Dear Colleagues,
As part of our commitment to keeping you updated, we wanted to make you aware that we issued a press release today providing new developments impacting our proposal to combine with Syngenta. As noted in the press release, we recently presented an enhanced proposal to Syngenta. However, they communicated to us that the additional value still did not meet their financial expectations. As a result, we will now focus on the growth opportunities with our existing business to deliver the next wave of transformational solutions for agriculture, and no longer pursue the current proposal with Syngenta.
While we had hoped to create significant new value by combining with Syngenta, we remain in a strong position to deliver the next wave of innovation for agriculture, bringing integrated solutions with our industry-leading assets in breeding, biotechnology, data science, next generation biological, and multiple options to build on our existing crop protection portfolio. Underscoring the strength of our base business, we reconfirmed our confidence in delivering our five-year plan to more than double fiscal-year 2014 on-going earnings per share by 2019.
The Executive Team and I understand these discussions and media attention have raised questions over these past few months. We appreciate your focus during this time. As we look ahead, and focus on our growth, I am confident that we can deliver the next wave of innovation, creating tremendous new value for our shareowners and customers.
Thank you for all you do.
Hugh Grant
Chief Executive Officer