So let's kick off our conference. We're gonna start off with a fireside chat with FMC, who's of course a very large global producer and distributor of crop production chemicals. Here with us today is Mark Douglas, who's the CEO, and Andrew Sandifer, CFO. Gentlemen, come on up. I think they put me here. I don't know. What I'll do is maybe later in the presentation I'll poll for anybody in the audience to raise your hand if you have questions, but you can start off too by if you have the app on your phone, which you can get by the back of your name tag, there's a bar, there's a QR code, you can do that, as Mark just-
Demonstrated
... nicely modeled. So Andrew and Mark, thanks a lot.
Pleasure.
Why don't you give us a brief overview of the business and the outlook as you see it currently for your FMC and crop chems?
So many of the audience know FMC pretty well. We are a global supplier of crop protection chemicals, active in over 102 countries in the world. Pretty much a quarter of our revenue comes from each of the four regions of the world. Research-based, so technology plays an important part in this industry as we look to fight resistance, whether it's insects, fungus, or weeds. I would say the evolving area of biologicals is an important growth prospect for not only us, but the industry in general. I would also say that the industry's been extremely challenged over the last year. I think many of you are aware of all the issues we've had coming out of COVID with supply chains, with destocking. That's something that's on everybody's mind. Certainly it's on Andrew and I's, my mind.
I think as we go through the rest of this year, and as we go, certainly go into 2025, you're gonna see, start to see a more normalization. It's not gonna be smooth, it's gonna be bumpy, but we're getting to the end of this destocking period, and I think that's an important facet for investors to recognize that, you know, supply chains can't empty forever, and they have to replenish. That's the phase we're in now. We call it a transition this year. I think that's an apt description, but 2025 is where everybody should be focused, and what does that mean for the industry in general?
So I think when we look at crop chems and other chemicals in general, there's a question out there about, you know, when we do go back to restocking in the coming months, you know, will demand be normal, or will it be a little more muted than... you know? And again, it seems like it's the question's being asked across the entire chemical chain. What's your view on that?
Yeah, I mean, these are complicated supply chains. From us placing an order to ourselves for raw materials, to actually delivering it to a customer in a warehouse, that's a six- to seven-month cycle. So here we are today, we've been running down inventory since last year at this point. So we're getting to a point now where our inventories are getting lean. We don't have the same flexibility that we've had in the past because we're not carrying the inventory.
Neither is the next person in the chain, and back of us, our suppliers are asking us: "Hey, when you start the engine, we need to know as soon as possible because it takes us months to get fired up." So I think there's gonna be this period of, there may be shortages out there in certain products because the supply chain is just so lean. This industry has never run just in time. The signals that we get, because pest pressures change-
Mm-hmm
... so therefore, demand changes for us. Well, we can't carry that much inventory, our suppliers can't carry that much inventory, and distribution and retail don't want to carry the inventory. Something's got to give here as we go through this recovery.
What's gonna give? What do you think is gonna happen?
Well, I do think there will be dislocations. I think it's almost setting up the next cycle. It's a typical chemical industry cycle.
Mm-hmm.
We go from boom, and then we go down the other side. Well, we're on the other side of that. So what's going to happen? If you want certain products and they're not there, you're gonna have to look for alternatives. If they're not there, it's gonna get, it's gonna get tight, I think, in certain areas. So we are now, Andrew and I talk a lot about this, we're now starting to fire up our manufacturing units for the first time in basically a year. So we see demand coming, so we've been very careful. We don't want to build too much inventory, but we're getting there. So we feel the signs now, and we're starting to place orders on our suppliers, so the machine is starting to turn. But it's gonna be an interesting year going forward, I think, from that aspect.
Why don't we talk a bit more regional, so we're talking more broad, and maybe you can break down each region and talk about, you know, where the, how we're flipping from destocking to restocking, and how you see inventories in each region right now.
Yeah, I think, I think there's been a lot of commentary around the different regions of the world. North America is probably the furthest along. Was one of the first regions to get hit by this change. I would say distribution is still a little high, retail and grower is very low, so North America is in pretty good shape. Europe's the next that is going through their season now, so they started to deplete last year, depleting a lot more now. Asia's a mixed bag. India inventory is very high, that we have high inventory, others in the industry have high inventory. That's mainly due to weather, though, not necessarily the same dynamics as we see in the rest of the world. And then Latin America, I mean, Latin America is finishing its season now. It's not bad.
It's not exactly where it should be, but it's getting there. So as we roll into the 2024, 2025 season, in Q4 this year, it'll be in much better shape.
I want to come back to Latin America a little bit. So we just talked earlier about just-in-time purchasing, just doesn't really work for this industry. So, I mean, do you see structural changes happening? And maybe go back to a decade ago, we had another restocking, destocking cycle also. I don't know. You were there?
Mm-hmm.
You go back and think what happened then and afterwards, and like, will we see structural changes happen in the industry?
I'm not so sure you'll see structural changes. The industry is pretty consolidated at, in our space from a research perspective. There are only five research companies in crop protection chemicals. That's pretty consolidated. For any of those to get together would be very difficult. From a generic standpoint, there is opportunity for consolidation. I mean, this is a tough time. If you don't have a strong balance sheet, if you don't have good financial strength, you're not probably gonna come out of this in great shape. So there may be, there may be opportunities there. From a vertical, in the sense of, distribution retail, there are changes going on there, we see that. There are people in our space looking at distribution, going around distribution to the grower. I think all those things are, are in flux.
Brazil is one of the best examples of that. We see that more in Brazil than we do anywhere else.
Let's talk about Brazil. There are lots of questions about your visibility in Brazil the last couple of years. You've done a big reorg, you brought in a new head of that business from outside. Talk about what was happening, why the changes, and how it's looking now. It's, I think, only a few months into the-
Yeah
New person, but maybe talk about that.
Yeah, this is the first time that we've brought in a president of a region from outside the company. We have a very strong talent pipeline, but we did feel that with all the changes that are occurring in the Latin American market, everybody focuses on Brazil. Argentina's important, Mexico's important. We wanted a different view of the world, so we brought somebody in who has a lot of crop chem background, but also has distribution and retail background. And that, for us, is a different way of looking at the world. In other words, how are our customers in Brazil actually operating and what drives their business, rather than thinking of it from a technology sell? So that's a different angle that we've got on Brazil right now.
Okay, so, your 2024 guidance is very back-end loaded, which isn't really atypical. It's typically what, you know, FMC is, how the earnings will line up. But it seems like it's really driven by a 20% something, or mid-20% volume growth driver in the second half of the year.
Mm.
So big volume recovery in the second half of the year. So can you, can you talk about that and, and how new products are contributing to that as well?
Yeah, sure, I'll jump in on that one, Joel, and help out a little bit here. Look, the second half, we're seeing a return to more normal market conditions as a part of second half. We're not talking about a snapback or a sudden return to the overheated 2022 conditions, but the percentages in the second half seem really large when you look at them, 23% at the top line, 56% at the bottom line, if you look at the midpoint of our guidance range. You've got to put them in the context and the absolute size of the business, and we've had four quarters in a row where we've had volume drops of in the upper 20%, right?
The size of the business is significantly lower, and while it's a big percentage, you know, the amount of sales we're pointing to in the second half is essentially the level of sales we had in 2020 or 2021, right? Before the overcorrection that we saw in 2022. So I do think when we think about the composition of the sales in the seasonality, you're right. You know, historically, our business is more heavily, probably 55-45 weighted second half. It will be significantly more pronounced this year because we're coming out of this channel reset. But I... Look, again, I think the biggest point I would make on our outlook for the second half, you know, we are not looking for some return to overheated market conditions.
We're merely saying that there is an inflection point coming. You know, this quarter, even in the second quarter, it's the first quarter in four quarters that we've guided to a volume uptick, right? We do believe that channel inventories have been drawn down substantially. You know, that consistent pull-through from the grower and the consistent use and actually consistent and growing use of product on the ground by growers, has helped bring down that inventory. Manufacturers have put less into the channel-
Mm-hmm
... with lower, dramatically lower sales in the last four quarters. So that's gonna start rebalancing and flowing through. And it's, and again, it's getting back to a size of business that's, you know, several years ago, prior to, what, you know, the current, you know, the 2022 overheated conditions.
Okay, and also you've implemented some cost-saving initiatives, some optimization programs. Maybe talk about the lowest hanging fruit for the organization and-
Mm
... how that plays out over the next couple years. You talk about you should see some tailwinds in 2025.
Yeah, so the two dimensions of cost I'll talk about. First, you know, on restructuring, you know, we've been pretty aggressively going after SG&A. We started this in the second half of last year with some very, very draconian spending controls. What we spent a lot of time this year is both in continuing to increase the reductions in SG&A, but also doing the hard work of changing how we work through changing our systems, how we work, how we manage processes, doing some automation, moving work around to different locations around the globe to make those cost reductions more permanent, right? So you saw a very significant drop year-on-year on SG&A in our Q1 results. That comparison gets a little tougher as we go through the rest of the year.
They'll still be very favorable, but not to the same degree that you saw in the first half. So I think for the restructuring program, yeah, certainly on the SG&A and back office expense portion of it, very, very good progress. Also, doing some things to fine-tune our manufacturing footprint. We've adjusted, you know, some facilities, continued to look at certain locations. We just exited a large toll relationship, as we rebalance it and, you know, where we have manufacturing capacity and, you know, make sure we have a capacity that's in line with, you know, current market conditions and where we see growth happening.
You might also want to comment, thinking about 2025.
Yeah.
We've got a lot of headwinds right now. Talk about how they reverse-
Yeah, so let's-
-next year.
I think, take Mark's lead here, you know, shifting away from restructuring, just thinking about what's flowing through our, particularly our COGS line. You know, in Q1, we had a tailwind at COGS. You know, throughout the year, we do see lower raw material costs for our business. What we have is a push and pull between parts of our cost structures. You know, at the COGS line, again, you know, Q1, with pretty significant benefit from lower raw materials year on year. That benefit continues through the year, but it becomes, as we go through the year, offset more, yeah, in full by higher unabsorbed fixed costs as we're continuing to work through all of the lower manufacturing activity we've had for these last several quarters.
So as that flows through, that becomes a bigger headwind. And we're actually seeing some increasing logistics costs in the second half as we start to see returns in volumes. So whereas in Q1, we had a cost tailwind, in Q2 through Q4, we have a COGS, a cost headwind. Now, the highlight here, though, I think is, you know, this is a part of the transition. You know, as we restart manufacturing lines, as we start building, both from a cash flow perspective, rebuilding payables, but also from an operating perspective, as we start absorbing more fully fixed costs, that headwind goes away as we go into 2025. So that absence of a headwind from unabsorbed fixed costs that we're really having to battle with this year becomes a tailwind as we go into next year.
So remember, you're allowed to ask questions on the app, like this one. It's a two-parter, so about Brazil, though. But first is... It's going back to the question about new management in Brazil. It's early, but what do you expect from new management and strategy in Brazil?
So when I look at our market shares in Brazil, big crops such as soy, we have single-digit market share. Yet the technology platform that we're building and the technologies we're bringing, we should be able to enhance that market share, especially in soy. So I think the management there now is really focused on: where do we go outside of the business that we have today, which is a healthy business in Brazil? Where do we now go and grow with the technologies we're bringing? It takes 12 years to bring a new molecule to life in this industry. Costs about $270 million -$280 million. So it's a long burn. Our research pipeline is now getting to the point where these products are becoming real. So here we are, getting ready for Brazil.
It's really a great opportunity to say: We've got expansion opportunities, we've got the technology. How do we now execute? That's the biggest focus.
Okay, and then a near-term question on Brazil also: following, I'm sorry, the flooding in the southern regions of Brazil, any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean, listen, it's a catastrophic event. I mean, if most people in the room will have seen the news, I mean, what is going on there is just unheard of. Now, it's hit at a time when you're at the end of the main seasons, and you haven't started the next season. So in a way, it's fallen right between the two seasons. So we don't see any impacts today. We don't expect any impacts in the next season because the floods should have receded by then. So no impact at this point, but from a human perspective, a huge impact.
Okay, so we talked about 2024 to 2025. So you've, you know, you've had your Investor Day in November, and you've, you've kept it. You put out 2026 targets of midpoint $1.4 billion EBITDA. You're gonna do a little under $1 billion this year, so, you know, maybe 40%+ growth over the next two years. Can you talk about, you know, as you see it now, how does that growth, to hit those targets, how does it cater to the growth across 2025 and 2026? Is it linear? What are the most reasonable things, the easiest things to achieve there, what are the hardest things? So how will it split between 2025 and 2026?
Okay, I'll take a high-level view, and then, Andrew, you jump in.
Sure.
I think there's a couple of things. First of all, on the top line, we are expecting more normal market conditions as we go through 2025, 2026. This industry generally grows at 2.5%-3.5% on the long haul. So you've got that underlying base growth, which is driven by the need to produce food, fuel for a growing population. I think everybody kinda knows that. We need about 3% productivity gains every year just to keep food production in line with population growth. So there's your underlying basis. For us, technology is playing a bigger role in our growth. We have a metric that we call NPI, New Product Introduction. That basically means products that are introduced over the last five years, how much of your overall revenue do they compose? Back in 2021, it was about 10%.
Today, this year, it's about 17%. So that's a big boost to the top line. That's all market share gains. There is some cannibalization, but it's mainly market share gains. So the technology growth is what drives that top line. And then, Andrew, do you want to comment on the below the top line?
Yeah, so certainly, if we look between 2025, 2026, at the cost structure, all right, from. We mentioned restructuring earlier. You know, by the end of 2025, we expect to have about $150 million or more in run rate benefits from the actions we're taking in our restructuring program right now. So that'll help amplify any volume flowing through the cost structure. So we mentioned a moment ago getting past this period of high unabsorbed fixed costs as we start you know, getting volume back to more normal levels and more fully utilized in our plants. And that'll be a big step up and improvement in cost structure in 2025. But, you know, I'd be careful, Joel, not to think of this as linear, right?
I do think, you know, you do have a combination of factors. We'll see a big step up in 2025 and a continued step up in 2026. But you do need those normalizing market conditions. You need to get some volume back through the system. We do need the benefit from all of our new product introductions, a substantial amount of new formulations, in particular, over the next two years, that we're bringing to market that should be very helpful, both to volume and to mix. And then the benefits from cost, both restructuring and from relevering, you know, getting volume back through, getting back to proper leverage on the overall cost structure.
I'll get cheeky a bit here. So I don't know, $200 million of growth each year, you know, $200 million-
I just said it's not linear.
North or south... I know. North or south for 2025. Okay, we're about halfway through the fireside. If anybody in the room has a question, you can raise your hand and we'll have a runner come get it. Anybody have a question in the room? Okay, so looking back on the growth through 2026 to hit the targets, one thing that was interesting to me when you revealed these targets, six months ago, was, if I remember, you're assuming a 5% sales CAGR for the diamides... and a 5% sales CAGR for the rest of the portfolio, non-diamides. It's nice, it's round. Can you talk about that? It was interesting to me that they're exactly the same number.
Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of discussion about this class of chemistry called the diamides, which we own, which has been a, and is, a tremendous franchise. It'll continue to grow. It won't grow at the rates that it was growing at 10 years ago, five years ago, which were in the double digits. It's gonna grow more in that mid-single digit range. But I think what a lot of people have missed in the story of FMC is truly the value of that new technology pipeline. That's what's driving that 5%, perhaps even more growth. And the reason for that is, these are new molecules in new markets that we're not exposed to today. So when you look over the long haul, that's a tremendous growth algorithm for us. So yes, the diamides are incredibly important, very profitable. They'll be there, they'll continue to grow.
But I think people are missing this secondary leg, which we've tried to explain, especially during our Investor Day, that those technologies are the ones that really drive the growth of the company. We're seeing that already today, 17% of our revenue coming from those new products. It was 10% three years ago. That's gonna go into the 20s as we go over this next decade. We have two molecules we've just launched, a new fungicide and a new herbicide. Those products are over $1 billion combined. So that's a growth that's already occurring. Following that, two more herbicides, and one very important one, which is a new rice herbicide for grass. Think about it, rice is actually a grass, so trying to kill the weeds that are grass is very, very difficult.
We have a new patented technology that will be launched in Asia in 2025. It will be used on other crops as well. That's another $500 million molecule. The one after that is another broadleaf herbicide, particularly for corn and soy.
What'd you say? You said koi and soy?
Yeah, I did. That one comes as we go through the 2026, 2027 time frame. So you take those four big molecules, there's over $2 billion of growth there, and that's real growth that we know because we're already seeing it with two of them. They're gonna contribute something like $100 million-$150 million of growth this year, the two molecules that we've launched. Technology is needed in the industry. That's what we're providing. I think that's what's been missed in that, that growth that you're talking about, that balanced growth.
Talk about maybe for people that don't know, talk about, as the diamides lose exclusivity in some of the patents across the decade, and start in the different regions, and you've been signing partnerships and agreements, talk about how that all plays out.
Yeah, I mean, this industry has a record of new active ingredients coming off patent and then becoming more generic. It's not like the farmer industry. Everybody talks about a patent cliff in the crop protection market. It doesn't exist. You can go and look at all the different curves for price and volume. Nothing falls off a cliff. What usually happens is price declines over time, but new markets are opened up, so volume increases. So volume generally offsets price as you go over the long haul. We're expecting the same thing for the diamides.
I just, if I can add, you know, I think this theme of new product introduction and technology innovation that Mark's pointing to applies to the diamides as well.
Mm-hmm.
If you go back to our November 2023 Investor Day, and we laid out a pretty clear story and a plan on where we're continuing to innovate with higher value formulations of the diamides, whether they're higher concentration, so more efficient for the farmer to use, or combining with other active ingredients in ways that give a different co-pest coverage or a different functionality to the farmer. Many of those formulations themselves are patented, right? So it is a part of continuing to rejuvenate even the Diamide portfolio. And the composition of matter patents, you know, that might be rolling off, you know, continuing to bring new products, and it's something that is very hard for, you know, a generic entrant to try to compete with.
One of the first beachheads, or no, one of the first areas where we're seeing this test on the diamides has been in India, where you've been starting-
Mm.
You've got some things going on, and you've been starting to defend your patents in some court processes. Maybe give an update on that and how you see it playing out.
Yeah, I mean, I would say the two biggest areas where we see generics are China and India. When we bought these assets back in 2017, there was already generic materials in the Chinese market. It's not something new. In India, it's more recent, as people are getting ready for patent expiration. So there are generics there. We are fighting them because, frankly, we believe they're using our processes that are still patented. But the market being what it is, there is a lot of generics there already. We have an extremely strong brand in India, so we have seen generic entrants. They haven't taken significant share. We continue to grow.
What's been the biggest mischaracterization in the last eight-nine months around the India FMC diamide situation?
I think it's the channel inventory, to be honest. We have a lot of channel inventory. We've been clear on that for some time. Other players also have channel inventory. We're introducing new products into the market for the diamides.
Mm.
They're all growing. It's not as if the market and the business is not growing. So I don't think from our standpoint, India is any different to what it was three years ago, for instance. So channel inventory, once we work through that, we'll be off.
As part of that, is that not the point that as you lose exclusivity, the market will grow, you'll keep your pie, the pie will grow, you'll keep your share, margins will probably come down, but the end will kind of be still growth? How, how should you think about it?
Yeah, listen, at the end of the day, I, I care about EBITDA dollars.
Right.
Whether it comes from price or volume, we'll manage that situation. We manage the market, we manage the access. At the end of the day, I want to see that continuous growth of EBITDA dollars from the diamides. That's what's happened over the last 10 years. We expect it to continue.
So one of the weirdest discussion points at crop chems, I think the last six to nine months has been so one of your competitors had said, "Well, there's generic pressure in Brazil, more than we've seen before." And then you said, "No, there isn't." And one of your other major competitors said, "No, there isn't." And then the one competitor that said, "Well, there was more generic pressure," now says, "Actually, there wasn't, wasn't generic pressure." So that was a weird-
Is this a joke or what? I mean...
I mean, it's kind of a joke. But, I mean, I think, the ultimate question is: how does generic pressure in Brazil be about similar, and maybe one person maybe got one data point wrong a little while ago?
Well, I think, first of all, you can't look at this as one large homogeneous market.
Right.
You can't look from a competitive standpoint at the five of us. We all have different portfolios. We all play in different crops, in different spaces. You can see generic pressure in one company that another one is not seeing, because they're not playing in that space.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, there is generic pressure in Brazil. There always is.
Right.
It's a huge ag market. Is it any worse? Not really. Some pockets, but not overall. So when one company says they're seeing generic pressure, that's more germane to their portfolio.
Mm-hmm.
We might have generic pressure somewhere else, in Australia, for example. That's kind of don't treat it as one big market. It's not, it's highly fragmented.
Okay, let's maybe talk a little bit about some longer term growth in the pipeline. So you did a big biologicals acquisition not that long ago, maybe a year, year and a half ago, or more than that?
Yeah.
Talk about what, what you're most excited about from that portfolio, and when we're gonna start to see it really hit the bottom line.
Right. So our biologicals platform is about $250 million in size. It's growing in the high double-digit range, usually. That's generally the scope of it. We really entered into a new space called pheromones. For those of you that don't know, pheromones are semiochemicals that insects use to attract mates. So for the first time, actually, in agriculture, we're gonna use pheromones on row crops to disrupt mating, which reduces the amount of insects. So if you think about this from a sustainability angle, you're not actually killing the insects, you're actually stopping them being born in the first place. You will then use insect sprays, but you'll use less. What's the real beauty of this is two things. First of all, insects are attracted to each other by these pheromones.
Those pheromones are only specific to that one insect, so no other insects will pick those pheromones up. There is no impact on beneficial insects, such as bees or pollinators. That's the first thing. The second thing is, the technology we bought is not a synthetic chemistry route to produce the pheromones, which is very expensive. We bought a technology that is the genetic manipulation of yeast to produce the pheromones. Our manufacturing cost is about 20% of the synthetic manufacturing cost, and therein lies the trick of how do you get pheromones into row crops? They've always been too expensive. They've always been used in greenhouses for specialty crops. Now, we have a technology that has a cost base that allows us to go into row crops. That expands the market dramatically. So for us, this is a whole new platform that we're building.
We expect the first soft launch in Brazil in 2025. We're already scaling up. We have a lot of trial materials out there. So the pheromones is a whole new frontier, not only for FMC, but for the rest of the industry as well.
I've seen Mark, I've heard Mark describe the whole pheromone. He gets very excited about the pheromone.
I do
... biological part of it, but we won't get into it here. But yes. And then if you talk about the rest of your portfolio outside the biologicals, sort of what are you also... Talk about what you sort of see coming up the next five years, eight years in the pipeline.
Yeah, I just alluded to the molecules that are out there.
Yeah.
We have molecules that are longer term. We have about 39 active ingredients in our pipeline, all the way from discovery, all the way through to development. The message there is, this is a very sustainable pipeline for us, both synthetics and biologicals. I think there's one particular molecule that's a little bit out there. It won't be here until, I think the late twenties, early thirties. This is a brand-new fungicide for Asian soybean rust in Brazil, which is a market that we don't play in. It's a multi-billion-dollar market. It's a very important pest in soybeans. That's a whole new market for us that'll come at the end of this decade. So the other four that I talked about, already on the way, that big fungicide is coming, and it is gonna be important for FMC and for the industry as well.
That would be another one that I would say, a little further out, but very important.
So I got a question on the app, which is actually so I mean, I'm gonna ask another question that leads into this too, actually, as I think about it. So you know, what we've really seen the last bunch of years is, so you're gonna develop new chemicals, new biologicals, new this and that. The regulatory scrutiny, the legal scrutiny is just, seems like it's ramping up to question whether a Bayer, or an FMC, or a Corteva, BASF, would even ever wanna try to spend all this money to develop a new chemistry 10 years from now, because everything passes muster, and then 20 years later, it turns out it didn't or, or there's, you know, legal challenges to whatever.
So, you know, how do you manage that risk, and is it worth it to go on a five, eight, 10, 12-year design cycle, when who knows what faces you 20 years down the road?
Yeah, I mean, listen, we have a very robust process, from basic discovering technology to taking it all the way through development. As I said, it's a 10-12-year process. We spend a lot of time. We have a very large regulatory group that really focuses on, okay, here we are today, what is the environment going to look like? How much influence will Europe's policies have in Latin America or North America? And the one assumption that you have is, the market is gonna get more stringent in terms of the technologies that can be used. That is a strategic advantage to a company like FMC, because all the technologies are getting taken off the market, and they're losing their registrations. You have to remove the pests. If you don't remove the pests, your yields go down, and we won't be in a great food security situation.
So that, to us, is a great opportunity. Yes, it's a large investment. You have to de-risk it as much as you possibly can, but you know that pest pressure will be there. But the regulatory environment is so critical, and it, it really is a differentiator if you can understand that well. There are technologies that we've discovered that we will not take further, because when we go through our work, we see, yes, they may, they may do a great job over here in controlling the pest, but in ten years' time, when we bring it to market, the regulatory environment won't allow it to come to market. So we're actually, we have technologies that we're not developing because we know that's gonna happen.
Okay, we're gonna stay on the theme of challenges here for your business 'cause I'm getting questions. So first, back to this default question now on... So this question, as worded, is: Much of the U.S., much of the U.S. pesticide portfolio is under legal assault from activists. How is FMC positioned for this?
Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't characterize that as true. It's a good question, but it's not a true question. There is only, I think, two molecules out of the whole spectrum that are under legal precedent with the FDA. Everything else goes through such a stringent process, that they're used every day, they're constantly being checked. I don't see that as an issue for the industry as a whole. I really don't. You have to use something. You're going to use the most environmentally friendly, the most safest, the lowest dose, the most targeted products. Those are the new products. That's the growth algorithm. Those older products are going away, rightly so. The new ones that are replacing them are much more enhanced from a sustainability and safety perspective.
So obviously, what's been topical, at least academically and conceptually, for a lot of years has been Deere, precision ag, See & Spray. It really seems like it's dragging on, and it hasn't really been overly commercialized really. That was always a big threat for pesticides, crop protection chems, right? Because, oh, well, you'll get to use... You'll be able to reduce your crop chems use by 80% in the early part of the season, and maybe half the rest of the season. And maybe talk about that, and, and, and, you know, is that a challenge to your business?
Yeah, and listen, precision agriculture, as it's more broadly known, is absolutely here to stay. But you have to remember, what does that actually mean? See & Spray is something that's talked about a lot. There may well be herbicide opportunities where you can reduce the amount of herbicides, but trust me, you're not gonna see & spray insects. They move a lot. So for us, 55% of our portfolio today is insecticides. Yes, there may be impacts on herbicides if you're broadcasting herbicides, but yet to be proven on a large scale. Fungicides are the same. Fungus spreads across a whole field so quickly, you can't see and spray. You see it, you have to spray. So I think there'll be applications that will be potentially impacted, there'll be others that are not impacted. Now, precision agriculture means many different things.
It doesn't just mean see and spray. We use precision ag. We have what's called Arc farm intelligence. It's a predictive model for insect pressure. That allows the growers to spray exactly when they need to, to get the most impact and at the most opportune time. That means they can reduce the amount of sprays. That's good business at the end of the day, it's sustainable business. So there are many different aspects to this. Some will be positive, some will be negative.
I forget the exact terminology, but there's, like, brown on brown and green on brown or brown on green, where it's hard, it's easy to see a weed in the dirt, but it's hard to see things when everything's the same color. So, I mean, it's not a perfect... It's not at all a perfect science.
No, it's not, but it's developing rapidly. And what's interesting is the technologies are coming from different industries and being aggregated for agriculture. Whether it's satellite imagery, whether it's sensing, all those things are coming together. There is definitely a place for it. I'm an advocate for it. I think if we can use less materials to the same effect... People think about volume. It's not volume, it's value. How much value do you to bring to the grower? If you're using a different technology to get the same result, there's a value to that, and you will be able to get that value from the grower.
Does that mean you're selling a more concentrated version of something, and-
Could be
... getting the same value per acre, or how do you look at it?
We have a technology that's called 3RIVE . When you plant a seed, you also can put down in-ground insecticides. Usually, that's done in a liquid form, so you're carrying a lot of water across a field, you're using a lot of fuel, there's a lot of compaction of the soil. Our scientists created what is essentially a shaving foam, which goes in the furrow as you're planting the seed. We're using 99% less active ingredient and capturing the same value. That's the idea that's out there.
Okay, so another question that's sort of on this line of: What does this mean for crop chems? What does gene editing mean for crop chems?
So gene editing is another form of modifying a seed to give you a an output that benefits either yield or protection against chemicals. If you look at the introduction of GMO and the growth of the crop protection industry, there was a small lag period when GMO was first introduced, and then Mother Nature develops resistance, and off we go. You absolutely need chemistry, as well as all the other methodologies that you can use, whether it's gene editing, whatever it is. You absolutely need chemistry. You're always going to need it. You can't do the gene editing fast enough to stop Mother Nature building resistance. You need to enhance that with chemistry, whether it's biological chemistry or synthetic chemistry.
... Can we talk a little about capital allocation. Up for sale is your GSS specialties business. Give an update on that.
Sure. So our Global Specialty Solutions business, which utilizes many of the same active ingredients we use in our crop business, but for purposes that are not agricultural. Think home pest control, institutional use, turf and ornamental kind of use, golf courses, et cetera. That business, we've put out to sale, it's about $150 million in revenue. We've gone through the first round. We've had very strong interest from both strategics and financial sponsors. We're now moving into a second round with a smaller group, and still moving towards what we expect to be a close at some point in the second half of this year.
From a capital allocation perspective, you know, any proceeds from that transaction will be used to pay down debt, as we try to get our leverage back to more normal levels. So that, you know, clearly, you know, both free cash flow above and beyond what's needed to fund the dividend, and any proceeds from divestitures this year will be reserved for debt reduction.
Then, you know, you've paused the buyback for a little bit, as you paid down debt and talk about, like, under what conditions would have to occur for FMC to resume share purchases?
Yeah.
Can this happen in 2025?
I think 2025 will be a challenge. It's possible by the end of the year, but it'll be a challenge. I think more 2026. Look, I think our leverage right now, we're at 5x net, at the, at March 31st. Our targeted leverage on a, on our rolling four quarter average basis is 2x. So we've got some work to do. Now, we've had a major retrenchment in EBITDA with this global channel inventory reset. We do expect to grow back out of that. It's a big lever, and getting leverage back to where it should be. And as I described, you know, free cash flow that we generate organically above what we need to fund the dividend, and any divestment proceeds are also gonna be used for de-leveraging.
So it'll take well into 2025 and into late 2025 to get leverage back closer to target. At that point, once we're at target leverage, we can start having that conversation about buybacks. I will say, just philosophically, if you look at our history, you know, we've existed in this configuration as a company since about the beginning of 2018. We've been very balanced between returning cash to shareholders through buybacks and through a growing dividend. You know, at this point in time, right now, we need to get the balance sheet back in line with the current size and profitability of the business. But over the long term, the philosophy remains, you know, have that balanced return of capital to shareholders through both the dividend and through ongoing share purchases.
But first and foremost, we gotta get the balance sheet leverage to the right place.
A couple minutes left. You know, 2023 was not... It was, it was a tough, challenging year for, for the industry and for FMC. Things have stabilized, things are going back to growth. Maybe talk about, you know, what are investors getting wrong on FMC right now?
I think just the general market is a backdrop that doesn't play well, and I think, I think the diamides discussion is hanging out there. It's kind of a show me story, I believe, on the diamides, certainly. You know, when we bought the asset, we were starting to get questions around: Can you grow it? We doubled it in five years, so yes, we can. I think it's now show me as you go through the next five years, what does that growth algorithm look like for the diamides? I don't think the technology is being valued. I really don't, and I think people are missing a trick here. And we'll, we'll prove that as we go through 2025 and 2026. As we head into the rest of the decade, you'll see the value of that technology in the growth and the margins.
Don't forget, we have one of the highest margins in the industry. We have great return on invested capital. Those are the backdrop that I think is getting missed to this company.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. Thanks.