Archer Daniels Midland Company Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Conference

Sounds great. Thanks for having us, Ben. It is always great to be back here. Iain, thanks for joining me on stage. We got my two IR friends, Greg and Kate, joining us too. I just thought I would do a quick recap of the second quarter and where we stand at the first half, and then we will take the questions the way you see fit. The team executed well. We delivered $1.84 of adjusted EPS at the end of Q2. For the first half, when you look at where we are, our adjusted EPS is up 50% on a year-over-year basis. Good execution, I would say, across all the three businesses. I would say on the commercial and operational side, including manufacturing, the teams have done a nice job of driving volume, capturing some of the opportunities that existed.

When I go through the businesses, I look at AS&O, I look at carbs, I look at Nutrition. I will start with Nutrition since Iain is on stage. The Nutrition business grew approximately 50% on an OP basis in Q2 of this year versus Q2 of last year. You had the AS&O business that grew greater than 100%, and then you had carbs that also grew very well, thanks to all the work the team has done on ethanol and the policy incentives like 45Z that they were able to capture. When I go to AS&O and I break out Ag Services and Oilseeds, the team did a wonderful job not just managing the risk through the volatility, but also making sure that manufacturing cost execution was great, Ag Services volumes were higher, and then our port in Brazil was back online, which was impacted last year.

That also helped the Ag Services business. I would say from a macro perspective, we continue to see a very constructive biofuel environment, as well as we have been helped a little bit by higher fuel prices. When I look at our Biosolutions business in AS&O, I look at ethanol and carbs, they both have shown tremendous strength, future constructive environment too, and the teams have done very well to capture the opportunities. This is where the power of ADM comes into play. You have deep domain from a talent perspective. You have a global asset base that we have, and that allows us to capture these opportunities and capture the value that passes through different pieces of the value chain in a very dynamic environment.

Based on where we were for year to date, as well as where we see the environment to be, we raised guidance again for the second time this year. Currently, our projection is our adjusted EPS for the year is in a range of $5.15-$5.60. We are, of course, monitoring multiple risk factors that I am sure many of you and other companies in this conference are monitoring too. I think about capital allocation, Ben, and I look at also just the work the team has done on cash. I would first say the team did a very nice job on executing on the cash. We have been driving for the last two years opportunities in working capital management, so that has been a big driver for us on driving cash.

Our ratings are back up to stable in all the three different rating agencies that we use. Leverage at the end of Q2 was approximately 1.6. We have still said leverage will be around 2 by the end of the year. We continue to invest CapEx in the range of $1.3 billion-$1.5 billion. Dividend, we raised, we announced our 379th successive quarter of paying a dividend. We are back in the market with a certain modest share repurchase, as we had disclosed during our earnings call. Overall, I would just say the team has done a really nice job of executing well, navigating through a very difficult environment.

We are really jazzed about the future with all the work the team has done, whether it is on future expansions, opportunities for driving more efficiency, and of course, innovation and growth that we will be happy to discuss more. With that, I will turn it back to you, Ben.

Yeah. Thanks, Ben, and hello, and thank you to everybody that's joining us here. Flavors is compounding. We're seeing growth on growth. The success, if you like, is coming from some core areas. We've got very strong customer focus. We really are zeroed in on making sure that we're dealing with our customers' needs and requirements. We've got a team that's executing very well. We spend a lot of time making sure that we've got strong commercial discipline and strong executional discipline as well. Then I think you're seeing us harvest some of the investments that we've made over the years with Flavors. We've spent a long time investing in core capabilities in Flavors since the WILD acquisition in 2014, all the way through to our more recent acquisitions in 2024.

I think the integration of those and the way that the team are operating those as well is really starting to come together with the focus that we have on operational excellence, commercial excellence, and customer focus. I think as well, you're seeing strong trends. We're in a market that's looking for opportunities and also dealing with challenges. Reformulation is an area that our team are experts in. Whether it's thinking about managing inflation and renovation of existing products, or whether it's thinking about anchoring into the consumer trends that we're seeing now, whether it's health and wellbeing, whether it's the functionality that we're looking for, maybe it's clean label, natural colors.

As well, we're seeing strong overlaps now in the human nutrition business with the change in GLP-1 and proteins, and how we're helping with flavor masking and the functionality that's coming from our health and wellness business as well, which is then being driven by Flavors. If you think about the opportunity for functional beverages, which we're very strong in, and we're seeing customer launches there too. I think as well, in addition to that, when we think about the regional base, we've seen strong growth in emerging markets. That's been good for us, and we made some inorganic investments over the last years, which are starting to really come together and accelerate. But we're also building on our base business in North America and in Europe. So we've come from a lower base, and we continue to build on that business.

Longer term, our margins are in line with peers, and we target specific areas where our capabilities allow us to grow in excess of the segments that we're targeting in. So longer term, I think you'll continue to see us targeting in excess growth rates from the segments that we're in and those margins at peer levels.

Yeah, always. I love spending time with customers. When we're with our customers, we're looking at helping with their challenges, but also the opportunities that they're seeing. Our customers provide us with strong input to our innovation agenda as well. It's really important that we stay very engaged with what they're working to do, so that we can back into how we can support their growth. We're looking at the continued trends in health and wellbeing. There's clean label, there's natural solutions, there's functionality, and some structural trends as well around GLP-1. I was in India a couple of weeks ago, and I was spending time with one of our customers who's launched a prebiotic beverage into the India market using our system. They've got our Flavors in there, our natural colors in there, and our prebiotics in there.