(Bloomberg) -- The Andersons Inc. tapped Bill Krueger as chief executive officer, who will take the reins of the crop trader as it faces weaker global agricultural markets.
Krueger, 57, currently chief operating officer, succeeds Pat Bowe beginning in October, the company said in a Monday statement. Bowe, an executive at crop trading giant Cargill Inc. before being tapped to be CEO of The Andersons in 2015, will remain chairman.
Bowe, 65, has overseen growth at the Ohio-based company that has operations in crop handling, biofuels, fertilizer and providing ingredients for markets such as racehorse feed and pet food. Krueger joined The Andersons in 2019 as part of the company’s $305 million takeover of grain trader Lansing Trade Group LLC.
“The acquisition of Lansing, where Bill came from as CEO, really propelled us to be much bigger and broader in our grain business and also trading lots of other commodities,” Bowe said Monday. “We would like to consider ourselves not to be a sleepy little grain company in Ohio, but really a broader ag company across North America.”
The company’s shares closed 1% lower in New York trading.
Krueger said he expects The Andersons to continue to expand on the grain side of its business as well as in its ingredients, renewables and agronomy units. “I would like to think that in five or 10 years we will be a larger version of ourselves today,” he said in an interview alongside Bowe.
Bumper global harvests have squeezed profits for agricultural commodities traders. The Andersons earlier this month reported a 30% drop in revenue for the second quarter. Others including Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. have also recently reported weaker results.
Still, The Andersons could see greater profit growth, benefiting from better ethanol margins, strong grain sourcing and “savvy deals,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Jason Miner and Ama Kyerewaa wrote in an August note.
(Adds details in third paragraph, comments from current and incoming CEOs starting in the fourth, and updates share price.)
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