(Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, reported fourth-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates because of higher corn and vegetable seed sales. The company maintained its forecast for 2010 earnings.

Profit in the three months that ended Aug. 31 was 2 cents a share, excluding some items, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. The average estimate of 13 analysts in a Bloomberg survey was for profit of 1 cent. The net loss widened to $233 million, or 43 cents a share, from $172 million, or 31 cents, a year earlier, largely because of restructuring costs.

Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is cutting 8 percent of the workforce as farmers spend less and Chinese competitors sell cheaper generic versions of the company’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto repeated its 2010 earnings forecast after two earlier cuts in the outlook for the glyphosate-based weed killer.

“People thought they would lower the outlook,” Laurence Alexander, a New York-based analyst at Jefferies & Co., said by telephone. “The outlook for next year is basically in line.”

Earnings in the year that began Sept. 1, excluding some items, will be $3.10 to $3.30, Monsanto said, repeating a Sept. 10 forecast. Profit was projected to be $3.42 a share, the average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed. The company didn’t provide a first-quarter earnings forecast.

Monsanto rose 49 cents to $75.85 at 9:32 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares gained 7.5 percent this year through yesterday.

Sales Fall

Fourth-quarter revenue fell 8.4 percent to $1.88 billion because of lower herbicide sales, Monsanto said. That trails the $1.99 billion average estimate of six analysts in the survey.

The fourth-quarter net loss includes 53 cents a share of restructuring expenses and a gain of 8 cents a share from the sale of the sunflower unit.

Results in Monsanto’s fourth quarter often are weaker than in other periods because farmers in North America and Europe already have planted most of their crops.

Fourth-quarter gross profit declined 11 percent to $857 million as profit from seeds and traits dropped 17 percent and crop chemicals fell 3.5 percent, led by a 23 percent drop in glyphosate herbicides. Corn and vegetable seed sales gained, while cotton, soybeans and other crop seeds declined.

Seeds Profit

In 2010, gross profit in the seeds and traits business will rise to $5.1 billion to $5.2 billion, Monsanto said, repeating the September outlook. That’s an increase of as much as 16 percent from 2009 gross profit of $4.5 billion.

Gross profit in the weed-killer unit will drop to a range of $650 million to $750 million, Monsanto said in a presentation on its Web site, repeating last month’s forecast. That’s as much as a 64 percent decline from the unit’s 2009 gross profit of $1.8 billion. Monsanto initially forecast gross profit of $1.9 billion before reducing its expectations in June and September.

The company is cutting Roundup prices in half to as little at $10 a gallon in the hopes of reclaiming lost market share, Grant said in a Sept. 23 interview.

Herbicide gross profit will be as much as $900 million in 2011 before stabilizing at about $1 billion in 2012, Monsanto said in the presentation. Grant in June said he may divest the Roundup business after restructuring and carving it out as a separate unit. Weed killers, which generated 27 percent of 2009 gross profit, will account for 11 percent of profit in 2010, the company has said.

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