Corteva, Inc.

Teva AgriScience first quarter 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Kim Poo, Vice President of Impressor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Corteva's first quarter 2024 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 join the Q&A session. We have prepared presentation slides to supplement our remarks during this call which are posted on the investor relations section of the Corteva 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 in the risk factor section of our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Please note in today's presentation, we'll be making references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release and related schedules, along with our supplemental financial summary slide deck available on our investor relations websites. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Chuck.

Thanks, Kim. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We continue to be very pleased with the progress we're making executing our strategic plan, including items such as the Enlist technology, biologicals, increased investment in strategic innovation, and our productivity and cost actions. Today's focus will be on our first quarter performance, and also some insights into how we see the rest of the first half in year unfold. Let me start with the bottom line. While the crop is not yet fully planted in North America, 2024 is playing out mostly as we expected. And so we are reaffirming our full year guidance, which we announced in early February, and we remain on track to meet our 2025 financial framework. Globally, from an industry perspective, We have relatively constructive fundamentals. We continue to see record-setting demand for grain, oilseeds, feed, and biofuels. In order to meet this growing demand, farmers are investing in premium seed and crop protection technologies to enhance and protect yield. Our seed business is having a very good start to the year. Organic sales are up 5% and prices up 6%, reflecting the value our seed technology consistently delivers to farmers. Our seed order book reflects strong demand for our product lineup. We are planning to bring about 500 new products to the market this year, with approximately 300 new seed hybrids and varieties. Factored into our guidance for the year is the fact that farmers in the U.S. are projected to shift planted area from corn to soybeans, resulting in a projected increase in soybean area of about 3.5%. If current trends hold about 60% of all US soybean acres will be planted with our enlist technology in 2024. Quite an impressive feat in less than five years. Where we continue to be the number one selling soybean technology in the US. On the crop protection side, ample supply in the residual effects of D stocking are creating a more competitive environment. This is coupled with farmers making their purchases much closer to the application window, resulting in a delay in volumes. But all signs point to volume growth in the second half, particularly in Latin America, as the channel inventory imbalance in remaining regions is expected to stabilize. At a high level, our crop protection business has made significant performance improvements since 2021. By the end of 2024, we anticipate that we will have added 1 billion of new products and biological sales, exited 500 million of lower margin products, and improved EBITDA margin by about 200 basis points in that three-year timeframe. Our differentiated crop protection portfolio will continue to create new pathways to value creation, and this has been strengthened by our industry-leading biological business. As a result of targeted portfolio actions and strategic investments in fast growth market segments, our portfolio differentiation mix has grown from about 50% to an estimated 60% in 2024. We also continue to execute on the optimization of our global crop protection asset footprint, where we are estimating annual run rate savings of 100 million by 2025. As I said, we expect the crop protection industry to return to volume growth in the second half. Mixed enrichment driven by our new products and biologicals, as well as the cost actions I mentioned, will drive margin improvement in our crop protection business in 2024. A final point on controlling the controllables. In 2024 and again in 2025, we're still expecting to see between 350 and 450 million of benefits from our self-help levers. These actions continue to drive value creation for the company and are providing margin enhancement throughout the ag cycle. Finally, I'd like to note that in about a month, Corteva turns five. We'll be celebrating not only our fifth anniversary, but also the impact we've had on farms around the world over that time and the value that impact has created for farmers, for shareholders and for the world at large. It's been a remarkable journey in which we rolled out more than 1500 new and next generation products and technology to our 10 million global customers. I'm proud to say that together with our 23,000 employees, we've built one of the most competitively advantaged agricultural technology portfolios in the industry, and we remain optimistic about the future of agriculture and the future of Corteva. And with that, let me turn the call over to Dave.