FMC Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the fourth quarter 2018 earnings release conference call for FMC Corporation. Phone lines will be placed on a listen-only mode throughout the conference. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer period. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Worley, Director of Investor Relations for FMC Corporation. Mr. Worley, you may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to FMC Corporation's fourth quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Pierre Brandot, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Mark Douglas, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Andrew Sanifer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Pierre will review FMC's fourth quarter performance and provide the outlook for 2019 in the first quarter. Andrew will provide an overview of select financial results and then all three will address your questions. The slide presentation that accompanies our results, along with our earnings release and the 2019 outlook statement, are available on our website and the prepared remarks from today's discussion will be made available after the call. Finally, let me remind you that today's presentation and discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning specific factors, including but not limited to those factors identified in our press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Information presented represents our best judgment based on today's information. Actual results may vary based upon these risks and uncertainties. Today's discussion and the support of materials will include references to adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted cash from operations and free cash flow, all of which are non-GAAP financial measures. Please note that earnings shall mean adjusted earnings and EBITDA shall mean adjusted EBITDA for all income state references. A reconciliation and definition of these terms, as well as other non-GAAP financial terms to which we may refer during today's conference call, are provided on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pierre.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. 2018 was a critical and very successful year for FMC. In AgSolutions, we delivered tremendous performance in both Q4 and the full year that significantly outpaced our peers and the broader ag market. Our sales team aggressively pursued revenue synergies made possible by the limited cluster overlap and the strength of our broader product portfolio. They delivered 11% performance sales growth for the full year, posting gains in all geographies. Our entire organization executed well against our growth goal. We achieved this performance in 2018 while taking great strides toward integrating the largest acquisitions in FMC's history, separating a lithium business, which included a successful FPU, and advancing the implementation of the SAP S4HANA platform. We also reduced debt to $500 million and completed a $200 million share repurchase program. Turning to slide three, FMC reported over $1.2 billion in fourth quarter revenue, including lithium, which reflects a -over-year increase of 24% on the reported basis and 17% on a pro-forma basis. This increase was driven by strong commercial execution that enabled broad-based growth in every region in ag solutions, along with 6% sales growth in lithium. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.69 in the quarter, an increase of 54% -over-year. This was $0.02 above the high end of a pre-announcement from January 31, 2019, and $0.31 above the midpoint of a guidance given on our last earnings call. Slide four will shed some light on this outperformance. The guidance bit was due to very strong operational performance in ag solutions, which drove $0.08 of the outperformance, and lower taxes, which drove another $0.21 of the gain. The lower tax was primarily driven by a more favorable earnings mix by jurisdiction, and to a lesser extent by the clarification of certain international tax provisions of the 2017 US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We also gained $0.02 of incremental EPS from a lower share count, due in large part to the repurchase of 2.4 million shares. Moving on to ag solutions financial results on slide five. Revenue of nearly $1.1 billion increased 27% -over-year and 18% on a pro forma basis. Excluding an estimated 5% headwind from currency, the pro forma organic growth was a very strong 23% and far ahead of the market. Performance in the quarter and the year was driven by strong commercial execution and robust demand for industry-leading products. Our sales organization has leveraged valuable cross-selling opportunity due to minimal customer overlap between FMC and DuPont to deliver significant sales synergies. Additionally, we reduced expected operating costs for the acquired business through accelerated functional integration, leveraging FMC back office capability, and reducing manufacturing costs in legacy DuPont plants. Fourth quarter segment EBITDA of $302 million increased 35% versus the year-ago period and was $13 million above our original gammas. Our EBITDA margins for Q4 increased 160 basis points -over-year to .4% and full year margins increased 560 basis points to 28.4%. Turning now to fourth quarter regional financial results on slide six. Q4 revenue growth was sharply up on a pro forma basis, led by strong commercial performance in Latin America at 27%, followed by North America at 21%, EMEA at 13%, and Asia with 4%. In Latin America, price increases more than offset the effects of currency headwinds. The outperformance in the region was driven by strong demand from cotton growers in Brazil with acreage expected to be up 25% -over-year, and wheat farmers in Argentina where acreage is forecasted to grow by 5%. Robust demand for insecticides in soybean applications was also a key factor in the region. In North America, despite an expected shift in acreage away from soybean, strong demand for pre-emergent herbicides remained a key to our growth. As glyphosate resistance continues to spread, we saw strong customer uptake of our pre-emergent herbicides, especially Authority Supreme that was launched last year. In addition to strong sales of insecticide and new fungicides, EMEA experienced strong growth in France, Germany, and Russia with the combined sales of those three countries, growing 45% -over-year. This growth was driven by a range of SU herbicides and runaxa peer insect control. In Asia, we continue to benefit from a commercial integration and strong demand in Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia. If we exclude the India restructuring, which included the discontinuation of certain products and the loss of sales from the required antitrust diversities in Asia, sales in the region would have grown 14% on a pro-format basis. Moving now to lithium results on slide 7. Lithium 4 quarter revenue was $120 million, but 6% -over-year, segment EBITDA came in slightly above the midpoint of guidance at $46 million in the quarter. As you most likely saw in a separate press release yesterday, FMC's Board of Directors has officially declared the spin of the remaining stake in livens to FMC shareholders, which will occur on March 1, 2019. This will complete the separation process. Please refer to that press release posted on FNC.com for details. Looking ahead at our 2019 outlook on slide 8. As we disclosed in the pre-release on January 31, 2019 earnings per diluted share are expected to be $5.55 to $5.75. This represents an 8% at the midpoint over recast 2018, excluding lithium and the impact of annual share repurchases in 2019. All comparative values from 2018 will now exclude the lithium business entirely. Shortly after the spin on March 1, we will file an NEDK with recast 2018 results that strip out the lithium business. We expect 2019 revenue for FMC will be in the range of $4.45 to $4.55 billion, up 5% at the midpoint year over year versus 2018 recast sales. Excluding an expected 3% FX elwin, organic sales growth estimate is 8% at the midpoint. We also expect total company EBITDA of $1.165 billion to $1.205 billion, which represents 7% growth at the midpoint versus 2018 recast results. As a reminder, in 2019 our EBITDA governance includes all corporate expenses. We will no longer delineate between high segment results and corporate expenses as we had in the past when we had multiple segments. For FMC, first quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.18 billion to $1.21 billion, which represents growth of 8% at the midpoint, Excluding an expected 6% FX elwin, organic sales growth estimate for Q1 is 14% at the midpoint. We are also forecasting EBITDA of $320 to $340 million in Q1, which will be flat year over year at the midpoint. This is despite significant FX and raw material cost elwins. We expect first quarter EPS to be in a range of $1.58 to $1.68, up 3% versus recast results from Q1 2018. A 2019 expectation for the overall global crop protection market growth is that it will be flat to up low single digits. We expect North America, EMEA, and Asia will also be flat to up low single digits, driven by a variety of factors, and Latin America will grow in the low to mid single digits. In North America, growth will come from an increase in corn acreage and normalized pest pressures. In Latin America, Brazil is experiencing dry weather and important soybean and corn area to start the year, but we expect this will be offset by favorable climate conditions in Argentina and another strong soybean season across the region next fall. In EMEA, we expect recovery of the winter and spring serals area and strong serals pricing. Asia is expecting strong growth driven by a more normal monsoon season in India, as well as a recovery from the drought in Australia. We expect that FMC's above market growth in 2019 will be driven by the continued strength in global demand for diamides, pre-emergent herbicide growth, sales expansion in Brazil, SU herbicide growth in key European countries, as well as new product introductions. These new products will account for approximately 60 to 70 million dollars, or .5% in incremental sales growth in 2019. In our third largest country, India, which had over 300 million dollars in sales in 2018, we're expecting strong top-line growth in 2019 from our insecticide portfolio, as well as new applications of our herbicide portfolio in sugarcane. A well-structured super distributor network in India drives increased market access and demand generation, further lowers our credit risk and requires less working capital, while increasing profitability. Earlier this year, we launched our first new active ingredient from the legacy FMC R&D pipeline, Lucento fungicide, in time for the 2019 growing season in North America. Our R&D organization also reached a second very important milestone since our investor day in December. We advanced one of our insecticide active ingredients out of the discovery phase and into the development pipeline. Launch for this product continues to be expected in 2026. This means we still have six AIs in our development pipeline after launching Lucento commercially. We will continue to update you with progress within our innovation pipeline on future calls. As you can see from this full year 2019 EBITDA bridge on slide nine, the headwinds from FX and higher raw material costs are significant factors in 2019. The full year headwind from FX is expected to be 70% at the EBITDA level, plus another 10% headwind from higher cost for raw materials, representing a total of about $190 million. We expect price increases will offset $130 million of these combined headwinds, or approximately 70%.

Turning

to slide 10, the first quarter EBITDA bridge reflects the pressure on profitability as we begin the year. Q1 headwinds from FX are expected to be 15% at the EBITDA level, plus another 18% headwinds from raw material cost, representing a total of about $110 million in headwinds. We expect price increase in Q1 will offset $65 million, or about 60% of these headwinds. We will absorb about half of the full year impact from raw material cost in Q1 alone. The impact will diminish significantly in the second half of the year. Likewise, about two-thirds of the full year headwind to EBITDA from FX is expected to occur in Q1, and this is also expected to diminish greatly in the second half. Our plans to offset a large part of this adverse cost with price increase throughout the year are in place, and the execution is taking place as we speak. I will now turn the call over to Andrew.

Thanks, Pierre. There's a lot to cover this morning. Let me start with a few specific income statement items for 2018. I'll then move on to the year-end balance sheet, cash flow, share count, and finish with a few comments on the 2019 outlook. Foreign exchange had a meaningful negative impact on fourth quarter agricultural solutions revenue, estimated at approximately 5%. We believe this impact was more than offset by our price increases in the quarter. For the full year, we estimate FX was an approximately 2% headwind on ag solutions revenue. In the lithium segment, FX was a modest headwind to revenue in the quarter and the full year. Corporate expense was $28.4 million for the quarter, $4 million higher than implied by poor guidance given in our last earnings call. There were several drivers of this variance, including a higher than anticipated year-end LIFO inventory valuation adjustment reflecting continued raw material price increases, higher health and welfare benefits expense, and to a much lesser extent than in the third quarter, foreign exchange impacts on intercompany fund movements. Interest expense was $1 million higher for the quarter than guided, with higher than expected commercial paper balances throughout the quarter due to higher working capital. Our tax rate for full year 2018 came in much better than anticipated at an effective annual rate of 13.7%. The primary driver of the outperformance was the earnings mixed by jurisdiction that was substantially improved versus our forecast, with more profit being earned in lower tax jurisdictions than expected. Also contributing to a lesser extent to the lower 2018 tax rate was the impact of the proposed regulations released in the fourth quarter related to U.S. international tax provisions. This resulted in a less unfavorable impact than projected for global low-taxed and tangible income, also referred to as guilty. The .1% effective tax rate in the fourth quarter is a result of bringing our full year provision for income taxes in line with the full year rate. We took a $106 million non-cash charge against GAAP earnings to adjust our environmental reserves to reflect the recent agreement of principle reached with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that would, among other things, settle past costs and govern remediation of historical contamination within a defined area attributed to FMC's Middleport, New York operations. Upon finalization, this settlement will resolve a significant portion of the issues related to the Middleport site and provide FMC with certainty of the cash outflows required to support these liabilities. The cash outflows specified in the pending agreement will be capped and are well within the assumptions we've made for ongoing cash spending on legacy expenses. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow. Gross debt at December 31st was $2.7 billion, down more than $500 million from the beginning of 2018. Gross debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA excluding lithium was 2.4 times, consistent with our long-term target of 2.5 times or less. Now turning to slide 11, FMC generated adjusted cash from operations of $576 million in 2018, up 47% compared to the prior year. Adjusted cash from operations was lower than expected in the fourth quarter as growth in working capital, as well as higher legacy and transformation expenses, more than offset, better than expected EBITDA. Working capital was higher than expected in both agricultural solutions and lithium. For agricultural solutions, higher working capital was driven by stronger than expected sales in the quarter and recovering inventory levels due to the faster than expected return to full production from our China-toll manufacturing partners. We continue to monitor our inventory and safety stock levels very closely as we move past this period of uncertainty in China. Transformation expenses were higher than expected, primarily due to timing of spending on our SAP implementation. In early December, we completed the $200 million share repurchase program announced on our November earnings call, purchasing 2.4 million shares at an average price of $81.97 per share. Looking ahead now to 2019, as Pierre mentioned, FMC expects meaningful FX headwinds to revenue growth, particularly in the first half of the year. Interest expense should be roughly in line with 2018. We expect our effective tax rate to be between 14 and 16 percent for 2019 based on our current forecast for earnings by jurisdiction and our evolving understanding of the implications of the newly proposed regulations governing the taxation of foreign income. As Pierre also noted earlier, we anticipate full year 2019 earnings per share to be between $5.55 and $5.75, with first quarter 2019 earnings per share to be between $1.58 and $1.68. We are in the process of developing fully recasted financials for 2018 to remove all impacts of the lithium business to provide a clean -on-year comparison for EPS and other metrics. Due to the complexity and evolving interpretation of the 2017 U.S. tax law, it will be March before we can provide fully recasted financials for 2018. At present, we estimate that -for-like earnings per share growth, removing all impacts of the lithium business, is 8 percent for full year 2019 and 3 percent for the quarter. Slide 12 shows a summary of our 2019 cash flow outlook, laid out in generally the same way we discussed cash flow at our December Investor Day. FMC expects to generate adjusted cash from operations of $750 to $850 million in 2019, with capital spending expected to be in the range of $140 to $160 million for 2019, as well as with legacy and transformation costs in the range of $200 to $250 million, we expect to generate free cash flow of $375 to $475 million. This suggests free cash flow conversion from adjusted earnings to be in the range of 50 to 60 percent, a significant improvement though not yet at our target conversion rate of greater than 70 percent. This is due to continued legacy and transformation expenditures in 2019, in particular costs to complete our SAP implementation. With this growing cash flow and improving cash conversion, we will continue to regularly purchase shares through 2019. -to-date, we've repurchased 1.25 million shares at an average price of $79.84 for a total of approximately $100 million. We intend to purchase a total of up to $500 million of FMC shares in 2019, inclusive of the $100 million already completed. FMC expects to maintain gross debt at 2.5 times trailing EBITDA for full year 2019. You should expect some variation quarter to quarter due to the seasonality of cash generation relative to our desire to be consistent purchasers of FMC shares through 2019. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Pierre.

Thank you, Andrew. All is in place for FMC to deliver a strong 2019 as a pure-play agricultural sciences company with above market growth. Quarterly earnings in 2019 will be atypical because of cost pressure in the first half of the year. The first quarter itself will see nearly 60% of the full year raw material cost increase and effects impact. Q2 will continue to see strong headwinds with relief in the second half of the year. We are highly confident in our ability to recover a large part of these adverse costs throughout the year and deliver 5% revenue growth with 7% EBITDA growth. Our high confidence is driven by the current work on price increases, which is going well, and the fact that cost pressure from raw materials will decrease considerably in the second half of the year. We are also highly confident that we will deliver EPS growth of at least 8%. I will now turn the call back to Michael Worling.

Thank you, Pierre. As Lyvin has just had its own conference call, we'll keep this Q&A session primarily focused on our ag business. Operator, you can now begin the Q&A.

Okay, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up question. If you have additional questions, you can jump back in the queue. To withdraw yourself from the queue at any time, press the pound key. We'll pause a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Chris Parkinson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Can you just give us a quick update on just active ingredient procurement and how the Chinese market evolved in 2018, what your key assumptions are in 2019, and just any longer-term thoughts you have on your global procurement? Thank you.

Yes, right now, as I said in the previous remarks, we are in a good place from supply of active ingredients from China. We are in a good place from supply of active ingredients from China. All of our units, as well as all of our toll processors, are currently functioning. And we were able to quickly rebuild the safety stock which are needed for us to operate, and we're able to do all of that at a faster pace than expected in the fourth quarter. From a situation in China today, there is still the same pressure around environmental issues, but it is, I must say, in a calmer and more organized approach. I think this approach, which was a bit at times surprising with one bad actor in an industrial park and everybody shut down, is going away to a much more targeted and rational approach. So right now, the situation has changed. It is also one of the reasons for which we have so much certainty around our ability to deliver on our targeted earnings for the year, is because we have a very good view of raw material, active ingredient price increase, which will be in the first year. We have the contract in place for what will be coming into manufacturing in the first half and sale in the second half in terms of pricing. So all of that is very clear now for the year. From a strategic standpoint, as Mark has said many times before, China remains very important to our active ingredient supply, but we are looking at diversification in the U.S., increasing the capacity of some of our plants. In Europe, where we do have active ingredient plants, also in capability, we are increasing our ability to supply from there, and also India. So yes, we will tend to diversify our active ingredient supply in the future.

That's great, Kailar. And just as a quick follow-up, given your current portfolio pipeline, as well as the existing product suite, can you just comment on your existing perception of your competitive positioning versus some of your larger peers, and then also just quickly comment on your willingness to purchase and or trade for third-party molecules? Thank you.

Yes, Chris, when you look at our pipeline that we predominantly showed in December, we feel very confident that the pipeline we have stacks up extremely well with anybody else in the industry. When you think about having six products in development, that means within the next few years, those six products are going to come to market, three within our five-year plan timeline, the first one already out this year. And then the 16 products that we have in Discovery that continue to evolve, and as Pierre said in the script, we've moved one of those Discovery molecules, which is an insecticide, into development. That's a very good sign that when we make those strategic decisions, moving from Discovery to development, that's when we start to spend significant amounts of money. So we're very confident that that new insecticide will hit the market mid-next decade. So we feel very good about where our pipeline is, but more importantly, we feel good about what is coming through into that pipeline from Discovery. We have a tremendous amount of new leads that we're developing down in Stein, and I fully expect that that Discovery pipeline will continue to expand over the next few years. Thank

you.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Byrne with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yes, curious as to what your full-year revenues were in 2018 for the Renaxa peer and Syaza peer, and how did that compare versus what were the key drivers and any other new formulations in development that incorporate those active ingredients to extend the patent life?

You kind of failed me on the second part of your question, so I'm going to answer the first part and ask you if you don't mind to repeat the second part. On the first part, what we are doing is trying to measure the legacy FMC and the legacy DuPont business and look at the -on-year growth. So we believe that the legacy DuPont business on the -for-like basis, on the pro-format basis, was for the total portfolio, but mostly driven by Renaxa peer and Syaza peer, but also including Indoxicarm and the SUs, the growth rate was north of 20 percent, and most likely in the 25 percent range, while the FMC portfolio was more in the low to mid-single digit. Now, you always have to be very careful because we have pushed a lot of sales, cannibalizing FMC sales with DuPont sales because of the quality of some of the products and the profitability of these products. So it is not exactly a -for-like, but I would say north of 20 percent for the DuPont and low to mid-single digit for the FMC. Could you repeat the second part of your question?

Yes, sure, Pierre. Sorry about that. I was asking about any new formulations that include Renaxa peer and Syaza peer to extend the patent life on those active ingredients, and maybe I will catch that in a broader question of the present value of your pipeline being fairly insecticide-heavy because of the potential for mutation-driven demand increases and more difficulty being disintermediated by seed-based insecticides. I just wondered your views on that.

Sure. Let me start around mixture and then I will move that to Marc or give you the detail. But absolutely, we do have a full strategy around mixtures and finding the right partners for Renaxa peer, Syaza peer. First of all, for normal growth, and that is what we do as FMC. We use formulations for growth, but also for our patent extension strategy. Now, you do not see these formulations impacting 19 sales or even 20 because every time you do create those new formulations, you do have to go through the full registration process. So depending upon the countries and the region, it could be from two years to four or five years. So that is the process we are going through. All of these products are currently in development with a very active portfolio. Marc, you want to add a couple of things?

Yes. Steve, your question around the insecticides versus the rest of the portfolio for us, yes. When you look at our portfolio, we are one of the world leaders in terms of insecticides and we are very happy with that situation. Pest pressure continues to expand around the world, especially in Asia. But if you look at our pipeline, if you think of the development molecules, they are all fungicides and herbicides. And then if you were the exception of the new insecticide we just put into development. If you look at the discovery pipeline of 16 molecules, 11 of them are herbicides and fungicides. So as we talked about many times, we are very active from a discovery and development perspective to rebalance that portfolio. And of course, we are talking to other parties around expanding the use of fungicides and herbicides. So I am very confident that we have the right programs in place to help sort of rebalance or continue to grow the portfolio. But I am not unhappy with where we are with insecticides right now.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Jester with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning everyone. Just a few questions on the quarter. First, in Latin America, was there any benefit in terms of pull forward? I think the soybean season in Brazil this year was pretty quick. So any benefit in the fourth quarter from that? And then on Europe, you called out very strong sales in France, Germany and Russia, much, much higher than the segment overall. Was there any countries that were particularly weak in Europe in the fourth quarter?

Listen, regarding your question in North America around pulling, and I think the question for us would apply to any region of the world. There was a very strong performance of all of our regions from a growth standpoint, even including Asia. It does not look like there were a very strong pull, but we do believe customers were anxious to procure our product. They have all heard about the tension around China, even if they all understand today that it is quite stable. So could there be some? I couldn't say no, but in all regions, we saw very healthy sales, especially in Latin America. Slide pool by customers to make sure they will be supplied possible, but nothing which jumped at us in Latin America.

And then with regards?

Yeah, Mark is going to give you a little bit on Europe, Mark. Yeah, you're

right. In Europe, France, Germany, Russia were very strong for us. Good mix. I would say from a weakness perspective, the UK was certainly weak, certain parts of southern Europe as well, but far outweighed by the other areas. And I have to say the other areas are growing very quickly, mainly because of the things we've done over the last few years with direct market access. That's been an important element of our growth in Europe, continues to be so. And certainly in France, where we now have a much stronger presence with a much broader portfolio, we see them growing very well.

One additional statement around your question around Latin America and potential pool. I can guarantee you that following our experience in 2015, we are keeping a very, very close eye on inventory and we are doing a physical check of inventory at customers, at distributors and in-house. And we are in a good place today with a very normal inventory level in the supply chain of FMC products.

Thank you. That's really helpful. And then on your 2019 guidance, you have 8% organic growth and you comment that the market is only going to be up, you know, one single digit. So you're certainly outgrowing the market at a very brisk pace in 2019. Can you comment about what regions you think that you have the best shot to outgrow the market or where you may be taking incremental share? Thank you.

Yeah, first of all, Asia. Asia is one of the fastest growing parts of the world, especially in India. We have a very good market access model in India. The portfolio has grown. We're introducing some of our herbicides from around the world. We have a new formulation in India, which is a mixture of sulfanxazone and clomazone, which is specifically targeted at the sugar cane industry where we've not had herbicide growth before, but we have tremendous market access. So we're very confident that we're going to see that business grow. And then I would shift to parts of Latin America. Argentina. Argentina last year was a very down market. We continue to see growth with the insecticides, but also with our pre-emergent herbicides. And then Brazil. We continue to take share in soy with our insecticide portfolio, not just the acquired diamide portfolio, but the FMC formulations as well. And then I would say in parts of Europe where we see that strong market access and growth. Thank you very

much. Our next question comes from the line of Don Carson with Susquehanna Financial. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Pierre, a question on your 23% organic growth in pro forma in 2018. What was the price volume break out there? And as you look to your 8% organic growth in 2019, what are you expecting on price versus volume?

In 2018, you talk about 2018 versus 2017 or 2019 versus 2018?

Well, first to 2018, you had 23% pro forma growth, XFX. What was the price volume break out on that?

Understand that we cannot do a breakup of price volume on a year on year because we can only do it on the FMC product. And most of the growth came from the DuPont product. We do not have the information to do EBITDA year on year or volume price mix on the DuPont product. So we believe a very large part of what we did was driven by volume. And most of the price increase was focused on Latin America to overcome the currency. But we do not have a your logical, like we have for 2019, your logical breakdown. And

how about for that 8% in 2019, what would be price versus volume?

So 2019, what we have is for the full year, we believe we're going to have an FX impact of about negative 3%. We're going to have a price mix on revenues. I'm talking, okay, the price mix of about positive 3% and a volume of 5%.

So

your price mix upsetting your effects. If you go to EBITDA, the drivers are a bit different because of course you have the effects and costs, but volume would be on your EBITDA growth driving 9%.

And then finally, last year you were quite aggressive. You changed your policy on hedging sales in Latin America. Are you continuing with that policy of basically hedging the full sale as soon as you book the order?

Yes, actually let me take that important question to elaborate a little bit why we have a bit of a very high confidence around our target despite the fact that a lot of the earnings are coming into the second half. First, to answer your question on currency, currency we're taking the forward values for currency. And we have a very significant part of the currency exposure which is aged, like every year. So we have the same aging process we have every year in place. And like last year, we're going to make a decision, I would say most likely in the next four weeks, if we do the additional edging for Brazil. If you would ask me to guess right now, I would say yes, most likely we're going to go with the same approach for Brazil as we did last year. There is a little upfront cost, but we believe it's giving us much more certainty. So I feel pretty strong around aging that the current programs we have in place and the next one we're going to most likely take for Brazil will put us in a very predictable situation. For the raw material, which is the other part, we saw the increase which is penalizing the first half coming from raw materials which we have contracted and used in manufacturing last year. Those are the products which are sold in the first half. What we have procured and contracted for the second half is already done at a pricing which is lower than what we saw in the first half. And actually pretty neutral versus the prior year. So we have a very strong visibility around our cost in the second half of the year.

And as a reminder, if you do have a question, please press star one. And in the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question going further. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Mitch with Fermium Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning, fellows, and a nice end to the year. Pierre, I want to expand upon that raw material headwind. And I like the description that you pretty much have already contracted for your raw materials for the first half of the year so you know what the headwind is going to be. And then it seems like you already contracted for the second half of the year at a much lower rate. But what are the key drivers there? Because I don't normally think of FMC's ag business as being very raw material driven. So can you help explain why we're seeing the big swings here on the raw material front? What are the key factors there?

Yeah, actually, you know, Frank, it's a good question. I should have said that. It's a very simple factor. It's supply from China. We, the specialty chemical industry for the ag industry is mostly coming from China. China went to a pretty abrupt approach to the environmental issues last year, which created lots of shutdown and shortages on raw material supply and active ingredient supply. Those were the products we were procuring at that time to manufacture them in the end of 2018 and sell them in the first half of 2019. Now everything has been reorganized. The shutdowns are not so visible or high than they were last year. We have the supply as normalized. There is less emergency shipment. So we are much more back to normal situations. So the products which are being contracted and sold now are contracted under a normal supply from China. So we are back to a normal level of inventory, normal supply, and back to normal quantity available, which get the price back to normal.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Connolly with Stevens. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'll keep it to one. Can you remind us of how working capital is going to change from here once everything with the DuPont acquisition is settled through the system and your product launches are settling into? I'm particularly interested in how seasonality might shift a little bit.

Hey, Mark. It's Andrew. I think certainly 2018 is a bit abnormal in terms of working capital growth. As you point out, when we acquired the DuPont business, we bought inventory, but we didn't get receivables or payables with that. So we had to build up receivables and payables to normal levels to support the acquired DuPont business. As we look through to 2019, we would expect to see working capital as ease of cash normalize with incremental working capital in the 20 to 25% of sales kind of range. I do think you have to think about the seasonality of working capital a bit. Certainly from a cash generation perspective, it's not even during the year. Q2 and Q3 being very strong cash generative quarters. Let me let Mark talk a little bit more specifically about some of the other seasonality elements.

Yeah, Mark. It's a good question. The business has changed a lot over the last few years. I'll throw some numbers out for you just so you can get a feel for how 2018 played out. And 2019 is probably going to be pretty similar. So this is, I would guess, a new norm for us. If you look by region, North America has about 60% of the revenue in the first half of the year. Latin America has 70% in the second half of the year. Europe has 70% in the first half. And Asia has about 55 to 60% in the first half. So you can see we have some very big swings in terms of where our business comes from. And as Andrew said, that is obviously going to impact what you see on a quarterly and semi-annual basis. So just bear those numbers in mind. And I would say 2019 will be very similar to that going forward.

That's super. Thank you.

Next question. One moment. Our next question comes from the line of Oleski Yirma with Nomira Instanet. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. On slide nine, you're showing cost and other part of the EBITDA bridge for 2019 at $115 million headwind. Is it fair to assume that this is mostly the raw materials headwind? And also, if prices have now fully reversed, is it fair to assume that we could see a similar positive item on the 2020 EBITDA bridge?

I would say yes and yes. I think the $115 million is all cost. And certainly, especially in the first half, when we're going to move to 2020, we should have a very favorable -on-year comparison. Because as far as we see today with a more normalized situation from a supply standpoint, we will not have in the first half of 2020 the raw material headwind. So yeah, we're going to like our comp in the first half of 2020 much better than we do right now.

Great. Thank you,

Pierre. Next question comes from the line of Mike Thyssen with KeyBank. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. You have a really strong start to the first quarter in terms of volume growth. It implies that one of the other quarters will be a little bit less than the outlook for the full year. Can you maybe just walk us through some of the seasonality again in the business on a quarterly basis and maybe just what we need to keep an eye on as the year unfolds?

Yeah, Mike, it's Mark. Similar to what I just answered the other question with regarding the seasonality in the halves, you know, if you looked at Q3 in 2018, it was our slowest quarter. You'll see that similar trend again. It won't really change. Q1, Q2 are the highest quarters, followed by Q4 and then Q3. You should not expect to see that change. There shouldn't be material shifts unless there is some major weather impact in one of the regions. You know, people are talking about what's going to happen in North America this year. Will the spring come early? Will it come late? Well, obviously planting occurs right around that Q1, Q2 border. So who knows? We plan for a normal year when we do our forecasting. Same thing in Brazil with late September being the planting season. That swings between Q3 and Q4. So those are the kind of bridges you have to watch for.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy, Vertical Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I was wondering if you could comment on the expected contribution margin in 2019 associated with your volume growth projection of 5%. The reason I ask is if I look at slide nine on the lower right, you show the 5% on the upper right, it seems as though the attached EBITDA benefit is 12%, which seems to imply a very high contribution margin of, I don't know, 65, 70%. So my question is, is that correct? And if so, what is driving that? Or perhaps there are other factors baked into there.

No, I think you're correct. I think usually contribution margin for, it's going to depend which region and which product, but quite a few of insecticides or other products do have a profit on sales, which is north of 60%. And you know, when you're growing because we are not adding resources, it drops straight to the EBITDA line, to the earnings line. Now, we don't see it in the full P&L this year as we should because of the effects and raw material issue, but your calculation is correct.

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

And those are regular earnings we have on some of the growing product lines.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Global. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Thanks. You talked about your ability to grow faster than the underlying market in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. It seems like you forgot an important region in North America. Can you maybe talk about how you expect to grow in North America relative to underlying markets that might be flat up slightly?

Yes. Thanks, Mike. Certainly not intending to leave North America out of the mix, given the scale of its importance to us. I think you're going to see a couple of areas where we continue to grow. First of all, the whole pre-emergent herbicide space, I think you know that we have a very large position in that area. We're introducing new products and cannibalizing our own product range, which allows us to lift up value to distribution, retail, and growers, while introducing new technologies to us, which allows us to keep ahead of the competition. So that's one area. Second area is obviously our insecticide portfolio. When you look at our growth and specialty and niche crops in California and Florida, that's an area that we see as a significant potential for us. And then the third one that we don't talk a lot about but is quietly growing for us and nicely so is our herbicide portfolio in the corn segment. We are introducing new products there. You'll see us continue in that area. It helps our balance with soy, especially in a year like this where there may be swings between soy and corn. And then last but not least, obviously fungicides. We're introducing a brand new fungicide. We have two others that are growing nicely on more niche crops. So I think if you take those areas together, you'll see us continue to outpace the market in the US and Canada.

All right. Thanks very much.

And the last question that we have time for will come from the line of Lawrence Alexander with Jeffreys. Please go ahead.

Hi. Just a quick one. Are you seeing any, in your discussions with regulators, any shift in how they're thinking about insecticide legacy effects or lingering effects or the duration of insecticide effectiveness, particularly in Europe?

No. You know, Lawrence, listen, the regulatory environment that we work in is an extremely stringent one anyway. You're not allowed mixtures of insecticides in Europe. The neonics have been removed in Europe and that's created opportunities for more targeted insecticides like our diamides. So we're not seeing anything that I would say is out of the ordinary with regards to insecticides. In fact, you know, I could argue that the technology players that are introducing new and more targeted chemistries will continue to take market share in those markets.

And in the past when those kind of impulses have happened, I mean, is it about a five to 10 year kind of tailwind or is it faster than that, that the market shifts?

Sorry. What was the first part, Lawrence? I couldn't quite get that. When

such regulatory shifts have happened in the past, you know, where a class has taken off the market, can players like yourselves who have the newer products, does the shift happen fairly quickly over three, four years or is it more of a five to 10 year kind of transition? It

tends to be more quicker depending on the space of which the product is removed by the regulatory authorities. If it's very quick, then obviously growers need something that they can use to combat the pest pressures. You can step into those spaces rather quickly. But it does generally take that four to five year time frame to get the whole market moving. Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks. That's all the time we have for the call today. As always, I'm available following the call to address any additional questions you may have. Thank you and have a good day.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the FMC Corporation Conference Call. Thank you.