FMC at Jefferies Conference: Betting on New Technologies

On Wednesday, 03 September 2025, FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC) participated in the Jefferies Mining and Industrials Conference 2025, providing insights into their strategic direction amid current market conditions. The company outlined an optimistic future driven by technological innovation, despite challenges such as softer demand and regulatory hurdles.

Key Takeaways

• FMC describes the market as "normalized" with controlled inventory levels, despite softer demand.
• The company is focusing on new technologies, including active ingredients like Fluentapir and Isoflex.
• Regulatory dynamics in the EU and US present both challenges and opportunities for innovation.
• FMC is committed to a B2B approach in India, seeking local partnerships.
• The company is preparing for the expiration of the Rynaxypyr patent by expanding its product portfolio.

Market Overview

FMC characterized the current market as "normalized," with more controlled inventory levels compared to last year. However, demand remains softer due to farm income fluctuations and geopolitical factors. The company reaffirmed its guidance for the third and fourth quarters, emphasizing the importance of September sales and the Latin American season.

Strategic Focus & New Technologies

FMC is "betting the farm" on new technologies, differentiating itself from competitors through innovative active ingredients like Fluentapir and Isoflex. These new products are expected to drive growth and offset the impact of the Rynaxypyr patent expiration. The company is also increasing its biological portfolio, although challenges remain in training sales forces and obtaining registration approvals.

Regulatory Landscape

In the EU, FMC noted pressure on regulators to relax rules due to a lack of available tools for growers. In the US, regulatory challenges are seen as opportunities for innovation, with FMC positioning itself advantageously. The company downplayed the influence of movements like MAHA on North American agriculture.

Operational Updates

FMC is focusing on a B2B approach in India and seeking local partners for commercializing new technologies. The company’s strong leadership and organizational readiness were highlighted, with an emphasis on marketing investments to support new product launches.

Future Outlook

FMC expects good visibility for 2026 by its October 30th earnings call, with confidence in new active ingredients driving growth. The company aims to introduce a new patented active ingredient every year or every other year, with several products already in development for the 2030 to 2035 timeframe.

Q&A Highlights

During the call, FMC addressed questions about the impact of the Indian market strategy on other regions, clarifying that their decision in India is unique. The company also discussed gene editing and precision agriculture, emphasizing their commitment to innovation and adapting to evolving regulatory landscapes.

In conclusion, FMC remains optimistic about its future growth, driven by a robust product pipeline and strategic adaptability. For more details, please refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Jefferies Mining and Industrials Conference 2025:

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: The Jefferies Industrial Conference is Laurence Alexander with Jefferies Chemicals team. To start off today, I’d like to introduce the team from FMC. Today, we have Pierre Brondeau, who’s the CEO Andrew Sandifer, the CFO and Renato Priyara, who’s the President. Thank you very much for joining us today. And, I think just to get started, Pierre, would you mind just laying out kind of your current views on demand trends around the world?

How what that might mean for how you’re thinking about Q3 and the setup for Q4? Sure.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Thanks, Laurence. I would characterize the market as I would say normalized in a sense that it’s a very different feeling from where we were a year ago, which mean there is more controlled level of inventory in the channel. So we are not in a place where predictability is harder. Now that being said, I would not consider us in a high demand period. It’s we are in a period with farm income, geopolitical situation where the demand is more on the softer side, but much more predictable, much more normal like what we’ve done before.

What does it mean for our third quarter looking into the fourth quarter? Maybe the simplest way for me to answer the question is that if I would have to do a guidance right now as we did at the earnings call, I would do the exact same guidance I did at the earnings call. So the first couple of months of the quarter were exactly as we were expecting. The fourth quarter is still looking as we are expecting. And we understand those are two very big quarters for FMC compared to the first two quarters and they are critical to make the year.

But at this stage, the quarter is unfolding as we’re expecting now. Always difficult to make a statement like that for Q3 knowing that September is always the biggest month of the quarter. That’s the beginning of the Latin America season. That’s when things start to really take off. And to some extent also preparing for the season in North America.

Europe, that’s the back end of their season. Q2 is the big quarter. But all in all, I would say much more predictable and much more in line on a monthly basis to what we’re expecting to see.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And so let’s carry that forward into 2026, because when we get to the earnings call, I’m willing to bet that half of us are going to ask you about next year anyway. How much visibility will you have on 2026 in November?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Well, think in November. Now it’s a bit early. Before you talk about 2026, you always need to see how the North American season and the Latin America seasons are going to go. But by the time we get to earnings call October, October 30, We’ll be one month into the fourth quarter. We’ll have the third quarter behind us.

So yes, we should have a pretty good visibility on 2026. The key thing being that what we sense today as I said before is more predictability. So short of an event, weather or things of that kind in the big regions like North America or Latin America, the visibility on the market is better than it’s been for the last couple of years.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And then when you think about the 2027 framework, you know, the components that you expect to have from the new actives, you know, biological, Cyazypyr and AxoPure, which pieces you have confidence in and which pieces you either need to still make a decision or you need to see how the market responds before you know that that piece is locked in?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: I think we developed portfolio in what we call core which is all of the product which are made from molecules which are in the public domain and we have growth which is all of the formulations which are made from product which are new active ingredients which are other patented or under data protection. So first, if I talk about the growth part of our portfolio, the highest confidence in the 26%, 27% numbers are with the new active ingredients. I think Fluentapir and ISOFlex are in very, very strong demand to a point where our customers are themselves intervening with registration authorities to move faster the registration of some of our product. We’re seeing that in Europe right now. We just got it in U.

K. For Esoflex. The same is taking place for Flundapier. We just launched Dodilx in some countries. But there is absolutely no doubt that the growth of those products is solely limited by the speed at which we are getting the registration not by the technical performance of the product.

So should we get the registration faster? We’ll get the numbers even bigger than what we have. Very high level of confidence. The next one is seozapine because it’s a large molecule. It’s 5,000,000,000 We know it very well.

It’s data protected. It’s a very, very good insecticide. And it’s a very good partner for formulation with a very broad spectrum. We know the molecule, our sales relation to the molecule will be it’s number two in terms of level of confidence. And then we go to number three biological.

We’re increasing the number of products. We’re not planning at this stage. We are doing a full scale commercial scale with pheromones, but we are not including any of that in 2026, 2027 until we see how it works, so biological with thermal. If I talk about the core product, our core business, we know how to make new with old. We know how to make formulation.

We know how to grow this business at the speed of the market. The most challenging of course, but we feel we are well ready for it is Rynaxypyr because we’re entering a new period where generics are going to be allowed to sell starting the 01/01/2026 everywhere in the world. We believe we are well prepared for that. The manufacturing cost is well aligned with what we need and we have local strategy in place. Right now everything looks like we were expecting, but I would say that’s the newest part of the core portfolio.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And because the question keeps coming up, can you just touch directly on why what happened in India with is not the template for the rest of the world or to what do or what do you need to see from the competitors? Is it a matter of competitor behavior? Is it regulatory dynamics, market structure? Can you give a sense for what’s different or what’s this, you know, what the risks are?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Yes. Thanks for asking that because it’s an important question. India is not a template for what is going to happen in other countries. It is not a run accept peer issue in India. It’s a decision we have made to play in the Indian market a different way.

I know very few of our colleagues, large international company who love how we have to operate in India. It’s a very, very complex market with a very large number of layers in the distribution channel five, six, seven to reach stores and then reach tens of millions of farmers. Packaging size maybe up and bigger than that. That’s not the kind of way we operate. That’s what you sell to people who have half an acre farms.

It’s a market for which you need to be structured, and we were not. It’s also a market which is we are betting the farm at FMC today on new technologies. We believe, and we’ve been told even by competitors, if I look at the next five years, we have the best portfolio of new products to be introduced on the market. Nobody else has the number of new active, patented, data protected, new mode of actions. So the next five years for us, we’re building the farm on growth with new technology.

India is late in new technology adoption because the number of layers you have to convince to get to the farmer, those are the new products you need to substitute, is very complex. And then you get to the end, to very small farmers, and they are not very often inclined to take those products. So it’s expensive. It’s complicated. It’s a very large organization For the size of this business, we have thousands of salespeople.

We made the decision to try to operate in this market more in a B2B way than a B2C. So our intent is to stay part of this market, to sell the business to some most likely somebody local. We have a lot of inquiries today, lot of interest, and then use this partner to commercialize on the specific agreement on new technologies.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And when you say betting the farm on the new product pipeline, that can be taken a few different ways. So can you unpack that? And specifically, do you have the right operating culture, metrics, rhythm, structure to place that bet?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: So when I say beating the farm on new technology, it is because today, we do have a solid core portfolio. But with Ranaxapir getting out of patents, it is not a clear advantage over competition. We are competitive. We have the right product. We know how to make formulations.

So we can compete in this market, but I think we’ll grow at market speed. Where we will be highly differentiated from our competitors is on new technology. I have never seen FMC, including all of my first eleven years as CEO, with so many products to be launched and products which are under very high demand by customers because they saw the differentiation. Think about the fact we have two new herbicides with new mode of action. No herbicide has been introduced in this market for thirty years.

So think about the resistance on herbicide. Our customers can’t wait to have access to those products, four new active ingredients, a rich biological portfolio and Cyozapir. So that’s very rich. On the positive, we’ve reorganized the region. We’ve reorganized the leadership of the region.

We believe we have the strongest leadership organization we ever had. Now what is not the downside, but the challenge when you are in a situation like that is selling new technologies to growers is not easy, especially when you’re selling new product in a space where no new product has been introduced for decades, herbicide. Growers are always challenging to convince. You need to have hundreds and hundreds of sales organization trained and ready to promote those products. If there is a place where we still have a little bit of a way to go, that’s where it is.

It is not you know, I always say I like the portfolio today better than post acquisition of DuPont business because DuPont business, we had sales appear, Branax appear, full stop. Those run out of patents, there is nothing behind. Today, the number of products we have, which are growing and for which we are getting registration, is very high. Now training a sales force on two insecticides, especially rhonaxapia, which has a very narrow mode of action, is not that hard. Today, we have four new active ingredients, And I don’t know how many new biologicals were on the market, but a significant number of

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: five big ones.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Five big biologicals. Think about that. That’s nine new products. And we are attempting to introduce pheromones where now it’s very different. You’re not killing, but you are preventing the event to happen.

So I would say it requires marketing investments where we have to focus right now. So are we ready? Not 100%. I think we’re a bit limited in the speed by the time of we need to get the registration, which will allow us to do it, but that’s the remaining challenge for us.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And so a few different regulatory crosscurrents. I think the first is, so in the EU, there’s been this long project to get rid of the older chemistries. Is there anything kind of in the crosshairs for the next four or five years that would make a structural change for FMC?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Not

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: that we know on the regulatory side. What happens in EU is more and more growers are going back to the government and the regulators and saying we are running out of tools. So that creates an environment for the regulators to give what they call derogations or emergency use or either existing AIs or new AIs. They are more likely to take a look at new AIs because it’s just a matter of speeding up something. They don’t want to go back to something that they phased out, they banned, and say, this one last time you’re allowed to use this.

So we see that. We see EU discussing a new regulation for biologicals. They’re still treating biologicals the same way they treat synthetic chemicals, and they are not offering growers the tools they need to change, to migrate and continue to grow their crops. Those are the two key areas that we see happening in EU. I’m not aware of any specific regulation that’s going to change the trend that we are seeing today.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: One other thing which is interesting in Europe, and that was there not long ago, Some of the countries had to back away from decision they made to ban some of the product because there was no replacement solutions. And that’s the kind of situation they were going to be in. I went to Europe and met with about 50 or 60 farmers, big growers and distributors. And we took them to experimental farm where we have been testing IsoFlex, the new herbicide for cereals. I can tell you, anybody in this room would look at those field and will tell you, IsoFlex, no isoflakes.

Isoflakes there has been so very few products which have been introduced in this market that you look at a field of cereals, there is as much weed on the field than there is cereals. So you see situation, as Ronaldo was talking about, where customers, right now, in the case of Isoflakes, we should get a regulatory approval early twenty twenty seven.

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: ’twenty seven.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: And right now, it is not us. It is the growers and the distributors who are asking to the EU to give them an exemption to be allowed to purchase the product in 2026. So there is a pressure, a grassroots pressure right now in Europe to be a little bit less rigid and accelerate the regulatory aspects of the product. Are running out of tools.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And then switching over to The U. S. You have the MAHA movement. And what I find interesting about it is this focus on root cause analysis, which is it can lead to odd outcomes. And so when you think about crop protection chemicals, which have been suspect in popular culture for several decades, I guess, sixty years now.

How do you see the risk profile for the industry? And then how do you see FMC position relative to the industry? Not in terms of what scientifically act, but what could happen in terms of branding. I mean, frankly,

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: what we’ve seen with our customers growers, with the regulatory side, we depend upon the EPA. Be careful the way I say it, but Ma has zero influence on what is happening today in the ag industry. There has been no reaction to any comment. There has been no change. It’s a critical part of the economy, which need those products, which is separated from a regulatory standpoint from Maha.

And we see very little risk in North America for Mahat to have any concrete impact on the industry beside noise and comments. They’re very different from what you could see on vaccines or places like that where they have authorities. The race is kind of a noise in the background. I don’t know, Ronaldo, you’ve talked to

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: Christian, Yes, I have. It’s very hard to go to a grower that is the ninth generation plant in on the same farm and say that that is not sustainable. Or it’s dangerous when every generation is out leaving the prior generation. Right? There’s something that doesn’t fit well in that assessment.

I think the growers are doing a very good effort to actually get closer to the administration. And say, come see what we do and help us. But get to know our place so we can at least have established a dialogue. Two aspects I think that is important for FMC, two aspects. The first one, there are some products that are more exposed than others, and we don’t sell those products.

We don’t have them in our portfolio. We don’t have them in U. S. We don’t have them anywhere else. And the other aspect is every challenge on the regulatory side will always favor innovation.

And we think we are in a very unique position from an innovation standpoint. That said, we continue to stand behind science as a way to make decisions and especially on the regulatory front. And and US has set the standards for a scientific based approach of regulations that as an industry, we want to protect.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: I would like to add that U. S. Is very far from being a place where it’s the most difficult to get regulatory approval. And there’s even been a decision was made three, four months ago to add a significant number of engineers and scientists in the regulatory part of the EPA to speed up approval. So and I think it was 200 or 300 people who to were accelerate the approval process because they believed they had too much of a long tail of product which we’re waiting for approval.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And then I guess another regulatory shift is on gene editing. And so it’s very easy for us on the outside to go back to the 1980s and 2000s, look at the shock that happened to the crop chemical industry from GMO. Can you just unpack what’s different? And to what extent can FMC either partner with the seed companies to help gene edited products? Or how do you see the riskreward with those regulatory changes?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: I think, scientifically, very different from what happened with GMO. When GMO came, there was a false view that the entire industry would be shifting to GMO. Crop protection would disappear. It’s not the case anymore. I mean you talk to the seed company.

We are in partnership with the seed company. Everybody sees gene editing as a normal evolution of GMO technology. It is not viewed as an abrupt change, which is going to be turning around the ag industry, but as normal technology innovation, which makes GMO evolve into gene editing, but not changing the fundamental rules by which that industry is operating. So it’s part of the process. It’s part of the evolution, but not at all the same approach, where everybody believed there was a shift in the way this industry was going to operate.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And can we also talk about we touched on this last year, precision ag drone spray technologies. How has your thinking evolved about the opportunity set created by that? So

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: I think precision ag is fundamental to the way all of us, we are operating. I think too often, confusion is that people, when they think about precision ag, they think about Sea and Spray. Well, precision ag is much broader than Sea and Spray. First of all, Sea and Spray is an important technology. But let’s What is See and Spray?

It is a process which is addressing weeds with non selective herbicide, which is a narrow segment of the anti herbicide technology. Our product FMC portfolio, for example, we are very little in non selective. Selective herbicides are not touched by sea and spray. That’s what we sell. There is also a very large part of herbicides, which are pre emergent herbicides, which is a category of product we do have, a big part of our portfolio.

Pre emergent mean you don’t see anything. So you cannot use sea and spray. There is also multiple herbicides, selective herbicides, leave what we call residual. So their spectrum residuals allow to treat future weeds post the spraying. All of those are not touched by See and Spray.

So See and Spray is a technology which addresses one very specific part of the herbicide market for non selective. It does not impact us because that’s not a segment we’re in. It impacts companies which are in this segment. The rest is using data and science to improve what you do. We have a very large organization today on precision ag.

A lot of the work we do today is to anticipate potential activity on the field of bugs, of weeds, mostly bugs for us, where because we are big on pesticides where you try with traps to understand what is the potential infestation, which bugs, when it will happen, to make sure you and the farmer are ready with the right product at the right time, rather than coming with a very broad type of options or intervening too late. That is a big part of what we do. We do have we do use this process. We do sell this process. So it’s part of what we do.

So Precision Ag is big and its usage of data much beyond SEASSPRY. You want to add a word?

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: We are also adjusting our labels for drone application. I think we were one of the first companies to start doing that on a global basis to make sure that the farmers that use FMC products, are covered by the bright labels to use their drones and to use their new equipment. Satellite images to help them make decisions. So on a broader sense, we play in precision ag because we see that it’s not that we offer new technologies related to that, but we use that as a way to inform farmers on how to best use our products.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And so I want to close with two longer term questions. And one, I’m not usually kind of a fan of blue sky scenarios, but just curious as you think about the next five, seven years, how you think about the next wave of APIs. Like, how often do you think you can add a new API to the pipeline? And how do you think about kind of when you’ve initially sketched the opportunity set for the new products, is that kind of you know, Syngenta used to talk about the first application and then the extensions. And so if we use that kind of analogy for you, how large could the extensions be relative to the first applications that you’re targeting?

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: I’m going to start to answer that and ask Ronaldo to go in more detail. I think there is when you talk about new products, we always look at two things which are very critical when you look on a four-, five-, six year basis. There is the product you’re introducing and what is the field of application. And I’ll give you an example, Dodilex. Dodilex is going to be a very important grass herbicide.

This product initially was developed to be a rice herbicide. And that’s when we talked about this $500,000,000 potential, that was a rice herbicide. Well, we are uncovering. It’s an herbicide. We had the test being run-in Brazil on sugarcane, excellent herbicide.

So there is the initial field of application. And then there is how does this product expand into new crops. So you always have that part. So you bring a new product, and then you expand in the years to come on different crops. Plus, there is behind this product the all of the new actives, which are in the development pipeline and then the actives, are in the discovery phase.

So all of this is part the process. Pranardo will add a word, but maybe one of the things we don’t do enough at FMC is to update the potential product to the size as we uncover new applications for an active ingredient. I think we start, we’re introducing four molecules. We knew which kind of crops they would be addressing. We define a market for that.

But as we go within two years, you’ve doubled the numbers number of crops this product could address. And that tremendously increased the size of your potential market. That’s something we are seeing with the new active ingredients we are developing right now.

Renato Priyara, President, FMC: On the R and D side, we screen a few hundreds of thousand compounds every year. And we are always advancing something into our pipeline. That very early stage success rate is very low, almost by design. And our goal is to select at least one development candidate every year or every other year. And we have enough to make that decision in our pipeline.

So we talk about the four new active ingredients because we don’t want to talk past 02/1930. If you say, what do you have between 2030 and 02/1935, we’ll come up with other five products that are already in development or they’re getting into development in our pipeline. So that is continuous. As for the expansion of the use and applications of those AIs, it never ends. Three, four years ago, we launched a product in U.

S. Called ZiWay. It’s a fungicide, a soil applied fungicide for corn. It’s based on a molecule that was discovered decades ago. But that use is brand new.

And the reason we are only introducing or we only introduced a few years ago is because there is now a target that needs that type of application. And twenty years ago there was no foliar fungicide application in corn in U. S. As the crops evolve, the target, the problems evolve, we continuously look at our existing products and we manage the way we offer them in terms of formulation, application methods, labels and things like that. So it never ends, really.

It’s a continuum.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: What I want to think, one word Ronaldo said, Any of our peer companies like us, we would be very proud if, on a constant basis, we bring a new patented active ingredient every year or every other year. That would be a very good rhythm. Hence, why we are so excited about today is I’ve never seen that we have four new introduced and five biological. To have nine products in a given period to secure your growth for the next ten years is extremely rare. There isn’t challenges, but it’s extremely rare.

It is not a rhythm we believe we’re going to sustain for the next thirty years. But right now, I can tell you we’re enjoying the potential.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. I think that’s a good point to close. So thank you very much for the discussion today.

Pierre Brondeau, CEO, FMC: Thank you.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: And thank you, everybody, for starting off so early.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.