Shares in Elders fell to their lowest in decades after the feedlot-to-car parts group unveiled its third successive annual loss, reflecting trading losses besides one-off charges.

The veteran Australian company reported a loss of Aus$395.3m for the year to the end of September, taking total losses for the last three years above Aus$1bn.

The decline reflected Aus$335.4m in provisions and writedowns on its forestry assets, for which the company had prepared investors in a profits warning last month.

The company is selling timberlands, but at prices set to come in below those in which they are carried in Elders' books, which will now be reduced to Aus$181m.

However, the results also showed a 50% decline, to Aus$7.1m, in profits at the group's trading division, covering livestock and wool deals, and feedlot operations.

The division's revenues from live cattle exports fell Aus$43m thanks to the temporary ban on shipments to Indonesia, Australia's top market, following an expose of cruel abattoir techniques.

In feedlots, "returns were reduced by lower conversion rates brought by unseasonal cool and wet weather".

'Clearly turned around'

Elders performed better in farm supplies, raising revenues by 16.1% to Aus$1.02bn and gross margin by 17.1% to Aus$114.8m despite fears earlier in the year over enhanced competition the business might face from the rival AWB network, which was bought by Canada's Agrium.

And Malcolm Jackman, the Elders managing director, while acknowledging that the group result was "disappointing", highlighted "positive takeaways", including the debt reduction to come from cash raised from forestry sales.

"The business has clearly turned around," he said.

"Elders will be a company with substantially lower debt and focussed on its profitable, cash generating and growing businesses."

The trading division was "on the rebound after what was a very disrupted year".

Shares dip

However, the comments failed to reassure investors, who sent shares in the 172-year-old group down 5.9% to Aus$0.24 in Sydney, the lowest close since at least 1983.

The forestry writedown is the latest in a series of setbacks at the group, which is still struggling to retrench from a heady expansion drive at the start of the millennium, including into banking, a business it sold out of last year.