Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

been placed on a listen-only mode to prevent background noise. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Vikram Lothar, CEO, Vice President, Head of Investor Relations, Chief Financial Officer, Nutrition for ADM. Mr. Lothar, you may begin.

Thank you, Emily. Good morning, and welcome to ADM's third 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 uncertainties. 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 highlight some of our accomplishments. Our chief financial officer, Ray Young, will review the drivers of our performance as well as corporate results and financial highlights. Then, Juan will make some final comments, after which they will take your questions. Please turn to slide three. I will now turn the call over to Juan. Thank you, Vikram.

This morning, we reported third-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.97. That is a 9% year-over-year improvement despite a higher tax rate. And our year-to-date adjusted EPS of $3.69 is already above our full-year 2020 adjusted EPS. Adjusted segment operating profit was $1 billion. up 18% versus the third quarter of 2020, and our eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year OP growth. Our trading four-quarter adjusted EBITDA was about $4.6 billion, almost a billion more than a year ago. And our trading four-quarter average adjusted ROIC was 9.6%. significantly higher versus the year-ago period. I remain proud to lead a global team that is delivering robust returns and sustained growth in profits. Our strong quarters and our ongoing upward trajectory are a testament to our team's execution and agility and the consistent implementation of our strategic plan. I'd like to take a moment now to highlight some of our accomplishments from the quarter. Slide four, please. I'd like to start by talking about our approach to portfolio management. Our starting point is the belief that in order to thrive and create value, a company needs to have a dynamic view of its business portfolio. So when we talked about the dramatic transformation of our portfolio over the last 10 years, is not a discrete event. It's a representation of our continuous work to identify opportunities for growth and improvement. Of course, those opportunities must be the right ones. The enduring trends of food security, health and well-being, and sustainability provide unique and stable opportunities for ADM to expand our existing capabilities. And we are focusing our efforts on identifying high-growth, on-trend areas with attractive margins and which are adjacent to our existing capabilities. That focus informed the building of our global nutrition business. The acquisition of Wild gave us entry into flavors and a global taste platform. We then use Bolton acquisitions to add adjacent capabilities and build a one-stop shop with an industry-leading pantry of ingredients and solutions for human nutrition. We do the same for animal nutrition with the acquisition of Neovia. And we continue to do the same today across our business. In order to meet growing demand for sustainable solutions, we have announced a joint venture and offtake agreement with Marathon Oil Company to support the production of renewable diesel. We are continuing to invest in key nutrition categories. As demand for alternative protein grows from $10 billion to $30 billion over the next decade, we are further enhancing our capabilities with the acquisition of soya protein. And with global demand for pet food growing to $140 billion in the coming years, We are continuing our growth with a 75% ownership stake in PetDyn. In the area of microbiome, we've signed an agreement with VLAN Biotech to launch a joint venture that we perfectly positioned to help meet $1 billion in retail demand for probiotics in China. These are just some examples of how we are dynamically positioned in our portfolio to continue driving growth for years to come. There will be more to come, and you can expect an increased level of investments to support our sustainable earnings growth and further expand our capacity and capabilities. Please turn to slide five. As part of our portfolio management approach, we're working to evolve our carbohydrate solutions business. expanding our array of solutions to meet growing customer demand driven by the enduring trend of sustainability. We made significant progress recently focused on two areas, new opportunities for our alcohol production and our growing bio solutions platform. Let me start with alcohol. Last Thursday, we announced that we'll reach an agreement which we expect to close at the end of the month to sell our ethanol facility in Peoria. And yesterday, we announced a memorandum of understanding with GEVO to explore potential joint ventures, one of which would include our Columbus and Cedar Rapids dry mills and our ethanol asset indicator, transitioning 900 million gallons of ethanol production to support growing demand for low-carbon, sustainable aviation fuel. These actions represent our commitment to a process that we began when we first announced the strategic review of our dry mills. Taken together, they will allow us to significantly reduce our exposure to vehicle fuel ethanol while using our expertise and assets to capitalize on new opportunities. SAF is one of those opportunities. The U.S. and E.U. have set goals that together which support almost 4 billion gallons of annual sustainable aviation fuel production by 2030, and more than 45 billion by 2050. The other focus area for our carbohydrate solutions evolution is our biosolutions growth platform. Biosolutions, which we launched about a year ago, is an effort focused on using our product streams to expand our participation in sustainable, higher-margin solutions for attractive end markets like pharmaceuticals and personal care. This is an area of significant potential, and our team is doing a great job identifying new and exciting opportunities. Earlier this fall, for example, we signed an MOU with LG Chem for the production of lactic and polylactic acid for bioplastic and other plant-based products. These efforts are enabling BioSolutions to deliver 10% annualized revenue growth, including more than $80 million in new revenue wins in the first nine months of this year. And we believe there are many new opportunities to come. So from the transformation of our dry mills to our growing BioSolutions platforms, Our work to evolve our carbohydrate solutions capabilities is a perfect example of how we're managing our portfolio and delivering smart, strategic growth. And one of the many reasons we remain convinced on our ability to deliver sustainable earnings growth in the years to come. I'll talk a little bit more about our business outlook at the end of our call. And, of course, we'll be going into much more detail at our Global Investor Day on December 10th. But in the meantime, I will turn the call over to Ray to talk about our business performance. Ray?