ADM at 2025 BMO Farm to Market: Strategic Growth Amid Challenges

On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (NYSE:ADM) presented at the 2025 BMO Farm to Market | Chemicals Conference. The company shared its strategic vision, focusing on cost efficiencies and growth initiatives, while addressing challenges in commodity cycles and policy uncertainties. ADM highlighted its commitment to operational excellence and shareholder returns, despite facing headwinds in certain segments.

Key Takeaways

• ADM aims for $500 million to $750 million in cost efficiencies over the next three to five years.
• The company is pushing for clarity on Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) to boost biofuel industry stability.
• ADM reaffirmed its earnings guidance of $4 to $4.75 per share for the year.
• The Nutrition business showed strong performance, particularly in flavors, despite challenges in plant-based proteins.
• ADM plans to monetize $2 billion worth of assets, maintaining a strong balance sheet.

Financial Results

• Earnings guidance reaffirmed at $4 to $4.75 per share.
• Q2 crush margins are lower than Q1, with a potential $0.50 headwind if margins do not improve.
• Targeted cost savings of $200 million to $300 million for the current year.
• Dividend increased by 2% to $0.51 per share, annualized at $2.04.
• Identified $2 billion in assets for potential monetization.

Operational Updates

• Focus on manufacturing efficiencies, reducing downtime and contractor use.
• Improved uptime in the Oilseeds business after addressing operational challenges.
• Ongoing integration efforts in the Nutrition business, particularly in the pet segment.
• The Decatur East plant expected to resume full operations by the end of Q2.

Future Outlook

• ADM is advocating for 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 5.25 billion gallons of biomass-based biodiesel RVOs.
• The company plans to address material weaknesses and continue investing in growth.
• Emerging markets present growth opportunities, with a focus on executing acquisitions in the Nutrition segment.

Q&A Highlights

• Emphasis on policy clarity for RVOs to enhance industry confidence.
• Continued strong demand in sweeteners, starches, and beverages.
• Customers are seeking innovative solutions to meet evolving market needs.

In conclusion, ADM’s strategic focus on cost efficiencies, policy clarity, and growth initiatives positions it to navigate current challenges and capitalize on future opportunities. Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed understanding.

Full transcript - 2025 BMO Farm to Market | Chemicals Conference:

Operator: All right. We’re thrilled to have ADM with us to discuss its strategy to manage through

Andrew: the commodity cycle, simplify its business and pursue strategic growth opportunities to build its earnings potential over time. ADM is executing against its strategy through cost optimization, portfolio management and a disciplined approach to capital allocation. And with key drivers on the horizon, ADM could be positioned for an improving earnings trajectory starting the back half of the year. We’re joined by Manish Padalawala, ADM’s CFO, who joined the company under one year ago, just under a year ago. Manish has enhanced ADM’s leadership through his keen focus on operations, productivity and capital discipline in his time in the role.

We also have Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, a role in which he’s responsible for ADM’s sweeteners, starches, ethanol, wheat milling and biosolutions businesses and his oversight more broadly over ADM’s North America operations. Excited to have you both with us. So thank you very much. I guess I would start, Manish, by asking you this. You’ve been with ADM for almost a year now.

Can you share with us some of your observations from that time? Any surprises? Any how has it gone?

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Sounds good. Listen, first, my first conference, so thanks for having me. Wonderful. It’s wonderful to be here. And I’m thrilled to be at ADM, and I want to start by saying just a huge thanks to everyone who’s been so warm to me to welcome me to ADM, ranging from farmers whose farms I visited all the way to see customers.

But I would say most importantly employees at ADM, including people like Chris and Megan who’s in the room who have never, hesitated to walk me through the history of the business, helped me learn the business, so a big thank you to all of them. You know, when I was coming into ADM and I was looking at the opportunity, were a couple of factors in my many factors, but I’ll I’ll do two. One was a personal one. When I think about I grew up in India, so poverty and hunger, have seen firsthand. And so from a young age, for me, I’ve always focused on hunger alleviation.

And then I come read about ADM and what they do and how they move product from where there’s surplus to a product where there’s need. And so I felt the mission, my own personal mission, the company’s mission were in harmony. So that was my first one factor. The second factor was just looking at value creation. So when I look at my prior experience and strength, I bring a lot of finance, functional expertise, strong controllership skills, I drive a lot of operating excellence through lean, tight capital allocation, and I felt that I could my experience could be helpful to this company as they were going to their next stage of value creation.

So those were my two reasons or factors or the main two that I said, okay, it’s worth joining ADM. Coming into it, a year into it, I would say the hypothesis that I had has been strengthened even further. The value creation opportunity that I see is fantastic. And you can ask why and what have I seen so far. First, I would just start by saying, more time with ADM, you think about ADM, it’s an amazing company.

It’s a large U. S. Company that is so critical for global food, feed and energy. You think about what we do is basically we’re bringing farmers and customers together and through that consumers. We are very, very critical to any economy in the world and part of it is because we move product and we move product at scale and very efficient.

So that was one start. Then you think about the unbelievable amount of assets that the company has and the locations it has, the agility has and then it has the experience like people like Chris who have been in this industry for a long time that we can take advantage of any trade flows that exist and help add value to it. So that’s, you know, I saw those strengths coming in. I think when you think about, so that’s one side of it. The other side is the operating side of it.

The company has over its cycles managed a lot of operational excellence, but I think there’s more we can do in this space. So one of the things Juan and I announced in January, we are going to drive the next wave of cost efficiencies between 500 to $750 over the next three to five years. We saw that and we said there’s clearly an opportunity that we can drive it. We can do it through both SG and A, do it through manufacturing efficiency. So that’s an area that I found coming in that an area that we could continue to drive and that’s what we’ve been doing.

And then the other side is one’s cost, the other side is growth. And you think about growth and the opportunities that we have in the world today, and Chris can talk about some of the ones in his area, whether it is biosolutions, carbon capture and sequestration, you think about our Ag Services business and we think about emerging markets growth. So again, I came from grew up in the emerging markets, so I clearly know the opportunities there, whether it’s through our destination marketing programs, whether it is through region ag, whether it is through traceability solutions that we offer is clearly a growth opportunity for us. Then you combine the nutrition business, which is basically taking the ADM pantry, helping customers grow by using a science based solution leading with taste and texture and functional ingredients, and you say that’s also a very good growth opportunity. So then you look at that and say, okay, but do they have the cash to do it?

And so then as I think about the strength that we have is we have a strong balance sheet, we generate a lot of cash, but the opportunity for us is working capital excellence. There’s a lot more we can do in this area when you think about just driving, whether it is collecting receivables better, having the optimal level of inventory, we have so many locations, so many factories, making sure you have the algorithm that works, and then of course driving payables. So therefore you’ve got an opportunity with cash and we continue to deliver good return to our shareholders, at the same time making sure that we keep a strong balance sheet because that allows us also to invest organically. And then the last piece I believe, Andrew, is that digital can be a multiplier for ADM. We are in our ERP journey, we are making progress in that ERP journey, but when I think about the amount of data that this company has on its own because of all the trading we do, the markets that we play in, the ability to stitch all that data together quickly and drive anomaly detection faster and then use it to get sustained solutions can be a big win for the company.

And we are making progress in that. I would say we have a long journey there. But in summary, would say I’m just absolutely thrilled to be here. I think there’s tremendous value creation opportunity here. But step number one for us is this year is get the material weakness remediated, drive the operational excellence, at the same time drive simplification through portfolio, and that’s what the team is focused on.

So I’m very, very thrilled to be here.

Andrew: That was a great backdrop. When I think about building on that, one of the market factors, I guess, that I’ve been talking about and get more questions about right now than any other, and I wanted to ask you about this, is the RVO and the potential impact that, that could have on the industry and on your business. So how do you think about the way that, that can impact your trajectory? And I know you’ve talked about it as a back half component. So maybe just walk through kind of the pieces there, please.

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: Yes. Thanks, Andrew. We’ve, along with others in the industry and actually even the petroleum industry, we’ve gone to the government and asked for 15,000,000,000 RVOs in ethanol, D6 gallons, and 5,250,000,000, in biomass biodiesel. And we’ve lobbied that group and asked that, basically given the fact that where we think the industry can run and what it takes to have a sustainable industry. And also, when we think about energy independence and American dominance in energy, and the importance for biofuels in the American economy, in the rural economy, we think it’s extremely important.

Luckily for us, we have this value chain that’s extremely long. We talked Mona just mentioned even regen ag, so if you think about where we start with the farmer all the way through our value chain here in The United States or delivered exports. We think we have a big role to play. And that $15,000,000,000 and the 5,250,000,000.00 we think is exactly what the industry needs to be sustainable, but also really just to have the confidence and the known entity of here’s what the rules are going to be going for. So certainty matters when you’re putting down the kind of capital that our industry puts in And certainly, it’s really what we’d like to see from the U.

S. Government.

Andrew: Is we’re going see the headline number whenever we get that. I don’t know what the timing is that you’re expecting, maybe you want to share. But what are the other details? Is it important that we get some certainty beyond ’26? What else should we be looking out for as we interpret kind of the headline numbers?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: Well, I do think the length of time is important, particularly as these investments last a long time. So certainty is the most important thing for us. Whether it comes in at 15 and 5 and a quarter more or less than that, I don’t know and I don’t know when it will come out. We’re certainly doing our job to push administration to help us and help the industry there. I think the most encouraging piece for me is the fact that we’re aligned with the Petroleum Institute, which at least in my time has never happened where we’ve been this aligned.

So I’m encouraged because of that alignment on both sides with petroleum and ag.

Andrew: And in particular, on the five twenty five, that is the industry’s assessment of what we can run. Is there I guess I’m trying to frame that. Is there a level which is just it’s too low, too high? I guess how do you think about kind of the flex of that number?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: We know we can run at those levels. We have run at those levels, and that’s what our ask is. Today, in biodiesel and nobody is running, I don’t know, two third well, three thirty something or 3.3 something. So we’re we know that we can move to that level, and that’s what we’ve asked for.

Andrew: Got it.

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Just on math on that, Andrew, everyone’s benefit, when we came out with the earnings for the couple of weeks ago, we reaffirmed guidance at four to 4.75 at the low end of the range. One of the things we did mention in that was we believe that any clarity on the RVOs will help us will get crush margins up in the second half. Currently, if you look at Q2, crush margins are actually running lower than Q1. We also have said that if replacement margins don’t move up from where they were a few weeks ago, that’s a $0.50 headwind. So the math equation also our hope is that as these we get clarity, but also on the other side, making sure that this clarity comes sooner rather than later because we do put stuff on book.

Now we’ll manage all of this as we go through, I’ve already given you where the replacement margins are right now. Secondly, just for people’s benefit, people talk about RVOs and its impact on crush margins. 50% of bean oil is going to food, 50% is energy. And if you look at the first quarter, the amount of bean oil that was going to biofuels was down 42% on a year over year basis, while things like EUCORE TALO were down 4%. So then so that is why we believe that once the clarity comes through, there will be more demand and more constructive for Bean Oil, which should help margin rates to go up.

And that’s what we are currently baking into our guidance.

Andrew: You know, it it feels like such an anomalous year in some ways because of some of the disruption that some of the lack of policy clarity has created. So what I’ve been trying to think about is what is the right earnings base for this business in this kind of environment, absent some of that disruption. You mentioned $0.50 on a go forward. If it doesn’t improve, is that the right way to think about how much disruption it’s created this year that whatever you do, it should really be $0.50 higher and that’s how we should think about the earnings evolution from here?

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: So I don’t know because I don’t see a current perfect correlated math equation because there are so many other variables in play right now. What I would tell you is when I and I’ll let Chris talk about the carbs business. When I just think about ADM in total, you do know there’s overall demand in the world. So whether it is meal demand or oil demand, I think you can sit and say, okay, is it low single digits? It’s low single digits to mid single digits.

So I think that’s number one. We believe that that long term, there’s a construct of that. Similarly, when you think about nutrition and you think about all the places we play in, the growth rate long term, that industry is going to grow somewhere between low single digits and maybe settle to mid single digits. And then I’ll let Chris answer his piece, but then there’s also diversification opportunities for us. And we’re going to drive the cost out that we have talked about, and we’ve got good cash that we can deploy as required for organic growth.

So I don’t have a perfect here is what the number should look like. I just say, I think all the things we are doing with the equation that’s being set up sets us up for the long run. And then we have locations in Brazil and Europe and all parts of the world. So even if trade flows move in a certain direction or not, we have capacity that can take advantage of those trade flows. But I would say the last few weeks have been quite constructive in general in this sector.

And so I think we are quite bullish about the long term. And Chris, anything you want to add about your business and all the stuff you’ve been doing?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: Well, around one of the things we’ve done, you’re talking about biofuels. From just an ethanol perspective, while we still manufacture a lot of ethanol, you know, 1.2 to 1,400,000,000 gallons, it’s become a smaller piece of our business. And we’ve looked to build up and bolster the other more reliable pieces that have more consistent earnings streams, which if you look over the last four to five years has really given us the right return in margin structure to continue to reinvest in the business around our wheat milling groups, sweeteners and the starches that we’re doing. Even some growth that we’re seeing around our biosolutions business anchored with things that are coming out of our corn plants, even fibers from our wheat mills. And one of the cool things that we’re doing that this group probably knows some about is the carbon capture and sequestration that we’ve been doing in Decatur, Illinois.

Since 2011, we started pumping, injecting into the Mount Simon area in Illinois. And we will be online at the end of this year, kind of call it Q4 ish, with our Columbus, Nebraska wet mill and dry mill. We’re tying into the Trailblazer pipeline going west. So a lot of growth opportunities that we continue to see in our core business in Carbohydrate Solutions.

Andrew: One other policy related question, I’m sure it’s your favorite topic to talk about. The 45Z with the House draft bill and some of the adjustments potentially there, just your interpretation of that and how that relative to what the initial guidance was, how that impacts ADM?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: I think what we’ve been trying to do around carbon intensity, we think is important for the long run. No matter who the administration is, we think that our stakeholders demand it. And whether it starts with regen ag and the farmer all the way through our supply chain, including our factories and what we’re doing around converting from coal into gas, sequestering carbon on not only our ethanol, but even in new power generation that we’re building. So for us, understanding what that is and at least having the timeline too, as I suggested earlier, for putting capital in place that will get the proper return. We’ve been diligent about that so far, and I think we’ll continue to be diligent.

And we continue to work with the administration on understanding how we can be part of the solution, whether it be on well, particularly around 45C

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: and 45Q.

Andrew: Got it. Okay. That’s helpful. Going back to the outlook for the year, you’ve talked about this kind of first half, back half dynamic. How does the cost savings plan play into that?

And even from a reliability plant reliability perspective, those types of things, within the existing asset base, I think there’s been a sense that there’s been some operational challenges. Is that something that you’re addressing? Is that a fair concern? I guess, how are you how does that all wrap together?

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Yes. So I’ll start with just talking to total cost, and then I’ll have Chris just talk about what he’s doing in his business just to bring it to life. When we talked about cost out, we said 500,000,000 to $7.50 over three to five years. This year was 200,000,000 to $300,000,000 The cost opportunities are going to come from both optimizing SG and A but also manufacturing efficiencies. The bulk of the savings will definitely come from driving manufacturing efficiencies.

And what we mean by manufacturing efficiencies is reduced downtime or unplanned downtime. It’s reducing the number of contractors and third party sources that we use. It’s better sourcing to make sure that we can take advantage of lower pricing, all of that put together. And what we’ve been trying to do, and we’ve tried to do that in Q4, we talked about it, you can see it in Q1 too, We have started to see progress. For example, our Oilseeds business did have quite a lot of unplanned downtime.

Part of it is the assets are older, part of it is some of the other structural changes that Chris will talk about that we have addressed. And we can see that got much better in Q1. One. Now it did get offset by weather, which is very normal in the first quarter, but as that continues to hold, you should see the ramp up of the benefits in Q two to Q four. Secondly, and I’m purposely not touching on carbs as Chris is going to, but I’ll touch on nutrition.

Again, at Q4 earnings, we had talked about making sure that we are spending enough time in our factories to get our integration better of some of these acquisitions we have done, making sure the product flows better, making sure that demand fulfillment is better. Q1, you can see the overperformance that we saw in Nutrition was largely in the Flavors business, and that was driven by the fact that the team is spending a lot of time in the factory. So my view, Andrew, is I see green shoots, so I’m happy to see the progress. There’s no way I would say we are done. There’s a lot more we can do in this space, but that’s how we’ll

And then I’ll let Chris answer specifically for Carves because that’s another example of how we have driven margin expansion in his business through using supply chain. The

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: in the processing business, operations are obviously core, and I think if I look back through my twenty seven year career, I mean, we’re good operators, in my opinion. But that core is super important for the health of the organization. And if we look to grow, you can’t have any deterioration in the core. So for us, making sure that the factories are running at high capacity utilization, they’re efficient, they’re effective, they’re performing and performing across safety, quality, on time, in full and increased uptime is super important to us. I would say during COVID, we stubbed our toe a little bit, a significant amount of turnover in the plants.

And we’ve come out of that better through more money going into non discretionary spend into the plants. We’ve also just put more of a focus around people in the plants and what we’re doing for management as far as shift work, overtime, all the things that make us more efficient, bigger focus on process safety and quality. So all around, we put more of a focus on it, Andrew. And while we’re not as good as we want to be, we continue to get better year over year. And I think that’s important for the team to see success.

Andrew: Yes, that’s great to hear. Sticking on Carb Solutions for a minute, you talked about seeing some demand softness in the most recent quarter. I’m curious kind of how that’s manifesting, where you’re seeing that across end markets, geographies even and how you expect that to evolve from here?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: So our we’ve had as I mentioned earlier, how we’ve evolved the portfolio to be more of a robust performer around sweeteners and starches within North America, which are our biggest footprint for carbohydrate solutions. We did see demand softness some in Q1. I’m not that overall concerned with I don’t feel like the sky is falling by any means. We’re still pretty happy with the demand that we have and the demand is allowing us to run at a high capacity utilization for our plants because we are running at a higher capacity than we did last year and the year before. But we’re cautious.

We’re paying close attention to the CPG brands that we supply. We’re paying close attention to the border issues that we’re having between us and Mexico when it came to tariffs in the first quarter. So in some cases, some of our cross border volumes were people were hesitant to buy as they had possible tariffs come into play. The Paper and Packaging segment seemed to be slowing down a bit, and so that gave us some pause. But overall, I would call it healthy and we’re cautiously optimistic on volume.

Andrew: I think there’s a degree of concern about the demand outlook in the market because of a couple of things. You talked about trade with Mexico. You’ve got the snap discussion. What does that do for CSDs? I guess how do you weigh those dynamics and the potential impact or maybe your exposures?

How should we think about those things?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: Those are exactly the things that we are thinking about. So from just from a cross border piece, we stay super close to not only the current administration here in The United States, but our trading partners as well. And making sure that whether it be tariff or non tariff barriers that we can keep those to a minimum because we do have an important flow for ADM across North America and even in The Caribbean out of The Gulf that we manage. So it’s an important part of our core business and making sure that those disruptions are minimal are super important. When it comes to SNAP, we’re also are paying a lot of attention to what happens in that area.

Our customers don’t seem to be that concerned. So while we’re trying to map out what the possibilities could be, if there is any demand disruptions because states or at a federal level, if it ever came to snap restrictions on certain foods or drinks, what that would mean for for our business. I would tell you, we don’t get any feedback from customers today that causes us to panic.

Andrew: Okay. The business the Carb Solutions business in particular has evolved a bunch over time. You’ve got BioSolutions in there. You’ve kind of evolved your ethanol exposure a bit as well. But if I just look at the margins for that business, they’ve doubled over the last decade.

The core sweetener and starch margins have been a big contributor. I guess, can you talk about the durability of that improvement kind of on an underlying sweetener and starch basis? Is there I guess, the risk would be that, that business is, for some reason, over earning. So how do you think about the durability of Carb Solutions profitability?

Chris Cuddy, President of Carb Solutions and President of North America, ADM: The it’s a healthy industry, and we have good industry structure to start with. We’ve done, I think, a good job in continuing to be agile and opportunistic and flexible. And what we do, particularly around flex, is have an optionality. We call it internally fight for the grind. So we’re always looking for opportunities to margin up with new products.

And there’s areas that are shrinking in the business, so we’re always trying to find a way to add to the pipeline so that as things fall off or margin is lowered, we have another product to take its place. And I would also say that in general, these assets aren’t getting any newer and inflation from that perspective, it isn’t any cheaper to replace them. So there continues to be a pretty tight supply and demand balance around the corn wet milling industry and even in the wheat milling industry that we’re involved in. With that being said, what we have done is, I mentioned earlier carbon capture and sequestration, so that’s a new revenue stream and profit stream that we have coming in now and we have more to come. But we’ve also put a lot of time and energy into what we call our biosolutions business, which is really a purposeful innovation line into green renewable products, really destined for industry.

And so we still have a huge focus on food, it’s still core, but as there is some slippage in volumes in some of those, we want to be able to replace it with items in this renewable space. And we’ve been fairly successful and that’s what keeps us running at a high capacity utilization.

Andrew: Shifting gears to the nutrition side of the business, there was also a mention there of some demand softness, think largely or you have seen some demand softness in different areas of the Nutrition business. Can you give us an update kind of on how that has progressed and what you’re seeing from a

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: I would say, listen, overall, what we said about nutrition was we are it all depends on what consumer demand turns out to be and how much inflation is there in the economy. So that’s what we are watching. But I would say overall demand has been pretty good. If I think about our flavors business, first quarter we saw pretty good growth both in North American EMEA, so beverage demand continue to be strong. Customers continuing to ask for innovative solutions, which our teams were able to deliver.

You think about health and wellness, we continue to see good for biotics and fibers. Our Specialty Ingredients business, which is our protein business, was lower, but that’s partly driven by the fact that we had our Decatur East plant down. The Decatur East plant now has come online. We expect that by the end of 2Q, we should be back at full ramp, so that should allow us. Then when you think about our Animal Nutrition business, we have continued to see demand for specialty premixes.

But at the same time, that team is also working on driving its profitability up. And you can see that progress that the company they have made over the last few quarters. In pet, the demand was strong. We found in certain of our customers in North America a slightly lower demand in pet. But again, it wasn’t overall across the industry.

But that’s another area we’re also seeing there’s a move to private label, which has been the trend in that industry from a pricing perspective, so we’re watching that. But I would say in general, we haven’t similar to what Chris said in the nutrition business, they’re being very cautious, they’re being very watchful and making sure that they are there when the demand is there or not to deliver.

Andrew: We’ve been on a bit of a journey with that business, recovery journey with the Nutrition business. And you already mentioned it, the guidance for the first quarter was one thing and you came in materially better than that. I guess, what was so much better than you anticipated? Where are we still lagging? And do you feel like we’re kind of this is the inflection?

Are we back on track? Or is there more work that we need to do to say that from a more consistent perspective?

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Yes. So I would start by saying, I see the green shoots. So we are happy to see the progress. Is there more to do? Absolutely.

And that’s across the company, and we would, you know, Juan and I would say there’s always more we can do across any of our business units. When I just go back to your question on attrition, what drove the upside in Q1 was the flavors execution and flavors demand. So that was a positive. As we go through the remaining three quarters, we are watching demand, but our goal is continue to drive the execution in North America and EMEA, making sure that we can flow the product better, which we started seeing in Q1 and continue that in Q2 to Q4. In SI or our Specialty Ingredients business, the key comes down to making sure that we can do a full ramp up of our Decatur East facility, making sure that as that comes online, the margin starts expanding there.

In health and wellness, it’s all about demand fulfillment in biotics and fibers, but also making sure that the factory can put the output out that it needs to when the volume comes in. When you go to our pet business, it’s a lot about demand fulfillment and making sure we’ve had some integration issues in Pet business. Again, it’s the grand scheme of ADM, it’s not the largest of our businesses, but that’s an area that should as the second half comes in, we should see improvement there. And then the Animal Nutrition business, XPET, is all about making sure that we are managing mix, we are managing customers and managing profitability across geographies and which the team is doing. When you overall put Nutrition, Ian’s team is focused, one, on driving growth, but two, is making sure that some of these operational execution issues, integration issues get settled as well as driving optimization of SG and A.

And that’s why I would say, you’ll see a cadence of us moving up. When we gave you all guidance for the year, originally, we said Nutrition will be higher on a year over year basis. In the guidance that we just affirmed a few weeks ago, we have continued to see that Nutrition will be higher on a year over year basis.

Andrew: How do you think about the Nutrition portfolio? Has the thinking on what makes sense where it makes sense for ADM to play or not play evolved? And you’ve been making changes more broadly in the portfolio with some closures and other things as well, so if you wanted to expand that to the rest of the portfolio as well.

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Yes. So listen, I’ve been here less than a year, so I’ll give you what I’m seeing in nutrition. I don’t have all the history that many people will have on the business. And I look at some of the trends that you’re seeing in the world and you talk about first, I’ll just talk about beverages. And in general, there’s more and more demand about innovation in beverages, whether it is a different flavor, whether it is using natural colors and flavors.

So there’s a lot of innovation there. The team that we have that does that in our flavors business is world class. So my view is they’re gonna continue playing in that innovative space. Their growth is gonna come from geographic expansion as you think about the Indias and the Africas of the world, while making sure that they’re also building platforms as their customers want. If I then go to a plant based protein business, that’s a business that has grown below what food has grown over the last few years.

Part of it, I would say, is also what happened was the inflation where people backed away from plant based proteins. Part of it was our own execution issues in Decatur East and the problem we had there. My view is once that comes back online, making sure that we can get the demand back and the customers that we have lost, make sure we get them back, make sure we can flow the product. But at the same time, I think as the world evolves and there’s more and more desire for plant based proteins in our foods, we are seeing it in areas like breads, etcetera, that you hadn’t seen before. I also think when you think about all the brands and all the work that people are doing as they get stronger, demand will come back.

And then if inflation is lower, I think you’re going to see more demand in plant based proteins. So long term we think that sector is somewhere in the mid single digits in the long term. Then you talk about our health and wellness business, I’ll just say supplements, biotics, fibers, you know that’s the trend right now where it’s good for you, it’s better. I think we’re seeing more and more articles being published about it, more and more research papers around it, so that should definitely help. And then the last one is what’s the place of artificial foods and dyes in our diet and that’s an area as regulation plays itself out.

We’ve got, I think, one of the largest natural portfolio of colors and flavors that we can partner. There’s a lot of demand already from customers to reformulate and figure out how they can play in that space. So we’ll see how that industry plays itself out. But I would say right now, Andrew, in my view is we’ve bought what we’ve bought. We got to make sure that we’re going to execute that, get the return.

As Fawn and I have said, it’s going to be an opportunistic M and A play. If there’s something great that comes about, we’ll definitely look at it. At the same time, as we are thinking about simplification of portfolio, there are smaller businesses in all three businesses that we have that we are making sure the teams actually believe we have a market and a right to win, and that’s part of that journey. So I would say right now for the nutrition businesses, execute and basically deliver the value that was there when we bought these companies, and that’s what the team is trying to do.

Andrew: Okay. So sticking on kind of the capital allocation, and this will be probably the last topic before we close. And I think I have all of this right. Your ROIC right now is below your cost of capital. Your CapEx is the highest in fifteen years.

I understand there’s inflation in Buybacks aren’t really a particular focus right now, it doesn’t seem like coming off obviously a big repurchase cycle. So how are you weighing those capital deployment options on a go forward basis? And if your earnings trajectory does improve, how does that evolve?

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Yes. So I’ll just start by saying one of the hallmarks of ADM has been cash generation. And as I mentioned at my first question you had for me, I think there’s more opportunity we can do with working capital. So step number one, we always try to make sure we have a strong balance sheet. We have coming into the year, we said we believe EBITDA to leverage ratio is somewhere in that two ish range.

We still feel that’s good. The benefit of a strong balance sheet does two One, it allows us to invest organically, but two is also return capital to shareholders. So for us, that’s equally important that we return capital, but we also grow the business for the long term value creation. When I think about where we get the best return, when we invest money organically, we get the best return. So that we are going to continue doing because we believe that’s the best return.

To answer your question on CapEx, and I’ve studied this again in my eight, ten months that I’ve been here, there are two pieces I would say on the increase in CapEx. Number one is inflation that when you compare over a decade ago what inflation was today, that eats a lot of chunk of the CapEx increase. The second is we have bought businesses, so that also has intensity of CapEx. But the third is as these plants are getting older, what the team is doing, that’s what we are trying to do here from the that I’ve been here is making sure that we are investing CapEx where we are getting a return. And the return doesn’t always have to be, you know, like a growth return, but maintenance capital that at ADM we call NDE basically is saying, can I improve the downtime?

While I’m improving the downtime, I’m also modernizing. So simple thing, I’m replacing an old motor with a new motor. You are going to get the efficiency. Not as large as growth capital, but you’re going to get that. So our goal is we’re going to keep investing in those areas where we believe we can get the volume throughput because that gives us pretty good leverage, but at the same time modernizing our facilities with better control infrastructure so we can get more use more data and data analytics to cycle these plants better.

So that, in my view, is where we will go with CapEx. We’ll definitely have growth investments where the returns are good, and the ROIC for those growth investments are going to be higher than the cost of capital, otherwise why do these? So we’ve got the teams on a stage gate process where we are being very thoughtful about how much money that we are putting in, but that’s an area that we believe that putting in more around maintenance capital and also growth is a good balance to have versus just one or the other. And then from a shareholder return perspective, the company had done a good amount of share buyback last year. This year, we have gone ahead and increased dividend 2%.

It’s $0.51 You can annualize that, dollars $2.00 4. So and we’ve paid dividend for what, over then over ninety years now and fifty years of increasing dividends. So clearly, that’s also front and center for us is giving shareholder return. And then in general, would add with that is we will make sure from an M and A perspective, we are very opportunistic. We are not currently in the market for big acquisitions.

We have a portfolio that we have identified of assets worth $2,000,000,000 of value that we could monetize, But we are not in fire sale mode either. So we are going to do it at the right amount right time, and we’ll do it the right way. But I would say, in general, I feel really good about the company in total. Some of the announcements that have come out from the administration in the last few weeks have been very helpful for us. The teams are focused on driving execution, remediating the material weakness, making sure that we are setting up ADM for the long term, and I feel very confident that we’ll do that.

So that’s how I’d love to end. And thank you for having us.

Andrew: Yes. For your first conference, you landed that right at the buzzer. So that was very well done. Appreciate it. Thank you both.

Manish Padalawala, CFO, ADM: Thank you. Thank you, Andrew.

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