Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the ADM fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode to prevent background noise. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'd now like to introduce your host for today's call, Victoria De La Huerga, Vice President, Investor Relations for Archer Daniels Middling Company. Ms. De La Huerga, you may begin.

Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Jack. Good morning and welcome to ADM's fourth quarter earnings webcast. Starting tomorrow, a replay of today's webcast will be available at ADM.com. For those following the presentation, please turn to slide two, the company's safe harbor statement, which says that some of our comments and materials constitute forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views and estimates of future economic circumstances, industry conditions, company performance, and financial results. These statements and materials are based on many assumptions and factors that are subject to risk and uncertainty. ADM has provided additional information in its reports on file with the SEC concerning assumptions and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in this presentation, and you should carefully review the assumptions and factors in our SEC reports. To the extent permitted under applicable law, ADM assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events. On today's webcast, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Juan Luciano, will provide an overview of the quarter and the year and important actions we are taking to meet our strategic goals. Our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young, will review financial highlights and corporate results, as well as the drivers of our performance. Then Juan will discuss our forward look. And finally, they will take your questions. Please turn to slide three. I will now turn the call over to Juan.

Thank you, Victoria. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. This morning, we reported fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.42, up from 88 cents in the prior year quarter. Our adjusted segment operating profit was slightly above $1 billion. Our return on invested capital was 7.5%, above both our 2019 WAC of 6.75% and our long-term WAC of 7%. We are continuing to drive towards our long-term ROIC goal of 10%. The team delivered solid results this quarter, and I'm proud of how they performed both over the last three months and throughout the year. We managed through a difficult external environment by keeping our focus on strong execution, continued improvement efforts, and by providing winning solutions for our customers. And given our performance, we are today announcing a quarterly dividend increase of one cent per share to 36 cents per quarter. This dividend will be our 353rd consecutive quarterly payment and an interrupted record of 88 years. I'm proud to look back on a year in which we delivered significant advancements in each of our strategic pillars. In our optimized pillar, we advanced key business improvements and are seeing the results of our work at the Decatur Corn Complex and in our golden peanut and tree nuts business. We reshaped our North American wheat milling footprint closing old, less efficient mills, and opening our brand new state-of-the-art facility in Mendota. We completed a significant global organization redesign, including offering early retirement for certain North American colleagues and reducing management layers that is helping us enhance productivity and efficiency. And just in the fourth quarter, We entered into an agreement to sell our palm plantation operations in Brazil and sold our investment in CIP, advancing our ongoing efforts to ensure our asset portfolio maximizes returns and aligns with our core competencies. In our drive pillar, we launched the Ag Services and Oilseeds Business Unit, and we are delivering on the synergies created by simplifying the business model including capital reduction efforts. More widely, as part of our readiness efforts, we introduced a company-wide simplification initiative, which is streamlining decision-making and processes in order to drive accountability and realize additional value in the way we work. And we continued to drive standardization and efficiency by centralizing critical activities, including our new global operations organization. In our expand pillar, we expanded on our leadership position in the fast-growing alternative protein through our partnership with Marfrick and by working with many other customers to create systems and solutions to meet their needs. We enhanced our global citrus platform with the addition of Florida Chemical and Ziegler, and we cut the ribbon on our expansion and enhancement of our flavor production capabilities in Beijing. We created an unparalleled global leader in animal nutrition thanks to the addition of NEOVIA, and I'm extremely pleased with the integration, including running ahead of our internal targets for synergies. And just in the last three months, in the last few months, we further expanded our animal nutrition capabilities with the opening of our state-of-the-art technology center indicator and our new feed production facility in Vietnam. We continue to build a leadership position in the key market of food, beverages, and supplements that enhance health and wellness with the acquisition of Brazil-based Gervalatina phytoactives, a pioneering leader in plant-based extracts. And we further enhance our global destination marketing footprint, this time expanding into Turkey, capping a year in which our overall destination marketing volumes grew by 10%. Please turn to slide four. A year ago, I called 2019 the year in which readiness would accelerate, moving beyond the introductory phase to become a driver of our culture and how we do our work every day. The enterprise has been laser-focused on readiness, which shows in our execution. By the end of 2019, we had completed 435 readiness initiatives that in total will account for $815 million in run rate benefits on an annual basis. We remain on target to reach $1.2 billion in annual run rate benefits by the end of 2020. For 2019 specifically, readiness has contributed approximately $250 million in accrued net benefits in line with our goal. I'm also proud that we achieved an important internal goal. As of the end of 2019, 31,000 colleagues had completed our comprehensive ability to execute training since the program began. We continue to implement new, innovative initiatives as a result of readiness. For example, this quarter we launched two new technologies, The first will help us more efficiently interact with our customers by providing new tools to our sales team. The second is allowing us to centralize and automate our truck dispatch and tendering in North America. What is even more impressive to see, however, is how our team has integrated readiness and its rigor and discipline into their everyday work. Our readiness evaluation and tracking system is now routinely applied to projects large and small alike. The what else can we do to be better mindset is helping to guide actions and investments, become a part of who we are as a company, which was one of our goals from the start. Now, Ray will take us through our business performance. Ray?