All right. We're thrilled to have ADM with us today to discuss their strategy for realizing sustainable long-term growth. ADM has executed on the strategy through improvements to its portfolio mix, capital deployment, returns, and operations, enabling it to capitalize on opportunities through a challenging operating environment. Now, ADM has enhanced its focus on innovation and productivity to drive enduring value creation. We're joined by Vikram Luthar, ADM's CFO. Vikram was appointed CFO over a year ago and is approaching, I believe, his twentieth year with ADM, having served in a number of financial leadership positions prior to being named to his current role. We also have Chris Cuddy, president of the Carbohydrate Solutions business, a role in which he's responsible for ADM's global sweeteners and starches, ethanol, and wheat milling businesses. We're excited to have you both. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
for joining us. With that, I'll hand it over to Vikram for some opening remarks.
Thank you. Can you hear me? Thanks, Andrew. It's good to be back here again this year. It is an exciting time for us at ADM. We have significantly transformed the business over the last decade and extended our value chain closer to our customers by building out our nutrition business. We have aligned our portfolio and our global asset footprint for growth, driven by three enduring trends of food security, sustainability, and health and well-being. Our strategy, disciplined capital allocation, as well as effective execution, even in very dynamic market conditions that we have witnessed over the last 3+ years, has delivered excellent financial performance. Coming off an outstanding 2022, we posted a record Q1 this year with adjusted EPS of $2.09 and returns of 14%.
We've guided that we expect 2023 to be very strong with an EPS range of $6-$7. Our balance sheet remains very strong. It is giving us the flexibility to look at strategic growth opportunities while still returning capital to our shareholders. In fact, we have consistently increased dividends every year for the last 50 years. Just since the beginning of 2022, we have returned $1.8 billion in terms of buybacks to our shareholders. We're also investing in a very robust productivity and innovation agenda. In productivity, we are harnessing digital to optimize our costs and increase efficiency. In innovation, we are leveraging expansion of organic growth capacity in fast and high-growing markets like crush, in some cases in specific areas of nutrition as well.
In addition, we are leveraging our capabilities and our scale to enable the energy transition, as well as lead the decarbonization of the food and ag supply chain. That is allowing us to power new profit pools like regen ag, like BioSolutions, like conversion of ethanol to SAF, thus further expanding our base earnings power. That's why, as I said at the beginning, it's an exciting time for us at ADM. Turn it over to you.
Great. Thank you very much for that. Maybe we'll start... Obviously, you've talked about a couple of very, very strong years. You've given the guidance now $6-$7 of earnings for this year. I guess for us, when we look at it very closely, there's a lot of volatility through the year, in the markets and the operating environment. Can you just talk about the swing factors to start, $6 and $7? What gets you to the high and low end?
Maybe I'll start with the, with nutrition, customer-facing business. We've guided that that business should generate 10% growth for this full year. First half is gonna be challenging. We remain confident that the growth will be back half loaded, so we feel good about the 10% growth. That's clearly part of that 6%-7%. In the Carbohydrate Solutions business. Chris is gonna talk a little bit more about this as you, as part of your questions, we see robust demand and margin structure in the base sweeteners and starches portfolio. We anticipate ethanol looks to be constructive, but the biggest volatility-causing issue in the S&S portfolio is ethanol. While the outlook looks constructive right now, we know it can change. Why is it constructive? For a few reasons. We see strong blending economics.
Gasoline demand generally seems to be up. Blend rates are slightly higher than we've seen before, as well as imports are stronger than what we'd anticipated. The outlook is constructive, but it could change. That's one of the reasons why maybe, you know, there could be some pressure going to the lower end of that range. In the AS&O business, I'd say the fundamental issues are related to crush, how fast we can get the recovery in crush margins with renewable diesel capacity coming online, which we clearly anticipate. There might be a little bit more of a delay, which could put some more pressure for a longer period of time on crush margins. Generally speaking, today, the outlook remains very constructive. Finally, consumer demand.
We gotta think about what's happening to the overall macroeconomic situation. To the extent there's a deep recession, and that every day you hear more and more news about consumers feeling pinched, retail sales being lower than what was anticipated even just yesterday, what's gonna happen with the debt ceiling discussions? I think the consumer is feeling pressure. The extent of that pressure might weigh on some of our demand, but it depends. I'd say those are some of the puts and takes which give us this range of six to seven.
If we look beyond this year on kind of at the long-term value creation opportunity, what are the areas that really get you excited? Maybe there's an opportunity for both of you to chime in on this one, just as you think about the range of opportunities.
I'm maybe, I know the Carbohydrate Solutions business is going through a massive evolution. Maybe, Chris, you wanna start first, and I'll build on the others.
Yeah. I'd love to. Thanks, Andrew. It's, for us in Carbohydrate Solutions, which is our global corn milling and wheat milling operation, I've never seen as much excitement around what we have going on as today, really around sustainability, decarbonization, and leaning into new markets. We have carbon capture and sequestration at our facility in Decatur, Illinois. We've had there for 10 years now. We're looking to add to that. We're looking to build pipelines across our infrastructure, both in Iowa to bring that to Decatur, as well as in Columbus, Nebraska, our western facility's going west. We're exploring technology and partnerships for sustainable aviation fuel, and I'm really pumped about the future for sustainable aviation fuel and how we can be a leader in that space.
We continue through our BioSolutions platform to deliver sustainable solutions for our customers, a lot of which are happening today, but it's also a robust pipeline that we're building for the future, and not too far out either in the near future, in the coming years.
Clearly there's a lot happening in the Carbohydrate Solutions business. When you step back, Andrew, going to my introduction, we recognize that there is a cyclical component to our business. What's great is our team is exceptional at execution and capitalizing on the opportunities that become available to us. Is that same amount of opportunity going to be available to us every year? Perhaps not. That's why it is our responsibility, that's what we are doing, to leverage our scale and capabilities that we've built over the last 10 years to create these new profit pools of value, which are gonna be able to more than offset any potential cyclical headwinds over the medium term, BioSolutions being one of them.
Yeah.
Talk about regen ag, that's a huge opportunity, especially as customers think about reducing their Scope 3 emissions, very few companies other than companies like us are well positioned to be capitalizing on that. As well, the conversion, the energy transition, the conversion of AT J, ethanol to SAF, that Chris briefly referenced, our focus on decarbonizing our asset footprint, our production footprint, will enable that continued growth. Don't forget productivity. That's a muscle that we've been building every year. Yes, every business sees inflation, we've been able to more than offset inflation through our productivity efforts. We continue to see that going forward. Plus enhancing it more through what we've defined as automation and digitization of our processing facilities across the world, 70+ facilities. It's gonna take time. Is it gonna take capital?
We see strong returns, double-digit returns already being realized with a few of the facilities we've invested in. That's what gives us a strong level of confidence and optimism about our ability to continue to expand our base earnings power, and we'll talk more about that at our upcoming Investor Day in Q4.
Great. We look forward to that certainly. Thinking about capital allocation and the balance sheet in this environment, you're well below kinda your target levels, from a leverage perspective. Are you comfortable with that? Are you looking to... I guess how are you thinking about it? Maybe the cycle plays into it, but how are you thinking about that here?
Well, I think, the balance sheet is a competitive advantage for us. Maybe it was less so in March of 2022 when interest rates were low. I mean, it's amazing how quickly rates have gone up to 5%, and you all know that. It is today a competitive advantage and gives us the ability to drive return to shareholders, which I talked about, as well as invest in strategic growth opportunities. There is an M&A pipeline that we evaluate all the time, and one thing that you may not know about us, we have done 30+ acquisitions over the last 10 years. We have undertaken 20+ partnerships and investments and done divestitures. We have dynamically rotated our portfolio, and the way we've been able to do that is by leveraging our balance sheet.
Actually, as you think about it, Andrew, the supply side of the grain environment is getting more comfortable, which means our working capital should actually improve. That's gonna be another inflow of cash. We got a liquid and a very strong balance sheet to enable us to drive continued growth by reinvesting in the business as well as strategic opportunities and/or return capital to the shareholders. We feel very comfortable with our balance sheet today.
I wanna dig in on a couple of things you just talked about. First, on the M&A side. What is the environment right now for M&A? How are you thinking about, you know, inorganic growth, your priorities, whether it's, you know, primary processing or crush capacity or anything like that, or more on the value-added side?
Clearly, we are looking at exploring opportunity on the value-added side, right? I'd say we've seen compression of multiples, and you guys are all familiar with that, in that space. There are opportunities that will likely become available that are attractive, not just from a strategic perspective, but also from a returns perspective, which is vital to the way we think about M&A. The other thing that sellers are looking for always is speed and certainty, right? That's critical to a deal, and we offer that given the success we've had with programmatic M&A over the last decade or so. I'd say value-added side on the nutrition, think about health and wellness. Think about pet. There are opportunities there. There may also be some scale opportunities available as we see some compression of multiples across other parts of our portfolio.
Had you asked me about crush three years back, I would've said probably we don't wanna increase capacity. Today, the structural changes that are happening in crush would suggest if there is an asset business that's available that is attractive, with the right level of returns, we may consider that. The M&A landscape has broadened as a consequence of some of the structural changes, but the primary focus continues to be on the value add side.
Okay, great. Then kind of on the other side of that, returning cash to shareholders, the buybacks in the first quarter were above the $1 billion pace for the $1 billion that you've guided to. I know some of that was opportunistic, I'm assuming your view of intrinsic value hasn't changed, and you talk about the working capital inflow. How do you balance the M&A and the buyback side? Is there more room relative to $1 billion, or how do you think about it?
I'd say in general there could be more room. At the same time, we wanna make sure that we preserve sufficient dry powder for strategic opportunities that'll come by. We have to make sure we strike the balance, and you know we've been very balanced and disciplined about our capital allocation, and that is not gonna change.
Okay. Got it. Lastly on this topic from a returns perspective, going more value add, going more higher margin, has the return on capital profile of the business changed more structurally? You know, you've done 14% trailing ROIC. You have a 10% target. Is that target moving higher? I guess, how do you think about the returns in the business?
We haven't established a revised ROIC target. We think about the right balance between earnings growth and returns, right?
Mm-hmm.
The focus is on also driving EVA growth. Fundamentally, Andrew, if you think about the continued shift to higher margin closer to customers value add, whether it be nutrition, whether it be BioSolutions, the margin structure should expand over time. You think about returns being a function of margins and asset turnover, the margin profile should be increasing, which is supportive of returns. We'll continue as always to focus on asset turnover. With potential commodity prices softening, we might see an expansion increase there as well. You could see over time a continued expansion in returns, but we gotta balance that out also with certain strategic opportunities that we might consider. You know, with that may come some goodwill and that, for a period of time, we'll have to work through.
Within the sweeteners and starches business too, I mean, you've seen very nice margin expansion. You have the BioSolutions as well. I mean, do you see that in your business as well from a return perspective?
Yeah. I would echo what Vikram said. Certainly, we've seen expansion of margins, which has helped that return profile. What you've also seen with inflation and just permitting and the inability for folks to expand, from a supply side, it's more and more difficult...
Mm-hmm
... to expand today than it was, say, 10 years ago. Of course, money's tighter, so to go out and get new dollars for expansion in this space I think is more difficult, which has allowed us to expand margins and why I think they'll stay that way for a while.
Okay, great. let's switch gears a little to the Ag Services and origination segment. I wanna start on crush margins. There's been a moderation in crush margins here. You talked a little bit about the renewable diesel timelines and how that's playing out. At the same time, we saw this softness last year as well, so I'm not sure how much you think is maybe seasonality. How much of it is the renewable diesel side? Do you think that the new crush capacity is playing a role already as well? How are you thinking about what's going on with the crush margins?
I think the dynamics last year were different. I mean, we had supply shocks come through, right? The world was trying to figure out how to balance trade flow. Let's just focus on what's happening this year, okay? This year, yes, there's been moderation in crush margins. We think there are three primary factors for that, at least in the near term, which will adjust towards the back half of the year. One is the renewable green diesel capacity. We know they've had some supply chain and logistics challenges and catalyst issues. We already see that there is increased pull for veg oil. We remain quite confident that the renewable green diesel capacity, while delayed, will still come back online in the back half of the year.
We still believe that renewable diesel capacity should increase by about 1 billion gal. Increase by 1 billion gal in 2023. It's not just in the U.S. It's all over the world. That's one. Two is Argentina. We know what's happening in Argentina. The crop could be, you know, soybean crop could be 25 million metric tons, about 50% roughly lower than a typical crop. They're gonna run out of beans, they're not gonna be able to crush. They are the largest exporter of crush. That's gonna create opportunity in the back half when they run out of beans in Q2 for crush in parts of the world that continue, like North America and Brazil in particular.
That is a trend that will support margin structure in the back half of the year. The third is the tightness in the soybeans, right? Right now, the soybeans are tight. You've seen the expectation of the crop, the U.S. crop this year. That should actually help provide some tailwinds for the processing business on the crush side, as the balance sheets on soybeans get a little more comfortable in the back half of this year. A combination of those three factors gives us confidence on the outlook for crush being stronger in the second half than we're gonna be seeing in Q2.
Sure. Okay. The other side of the crush margin is on the meal side, and I think with RD, that is a very understandable kind of longer term demand pull structural change on the oil side. What do you do on the meal side, you know, with the capacity that's gonna be coming on? How comfortable are you that there's a home for that or the risk that that creates a disruption over the next several years from a crush margin perspective?
Yeah. I mean, you asked another question, Andrew, about the crush capacity. Do we see that's coming? I'll address both those questions.
Sure.
On the crush capacity side, yeah, we see that crush is gonna keep coming online. Could there be some delays like in renewable diesel? Possibly. Nevertheless, if you just do the math, the amount of crush capacity that is currently expected to come online is still gonna be much less than the required amount of veg oil for the expectation of renewable diesel capacity over the next few years. The veg oil will continue to get supported. Soybean meal. I think on soybean meal, here are the facts. The facts are that the underlying trend for soybean meal demand is gonna be slightly higher, we believe, than even GDP growth. Why? Because as you see balance sheets getting more comfortable and soybean meal becoming more available, the inclusion levels should also increase.
You'd see consumer diets switch towards more poultry, which by definition is a higher level of soybean meal inclusion. We remain constructive about soybean meal demand in the mid to long term, possibly, as I said, even above what we had thought before. With previously we thought GDP growth, we think it's possible to be higher than that. That would enable the crush, the meal from the expanded crush to get absorbed from the global markets as soybean meal demand also shifts to parts like North America. We might displace and substitute other soybean meal exports. I think generally or even on the soybean meal side, we feel quite constructive about the outlook.
Okay. Then on the core Ag Services piece, which has obviously been very strong, there's been some unique benefits there. If we do get a good U.S. crop, obviously we understand what's been going on in Brazil. Is that enough to fully replenish global supplies, the stocks to use to then get back to normal levels? Is there still enough kind of... I guess, do you think that's enough to keep Ag Services above kind of what used to be the baseline from an earnings perspective, or are we kind of rebasing back towards that?
Well, it depends on how you define base, right? I think it's important that. Let's talk about what's happening. The supply side is clearly getting comfortable, more comfortable, right? You're gonna have a record crop in Brazil, and based on the outlook from WASDE that was released on Friday, assuming trend lines are unchanged and weather is good, which is by the way very highly uncertain. Assuming that happens, you'd still have a very good crop in the US next year, and balance sheets should get pretty comfortable. Even with that, even in that scenario, we do see tightness in certain parts of the world, which is in veg oil. Veg oil demand for food and fuel for veg oil is very, very strong.
Actually, if you think about the four major veg oils, we think there's gonna be tightness in palm oil, which is by far the largest inclusion, over 30% of the total veg oil pool. Why? Because plantations are getting a little dated. People were trying to squeeze the plantations to maximize the opportunities because veg oil prices were very supportive, and there's not been enough new planting. We think palm oil is gonna get pretty tight in the back half of this year, early part of next year, which in general should be very supportive of veg oil. While supply side is potentially getting a little more comfortable, we see a lot of opportunities potentially in veg oil, and it should also help us on the processing side.
The other thing to bear in mind, we had a strong performance in Q1 in South America. We talked about that. There is this record crop in South America and a potential big crop in North America is gonna increase the volume that we can process. Net, net, we have a larger footprint in North America than South America. Net, net might be slightly negative for us, relatively speaking, but it'll give us the opportunity to put a lot more crop through our system. Volume should be higher, although the margin structure will possibly be lower. We'll have to see what the trade-off's there. Generally speaking, we still see a fundamentally good story for Ag Services, albeit maybe not at the same level as this 2022.
If you put the two pieces together in AS&O, is that enough to get you with a good U.S. crop, what you just described, is that enough to get you back down towards kind of the longer term profit profile of the business that you guys have talked about previously at the Investor Day, or is that still better because the crush is better? I guess, how do you think? What takes you back down to those, to that range?
Well, I think we talked about a range, let's say roughly $3 billion, at the Global Investor Day.
Mm-hmm.
That was driven off, Structural expansion in crush margins. We would think that given the growth in renewable diesel, maybe the structural opportunity on the crush margins could be possibly even higher than what we talked about in Global Investor Day. We haven't specifically quantified that. We are working through that. We perhaps talk more about that in our upcoming Investor Day. Structurally, that is very intact.
Mm-hmm.
The destination marketing part of the business in Ag Services remains very strong. Export volumes then are gonna continue to grow. We are very well positioned with our irreplaceable footprint, asset footprint, to be able to perform under those conditions and continue to drive higher volume, albeit maybe at slightly lower margins than what we had last year. Just given we had some significant supply shocks last year. Still much better than what we've had historically. I'd say fundamentally, we see the outlook for S&O business to be constructive and clearly much better than what we've seen historically, and perhaps better than what we had articulated even in our Global Investor Day in 2021.
Interesting. Okay, great. Shifting gears a little bit to the nutrition side. Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of demand across the nutrition portfolio? I guess, how do you characterize elasticity in the portfolio in this environment?
In nutrition, we play in different categories, right? Generally speaking.
Mm.
The categories we play in are relatively price inelastic. Generally speaking. You know, there are some puts and takes there. We've talked about softening in dietary supplements. We've talked about softening in the plant-based proteins. We continue to see good growth in parts of the beverage space that we operate in, including in alcoholic drinks, in energy drinks. You think about the price point there, they're not exactly low, but the consumer demand remains robust.
Mm-hmm.
I'd say in general, the categories we play in tend to be priced inelastic, and that gives us continued confidence and the reason why we have a very strong pipeline. We talked about a double-digit growth in our human nutrition pipeline. That is very helpful to help us give us confidence in the continued growth of nutrition and the back half load of the 10% growth this year. I'd say overall, human nutrition has performed well, right. We were flat in Q1. We expect some growth in Q2, and we expect, you know, potentially in the mid-teens for the back half of this year, driven by pipeline, driven by the fact that customers are looking for innovation, and we are very well positioned to capitalize on that.
Plays to our strengths, the breadth of our portfolio, our capabilities on creation, development, and design, which is basically product development and customized solutions and systems. We feel good about that. There's also the destocking that we saw part of it in Q1, we think is gonna unlock... will recover in the back half of this year. The demand fulfillment challenges we've had in human nutrition through specific actions we've taken on operational excellence are also getting addressed and will help us with our customers and delivery customer to perform to our demand creation in the back half of this year. On animal nutrition, pet looks good from a demand perspective. Double-digit growth in the pipeline there, as well as we see.
Improvement in the demand fulfillment with new capacity coming online, debottlenecking, which is already realizing value, but more back-end loaded in the second half of this year. We've had challenge on the animal nutrition excluding pet, and that's been actually softer than what we'd anticipated. We anticipate that softness will continue to Q2. What we are doing there, this is important for you to know, what we are doing there is we recognize the softness in volume, but we are taking specific actions to improve the margin structure. How? By focusing on our costs. We've closed down 8-9 operating facilities. We've closed down distribution centers, and we have also rationalized headcount by about 800 already. We see more opportunity yet in 2023 on those fronts.
In parallel, we're doubling down on our commercial opportunities by leveraging what's made us successful in human nutrition and translating that into animal nutrition, reducing SKUs, focusing on specialty ingredients. We anticipate there'll be some recovery of demand, even on the base animal nutrition in the back half. The focus is things that are within our control, which is margin expansion through specific measures that I cited. Those are the reasons why we are confident that we will have 10% growth in nutrition, 10+% growth in nutrition, albeit very much back half loaded.
I was gonna ask about some of the specific things that you're doing in that business. I think you've pretty much covered that. I don't know if there's anything else to share. Kinda longer term, what's the role of animal nutrition in the nutrition portfolio? I guess when you look at the, you know, the growth rates and the margin profiles, like how do you think about that piece of the business longer term relative to human nutrition?
You know, animal nutrition has got the pet and the non-pet component. The pet is clearly a lot more like human, and we see margin structures being quite robust, let's say in the 15% EBITDA range, and we talked about that at Global Investor Day. In the animal nutrition, excluding pet, the margin structure may be in the mid-single digits. We see an opportunity to expand margins, and we are taking specific actions to do that. There are clearly elements and synergies that we are capitalizing on with human nutrition and with pet. You think about probiotics. Probiotics just don't go into humans. They go into pets, they go into other animals. We are leveraging those synergies to be able to maximize the opportunity on the specialty side in animal nutrition.
We clearly see, continue to see a space of animal nutrition to play within the overall nutrition business, with a focus more on margin expansion through the actions we talked about.
Okay, that makes sense. Then this one might be harder to answer, but I'm trying to get a bridge on, or a build, I guess, on this 10%+ nutrition growth for the year, heavily back half weighted. I guess your confidence level, you seem very confident, but, you know, from the outside, it's, I guess, a little harder. It's a big ramp in the back half. When you think about the visibility that you have based on what's within your control, the capacity side, the pipeline that you see, internal actions, I mean, is there a way to kind of frame the build or the. Any detail on that would be great.
You've got two factors when you think about it, right? You've got demand creation. I'd say demand creation has been very strong, as evidenced by our pipeline in human nutrition and pet. We've had challenges in demand fulfillment, and those are self-help actions we are taking that gives us confidence we'll be able to address that. That match between demand creation and demand fulfillment is much better aligned now than it was last year, and in particular in the back half of this year, because most of those actions are gonna start bearing fruit. The destocking that we saw, we see already signs that that is the recovery on the destocking side as well. We're already seeing signs of that. We've got very good visibility on the human nutrition side. Now, Andrew, we talked about macroeconomic uncertainty.
You know, let's just say hypothetically, if there's a deep recession, then could that impact some of the categories, even if they're price in-inelastic? Absolutely, they could. We don't see that right now. Based on what we can see, we still see a very good demand environment on the human nutrition side as well as on the pet side. I think on the animal side, we continue to see weakness, but there are signs that we-- of potential recovery in the back half, even the volume side, while we continue to take actions on the cost side. Based on what we see today, we feel very confident about the 10% growth in human nutrition. Not just in human nutrition, in nutrition as a whole.
Okay, great. Let's go to the Carbohydrate Solutions side for a little bit here. Can you talk a little bit about the supply demand environment for the core Starches & Sweeteners business? How are utilization rates in the industry? I mean, pricing came through very strongly. Obviously, corn helped. But how is the tightness now compared to history?
Across North America and our international footprint as well, we see robust demand across the sector, particularly around the liquid business, our liquid sweetener business. We've seen really no erosion in volumes. Actually, a little bit of an uptick across North America, in particular on liquid volumes into the food and beverage industries. The dry goods starches.
Mm-hmm.
mainly we've seen about a 15% reduction in volumes based on the back of falling corrugated volumes. Really saw that starting to happen in the tail end of Q4, and that's continued through Q1 today. I see that leveling off, from just an OP point of view, our margin expansion was enough that it really actually hasn't. That volume displacement hasn't impacted us. As well as for those of you who understand the model that we have, we always talk about fight for the grind. We do have this ability to move things around internally, which is what we pride ourselves on and that flexibility. We continue to run at a pretty high capacity utilization as well as the industry does.
Okay. You have high utilization rates. You also have sugar that's at decade highs. What opportunities does that create for the business in terms of switching or, or maybe pricing power? Are those implications near term, or is that really as we think about next year, how that plays out?
I think mainly for next year. I'll take a couple of those pieces there. The sugar prices are. In United States, we don't necessarily move one for one. In other parts of the world, we will move with sugar. This is obviously very helpful. If nothing else, psychologically, it's helpful when you're selling liquid corn sweeteners into a sugar market that's at a 30-year high. That's beneficial for us. There has been some switching, albeit small, but psychologically, it's a good environment to be a sweetener salesman in when sugar's at a decades high. I forget the other question that you asked along with that.
With tight utilization rates and you've got maybe some, you know, that's a good environment for pricing and kind of how if that's near term or longer term.
I think it's both. We've seen a little destocking just in the dry goods where people actually, particularly if I think about starches, acidulants, maybe some of the dry sweeteners that we have where you can store them. We've seen a little bit of destocking. I think at some point that has to stop. One of the reasons that I think liquids have been robust, because you really can't stock or destock liquids. You only have so much room in tanks, whereas warehouses, you can put whatever you want to in them. I think we're gonna see that dry goods switch over to what we've seen in liquids and pick up in the back half of the year. I think that'll give us a robust margin environment coming into next year as well.
The BioSolutions piece is a nice long-term and medium-term contributor as well.
Yeah.
To the growth outlook. How are you guys tracking relative to the 10% revenue growth goal annually that you've laid out? Where have you seen the most momentum, I guess, relative to your expectations?
We're pretty excited about the platform that we've built in BioSolutions and the way that we're penetrating that market. The customer demand that we felt there really tied not only with the offerings that we have, but what you're gonna hear about at lunch through our regen ag, and really how we're tying this long value chain together from the farmer all the way to the consumer. The ability that we're giving to our customer to meet some of their goals for sustainability and lowering their carbon intensity in their packaged goods through using us as a vendor. We're excited about what we can do in that platform, really around packaging, construction, fermentation. Those have been the ones that have been the biggest needle movers for us. Obviously, the biggest volume market, so that certainly helps.
Some of the smaller ones that have higher margins just haven't been needle movers for us yet, like pharma, home and personal care. Certainly we look to have some new products and move into that business as well.
If you reflect on what you laid out at the Investor Day in terms of the growth rate of the segment and what that should look like over the next several years, is the market dynamic intact to achieve what you said? Is it actually better than what you were thinking, or are there pieces where it's moved around better or worse?
I think overall, it's there's more opportunity than we thought at the time. Particularly when you think about sustainability for us and taking what we think we can do in the sustainable space and make a huge profit out of that opportunity for us and our customers. Things that this long value chain that I already mentioned that we can tie together that I think nobody else has or that we're in the best position to penetrate. The opportunities around biofuels, particularly sustainable aviation fuel.
Mm-hmm
... I think are on the horizon. They're gonna be here before we know it. I think all those, along with BioSolutions and our ability to decarbonize, is gonna make us a leader in this field. You know, this decarbonization thing, we've had this carbon capture and sequestration model going, these wells going in Decatur now for over a decade. Around 4 million metric tons that we've already sequestered. Nobody else is really able to do that in our space. I'm pleased with our ability to execute there and what we can link into that platform to help us grow.
On the SAF side, you guys, I guess it was disclosed in Gevo's press release, that there was an agreement, or, you know, an extension of the partnership. On the SAF side from a technology perspective, can you talk about what that is, how it compares to what you've talked about previously, and how all that's gonna work?
Yes. Gevo did file an 8-K which referenced ADM in that and some other folks that we have been talking with and looking and evaluating different technologies. We continue to evaluate technologies. In this case, we have a license for the access technology. There's really three out there. We think this is the best in class today as it sits. Obviously, that can change, but as we speak today, we think this is the best technology out there to get us from alcohol to jet. Hopefully in the coming months, you'll be hearing more announcements with a little more definitive things that we can talk about. Certainly I'm excited about it.
I think, as I mentioned in the earlier comments, this is a disruptor and an opportunity for us to really lean into the future of decarbonizing jet aviation.
I wanna tie one of the questions the question that came in on the from the audience here with my last question, that's around regen ag decarbonization and your understanding about how ADM's assets are gonna qualify for the SAF tax credits. You know, I guess there's more uncertainty there maybe than before, is that carbon capture a differentiator? How do you think about the ability to qualify?
It certainly is a differentiator. If others are gonna qualify, they're gonna have to do something similar, which most of them are looking at through different pipelines that are being explored today throughout Iowa, well, the whole Midwest, actually. It's not on a differentiator, it's a must. We've already proven that out. We have the wells in Decatur that I already discussed. We already have definitive agreements for our western corn plant in Nebraska to move west on the Tallgrass pipeline. We have two others to do. We're kinda 50% there. That, along with really changing what we're doing around heat and power sources is another big deal. All those combined, you know, there are some things with renewable natural gas. There's lots of ways to get there.
The other big component is what Paul's gonna talk about at lunch and is our tie-in with the farmers in bringing in low CI corn or feedstocks that will continue to separate us out from, I think, the rest of the pack.
Great. We will leave it there. We're out of time. We appreciate you guys being here today very much.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks.