Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

Good morning and welcome to the ADM fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode to prevent background noise. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Vikram Luthar, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations, Chief Financial Officer, Nutrition for ADM. Mr Luthar, you may begin.

Thank you, Grika. 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 uncertainties. ADN 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 ISEC 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. Our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young, will review the drivers of our performance as well as corporate results and financial highlights. Then, Juan will discuss our outlook, after which they will take your questions. Please turn to slide three. I will now turn the call over to Juan. Thank you, Vikram.

Our team delivered a superb fourth quarter. This morning, we reported record fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.50. Adjusted segment operating profit was $1.4 billion, 23% higher than the fourth quarter of 2020. Our trailing fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $4.9 billion, $1.25 billion more than a year ago. And our trailing fourth quarter average adjusted ROIC was 10%, meeting our objective. Slide four, please. That performance represented a strong finish to an outstanding 2021. For the full year, our adjusted EPS was $5.19, also a record. And full year adjusted segment operating profit was $4.8 billion. This excellent performance was reflected across the company. The services and OECD team's actions to improve their business portfolio and strengthen their operating model continued to enable superior performance in a strong market environment. ASNO delivered full-year 2021 OP of $2.8 billion, with each subsegment performing at or near historic highs. Carbohydrate Solutions executed phenomenally well to deliver full-year operating profits of $1.3 billion. And the team is continuing the evolution of carbohydrate solutions from the sale of our Peoria dry mill and the announcement of the sustainable aviation fuel MOU to our agreement with LG Chem and the continued growth of our exciting BioSolutions platform, which deliver new revenue wins with an annualized run rate of almost $100 million. to the project we announced earlier this month to further decarbonize our operations by connecting two other major processing facilities to our Decatur carbon capture and storage capabilities. The Nutrition Team once again delivered industry-leading revenue and OP growth, with full-year revenues up 16% and full-year OP of $691 million representing a 20% year-over-year increase. We also continued to enhance our nutrition business with the strategic investments targeted at growing areas of demand, including soya protein, which will expand our participation in alternative proteins, pet dine, which substantially enhanced our presence in pet food and treats, beer lamb, which continued the expansion of our functional probiotics and enzymes portfolio within our global health and wellness business, and FISA, which enhanced our flavor footprint by opening up new growth opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Slide five, please. Last month, At our Global Investor Day, we unveiled our strategic plan and reiterated our balanced financial framework for value creation, including using our strong cash flows to deliver both gross investments and distributions to shareholders. We are confident in our plan, which is why we are pleased to announce an 8% increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.40 per share. We are proud of our record of 90 uninterrupted years of dividends and more than 40 years of consecutive annual dividend increases, and we are pleased to continue to follow through on our commitment to shareholder value creation. It's been a great year, and we are excited about what's to come. Our continued actions to build a better ADM and dynamically align it with the global trends of food security, health and well-being, and sustainability, and the steadfast advancement of our productivity and innovation initiatives will help propel our 2022 results. I will talk in more detail about the upcoming calendar year shortly, but first I'd like to turn the call over to Ray to review our business performance.