We will do our next session here. It is with FMC, of course, PurePlay Crop Protection Chemicals Producer. Happy to have with us today the CFO, Andrew Sandifer, and Pierre Brondeau, CEO. We had a nice dinner last night with a lot of investors, so we are going to pick up the conversation today. If you want to ask any questions, again, submit on the app. Maybe, Pierre, Andrew, we could start off by, you know, you have labeled this year as kind of a reset year, the first half year being a reset. Talk about how the reset is going, you know, almost 5, 6 months into the year.
Yeah, thanks, Joel. We're on track. We're exactly, if not slightly ahead, of where we wanted to be. The.
Sorry.
The discussion.
Sorry. Excuse me. Hi. Hi. Sorry. Thank you very much.
We are where we wanted to be. We are really on plan for Q1 and for Q2. I think the reset, 1 part of the reset, was putting the inventory of FMC product below where it has been in the past. I would like to say, except India, which is a problem for most companies, we are exactly where we want to be. I believe we will be, as we said in February, at the start of Q3, in a position to deploy a growth strategy for the second half of the year, which is critical to deliver the year. We'll be in a very good position.
Okay. Now, let's talk about what you did to get to the reset. You have done some tougher choices in our next period to get ready for some moves in that molecule. You're getting ready for a new sales team to, well, you've launched a sales team, but to really start hitting product sales into Q3. Maybe talk about some of those moves.
Yeah. I think at this stage, if I would define what we have to do for the company to be fully back on track, there is delivering the growth in Q2, Q3, Q4, which is driven entirely. We have not in the plan forecasted any natural growth of the market or change in demand. It is driving growth through new technology, mostly the 2 new products we have introduced on the market last year, which are Fluindapyr, which is a fungicide, and Isoflex, which is an herbicide. Both of those products are impacting Q2 because they are mostly impacting part of Europe for cereals, which is a Q3 event. Most of the registrations we have for Fluindapyr are in North America and in Brazil, which is an H2. That is number 1, growth of new technology, completely on par right now with what we're expecting to do.
I said it. If we miss a number for new technology, it will be on the high side. Right now, lots of the time we are spending is more making sure we're accelerating capacity because the demand is stronger than what we're expecting. That piece is working well. Piece number 2 is, as we've said, Brazil is basically 4 large markets: the co-ops, the retailers, the sugarcane and cotton farms, and the row crops large farm. The last one, we've never been able to penetrate because we needed to have a full product line to participate in this market. We had multiple discussions with them. We have a full product line with a new product. We have a new fungicide, which will be one of the best on the market, if not the best.
We'll have 3 new herbicides, including 2 with new mode of action and a regular insecticide. We have, at this stage, structured the sales organization. We have hired the people. All the people we've hired are coming from the regions and have worked with the customers we are targeting. They have all been trained, and the contacts are being established with the farmers in that segment. We are ready for action in Q3 for that. That's the second part of the growth to deliver Q3, Q4. If we deliver, and I believe we're in a very strong place to deliver, we will deliver the H2 numbers. We understand there is a, it's a big number compared to the first half of the year, but the first half was focusing on resetting the company. For H2, those are the 2 main factors. You talk about Rynaxypyr.
Rynaxypyr is mostly the strategy we're putting in place right now, is mostly a 2026 impact. 3 aspects to the strategy. Number 1, reducing dramatically the manufacturing cost. We are there. Right now, we are within shooting distance of the quality generics. We will be at the beginning of 2026 on par with the high-quality generics for manufacturing cost. What does it do? It allows us to defend a position on what we call a simple solo Rynaxypyr molecule and to expand the solo molecules into other markets, other insecticide markets. To grow the volume at a lower price, but much larger volume, and at the same time develop new technology. We have 3 products today we're putting on the market, and we have 3 more registrations. That would be a total of 6 products by next year.
The Rynaxypyr strategy is really we are gearing up to be ready at very early 2026.
Okay. Let's dive into all those throughout the next half an hour or so. Let's talk about Brazil. You put together a sales team pretty quickly. Talk about why you could do that so quickly.
I think we are benefiting from, that's the only good side about the situation we are facing today in the agriculture world, is that there is not a lot of companies which are doing very well. Most of the companies have been going through restructuring. A number of people are available on the market. Many companies have been downsizing in multiple big markets. Plus, there is the fact that we are doing something new. There are very few companies today which are building a new part of the organization, targeting growth from scratch. That's what we're doing. That's a challenge which is attracting a lot of salespeople and agronomists. We were able in about 3 months to 4 months to build that organization.
Now, I also want to, it was not as quick as it might seem because we talked about it at the February earnings call, but we started that process in November, December 2024. It is not like we started when we announced it. We were already in the process when we announced it. We started in November, and now by the end of, by now, the team is trained and is already in contact with the farmers.
What is like a selling pitch? Your new salesperson, he knows his customer. Now he's got a new jersey on. What is his sales pitch? What is his or her sales pitch?
The first selling pitch is new technology. The opening statement and what made those farmers contact us as much as we are contacting them was the launch of Fluindapyr. We believe it is a product right now. It's going to be one of the fungicides on the market, which has the widest spectrum, which is very important for row crops because the problem with fungus and controlling fungus and fungus keeps on coming back in a different form. This one has a very broad spectrum. That's the opening pitch. The 2nd one is once we have that, we have 3 new herbicides we're putting on the market, and then we have the rest of the portfolio. We are pretty much qualifying as a full product line supplier with a star product, which is a fungicide, which is very critical to those farmers.
Okay. You are targeting, like you said, the large farms, not the mega farms. Talk a bit about why mega farms are sort of off the table.
They're not off the table. I should have said that. If you think about the market, as I said, the big segments, there is what we call the mega farms, which are very often 100,000 hectares and more. Those are doing usually sugarcane. They are doing cotton. And as a rotation, they also do corn and soybean. We are selling, and we've sold for decades to these farms. It's one of the big markets today. If you exclude the new market we're going after, the row crops, the large farm, we are selling 40% of our sales are direct to farmers, and those are the mega farm. We're going to carry on selling to the mega farm and the co-ops and the retailers. That is not changing. The new market is now, because of the new technology, we have been invited by the large farm.
What we call large farm is 10,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares. You can only go into those farms. They cannot afford to have 8 suppliers. They need a limited number of suppliers which have a full product line. We did not qualify until this year. We do now, and that is the new segment. We know how to sell to corn producers and soybean producers. We are doing it with the mega farm, but we are going to apply this model now to the large farm. That is why it is not a big stretch. We have sold direct. We have sold into corn. We have sold into soybean. It is just a new segment.
Just staying in Brazil now, generally, talk about the level of generic pressure you're seeing in Brazil. Is it the same as always? Is it different? I'm not talking about next year, which, you know, more generally.
Yeah, it's there. It's always difficult to qualify if it's more or less. There is price pressure. It's not lower than it's been in the past, but it's not dramatically different than what it was in the past. I think the numbers will prove at the end of the year. We very often talk about price pressure, but if you look over the last 5, 6 years, the percentage of sales, whether it's in Brazil or worldwide, which belongs to generic versus tech companies, is about balanced. Let's not forget also that tech companies like us, we sell generic products. We manufacture them at a generic price. We are selling sulfentrazone, clomazone, bifenthrin. Those are the products generics are selling. There is price pressure. We can't deny it. I think we are forecasting in the second half, low single digits.
Single digit.
That's a kind of numbers for next year, which is not that different from the past in a low demand market. Rynaxypyr is a different story. That's why we need a brand new strategy going into 2026. We don't need it now because we are protected by patents in all of the large markets, except China and India. That's going to be a different story.
If we talk about next year a bit more, just sticking in Brazil, there was a question. We had a dinner last night, and 1 of the questions was talking about how, you know, receivables have been a bit higher than normal. Andrew, could you talk to, you know, how long it may take for receivables to come down to normal levels?
Sure. I think, look, we do have elevated receivables versus our own history. I think it's a difficult thing to compare across companies because the country and crop mix are so different among the different players. I think when we look at what's going on in our receivables, 1, it's the hangover from the deceleration in sales from the peak in 2022. It takes a couple of seasons for that to really resettle. Second, I think most importantly, it's a country mix thing. When we think about, particularly in a year like this year, where in the first half we're taking very strong action to reset channel inventory by not selling into the channel, that's in a lot of countries where we have structurally shorter terms. In the second half of the year, we're going to have pretty significant growth, both top line and bottom line.
A lot of that growth is tilted towards countries like Brazil, which have structurally longer terms. There is a big country mix element that is keeping it elevated right now. I think as we get back into a more normal rhythm in 2026 and 2027, you know, after we do not have this first half significant correction that we are going through right now in 2025, you will see some normalization there. I would just add, you know, 1 last comment just on working capital in general. I think working capital is an important part of the asset base for a crop chemical company. Now, crop chemistry is not big, heavy chemical production. We are very asset light. You know, the CapEx load is very, very low in our business, but we do consume working cash for working capital when we grow.
As we renew to grow, there will be some use of cash for working capital, but we'll get it back into a more normal balance than what you've seen in the last 2 years over the 2026 and 2027 horizon.
Just on the second half, you know, some of your competitors are talking about, you know, everything's great, but the 1 risk they see are crop protection chemical pricing pressures, potentially the second half of the year. I know tariffs are up or down every hour. I don't know where they are now, but, you know, they change. When you think about making that big second half number, the columns you have, you know, where do you weigh in the risk on more pricing pressure in general, tariffs, you know, as you play around with, you know, the thoughts, the numbers?
Tariffs, we've put that in our forecast, and we've put in our forecast with the pre-90 days truth period. At the 145%. Now, tariffs are important, but they are not that significant for a company like ours because a lot of the manufacturing which takes place in the U.S. is done with products which have to come from China. It would be detrimental to manufacturing in the U.S. if those products would have full tariffs. You see many exemptions in the Annex II list for most of our products. We are expecting a $15 million headwind, which is fully baked in our forecast, and that's on the worst-case scenario. We do not believe it's going to derail what we have in mind right now for H2.
Pricing, low single digit, we believe is in line with pretty much what the industry is saying, what our customers are expecting. Now, the big benefit for us is, to give you a sense of the numbers, correct me if I'm wrong, in H2, I think we have about $150 million of growth.
Revenue growth.
About $150 million of sales growth. Out of this $150 million of sales growth, $110 million are new technologies. So new products which are put on the market on which you do not have price pressure because there is no competing product. On the growth side, we're not expecting any price pressure. The level of confidence is pretty high that what we have baked into our H2 forecast is quite achievable.
Okay. Let's talk about next year. The game changes on January 1, 2026, right? Tell me how the game changes. January 1, what happens?
January 1st, there is no process patent, composition of matter patent, or data protection. Pretty much in every part of the world, any generic company capable of manufacturing Rynaxypyr will be authorized to sell the product. How do we deal with a situation like that? What was absolutely critical for us over the last year was to bring a manufacturing cost completely in line with the people we will be competing with, the generic. Now, there are 2 categories of generic. There is what we call the high-quality generic manufacturers who are able to make a product which works, and there is the low-level generics who are going to go after market we do not even participate in. Our objective is to be, from a cost standpoint, on par with the high-quality generic to be able to deploy a strategy without being limited by cost. We will be there.
The plan is in place. We're almost there by January 1. That will be done. Once you have that, you have to deploy a strategy which is based on, it's a 2-pronged strategy. One is what we call the single molecule. It's going to be using price to be on par with generic plus premium because we have a brand. A brand has a value. We don't need to be at the exact same price because there is quality. People know our product. Plus, we provide, compared to generic, a service to the customers with agronomist and tech service. The target here with the single solo molecule is to protect our position today and expand into other places where people would rather buy Rynaxypyr than other insecticide, but Rynaxypyr was too expensive before.
If you bring it to a price where you can compete, they will switch to Rynaxypyr. It is increasing the solo molecule market where we will be competing against generic at a lower price, but increase volume significantly. The other part of the strategy is developing new technologies which command a premium. Those technologies have different, there is different aspect to it. In some cases, Rynaxypyr is a great product, but has a very narrow spectrum. Very strong with caterpillar, which is the biggest issue. What you can do is, if you create the right mixture, you expand the spectrum, you limit the number of applications farmers have. That is part of the strategy. We have today 1 product like this, which is being sold this year. We are also creating high-concentration product. It is less cost for the farmer, easier to use.
Rice is a very big market for us. It's 25% of our sales. We have developed a tablet, a fervicin tablet, which is where the efficacy is very good for rice. Those are new products which are commanding premium. We have developed 3 other mixtures which are addressing resistance and increasing spectrum. We're going to get the registration in 2026. To tell you the speed at which high-end technology farmers are willing to switch to new technology, remember the discussion we had last night? We sell $800 million of Rynaxypyr in 2025. $200 million are contract with our partners who are supplying the cost plus the tech partners. $600 million Rynaxypyr we sell to the market, branded Rynaxypyr. Those 3 new products we've just introduced at the end of 2025 will represent $200 million-$250 million.
Of the $600 million, we brought 3 new molecules. Farmers know very well generics are coming. They know we're going to be lowering our price on the solo molecule. Nevertheless, to go to higher technology product, we have been able to convert already $250 million of those $600 million sales, which means the shift is taking place. That's a 2-pronged strategy we're going to go after.
In that, what your forecast has been is that Rynaxypyr sales, about $1 billion last year, about $800 million this year, like you said. I think you're talking about mid to high single digit growth, CAGR 2026, 2027 rate, so 8% or so every year after this year.
Correct.
The goal being to get you back to about $1 billion of sales in a few years. I think you said last night, Andrew, I think you said that the goal is to be at the same profitability level, I can't say it, profitability level on Rynaxypyr in dollars as you were in 2025.
Yeah. Let's be precise. We want profit dollars, right? Our 3 year plan, the February call, we laid out, you know, our outlook for 2027 where we think we can return sales to $5.2 billion and EBITDA to $1.2 billion for the company. Assumed in that plan are $0 of profit growth for Rynaxypyr. The strategy with Rynaxypyr as Pierre described is to drive higher volume, increase penetration into parts of the market where we don't play today with Rynaxypyr, to capture more value with new technology based on utilizing Rynaxypyr, doing both of those with a significantly lower cost position than what we've had historically. That'll allow us to grow sales with volume going up, price going down, but with cost significantly resetting, the balance between those 3 variables is flat profit dollars from Rynaxypyr.
Rynaxypyr is not a drag on the company's performance going forward, but it isn't the driver of where the growth from 2025 to 2027 is. That's really the growth portfolio, Isoflex and the 4 new active ingredients in our plant health business. But that's an essential assumption in our 3 year outlook.
I may have been wrong with this. We'll find out in the next 5 seconds. I thought you, so is the goal to be $27 Rynaxypyr per sale, same as 2024, $27 profit dollars from Rynaxypyr per sale as 2025?
So.
Right?
The math will work out roughly that same kind of place.
I know Pierre Brondeau's not Rynaxypyr. It's a tee-up.
Yeah. We didn't give a firm.
He always does that.
Yeah. We didn't give a firm number for Rynaxypyr in 2027, but the math will work. If you use that kind of high single-digit growth rate, it'll get it back to around 2024 levels.
Because what I was thinking was then, and it makes sense, on this 2027 Rynaxypyr sales being the same as 2024, but you're assuming a lower level of profitability on the same level of sales, which makes sense in a more generic world, right? Then I was trying to craft the numbers last night, but I got tired.
No, but that's an important comment you're making. Think about it. 27 sales, around 24 sales, earnings at the same level as 2025.
Yes.
Okay. 2025, 2026, 2027 earnings of Rynaxypyr. And going forward, the whole strategy is we do not want Rynaxypyr to handicap the earnings growth provided by the growth platform.
What I thought about that was, and I was trying to count the numbers as making a joke, was you're not assuming a massive amount of margin reduction in the new FMC and Nexpert reality.
No, because our cost will be much lower. Our cost will be much lower. It will not be a massive margin reduction, but the cost being lower, it will impact the overall dollar at the level of earnings.
The question I have for you is, it's got to be difficult to know what the Chinese production cost is going to be for Rynaxypyr here. And then you've got to kind of plan around that, or you're going to find out next year and the year after. How do you think about that?
You're right. We just don't know exactly how the Chinese generic company calculate their cost, what is in, what is out, how it's done. We know some companies we call the high-quality generics who are a bit more transparent around their costing. We also know very well the process to manufacture Rynaxypyr and the shortcut you can take. We have a pretty good idea of the number we should reach to be on par with the high-quality generics. That's the kind of number we are getting at. It is not a very rigorous comparison because we do not have all the information we need to understand the costing process generics are taking.
Don't you get worried that Chinese producers of anything get smarter and smarter and the bar could go lower?
The molecule Rynaxypyr, like it's even worse for sales, Rynaxypyr, are complex molecules to make. Nobody knows that process better than us because we've made that for 20 years. To go much lower, as smart as the engineers or process engineers might be, you would have to take some shortcuts, which will be detrimental to the quality of the product. There is no doubt. We have a very large organization right now, which is working on process. That's all they have done all year to take us to what we call high-quality generic costing. To go below that, they are going to be impacting the quality of the product, which might be okay for some market segments, the very low-end insecticide, but we don't play in this market. That's not where we're going to go in the expansion of our Rynaxypyr.
Okay. You've talked about Fluindapyr. Let's talk about some of the other opportunities that, you know, you're excited about, quadrupling sales of some of your new AIs over the next 4 years, a few years. Isoflex, Dodelex, talk about what's the excitement around some of the new AIs.
Yeah. First, fluindapyr is, it's been tested by our customers. We doubled sales this year versus last year. Fluindapyr and Isoflex, we're targeting about $250 million this year, which is twice what it was last year. We will be there. I can say it in a pretty certain way. We will be there this year, except that the demand is starting to go beyond what we're expecting. So we are accelerating capacity right now because the demand is strong. Fluindapyr, the product has a quality in its spectrum. It's one of the fungicides you're going to find on the market with the largest spectrum. There is a lot of excitement around this product. Isoflex, same thing. It's a product mostly, it's going to take off faster mostly in Europe, very, very strong besides for cereals application.
I can't tell you to a side comment, but I was last week with the head of Europe, who told me Isoflex will be bigger for Europe than the diamides were. It's going to be a very big product. The last 2, Dodelex, is coming next year. Initially, it was developed as an herbicide for rice. It's proving to be a very strong herbicide for multiple application. What is very important with this product, it's a new mode of action, which means nature has never seen a product. The last herbicide which was introduced with a new mode of action was 30 years ago. From an efficacy of the product, it's going to be very strong. We are introducing that second half of next year.
Some early stage introductions in the second half next year.
Second half of next year.
More significant commercialization in 2027.
This one, and then the last one, Remisoxafen, is another herbicide, also broad application. This one has a dual new mode of action. Also increasing the spectrum and something for which resistance doesn't exist. Those 4 AIs, listen, I never had a situation with the introduction of 4 new products of that quality in such a short period of time.
Joel, if I could just add just some proportions for everyone's benefit. The diamides at their peak were about $2 billion in sales. Those 4 active ingredients each have a peak sales potential between $400 million and $600 million. In fact, might be a bit higher for a couple of them. And what we're learning now as we're rapidly commercializing them. The 4 of them combined are significantly larger than the diamides were at their peak.
You signed recently a new partnership with Bayer for Isoflex.
Sorry?
Didn't you sign a partnership with Bayer for Isoflex?
Yes, we did.
Talk about that.
Yes, we did. It's something we often do in the industry. I'm certain we're going to sign more. I'm also certain we're going to sign a series for also fluindapyr. You sign this type of contract for companies which recognize the value of the product and want to apply it in the foreign market. Very often also, we sign those partnerships with seeds companies who want to use the product as part of their seeds program. That's where most of our partnerships are. Those are signing with companies which see the benefit of the product, but it's to be applied on hectares where we don't participate. Those are going to be critical. I would expect, looking at the quality of the product, that they're going to be more than the one with Bayer announced in the next few months.
How do you, like, you have got some big growth plans too for pheromones and biologicals. Is it just my conjecture? I just feel like you talk about the other things more than pheromones and biologicals. How do you feel about it? How did you feel about it versus what you felt about it a year ago?
2 different things. Biologicals, we talk about the growth of biologicals, and biological is growing double digit above 20%. Certainty around that growth. We have multiple products. We have multiple technologies. They are most of the time used in conjunction with chemicals. It is a couple of our plant health business, a couple of hundred million dollar business. This one, I could talk about it with the same certainty as the way we talked about the 4 AIs. Pheromones, we are a bit more careful because it is a very new way of dealing with insects, insect control. We are having a first sale of pheromones in the third quarter this year in Brazil with application in the fourth quarter. We need this full-scale application to be confirmed that the technology works. If it does, it could be very big.
We don't want to talk about it because we don't know yet.
Old Monsanto term, groundbreaker. It's like a ground breaker's year for pheromones.
Absolutely. We were forbidden to put a single dollar in the 3 year plan from pheromones until.
By Andrew?
By Andrew, yeah. Until that test in Brazil or that sale in Brazil is seen. I would say that by the fourth quarter, certainly by the earnings call in February for the fourth quarter, we'll have a very good sense of the performance of pheromones and what it could represent for the company.
Was there like something in the lab or some field trials in the last year or 2 that made you say, "Maybe it's pretty crazy new technology if people understand the background of it." Is it something that happened in the last year or 2 in the background that made you a little less excited?
No. We are very, very excited. Every test we've made worked. We are just more concerned about when you do that on experimental farms, which are our farm. They are not of the size and the magnitude of the kind of farms we are dealing with in Brazil. To do it in a very controlled environment, we know technically it works. Does it work on a full-scale field is what we need to verify.
Okay, Pierre, so when you retired from FMC, the stock price was a little bit higher. Things haven't gone so well for the company over the next following few years. You made the decision last year to come back. That must have been a very interesting decision for you. Maybe talk about that decision and also what has been the most challenging thing that maybe you didn't anticipate a year ago and what's been maybe the easiest thing you didn't anticipate.
I think I came back because after talking with the board, talking with members of the management team, I believed we could define a roadmap to take the company back where it was. We had the tools to do it. Now, I have to say, and I have to be very honest, when I came back, July, August, even September, I thought about a soft landing approach was possible. When I got to November and I looked at the issues around new technology and the launch, when I looked at Rynaxypyr costing, when I looked at specific inventory issues we had in the channel beyond the industry, I felt like the situation was a bit more complex. That is where we made a decision to go to a full reset of the company.
We knew we were taking 2 quarters, which would be painful for us operationally and for our investors. We believe we have a roadmap. I believe that by the time we get to the earnings call for Q2, we're going to demonstrate that we have a plan which is solid for the second half. By the time we get to the November earnings call for Q3, we should be able to focus on 2 of the key elements of our strategy. That is a growth platform, fluindapyr and Isoflex. That is the new route to market in Brazil. That should give us some very strong level of confidence and give level of confidence to our investors by the time we get to November around the second half of the year.
It should also give us enough confidence knowing that by that time, we'll have full certainty on the Rynaxypyr cost above the 2026 number. By November, I would love to be able to talk about growth of new product, new route to market, and start to give a pretty detailed view of what 2026 EBITDA could look like, which would allow, if we do that well, to focus at the February call for Q4 to focus on the Rynaxypyr story for 2026 and 2027 and the 3 year plan. We have the tools. That's why I decided to come back. It was a matter of resetting the company and then taking advantage of what we have. I think we have more new technology than many of our competitors today.
It's a matter of structuring the company and putting it back at a place where we can benefit from all of that.
Thanks, Pierre. Thanks, Andrew.
Thanks, Joel.
Thank you, Joel.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.