Corteva, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Corteva first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Jeff Rudolph, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Corteva's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Our prepared remarks today will be led by Chuck Magro, Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Anderson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Tim Glenn, Executive Vice President, SEED Business Unit, and Robert King, Executive Vice President, Crop Protection Business Unit, will be part of the Q&A session. We prepared our presentation slides to supplement our remarks during this call, which are posted on the Investor Relations section of the Cortepa website and through the link to our webcast. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are our expectations about the future. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could materially differ from these statements due to these risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those discussed on this call and the risk factors section of our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. Please note in today's presentation, we will be making references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and related schedules along with our supplemental financial summary slide deck available on our investor relations website. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Chuck. Thanks, Jeff, and thank you for joining us on the call and webcast today.

Corteva delivered a solid start to the year with double-digit sales and earnings growth in the quarter. Despite pressure from ongoing inflation and supply chain challenges, the team delivered impressive value creation. Every region delivered double-digit organic sales gains, led by strong demand for advantage technologies. Further, the company continued to drive penetration of our leading pipeline with new crop protection product sales of approximately $480 million, a nearly 60% increase over prior year. This was led by products like the Enlist soybean system, which continues to gain traction in the market given superior performance and grower confidence, and we expect to be on at least 40% of the U.S. soybean acres in 2022. We are encouraged by the current ag market backdrop and the overall financial health of the farmer. Market demand is solid, evident by the strong position of our order book, and growers are investing in their crop through top technology to maximize yield. We expect these trends to continue throughout the year given current commodity prices and the fact that productivity on the farm from top tier seed genetics in yield advantage Corteva products is the best way to manage inflation. Despite robust customer demand, we continue to experience increasing global macroeconomic uncertainty. Similar to 2021, supply chain challenges due to labor shortages, logistical constraints, and COVID-19 impacts are leading to further inflationary trends. This is compounded by the rise of global energy prices, which is adding to the volatility of raw material availability and prices. Given that we are still early in the growing season in the northern hemisphere and the significance of the first half in the agricultural industry, We are maintaining our guidance at this point. In addition, there are significant global macroeconomic and geopolitical considerations. All of this is against the backdrop of strong ag market fundamentals, and we remain constructive on the year and will provide an update on guidance as the year progresses. Turning to the work we kicked off earlier in the year on accelerating the operational performance of the company, in the quarter we announced that we are moving from a matrix organization to a global business unit model to drive overall simplicity and speed of business while increasing accountability. We have two great global leaders to run these businesses and extract the value potential we see in our premium technologies. Tim Glenn, who is an ag veteran with tremendous experience to capture the value of our market leading seed franchise. And I'm excited to welcome Robert King to Corteva given the experience he will bring to the crop protection business to maximize our operational effectiveness and growth potential. This was a critical step for the company as it now allows these leaders to focus on optimizing the business and operational structure to maximize the customer experience and deliver on growth and earnings potential. This will include prioritizing the product portfolios, the markets we serve, and how we go to market. This will also include optimizing all support costs, This work is well underway and we will provide updates in the near future on our progress. Now let's go to slide five where I'd like to provide our insights on the ag market outlook. As I said in my opening, ag fundamentals remain strong despite recent market volatility. We expect record demand for grains and oilseeds in 2022, which we believe will keep commodity prices at elevated levels. And we expect this trend to continue the next few years as ending stocks will remain under pressure. Recent volatility has increased due to several factors surrounding production, including the impact on global food supply from Russia's war on Ukraine. This region is vital to providing grain and oilseeds to the world, including countries where food security is critical, leading to further pressure on an already tight global food system. Corteva recently announced our decision to exit Russian operations while also committing to donate commercial seed to countries affected by these issues to help ease food security risk. Weather is another factor impacting production in key markets like Brazil and the U.S. Dry conditions in Brazil have led to yield and seed production impacts, which in turn impacts supply in that market and keeps seed availability tight. Despite a slow start to the planting season in the US, which shifted some US seed deliveries into the second quarter, farmers are very motivated to get the crop in the ground. We are also seeing, for the third time in recorded history, soybean acres outpace corn acres. Dave will provide more details on this later. Grower balance sheets and income levels remain healthy, despite increased input costs for fuel and fertilizer. This is leading to customers prioritizing technology for 2022 to maximize return, and Corteva is in a good position to capitalize on this opportunity. And with that, let me turn it over to Dave to provide details on the quarter and the outlook.