Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. And I'd like to introduce your host for today's call, Megan Britt, Vice President, Investor Relations for ADM. Ms. Britt, you may begin.

Thank you, Elliot. Hello and welcome to the second quarter earnings webcast for ADM. Starting tomorrow, a replay of this webcast will be available on our Investor Relations website. Please turn to slide two. Some of our comments and materials may 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. 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 discuss our third quarter results and share recent accomplishments on our strategic priorities. Our Chief Financial Officer, Ismael Roig, will review segment level performance and provide an update on our cash generation and capital allocation actions. Juan will have some closing remarks and then he and Ismael will take your questions. Please turn to slide four. I'll now turn the call over to Juan.

Thank you, Megan. And good morning to all who have joined for today's call. Today, ADM reported second quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.03 with an adjusted segment operating profit of $1 billion. Our trailing four quarter average adjusted ROIC was 9.7%. We delivered a strong cash flow from operations before working capital at $1.7 billion. Year to date, This equates to an adjusted earnings per share of $2.49 and an adjusted segment operating profit of $2.3 billion. Our team delivered solid results in challenging market conditions, highlighting the efforts of our teams across the business to manage through the commodity down cycle while putting our nutrition business on a path to recovery. Additionally, We saw signs of improving fundamentals within crash and ethanol later in the quarter, positioning us for a strong second half. We're also flexing our capital allocation strategy to return cash to shareholders, completing our planned share repurchases for the quarter and delivering our 370th consecutive quarterly dividend. Next slide, please. Let's start by reviewing the top line results of our business units alongside our efforts to manage the cycle through productivity and innovation. Our services analysis results are significantly lower than the record results of prior years due to the ongoing rebalancing of the supply and demand environment and overall lower farmer selling. In anticipation of this year's challenges, we focus on driving stronger production volumes and actively leveraging our footprint to match supply to demand around the globe. We've also focused on differentiation opportunities, extending margins and growing volumes by more than 20% year over year in areas like destination marketing, achieving our targeted run rate in our Green Bison JP for renewable green diesel feedstocks, and bringing new solutions to our customers through innovations such as our recent EUDR-compliant, fully traceable soybean program, and the expansion of our regenerative agriculture partnerships and acreage. These RegenAg programs highlight our leadership in this space. AVM was named the finalist in FAST Company's World Changing Ideas in May, and just last week we released our second annual RegenAg report, detailing the data-backed results we are achieving across our global operations. Carbohydrate solutions have continued a solid performance trajectory, driven by strong margins for sweeteners, starches, and flour, with higher volumes year over year. Ethanol margins also strengthened as industry production tried to keep pace with robust export and domestic demand. Along with this performance, we are continuing to drive innovation-based growth through the sustainability-centered evolution of the business. We have delivered 7% year-to-date volume expansion across our biosolutions platform, increased start capacity in our Marshall, Minnesota facility to meet growing demand from food, beverage, and industrial customers, and in a milestone for our strategic partnership Solugen recently broke ground on a 500,000 square foot biomanufacturing facility that will use ADM source dextrose for applications in water treatment, agriculture, energy, and home and personal care. Within our productivity agenda, the drive for execution excellence is continuing to deliver simplification and cost-saving opportunities across the enterprise. In Q2, we advanced hundreds of projects that put us clearly on the path to the planned $500 million in cost reduction over the next two years. We are accelerating these efforts and expect to see a significant portion of these savings by the end of 2024. Our focus on returning nutrition to its growth trajectory is also taking hold, and we are seeing sequential top-line improvement as compared to our previous two quarters. While we are experiencing some downward pressure with texturants and protein demand, we drove strong growth in health and wellness sales, along with flavor sales growth and excellent contributions from our recent acquisitions. In our targeted areas of focus, we are continuing to make progress. We continue to improve demand fulfillment for flavors in our EMEA region, following the implementation of one ADM. We're optimizing costs across the animal nutrition portfolio, building the foundation to drive continued sequential improvement across the core of the segment. The use of our refined M&A playbook with our recent flavor acquisitions has proven to be an important accelerator to integration and the ongoing growth of our leading global flavors business. And our innovation agenda is paying off. driving human nutrition revenues up 6% year-to-date, driven by flavors and our science-backed health and wellness portfolio. Our capital allocation efforts continued through the second quarter as we completed our planned share repurchases and announced our most recent dividend. We have already returned $2.8 billion of capital to shareholders to date. The second quarter marked an important point in our efforts to manage through the market realities of 2024 and deliver on our priorities. Across all three businesses, we are evolving to drive new pockets of growth in the near term, while positioning ADM to take full advantage of macro trends of sustainability, health and well-being, and food security in the longer term. As we continue to drive operational excellence and make progress on our key priorities, we have confidence in our full year expectations, despite uncertainties in the external environment. Before I hand over to Ismael for a detailed review of our second quarter results, I would like to first thank him for his leadership and guidance as interim CFO through the first half of the year. It's a hallmark of ADM leaders to step up when our organization asks for their support. And Ismael has shown that his experience, passion, and knowledge of our business set him apart as one of our best. We're excited to be welcoming Monish Patolawala to ADM as our new CFO in August. I know Ismael has important work to do as he returns to lead EMEA and Animal Nutrition's continued growth. Ismael, over to you.