Sal and I are going to double team Greg Morris from ADM. It's a pleasure to have ADM with us here today. Greg's been with ADM for three decades, I believe. Been involved in essentially all of their businesses. He currently president of Ag Services and Oilseeds. It's great to have you, Greg. You wanna give us maybe a brief outlook for 2023, and then we'll jump into some Q&A.
Sure. Well, thanks, Steven. Thanks, Sal. I thought maybe I'd just start by, just a quick reflection on kinda where we've been, where we are, and where we're headed as an organization. I'll start by saying, you know, a number of years ago, we got the organization really focused on, the basics, you know, cash, cost, capital, and really renewed focus on the customer. As part of that, we really tried to emphasize the importance of quality of earnings in addition to quantity of earnings. Think about return on invested capital and things we can do to influence both the numerator and the denominator.
We went through a period of time where we made some significant portfolio adjustments, exiting underperforming businesses, low returning businesses, volatile returning businesses, and replacing those with businesses that we believe were gonna have a much more steady trajectory in terms of their earnings growth. The result of that has been performance that has been less volatile than what we would have historically experienced. When you look at the results, $7.85 of adjusted earnings per share last year, that was 51% higher than the previous year. In Ag Services and Oilseeds, we delivered almost $4.4 billion in operating profits, which is a 58% increase versus the year before, which happened to be a record. Fantastic performance across the business unit.
In Carbohydrate Solutions and Nutrition, delivering solid year-over-year growth last year as well. When we think about where we are and where we're headed, our growth trajectory is really gonna be dependent on our ability to create our own levers. We talk about an agenda that includes productivity and innovation. When I think about productivity, I think about things like, how do I make sure that my commercial team can go to market every day with the right tools and technology to be able to make the right day-to-day decisions in a world that seems to be getting increasingly more complex?
How do we address operational resiliency so that we can take some of our facilities that are old and modernize them so that the workforce of tomorrow can operate those facilities just as well as the previous employees did? A really interesting area that we're really focused on is from an innovation perspective, thinking about the role that we can play in influencing environmentally friendly practices on the farms. We talk about regen ag, climate-smart farming. To the extent that we can influence the farming practices and capture that data and manage a more complex supply chain for our customers, you know, products of the future could not only have just the nutritional attributes or the cost position that a customer wants, but we can also help provide environmental benefits to help our customers with their commitments too.
I can honestly say, Steve and Sal, there's never been a more exciting time to be in the industry, and really never been a more exciting time to be in ADM. I'll start with that, and happy to answer whatever questions you might have.
Sure. I mean, I think your thoughts on growth is a great segue to understanding a little bit the more secular versus the cyclical part of ADM and what investments you're making to actually grow earnings more sustainably. Can you talk a little bit about your investments in the Ag Services business, which is more the merchandising, trading business, and whether you're looking at building assets or acquiring assets in order to boost your traded volumes in the next few years?
Sure. In the Ag Services segment, there's been a couple of things. We went through an exercise a few years ago, we called it Precision EVA, where we looked at all of our businesses, even down to some assets. We identified the strategic fit, and we looked at the return structure associated with those assets and businesses. As we went through that mapping exercise, we identified a number of facilities and businesses that were underperforming or that weren't strategic, and we've made a number of, or we've adjusted and sold a number of facilities. A number of those happen to fall in kind of that basic origination footprint. I like assets that feed downstream ADM assets. I like assets that are high volume, high throughput. Buy and hold facilities are less interesting.
We looked at all these assets. There's been a little bit of pruning on the front end with Ag Services. At the same time, we've made some good investments on the downstream side with our in-country distribution around the world. Getting closer to the customer to better understand their needs. We talk about destination marketing and the work that we're doing on that end of the value chain. We've made some opportunistic acquisitions. We bought a couple of fantastic high throughput facilities, grain facilities in Indiana, last year or the year before. They've been a nice plug-and-play in our network. We've made, you know, a number of investments just kinda in our existing facilities to improve the throughput and the volume that we handle.
That's how I think about Ag Services. O ur goal is to continue to push more volume through the network without taking unnecessary additional risk. You think about focusing on velocity. At the same time, while we focus on velocity, trying to manage to a lower net risk position, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Moving a little bit further downstream, as you mentioned. In terms of crushing or the refining business, if you can talk also about some investments happening there. Definitely on the crushing side, you have the Spiritw ood facility coming online next year or so. Let's start with a brief overview on that.
Sure. In crush, we were active a couple years ago. We bought a company in Brazil called Algar Agro. That's been a fantastic business that we've plugged into our network. 2 crush plants, a dozen or so grain elevators, bottled oil business. That business is performing fantastic as we, you know, experience good margins in Brazil. In the U.S., you mentioned Spiritw ood. W e did commit to building a crush plant in Spiritw ood, North Dakota. That plant is, it's due to be commissioned at the end of Q3, early Q4 this year. We're in the process of staffing that facility up. We've got bids in the market focusing on our producer relationships.
That business is gonna feed oil to our joint venture partner, which is Marathon. They own 25% of the facility. We'll feed our oil to their facility in Dickinson, North Dakota. That's an exciting opportunity for us. It'll add about 1.5 million tons of crush capacity to our network. In addition to that, back when we announced that, I believe at the same time, we announced our expansion in Quincy. We expanded our refining capacity in Quincy, Illinois, where we traditionally have had a mismatch between our crush capacity and our refined oils capacity. Traditionally, it's been okay to just export the crude oil down the river.
Well, given everything that's happening with renewable green diesel and the demand expansion, we expanded our refining capacity in Quincy to better match up with our crush. That project was completed last year. It's up and running and has been a nice addition to the network as well.
Okay, perfect. I guess on the Nutrition side, I know that's a business you used to be managing, and there's a lot of investments, including Europe. What are the synergies when we think about the upstream side, the Ag Services and the crushing and refining with the Nutrition business?
Yeah. That's a good question. Maybe I'll give you a couple of real examples. When you look at our Decatur complex, we have our protein specialties plant, which is what we call in our East Complex. We have one of our largest soybean processing plants, which is our West Complex. We're able to source beans into Decatur, but when we decide which plant those beans go to, we can send higher protein beans to the East Complex to be made into food grade proteins, just as an example. There's some co-location synergies. In Campo Grande, Brazil, we did the same thing. We had an existing crush plant, we built a protein specialties plant next to it, we can also better manage the raw materials coming in.
I think to the extent that we can source soybeans in a manner that allows us to do that's, you know, one synergy. I think in addition, though, you know, if you think about what I mentioned earlier with the work that we're doing with regen ag, that doesn't just benefit Ag Services and Oilseeds, that benefits the corporation. A lot of the wins that we've had thus far have actually been with our Carbohydrate Solutions customers. We announced the PepsiCo agreement, for example. We're looking at how do we leverage our origination capabilities to best complement the corporation, not just my business unit.
For Nutrition, it's the raw material piece, but also as you think about the broader specialty ingredients business or the, let's say, the human Nutrition business, a lot of their raw materials come out of my facilities. W hether it's the vitamin E production and the raw material source for that, whether it's lecithin, or whether it's the food grade proteins, a lot of their basic raw materials come from my processing facilities. There's a natural connectivity there, between what they're doing and how they're going to market as a further extension of my value chain.
Okay, perfect. Y ou mentioned the sustainability attributes of the PepsiCo agreement. You have a lot of programs with customers and farmers. Which are the initiatives that you think are the most important right now in terms of sustainability and decarbonization for ADM?
I think, well, if you just look at the food system today, you look at the agricultural value chain, you know, about 70% of the carbon gets created on the farm. To the extent that we can help influence by rewarding farmers to do something different, it doesn't have to be everybody plants a cover crop. There's incremental farming practices that are more environmentally friendly that if incented farmers would pursue. We're trying to meet the farmers where they are with programs that are relevant for them so that we can help influence where 70% of the carbon gets created.
When we take those products with the right data, with the right monitoring, with the right technology, if we could couple that with the work that we're doing to address our own Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and you think about the transition of, you know, to different power sources, or you think about carbon capture and sequestration, if you think about the pipeline work that we're doing, I think we can actually drive a much different carbon footprint of the entire value chain from origination from a farmer all the way through our system to our customers. Of course, then our customers would benefit from the Scope 3 emissions that we've helped them achieve by all of those things that we're doing to try to influence the carbon intensity of the feedstock and of the processed products that we sell into the market.
Do you think ultimately that could lead to a premium for some ag products that will be, you know, more verified low carbon intensity?
I think a sustainable business model needs to be a profitable business model, right? Our customers have to see value in it, the producers have to see value in it, and we have to see value in managing a more complex value chain, whether it's data, whether it's segregation, whether it's IP. I think when we can strike the right balance between those three entities, and so they look at it all as a value add for them, then I think we've created a sustainable business model that can actually help create an improvement to the environment. That's the way I think about it. A lot of this is still taking shape. You know, policy is evolving.
Policy makers are trying to understand capabilities of the industry today, which are different than capabilities of the past. This is something that's really evolving real time in front of us. If you look at, you know, just two years ago, in 2021, we had about 150,000 acres that we would consider as, you know, kind of regen ag acres. We finished this year with over 1 million. You know, over 2,000 farmers signed up for our program. I think it just, it's a, it's a sign and a demonstration that I think what we're doing is resonating on the farm, and we've got good uptake from our producers.
Do you have any questions?
I guess how does that farmer benefit from that? I guess maybe more specifically, regen ag at the farm, do you have to manage all of that grain separately from the neighbor that's not following regen ag? How troublesome is that for you? It's not like you can produce, you know, low or sustainable beans in one state and sell them from somebody else in another state. Y ou have to track that, correct? How difficult is that for you?
We've partnered with FBN. They have a technology tool called Gradable, which is a good tool to help do exactly that, to help track and monitor, help us quantify the impact of some of the farming practices that are happening. I think the challenge is, while the future supply chains and value chains are gonna be more complex, maybe because there's more data that needs to accompany it, what we need to be careful of is that we can't introduce additional costs into the supply chain like, you know, segregating grain, for example, in an industry that's not necessarily set up to do that would impose additional costs of compliance or costs of operating.
I think if we can strike the right balance between additional complexity, making sure that we track and monitor and what's, you know, what we're representing is really happening on the farm, and the benefits are real, and if we can do that in a manner that preserves the cost structure that the industry has been built on, then I think you find the right balance and you don't impose unnecessary burden on the food system.
On this decarbonization side, obviously agricultural practices are one side, but you have the industrial footprint of the crushing plants and the ethanol plants. Are you looking especially with the new incentives into carbon capture and sequestration from there, whether that's actually to get credits or just lowering the CI score to make your products more competitive?
Yeah. We have, we've been sequestering carbon in Decatur for a number of years and feel like we have a great head start on the industry. We're actively working on expanding our abilities, our capacity to sequester. We've announced the pipeline work that we're doing to try to connect other ADM facilities into that sequestration complex. Yeah, that's absolutely front and center in terms of our ability to address our own carbon footprint.
Okay, perfect. I know we have a renewable panels afterwards, but there are some things I would like to discuss, things specifically to, you know, the opportunity also for ADM. I think, according to the U.S. government, there's like 2.5 billion-2.6 billion gallons of renewable diesel capacity as of the end of 2022, probably another 1 billion confirmed, and then I think two or three possible. What are your own projections, I guess, in your probably risk-adjusted model about new capacity here, and what does this mean for vegetable oil demand? How much are we going to need to satisfy this?
Yeah, that's. It seems like if you ask 10 people, you get 10 different answers. I think part of the reason is, you know, some of us talk about U.S. renewable green diesel capacity. You can't forget about the Canadian renewable green diesel capacity. Now you have companies talking about, you know, going from renewable green diesel to sustainable aviation fuel now that we have line of sight to incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The number is big, right? I mean, there's meaningful expansion happening in that space. I think by the end of this year we'll be, you know, somewhere around 3.5 billion gallons or so. That industry is gonna continue to expand. No question about it.
I think what that means is, you know, we're in an oil-driven market for at least the medium term through the build-out of that renewable green diesel capacity. Y ou can pick your number. It's meaningful, and I think that the important part is it still appears today that the renewable green diesel expansions are still gonna exceed, are still going to at least provide enough demand to be able to soak up the extra crush capacity that's coming online in the U.S., which is meaningful also.
I think the last time we checked our numbers, and if we have our conversion rates correct, probably the next 1 billion gallons of renewable diesel will be more than enough well, should fully absorb all the new announced crush capacity in the U.S. What happens when some additional projects come online? Essentially, will the U.S. be short? Will these plants just delay their startup o r, do we need much higher soybean plantings, even, to try to figure out a solution? What's the way out of this conundrum?
Well, I think it's probably the combination of events. Certainly high oil prices are gonna spark innovation. That's maybe a longer-term, you know, opportunity, whether that's higher oil content soybeans, whether it's, you know, more plants that can process canola, which has a higher oil content. I know you're gonna talk later today about cash cover crops. I think that's an interesting opportunity that, you know, at some point in the future has, you know, when it's scalable, could be a great add-on to the crushing industry. I think there's also never before been such an incentive to aggregate used cooking oil and other waste oils around the world, and you see that continuing to move into markets that place a premium on that.
I think, you know, all of those things together, I think, are gonna help contribute to filling the demand gap or the demand that's coming with the renewable green diesel and the sustainable aviation fuel plants. I think the other thing is some companies are looking at veg oil as a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel. Other companies are think ethanol-to-jet. That technology is evolving. I think either way, I think whether you're an ethanol producer or whether you're, you know, a veg oil producer, there's gonna be significant opportunities to participate in this whole transition.
Certainly. At this point, I do have a lot more questions, I wonder if anybody from the audience has any questions. Okay. I think we're good. I wanna shift a little bit to more the short-term ag fundamentals. We've heard from others already today, the ag markets are tight. Everybody knows that. You know, certainly we need to know what ADM is saying. Can you shed some more light on supply-demand balance in some for some key key crops, but also some key regions outside of the US? In the US, we have the credible data, but what's happening, for example, in Europe? What's happening in China? Certainly our view is that yields are not going to be great. That's our group's view, but what are you seeing out there?
Sure. Well, I think this is one of those situations you have to be careful with, you know, 'cause you could easily look at a global supply and demand and feel like maybe we're in a better position than what we are. When you get down into the regions and you start to realize, you know, what's really happening in different carryouts in different regions, that's when the tightness starts to become evident. For example, you know, if you look at the carryout this year in the U.S. for soybeans, it's gonna be historically pretty tight. You could say the same thing about the corn carryout. You could say the same thing about the soybean oil carryout. If you look at South America, it's kind of the tale of two cities.
In Brazil, you're gonna grow a massive soybean crop that's gonna challenge and test the infrastructure in the region. They're gonna follow that with what appears to be a big corn crop. Then you go a little bit further south, and Argentina's gonna grow the smallest crop in 20 years. T hey had a terrible spring planting season down there, you know, with drought-like conditions. Now they followed it up with, you know, frost the other day. I mean, just a terrible situation for the Argentine farmer. Then you look at, you know, if you look at the Black Sea, you know, the challenges there, you know, are twofold. It's about production, but it's also about getting it to market.
Even if you produce a big crop, if you don't have a way to get it to market in a manner that allows you to move that to consumers around the world, that becomes the choke point instead of production. You know, unfortunately, I think it was a year ago, I was at this event, and it was a week or so after the war kicked off.
Unfortunately, that continues today. You know, I think a lot of us, you know, we're concerned about, you know, what do the crops in Ukraine look like in the future. You know, we're concerned about the will of the Ukrainian farmer and his ability to tolerate additional risk as the attacks ramp up in the spring. We're concerned about yields. If you're a farmer, you're concerned about the financial risk associated with having your inputs at risk. The grain corridor is set to extend at the end of March. You know, how does that process go? Does anyone voice opposition to it? Lots of question marks there. Even, you know, the surrounding countries, Romania and Poland. You know, at first, you know, grain was moving hot and heavy across the interior borders.
Now, a year later, if you're a Polish farmer, you're a Romanian farmer, you know, you'd like to see more of that moving out of Odessa and into the Black Sea so that you can preserve your own markets too. There's a lot at play there in terms of, you know, supply and demand in that region. Europe, you know, Europe had a good rapeseed crop. Canada had a great canola crop. The U.S., you know, had good crops last year, both corn and beans. We expect, you know, prices are gonna incentivize farmers to continue to plant, you know, the acreage that they can. It's a bit of a mixed bag, and I think the important takeaway is there's still regional dislocations and there's still regional tightness at play on the supply side.
I think if I just quickly pivot to China, you know, China has been a big question mark as they've emerged from, you know, almost three years of COVID lockdown. What their demand really looks like, you know, will be seen as we play out 2023. I think in general, you have a consumer in China that managed to save money through COVID. We know the mobility stats would say that they're back on the move and doing, you know, their business. Offices are filling back up. I think you have a consumer over there that's been a bit concerned though, right? After three years of COVID lockdown, concerns about the housing market, concerns about the U.S.-China relationship. I think building consumer confidence, which takes a little bit of time, is important.
If you look at some of the economic data that came out this morning recently, you know, perhaps we're starting to see signs of consumer spending improve, consumer demand, improving. I think that, you know, if you wanted to paint an optimistic scenario, it's, you know, China demand comes back, and that results in, you know, greater volumes of trade flows, and they emerge from COVID and, you know, continue to be kind of the consumptive engine of the ag industry.
Sure. F irstly, can you talk a little bit about wheat, just because I think prices there have been softer, and obviously part of it was the big spike they had last year. Are there concerns, I guess, about more supply in this side? Secondarily, I think it was the Ag Forum that had, like, the first kind of indications of U.S. plantings this year. I think they were talking about unchanged soybean plantings and 91 million acres of corn. What are your own projections for corn and soy?
Well, if I take the wheat question first, I would say the global wheat balance sheets are probably in better shape than corn and soybeans. You grow wheat in lots of different regions of the world. I would say they're probably a little bit more comfortable. You know, U.S. farmers like to plant corn. There's always a tendency to place their bets on corn. At the same time, you know, we're gonna still need, you know, a sizable soybean crop. You know, how the acreage plays out, you know, I guess we'll see, but I think you can expect big corn acres, you can expect big bean acres. Which one, you know, gets the incremental acres that do switch, I'm not sure U.S. farmers have demonstrated a tendency to like to plant corn.
I think based on the survey also we had that we're thinking you may see an increase in both. I nstead of seeing a switch, just seeing both being higher, which at least is not what the first indications are saying, but we'll see. On the crop side, obviously margins remain strong. What's your view of margins, I guess, today or around this period versus last month? Have they changed materially in some regions of the world, firstly?
I think probably from our earnings call, I would say U.S. margins are probably just a bit better. Brazilian margins are probably a little bit better. European margins are probably similar. You know, as the crop in Argentina has come into even more challenges, it becomes a limiting factor for that entire industry. You're gonna see the Argentine crush industry, you know, struggle with the size of crop that they have. That's gonna provide opportunities for more meal exports out of Brazil, more meal exports out of the U.S., less Argentine meal imports into Europe, which means European values will be supported. As people have more concerns about the Argentine crop, you start to see support in meal values, you know, whether that's reflected in Board Crush or whether it's reflected in basis levels.
Speaking about meal, I mean, prices since I think November, December have gone up even higher. What is driving this trend? Is it the Chinese reopening? Is it, I guess, in part the Argentinian issue? Why are meal prices so strong? Obviously oil, everybody expects it, but meal has been the outlier now.
Meal's gone up on the back of the crop deterioration in Argentina. No question.
Steve, do you have any other questions?
On this topic of meal and more and more of the U.S. soybean crop getting crushed, do you have concern about the longer term outlook for meal and/or you even commented on higher oil soybeans, is that a direction that you're supportive of?
Certainly supportive of higher oil content soybeans, so long as it doesn't compromise the quality of the meal in that bean. I think as the crush industry expands, certainly more meal exports are gonna have to happen. If you just look at the margin spread today, crush margins in North America versus crush margins in Brazil or Argentina, I think it would say that if that's an indication of margins going forward, the U.S. is gonna be in a position to be competitive for, you know, let's say, global meal destinations outside of China.
China's always gonna buy beans. For those soybean meal importing countries that maybe traditionally have looked at Argentina as an origin, I think some of those fringe countries are gonna be looking at U.S. in the future. Think Southeast Asia, Central America, even Western South America, Middle East, some European countries. I think the U.S. is gonna be competitive. I think Brazil will be competitive as well.
Perfect. I think we have just perfect time. Just in case anybody has any last questions.
Oh, we have one.
Thank you. Greg, I was just wondering if you could talk to the soybean oil question. In contrast to meal, it's been very weak and Darling reported yesterday, and you've seen fats and oils prices come down, but yet you see all this announced new capacity. It seems like some of the capacities just have an issue starting up. There was a fire in Rotterdam. Like when you're looking, you're closer to this than any of us. When you're looking across 2023 and 2024, when do you expect bean oil prices to firm and start moving higher?
I think, you know, certainly there's been some near-term startup challenges with some of the renewable green diesel facilities, no question about that. When they have issues, they're material because they're such large complexes. I think about, you have to think about oil as a spread versus meal, oil as a spread versus beans. Where the absolute price of oil goes, I can't tell you, but I think what's influenced it recently, though, has been as the Argentine crop has had problems, people wanted to buy meal. Maybe they bought meal and sold oil against it. I think if you take a longer-term view, though, oilshare should be supported.
Oil is gonna be, you know, oil demand growth is gonna grow faster than what people perceive meal demand growth, which means meal needs to find its way into incremental additional demand to keep a balance between the two. I do think oil is gonna be supported relative to meal over time, but the absolute price is gonna be dependent in large part on the underlying price of soybeans. That's gonna be driven by another set of dynamics like, you know, Brazilian farmers selling versus Chinese, you know, buying.
I think it's a, it's a complicated matrix, but you need to think about beans, meal, and oil all kind of in the context of what's happening in all three legs. I think given that oil demand growth looks to be growing at a greater pace than meal demand kinda over time, I would expect, you know, it should still be an oil-driven margin structure, at least in the medium term as we build out the renewable diesel demand and capacity.
We have run out of time, so please join us in thanking Greg Morris for his presentation.