Corn Products International posted first-quarter results on Tuesday showing that its net income soared 29 percent over last year, while net sales rose 22 percent. Furthermore, it boosted its profit estimates for the full year.

How is it that a corn processor is able to report such good news as grain prices are going through the roof and the economy is flagging? Largely, it has to do with how Corn Products does business.

The company offers its customers two types of contracts. In the first type, it buys a futures contract on corn on the same day as it strikes an agreement to sell a corn-derived product (such as high fructose corn syrup) to a customer. In the second type – a so-called tolling contract – the customer buys the corn, and simply pays Corn Products to process it.

The first type of contract allows the company to base its pricing on something approaching real costs of inputs (and it doesn’t hurt that Corn Products owns a piece of CME – owner of the world’s biggest grains-futures exchange). The second type foists the input cost off on the customer.

And it plays the futures markets in a similar way when it comes to natural gas, a huge amount of which is used in processing corn.

In this way, Corn Products can not only weather hard economic times, but can actually thrive during them. Up to a point, anyway – but given that the company’s has just reported its best first quarter ever, and the ninth straight quarter of profit growth, that point may yet be far off.

Surely, the company’s pricing strategy isn’t the sole reason for its stellar quarter. During a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, Cheryl Beebe, vice president and chief financial officer, cited “strong pricing actions and improved product mix in our North and South American businesses, along with favorable currency translations” as the main reasons for the results.