Bunge Global SA

Good day, and welcome to the Fungi Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Release and Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ruthann Weisner. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alyssa. And thank you for joining us this morning for our fourth quarter earnings call. Before we get started, I want to let you know that we have slides to accompany our discussion. These can be found in the investor section of our website at bungee.com under events and presentations. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are posted on our website as well. I'd like to direct you to slide two and remind you that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements that reflect Bungie's current view with respect to future events, financial performance, and industry conditions. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Bungie has provided additional information in its reports on file with the SEC concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in this presentation, and we encourage you to review these factors. On the call this morning are Greg Heckman, Bungie's Chief Executive Officer, and John Nepple, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Greg.

Thank you, Ruthann, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide three, you'll see the agenda for today's call. I'll start with some highlights of our 2020 accomplishments and a look into 2021 before handing it over to John, who will go into more detail on our outstanding performance and outlook. I'll then share some closing thoughts before opening the line for your questions. Let's start with an overview of the year, turning to slide four. We have to begin any discussion around 2020 performance with a big congratulations and thank you to the entire Bungie team. When we started the transformation, we had a specific plan for turning the company into the highly functioning, successful organization we all knew it could be. The team has embraced the process of driving operational performance optimizing our portfolio, and strengthening our financial discipline. They did it during one of the most challenging environments in recent history. Thanks to the team's incredible focus and adaptability, this is our strongest performance on record to date, building on our positive earnings trend over the last 24 months. As we go through the results for the year, you'll see the power of the new bunker. One of the significant changes we made was transforming our operating model to improve visibility and speed to act. As a result, the commercial and industrial teams are better coordinated, helping us to maximize our assets. In 2020, outside of Argentina, we processed record volumes in soy and soft seed crush. Our commercial teams ensured our plants had the supplies they needed, and our industrial teams reduced unplanned downtime at the facilities. by more than 30% year-over-year in soy and approximately 20% year-over-year in soft seeds. This improved capacity utilization brought immediate financial benefits without a significant additional use of capital. This is just one example of how this more global approach has improved our network efficiency. We were also better able to capitalize on market and customer opportunities as they arose throughout the year. As COVID lockdowns changed consumer eating habits, we quickly adjusted our production to help some of the world's leading brands continue to keep their products on the store shelves. We also work closely with our food service customers as they continue to adapt to the changing demand patterns. Agility is also critical as we continue to look at how our vital work can be done more sustainably. We're proud to be an industry leader in protecting the environment in areas where we operate. We are a leading supplier of certified deforestation-free soy from Brazil. And as we work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our operations, we're converting more facilities over to wind and solar power. For instance, our corn and soybean processing plants in Kansas run on wind today, and we recently announced a deal to use renewable energy at our Fort Worth, Texas, packaging facility. As we look at our assets, we've now announced all of the significant portfolio optimization actions we originally identified. With these major changes behind us, we can now shift our focus to continuous improvement and growth opportunities. In the immediate future, we know that COVID will still be with us. We continue to remain focused on our top priority of protecting our team, their families, and communities. Our global and regional COVID crisis to meet regularly to make sure our operations have the resources and tools needed to keep our employees safe so we can continue to serve our customers. Now let's turn to our results on slide five. With our strong team and unmatched platform, we've created a resilient model for moving forward. This quarter and the full year really highlighted the earnings power of that platform. We benefited from improving trends throughout the year and and were able to move quickly to capture the opportunities they presented themselves in markets around the world. During the year, we saw demand-led markets with higher volumes, volatility, and prices. And with our platform and operating model, including our industry-leading risk management, we captured upside well above our earnings baseline. In the fourth quarter, agribusiness benefited from a better-than-expected market environment, with particularly strong results in our North American operation. driven by higher oil seed crush and elevation margins. In edible oils, we realized exceptional margins in our Brazilian consumer business and also benefited from increasing demand from biodiesel in South America and renewable diesel in the U.S. We continue to innovate to deliver solutions that benefit our customers on both ends of the supply chain, consumers and farmers. And a great example of this is Caravan, a shea-based substitute for cocoa butter we launched in the fourth quarter, a sustainably sourced ingredient that also benefits the communities in Africa where we source shea. 2020 also demonstrated the power of our approach to risk management. There will always be volatility in this industry, but our approach to risk management allows us to capture the upside of that volatility and protect against most of the downside. While we won't always manage it perfectly, this approach is what makes our model unique and powerful. The strength will be critical as we look ahead into 2021. Many of the conditions that helped drive our success in 2020 remain in place today, but we don't have clear visibility into the second half of the year. And while we don't expect all of the conditions that existed in 2020 to repeat in 2021, we do expect to deliver adjusted EPS of at least $6 per share. Our team will be closely watching the key factors that could impact our forecasts including changes in demand, crop production, and a post-COVID recovery. And with that, I'll hand the call over to John to walk through the financial results in detail, and we'll then close with some additional thoughts on 2021.