strategy.. Funny, if you do mention the "California" political spirit, I do know a little about this because I'm following US domestic politics closely (reading Washingtonst Post, the Herald Tribune but also some more conservative media). Being a staunch Libertarian myself, I can relate to your musings on the tax & spend guys. Funny how the state of CA has changed in 25 years. Reagan used to be governor of California. Judging from now it looks like the state has changed into something entirely different. Now if tree-huggers have their say, then combustion engine cars will be outlawed in some years. How absurd.. JMHO of course.. all the bset CROSSY

To: Ken W who wrote (854)	1/4/2003 11:56:37 AM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23958

Ken, I calculated the current "refining spread" and found some interesting inference: Spread historically was 15-30% but the high energy prices and bumper crops sent the spred down to very low numbers throughout 2000. We even had NEGATIVE spreads during 3 months: June and November 2000 and April 2001. since then the spread recovered nicely to 28% in 2002Q1, 23% in 2002Q2 and 20% in 2002Q3. Recently prices seemed to have firmed again. Let's see. I get the impression that the "raw spread" is the maximum amount of gross margin that Imperial Sugar could attain each time. Production inefficiencies should reduce the gross margin available from the spread.. Reduced working capital requirements should improve the gross margin also. I'd love to see IPSU migrating to a business model where less stocks of inventory would be required. Would improve capital turnover and thus profitability.. rgrds CROSSY