Great. Good morning, everybody, and welcome back. Now we have on stage FMC. It's my pleasure to introduce Senior Management. FMC is one of the world's leading crop protection companies, with a diversified portfolio serving all crops in all regions across the globe. With me today is Pierre Brondeau, Chairman and CEO, Ronaldo Pereira, President, and Andrew Sandifer, CFO. Welcome, gentlemen.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here. Pierre, maybe we can start off with a bit of history. It was basically a year ago at this conference where the decision was made for you to return as CEO. Curious, just what motivated you to come back? It's obviously been a very challenging couple of years in the industry. What do you think you can improve, and what do you want to accomplish, I guess, as you're here in your time as CEO?
Yeah, the motivation to come back is, first of all, obviously I care about the company. I've been there for a while, and I have a deep trust in the ability of this company to get back to the kind of growth in terms of revenue growth and earnings growth that we had in the past. I also believe we have maybe the strongest potential portfolio this company ever had over my entire time with the company. Looking at what the company could be at the time the board asked me to come back was enough of a motivation, because we have all of the ingredients we need to get back and get back quickly to this kind of performance.
I have to say that in terms of coming back and where I feel the biggest, the most important period since I've been back, for me, has been Q1 and Q2 this year. I think it's when we decided with the team in the fourth quarter last year, looking at the situation in depth, really understanding where we were and looking at the potential. We thought we have too good of a portfolio. We have too good of an opportunity for growth to not reset the company over the first two quarters, to be able to apply the strategy we're going to put in place without having any constraints. I think those six months from, call it December to, or seven months December to June are maybe the most important period since I've been back as a CEO in terms of preparing the company for the future.
Got it. Maybe we start there, I guess, in terms of what you're seeing so far in the second quarter. How are trends on the inventory side within your channel, within the industry? You gave guidance for the second quarter. Where are we trending within that guidance?
Let me first start with the end on the guidance. I think we are comfortable with the guidance. Obviously, there is always a couple of weeks to go in June, but we are comfortable with the guidance for Q2. The planting conditions are normal. The demand is normal, so we have no issue. I'd like to be very clear: Q1 and Q2 are more important in terms of reset than the guidance. As I said, we're comfortable with the guidance. That is not the problem. The things we were and we are watching is, are we delivering what we were set to deliver when we declare we are resetting the company in the first six months of the year to be prepared for the second half?
What I can tell you is I could not expect to be in a better place than where we are right now. At the end of the second quarter, our inventory level will be exactly or better than where we wanted that to be. The channel will be clean with our product, and it will not be a handicap going into Q3 and into Q4. I would say I would put a little except India. India is still an issue overall, but it is an industry problem, number one. Number two, I think we have done a lot of work in establishing strategy for all of our core and growth platform, and Ronaldo had a process in place to make sure that those strategies would be then defined for each country, each region, each subregion, each country as an actual level strategy.
All of that is currently in place for the entire company. For the second half of the year, you remember we are penetrating a new market segment in Brazil, which we've never been able to penetrate, and we can do that because of the new product we have. Salesforce has been hired. Those salespeople, agronomists, tech service people know those customers. They have been trained, and the organization is in place, and the commercial discussions have started to take place. Finally, we did a lot of restructuring. We changed a large part of the leadership of the corporation. If I look at the commercial leadership, the regional presidents, we have four out of five who are in new positions to lead the regions. We have changed the organization. We used to have four regions.
We went to five regions because we wanted to break down Latin America into Brazil and Latin America, because we believe Brazil is big enough of a market that it deserves its own focus. We get to the end of Q2 with all of that in place. I can tell you that beyond the guidance, we are where we want to be exactly to go to the next phase of the company, which is revenue growth and earnings growth, as we committed to for the second half of the year.
Got it. Maybe in terms of industry dynamics, we've had a lot of competitive price pressure to start the year. How is that trending so far, and how do you expect that? Where do you expect that inflection point, I guess, in the second half?
I think there is price pressure. Let's not negate that. However, it's not as dramatic as the numbers are showing. If I take our case, first of all, there are two drivers for FMC in terms of price. One is a contract with our partners where we have to link sales or price to them to our manufacturing cost. The Rynaxypyr cost decrease, manufacturing cost decrease, has a big impact on our price. It's about half in the first quarter of the price. Now, there is pricing pressure, but there is no big change in the pricing sequentially from Q4 to Q1, Q1 to Q2. The issue is we are comparing year- on- year to very high prices, which are still on the back of 2022- 2023 being periods with very high pricing post-inflation. Yes, there is price pressure, but nothing dramatic.
For the second half, we are watching the low single digits.
For the second half, low to mid-single digits.
What's that?
Low to mid-single digits.
Low to mid-single digits for the second half, knowing that we have these partner sales which are negatively impacting. It is more a year-on-year comparison than a sequential situation.
Okay. Got it. Maybe we can turn to the recent announcements, I guess, in terms of news release from yourself. Number of collaborations, one with Corteva, one with Bayer. How did these come about? Maybe if you could talk about maybe some of the economics and what strategically, how does this benefit you, and how do you see this sort of growing going forward?
Several things. The most important is certainly the one with Corteva and the fluindapyr based. It's a good agreement because, first of all, we like to work with Corteva. We do have more complementary strategies, knowing that it's a seeds-focused company. We are solely crop chemicals. It's a reliable company. When we do a marketing plan and a forecast, we don't include a lot of penetration of crop protection products into corn and soybean, which belongs to Corteva. It's additional to what we had in our marketing plan. There is very little competitive overlap between the two companies because they do work around their seeds. It's a very important contract because, first of all, fluindapyr, we believe, is an excellent fungicide, and there is nothing like a third-party validation by a company of the quality of Corteva. That's number one.
Second of all, the volume could be very significant because it's a big corn and soybean company and mostly additional. Third of all, the economics. What do we sell to Corteva? We sell them a three-way mixture, which is equivalent to the one we are commercializing in North America. It's a North America contract. We're selling them, obviously, at a lower gross margin than what we sell in the market. Because we do not have any SANR expenses, because they are the ones selling the product, it is the EBITDA level as a % of revenues is the same as the rest of the portfolio. There is no dilution through these sales at the EBITDA level. Very positive contracts. We like it, and I think it's going to significantly speed up the growth of this product.
Great. In terms of the deal structure, do you get any licensing through revenue, or is this you basically sell them the product and they formulate it? As much as they can sell, you offer them.
We do all of the work around the product. We sell them the product, and they resell the product. They can explain. We do the formulation. We do.
It's a finished product. We sell a finished product, and they will commercialize that with their brand. It's not that we're selling one active ingredient, and then they have some other developments there. It's the product that we developed, branded for Corteva. Exclusively for Corteva, that brand.
Okay. Got it. I guess, this deal, would you look at this as a template for future collaborations, or how should we think about this, maybe bigger picture for future active ingredients?
With Corteva, we like to partner with them. We like the model where we sell a formulated product. Certainly, if this type of cooperation would be to be expanded, we would be certainly positive about it. Could we think about the same type of cooperation with obviously different formulations because they do have the exclusivity on this one with other companies? It's possible. It would not be with all of the companies. I think we have to be selective with the partners with whom we are working. We just can't give this molecule to everybody. Yes, we are open to cooperations. If there are companies which, like Corteva, do not create a very high competitive situation where we are giving a product to a competitor who then competes with us with the same product in the same market, that has to be taken into account.
It's going to be on a case-by-case basis.
Okay. Got it. Last question on this in terms of how this impacts guidance. Obviously, the deal with Corteva starts 2026 is when they start to sell the product. Any impact on 2025 in terms of maybe potentially speeding up sort of the acceleration of adoption among farmers? How do you think about that?
In terms of guidance, there are two questions. One is, I suppose the second part of your question connects to the first one. Are we going to change the guidance because we're going to be selling to Corteva? Listen, no respect to everybody. We've been told for six months that we are crazy with our H2 guidance, that it was too high. I am not going to start to think about increasing that guidance. I commit with the team. We have committed to a number. We say $910 million, so we're going to stay with this number. We believe it's highly achievable. We are highly confident in our H2 delivery, but we're not going to try to finesse around this number. $910 million is the number we are committed to. Yes, yes, the Corteva deal will impact sales of fluindapyr positively, most likely in the fourth quarter.
They were not in our forecast. It's the first year. I think the ramp-up is really starting to come in year two. We just signed the contract. Yes, there will be some impact of sales of fluindapyr. We believe there is a possibility that the new technology, fluindapyr and Isoflex, the target sales of $250 million for this year, coming from $130 million last year, might be underestimated. We might see a bigger number when we get to the end, depending upon how big we grow in Brazil with a new route to market.
Got it. Maybe take a bigger picture look at it. You talked about the four active ingredients that are going to drive growth and offsetting. Maybe revisit sort of where we are on the diamide side, where you have a patent rolling off. You talked in the past about the strategy of maintaining margins by cutting costs. How is that going on the?
Let me try to, if you don't mind.
Yeah.
What I'd like to do about Rynaxypyr, I'm not going to talk about the strategy because I've talked about it 200 times. It hasn't changed. Let me try to size what it is, put things in perspective around Rynaxypyr. Today, we sell $800 million of Rynaxypyr in 2025. That's the forecast. Of these $800 million, $200 million are to partners with whom we have contract until the end of the decade, into the beginning of next decade. So those sales, those $200 million sales, do not go away. So we're down to $600 million sales of branded products. As I said before, of those $600 million sales, we have already converted $250 million to new technologies, mixtures, high concentration, and now we're launching the tablets. So those conversions have taken place because farmers wanted the performance of the product.
Now we are down $600 million less $250 million. We're down to $350 million of solo molecule sales. Now, think about $350 million, and I'm going to take a shortcut in the calculation, but about 35% of our sales are in a place where it's difficult to change to generics. Those are the high-cost crops like fruit, vegetable, tree nuts. There is very little quick substitution. It's 35% of $350 million, it's another $100 million. Really, what we have, which is exposed today to generic where we're going to have to fight to protect, is $250 million of Rynaxypyr sales. All right? Now, what do we have to protect $250 million? We have a manufacturing cost, which by 2026 will be competitive with generic manufacturing cost. We will be there, number one. Number two, we have technology.
Three products this year, three new products next year, addressing ease of use, resistance, and spectrum technology. Six new products. We know more than anybody else how those products behave because we have been selling those products for a long time. We have a strategy which is in place and which has been communicated to our entire sales organization, taking into account the new technology we have and the manufacturing cost we have. Finally, we have a brand. I want to go back to the incident which took place in China. I think when you buy from FMC and you buy an FMC brand, it is a very well-known brand. It is a quality brand. It has been sold for 20 years, and it is a guarantee of supply. We have all of those tools to protect $250 million and grow $250 million.
There is a lot of drama around Rynaxypyr . If you break it down, it is $250 million with a lot of tools to not only protect but grow. Obviously, we have to grow this knowing that price is going to go down, but our cost is going down too. Volume should increase with lower price. Our only objective we have, which does not seem to be a tall order with the way I broke down the sales, is to hold earnings 2025, 2026, 2027 at the same level. That is it. We believe it is not a stretch. It is a strategy which we should be able to put in place without much of a challenge.
Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. It clarifies a lot.
Sorry, just to add to what Pierre said, Rynaxypyr became the largest insecticide in the world, and it only accounts for 9% market share. The entire diamide group accounts for 9% market share. What also gets lost is the potential for expansion of this market once, one, we have other combinations, other products based on the diamides, primarily Rynaxypyr, and two, at a different price point that will come. We know that. At a different price point, there will be many more growers willing to use that type of technology. With only 9% willing to go for the top technology, that became the largest molecule. We do believe firmly that there is a lot of room for expansion there.
To complete the answer to your question, why do we feel good about H2? Why do we feel good about 2027? And why, as a CEO, I came back and feel good about the future of the company? What we have to protect is quite limited with lots of options to expand that franchise, Rynaxypyr. You put on the other side the new product we have, four new active ingredients for which demand keeps on being stronger than what we are expecting, third-party validation like the fluindapyr contract or the Isoflex contract in Germany with Bayer, our competitors like this product. Guess what? Our customers like it even more. We say those products could reach $2 billion. We could be underestimating not only the speed at which they will grow and the final sales at maturity.
We do have also an old suite of new product biologicals, and we still have Cyazypyr which is protected until 2028 or 2029. So a limited risk on Rynaxypyr and a very high number of new products in the market, which are growing very fast.
Got it. That definitely helps. Makes a lot of sense. One thing that we've seen in the industry, there's been a lot of questions around this plant explosion in China. You talked about it briefly, but maybe if you could just clarify, how do you see this impacting the industry? I mean, some producers use that as a source of an active ingredient. Do you think this impacts supply at all? Maybe it tightens supply among generics?
What seems to be at, well, first of all, as I'm sure you've seen, multiple announcements were made, and we're seeing it in the places where there is export of Rynaxypyr to some countries. Pricing of generic Rynaxypyr are going up very significantly. There are multiple reasons for that. Number one, the explosion took about 25% of the Chinese capacity out. It was one of the generic-producing products on the high side of the quality. It is taking 25% of the generic, but it is taking a very large part of the quality Rynaxypyr from generic. This plant is most likely shut down for a long time. Second of all, when such an issue happened, the Chinese government ran immediate audits on all of the producers of that molecule.
We had the pleasure to have them in our plant the day following the explosion, running an audit on our process, which they liked what we did. They know us. They very often use us as a reference in terms of process safety. They gave us a green light to carry on producing the same day in the evening. We never stopped operations. We also know that they are going around auditing all of the producers of CTPR generic in China. Could that result in further tightening of capacity because some of those processes could be seen as unsafe? It's very possible. We do not have this information. We just know the process is going on.
The third reason for which prices are going significantly up is, let's face the fact, manufacturers in China thought they could penetrate markets where they were not allowed to, like Brazil, like North America, like Europe. They produced more inventory than they could sell to the countries like China, India, Argentina, and Türkiye. They were sitting on enormous inventory. They had to convert into cash and sell at prices which were in those countries below their manufacturing cost. We are getting back to a place where they have gotten rid of all of those inventory. They are back to normal manufacturing. There is less capacity. There is audit. The consequence is, yes, it is creating a more stretched supply, and prices are significantly going up on the generic CTPR.
Great. Okay. Maybe if I could quickly ask in terms of just the overall outlook for the industry and demand, have you seen any impact on demand in any region specifically from tariffs or from any concerns about weaker crop prices? How is that trending so far?
Maybe you answered, Ronaldo. We've not seen a lot of change in demand because of tariffs.
No. No. Growers continue to plant. There was a lot of debate here in the U.S., but when it comes time to put seeds on the ground, what we're seeing is a very normal season in terms of planted area, in terms of level of investments. We haven't seen any dramatic change. There is a bit more corn than soybean in the U.S. because of commodity prices. It is not related to tariffs. This is just a normal cycle in the ag industry. Honestly, in overall representation for us, that swap, that delta from soybean to corn, it's not material either way. What we're seeing is growers committing to the same level of technology and planting around the same area. It's off from a good start, though.
The season in the northern hemisphere has started probably on the normal side, and this has not been the case in recent years. We like what we see. It's not exceptional, but it's normal. There's no big weather concern. In terms of planted areas, just regular business.
You know with what's been happening over the last few years, normal is good.
Normal is good. Yep.
Great. Maybe, Andrew, maybe we can shift over to the balance sheet and cash flow generation. You put out guidance for free cash flow for this year. How's that trending? I noticed you also put out some debt, and maybe you want to talk about how that impacts sort of leverage and that type of thing.
Sure. So just briefly, looking for cash flow in the $200 million-$400 million range this year, midpoint about $300 million. It's a bit lower than a long-term cash flow conversion for two reasons. One, we had a big rebound in working capital and outperformance last year with working capital and cash release from working capital as we came out of the 2023 correction. Second, part of the restructuring actions that we took to really just make a step change in our Rynaxypyr cost structure had some ongoing cash obligations with it that hit 2025- 2026 that depressed our conversion by about $40 million a year in terms of restructuring take or pay payments we had to make to break a supply contract. I do think as we look to 2026, we'll continue to trend in that 60%-70% conversion of earnings and free cash flow.
We'll get a little more granule as we get there. Working capital continues to be the key driver, and that's just endemic in our business. We're a fixed asset-light business, but we do need working capital, particularly to grow. To your second question, and certainly about two weeks ago, we completed a debt offering, a subordinated debt offering, often referred to as a hybrid debt offering, 30-year notes that the rating agencies, because of the long tenure of those notes and the structure of those notes, treat as quasi-equity. About 50% credit on rating agency metrics only on that being treated as equity. We sold $750 million in notes. It's only about $375 million of that gets treated as debt. It's debt neutral overall for us.
We used the proceeds from that transaction to pay off notes that were coming due in May of 2026, as well as to reduce commercial paper outstanding. It was an important step to show our continued commitment to an investment-grade credit rating. We've had metrics out of line with our rating for a couple of years. We did make a divestiture last year of a non-core business that helped us pay down some debt. This year, the step we could really take was to improve the debt mix to where that it improves our credit metrics. With two out of the three agencies, it actually puts us a year in and metrics back in line with our rating. Through 2026, we'll get back in line with our rating with the third agency.
A bit of an interest rate premium we acknowledge, but really the trade-off there was really protecting the investment-grade rating.
Great. Maybe, Pierre, you did a lot of significant cost cutting in 2024. Annual run rate, $165 million. We expect to increase that this year. Maybe talk about how that's going. Where are the other buckets for additional cost improvement?
I don't think that we are in a further cost-cutting process. I'll tell you why. First of all, if you look at the total cost tailwind, there were significant numbers for this year.
We'll be at a run rate of $250 million in savings versus 2023 at the end of this year.
Frankly, now that that is done in place, I'm shifting my mind. I think I'm looking at growth. We do have a product portfolio today, which is proving to become stronger and stronger, which is allowing us to penetrate markets we were not able to penetrate. What we're doing in Brazil could be a model for what we do in other places. If you would ask me, protecting technology and increasing a presence on the front end of the company, the commercial part, tech service, sales is maybe more of a priority today because I just do not want to limit our capability to grow by keep on doing further cost-cutting. We have done the cost-cutting as we wanted to do, a big focus on manufacturing, on the administrative cost, even on sale. I think it's about time now that we have reset the company.
I feel we're going to finish the second quarter even in a better place than where I wanted to be when I declared the reset of the company. I think H2, we need to position ourselves to grow as we said, to deliver the numbers, but to carry on with the same momentum going in 2027. I have very high confidence in the product. So our mind is shifting more now to growth rather than to cost-cutting.
Great. That's good to hear. Last couple of minutes here, I guess, if there's one thing that you wanted investors to take away from this, obviously, it's been a challenging couple of years, what should people think about? You talked about growth. Is that really what you want people to focus on?
Yeah. What I would like investors to know and to understand is the potential upside due to the growth over three growth platforms, the four new active ingredients, the biological, and cellular Appear far outweigh the size of the risk on Rynaxypyr. I think it's been looked at differently. I hope that contracts signed with Bayer or Corteva are proving the value of a product. I think the growth rate, we're going to double the size of our new product from last year to this year. The only limitation is because we do not have the registration everywhere, but those registrations are coming. We need registration for Isoflex in the European Union. It's going to be a very big impact. It will be a step change.
When I look at the company today, there is a pocket of risk, which is Rynaxypyr , which I tried to size to the reality of the problem with lots of tools to expand that franchise, and then a very broad, high-quality growth capability with new technology. That is what people have to think about. Now that the reset has been redone, that the cost is appropriate, that our inventory level is where we want, it is time for us to shift the mode of operation to a growth mode.
Great. With that, thank you very much.
Thank you.