The share price weakened further on the disappointing news, falling 2pc from €3.37 to €3.30 before recovering to above €3.40 by the end of the week.

The Q3 performance at Origin was hampered by an unusually cold spring, which reduced demand from farmers for the group’s crop inputs.

In 2020 Origin was clobbered by a combination of the wettest autumn (when most grain is planted) in 30 years, followed by an extremely dry spring which persisted into June.

Origin was formed in 2007 from the rump IAWS when baked goods group Aryzta went off to conquer the world.

The legacy food businesses were sold off between 2010 and 2015. Its animal feed business was injected into a joint venture with Northern Ireland firm W&R Barnett in 2010, leaving the group free to concentrate on crop inputs – basically seed and fertiliser.

In its 14 years as a standalone company, Origin has expanded far beyond its Irish roots. As well as being the market leader in Ireland and the UK, it is number two in Romania, and number three in Ukraine and Poland.

Origin’s results have always been very seasonal, with the vast bulk of its profits being earned in the second half as the crops planted in the winter and spring are harvested.

The only way to iron out this seasonality is to expand into the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are reversed. Thus, in 2018 it agreed to pay up to €49m for Brazilian firm Fortgreen.

The jury is still out on Fortgreen. Business volumes in Brazil were up almost 45pc in the first nine months of the year, but currency problems meant this meant a revenue increase of just 17pc when translated into euro.

“Brazil is a strongly growing market. We are in a specialist part of that market. We are very happy with our investment. We are very happy with how the business is run.

"We would be very happy to invest more in Latin America. It helps iron out the seasonality of our business”, said Origin chief executive Seán Coyle.

But Brazil too is experiencing climate problems, with a drought likely to result in a 20pc reduction in crop yields per hectare this year.

All of which begs the question: with global climate changing rapidly, is the climate ‘abnormality’ we have experienced in recent years the new normal? And if it is, what does this mean for Origin’s business?

If one set out to deliberately design a company that was a pure play on climate, I suspect that the end result would look like Origin. Is the company set to become an early victim of climate change or can they turn it into a business opportunity?

Seán Coyle, who took up the CEO’s role at Origin last July, sees climate change as both a challenge and an opportunity.

“Climate change meant increased regulation for farmers [particularly restrictions on the use of nitrate fertilisers]. That increased regulation represents a challenge. Our expertise allows us to give advice to farmers, and develop new products that allow them to meet those challenges.

“We have invested in R&D and agronomic expertise, and are well-positioned to help farmers make the transition to better practices.”

At the same time as Origin is seeking to help its farmer customers adapt to tighter environmental regulations, the group is also working to reduce its dependence on agriculture.

In March it announced the acquisition of Greentech – the UK’s leading manufacturer and distributor of landscaping, forestry and grounds maintenance equipment. The Greentech acquisition is the latest step in Origin’s expansion into amenity businesses that are more sustainable and less exposed to the vagaries of the climate.

“Landscaping and urban regeneration allow us to balance our portfolio in a more sustainable way”, says Coyle.

While Origin is scouting for more farm input acquisitions in South America, they expect any acquisitions of amenity businesses to be in the UK, Ireland or Western Europe.

All of this is jam tomorrow. Origin’s earnings peaked at over 52c in 2019. On the basis of the guidance provided by the company last week, it won’t come near that figure this year – and the analysts who follow the company aren’t predicting a return to 2019 earnings any time soon.

Davy’s Roland French and Cathal Kenny are predicting earnings of 42.5c in the year to July 2022, while Goodbody’s Jason Molins and Patrick Higgins are being slightly more optimistic at 43.7c. It will take at least until 2023 before earnings recover to 2019 levels, with Graham Doyle of Liberum predicting earnings of over 50c in two years’ time.

Seán Coyle argues that the bar set by the 2019 results – when for once Origin benefited from extreme weather conditions – is artificially high.

“2019 was the peak year. There were a number of once-offs which were flagged at the time. This gave us 4c-5c of a benefit, and 48c per share is the normal bar we are working to get back to. It will come about over time.”

While the recovery in earnings still has a while to run, Coyle (who before becoming CEO had been finance director since September 2018) has been ruthlessly squeezing working capital.

Origin’s half-year results in March, revealed that the group had knocked €88m off its working capital figure at its seasonal peak at the end of January 2021 compared to 12 months earlier.

“Working capital is sustainable at the current level. We don’t expect it to fall further. We have extracted as much working capital as we can. Working capital will now grow in line with sales,” he says.

In addition to the large reduction in working capital, Origin is also set to receive a significant cash injection from the sale of a 31-acre site in Cork’s docklands to O’Callaghan Properties for up to €47.5m.

The deal was first announced in July 2019 and Origin has already received a €3m deposit.

The site has been split into lots, and Origin expects to receive a further €19.5m during its 2022 financial year for the vacant portion of the site.

The remaining €25m will become payable when Origin moves its Goulding fertiliser plant from the site to Marino Point. The date for this has not been finalised yet, so Origin will have to wait a while for the rest of the cash.

Although the cold spring clobbered Origin’s Q3 numbers, Coyle is confident that most of the lost revenue will be recovered in the final quarter, as warmer weather gets crops growing and demand for fertiliser and other inputs returns to more normal levels.

This is likely to result in annual sales of about €1.65bn and operating (pre-interest) profits of €60m this year, with operating profits rising to about €66m next year, and almost €72m in the year to July 2023 – according to Liberum’s Doyle.

At the current share price of €3.40, Origin’s market value stands at just €430m. Even when likely year-end net debt of just over €60m is added, that’s a total enterprise value of less than €500m, or the equivalent of less than a third of sales, or just over eight times operating profits.

After more than tripling in value from €3.00 at the time of the 2007 spin-out to a peak of over €9.00 in March 2015, the Origin share price has been slip-sliding away for most of the past six years. Its weak share price deprives Origin of an acquisition currency, meaning that it must pay cash on the nail instead.

This means that many larger acquisitions, no matter how suitable they might be, are out of Origin’s price range.

What can Coyle do to get the Origin share price back to up to at least the €7.50 price it paid to buy back 13.3m of its own shares (almost a tenth of the total) in 2013?

He responds with the old management adage: “We look after the business, and investors look after the share price.”