The ABCD Agricultural Traders

ABCD Is Shorthand, Not a Peer Group You Can Compare Line by Line

“ABCD” names the four largest global agricultural merchants: Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC). All four do the same four jobs. They buy crops from farmers and move them inland (origination), trade them (merchandising), crush oilseeds into meal and oil, and refine edible oils. That is where the likeness ends for an analyst. Two of the four are private, and the two listed ones cut their segments differently, so a comparison starts with mapping each company’s filed lines by hand.

Bunge’s own FY2025 10-K lists ADM and Cargill as key competitors in all four of its segments and Louis Dreyfus in three, alongside Wilmar of Singapore and China’s COFCO International.

The Four Names at a Glance

Cargill’s figure is from its annual report as reported by Transport Topics (12 August 2025). It is roughly twice ADM’s revenue, so the listed pair is only part of the industry.

ADM: Origination, Crush and Refining in One Filer

ADM’s merchant business, Ag Services & Oilseeds (AS&O), covers buying, trading, transport, storage, crushing and refining. It earned $1,614M of FY2025 segment operating profit, just under half of ADM’s $3,242M total. ADM splits AS&O into four lines: Ag Services (buying and trading), Crushing, Refined Products and Other, and its share of the profit of Wilmar, the Singapore-listed agribusiness group it part-owns. The value chain guide sets out both levels.

ADM processed 36.3M MT of oilseeds and 18.5M MT of corn. Its operating working capital, mainly inventory and receivables net of what it owes suppliers, was $7,888M, or 9.8% of revenue.

Bunge: Post-Viterra Segment Map

Bunge completed its purchase of Viterra, another grain merchant, on 2 July 2025, so FY2025 includes about half a year of it. Bunge reports four segments cut by commodity: three that process soybeans, softseeds and other oilseeds, and Grain Merchandising & Milling, the buying-and-trading business. Grain earned $465M of the $2,329M segment EBIT, or 20%, so the three processing segments earned 80%. The $465M includes a one-off $155M gain on selling Bunge’s North American corn milling business. Bunge does not file that 80/20 split itself; the value chain guide gives each segment’s figure.

Volume turns a thin margin into large profit. Bunge processed 51.8M MT of oilseeds (41.0M MT soybeans, 10.8M MT softseeds such as rapeseed and sunflower) and sold 67.2M MT of grain. Of its $13.20B of inventories, $11.36B (86%) were readily marketable inventories (RMI): grain and oilseeds that trade on exchanges and can be sold at a quoted price. Bunge’s own adjusted leverage ratio credits most of that stock against its debt, so it reads 1.9×, against 5.8× for debt less cash over EBITDA; the working capital guide explains the gap.

What Sets the Merchants Apart

Three traits separate the ABCD merchants from an ingredients maker such as Ingredion, which turns corn into starches and sweeteners. Their earnings are a margin per bushel or tonne times an enormous volume. Their trading profit and their crush profit move separately: from FY2024 to FY2025 ADM’s Ag Services fell 11%, from $715M to $636M, while Crushing fell 81%, from $844M to $159M. And they fund a physical pipeline of inventory and receivables (ADM operating working capital $7.89B; Bunge RMI $11.36B).

So one year’s earnings or return tells you little about a merchant. The method rebuilds earnings at long-run margins before applying a through-cycle multiple, then tests returns against the cost of capital; the valuation guide walks through it.

Three Traps When Comparing the Filers

• Bunge’s segments changed with Viterra. Use the four commodity segments; the older Agribusiness and Refined & Specialty Oils labels no longer apply.
• Crush versus origination is partly your mapping. Bunge files no processing total, and ADM’s AS&O also holds its Wilmar share, which is neither.
• Private scale is not a margin benchmark. Cargill’s revenue does not translate into a comparable EBIT without segment accounts.