Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

Good morning and welcome to the ADM second quarter 2022 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 would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Michael Cross, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Alex. Good morning and welcome to ADM's second quarter earnings webcast. Starting tomorrow, a replay of today's webcast will be available at ADM.com. 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 risks 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 the presentation. To the extent permitted under applicable law, ADM assumes no obligations 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, Vikram Luther, will review the drivers of our performance as well as corporate results and financial highlights. Then Juan will make some final comments and he and Vikram will take your questions. Please turn to slide three. I will now turn the call over to Juan.

Thank you, Michael. This morning, we reported outstanding second quarter adjusted earnings per share of $2.15. Adjusted segment operating profit was $1.8 billion. And our trailing fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA approached $6 billion. And our trailing fourth quarter average adjusted ROIC was 11.6%. Our team executed extremely well in the second quarter, navigating dynamic conditions to deliver nutrition to billions. And even as we worked tirelessly to serve our customers and consumers around the globe, We are continuing to advance our strategy with productivity initiatives that are improving our efficiency and cost structure and innovation work that is powering profitable growth. Slide four, please. Productivity is how we are improving our execution and optimizing costs. It's key to our long-term success, but equally as importantly, our productivity work is helping us mitigate the impact of inflation. We have a very strong pipeline of productivity initiatives, and I will be updating you on them regularly. There are two initiatives I'd like to highlight today. First is a set of operational transformation efforts we are driving across production facilities around the globe and spanning all three businesses. Earlier this year, we completed a modernization project in our Marshall, Minnesota corn facility that is unlocking significant new value through enhanced automation, more sophisticated control systems, and the increased use of analytics. We're already seeing double-digit returns on the investment we made in that project. This is an example of the kinds of projects we're undertaking across our operational footprint, designed to unlock incremental volumes and deliver safer, more reliable, more cost-efficient operations. Second, as we look to continue to grow returns, we want to focus not only on the numerator, but also the denominator. Our original billion-dollar challenge and its follow-up, the next billion, helped us drive to 10% ROIC. Earlier this year, we launched a new challenge aimed at monetizing assets and optimizing working capital to unlock another billion dollars in cash. helping us to continue to drive returns. In fact, we already realized more than $400 million. Next slide, please. We're also advancing our innovation pillar, fueling profitable growth as we continue to expand our capabilities to meet demand across the three global trends of food security, health and well-being, and sustainability. For example, last November, we added significant new capabilities in our health and wellness business with the acquisition of Deerland probiotics. Demand in the human microbiome space is expected to reach $9.1 billion by 2026, while in animal feed, probiotic demand is expected to grow to $6.2 billion. Deerland, with a broad portfolio of probiotics, prebiotics, and enzymes, provides a wide array of commercial, R&D, and operations-related synergy opportunities to help us meet that demand. And we're taking advantage of those opportunities, from connecting our dealing capabilities with our Biopolis team in Spain to utilize sport probiotics in a functional chocolate bar, to bringing together our expertise to expand our capabilities in PET, a key growth category, to looking across teams to offer new types of dietary supplements. Thanks to the strong collaboration across the enterprise, Dayland today is increasing our share of wallet for customers in both human and pet solutions. And we're seeing similar outcomes from other recent investments as well. In the first half of the year, our combined portfolio of 2021 nutrition acquisitions has delivered significantly more OP than we had in our acquisition models. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Vikram to talk about our business performance. Vikram?