Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I am Vikram Luthar, Head of Investor Relations at ADM. Welcome, analysts, investors and ADM colleagues to ADM's Global Investor Day. Thank you for joining us today. A quick reminder that all comments today are covered by our safe harbor statement, which can also be viewed in our quarterly earnings release posted on our website. Our last Investor Day was in December 2014. Since then, ADM has undergone a significant transformation, and we are seeing fundamental structural changes in our industry. Over the next 2 hours, we will recount this transformation and how we have dynamically positioned our business portfolio to benefit from powerful macro trends and drive sustained earnings growth through 2025 and beyond. First, Juan Luciano, our Chairman and CEO, will review our enterprise-wide strategy and growth outlook. And then our 3 business unit presidents and other leaders will review the key drivers and growth outlook for their respective businesses. Ray Young, our CFO, will review ADM's consolidated financial outlook and detail the earnings growth trajectory. And then Juan will wrap up the presentation section of today's session. After the presentations, we will host a 1-hour Q&A with our management during which we will take questions from the webcast attendees. We will take 2 10-minute breaks during today's session. And now let's get started. [Presentation]

Welcome, investors, analysts and ADM colleagues. We are at an important inflection point in our company's nearly 120-year history. We have evolved to become a global leader across multiple industries, delivering innovation from nature. At our session today, we will cover the 3 critical aspects of that evolution. First, we have built a better ADM. We have strengthened our base earnings to $4 to $4.50 per share. And through productivity and strategic portfolio actions, we have dampened the earnings volatility. Second, we have repositioned our portfolio for innovation and growth tied to enduring global trends. This has given us a high single-digit earnings growth trajectory, maintaining our 10% ROIC level. Third, we have significant upside potential. Our strategic investments and partnerships position ADM for long-term leadership in vast and fast-growing market segments. So let's get into how do we build a better ADM. For us, it's about culture and purpose. We are blessed at ADM with a foundational culture of execution and innovation. We basically -- we said -- we do what we say we will do with focus on constantly improving. We have taken that foundation and made it stronger through experiential learning activities involving all 40,000 colleagues across the world. We are committed to continue to invest in our people and our culture as essential elements of our success. And our culture comes to life in our purpose, to unlock the power of nature to enrich the quality of life. And we live that purpose every day through the products we make, through the services we deliver and also through our ESG efforts, whether it's through the progress we are making in gender parity and leadership positions or through our sustainability projects to advance our Strive 35 goals all through our ADM Cares outcomes. ADM Cares is our giving arm. And in 2021 alone, we have delivered 432 million meals to people with food insecurity. We have supported 8.2 million students and farmers that are engaged in STEM and agricultural education. And we have worked together with 650,000 farmers in sustainable agricultural programs. It's nice to see these efforts also acknowledged externally by companies like Ethisphere that has called ADM to the world's most ethical companies list for 2 years in a row. But to activate the purpose will require a strong strategic framework, symbolized by our horizons. And through the past decade, you have seen us navigating 2 strategic horizons, which have positioned ADM as leader in global ag and food value chains. You probably remember in 2011 to 2014, we call it getting fit for the journey. Our objective at that point in time was very, very focused on ROIC improvement. We needed to get ROIC above our cost of capital. So we quickly made a couple of portfolio changes, basically divesting businesses that didn't quite fit our returns profile. And we focused the whole organization in what we call the 3 Cs, capital, cost and cash. Capital, we simply slashed CapEx by 50% from $2 billion to $1 billion. Cost, we set up the basis of operational excellence so we could improve the cost position in every facility across ADM. And cash, we run the $1 billion challenge exercise, basically to show all our employees that we cannot have cash sitting around without getting a return. As part of that $1 billion challenge exercise, we realized $2.2 billion of divestitures or monetizations that we actually used to invest in the WILD acquisition later on. As part of this framework, we achieved the result that we needed, which was to stabilize the company ROIC above WACC and send the company in the path of value creation. Then we move into the second horizon, the one we've been operating over the last 4 to 5 years, characterized by, as you remember, optimize, drive and expand. Here, of course, we built on the previous horizon. So we bring all that cash, cost and capital discipline, but we actually lean a little bit forward closer to customers to get more margin. So whether you saw Ag Services going into destination marketing and stevedoring or the processing units that basically took their ingredients and transformed them into solutions for the customers as we created the Nutrition business. So overall, in this horizon, we improved the levers under our control. Of course, we did some bolt-on M&As and other M&As. And basically, we set up the Readiness program. Readiness program was basically our attempt to improve execution across ADM, which helped with the integration of acquisitions, but it helped with our ability to manage more variables that we have now under our control. Our strategic results, our strategic objectives at that point in time was: move earnings to $4 to $4.50 per share level; certainly, get ROIC to 10%; and build the Nutrition division. And we successfully completed all those goals. During these 2 frameworks, those 2 horizons, we maintained a balanced capital allocation that we described to you early on in our 2011-2014 period. It was very simple. Basically, 30% to 40% of our funds, we needed to reinvest in the business, whether in CapEx or bolt-on acquisitions, leaving 60% to 70% for strategic M&A or returning to shareholders. And during this period, if you remember, we faced several headwinds. We went through a commodity downturn. We get African swine fever. We get trade tensions. We get through a global pandemic. And through all that, our team delivered. We delivered in that period about $14 billion in free cash flow. And as part of our balanced capital allocation, we also returned to shareholders $8.6 billion via dividends and buybacks, all these while building a Nutrition business. So if you look at the results of these past 2 horizons, it's obvious we are a better company today. We are a stronger company today. Over the first 9 months of 2021, we have already exceeded the EPS record of 2020. We fully expect 2021 EPS will significantly exceed the $4.50 per share, the higher end of the range that we conveyed in July. And we have generated more than $3 billion in cash flow from operations through Q3 of 2021. Maybe more importantly, our ROIC has achieved our 10% target. And if you look at the past decade, we have decreased invested capital required per dollar of earnings by approximately 40%. So simplistically, from an earnings perspective, if you compare us, ourselves with 2014, we have effectively replaced ethanol earnings with those in nutrition, showing the different quality of earnings that we have today, not only from a volatility perspective, but also from a growth perspective. And in these horizons also, we opened new revenue streams for our company based on global macro trends. So let's take a minute to look at how we have repositioned the portfolio for innovation and growth aligned with these enduring global trends. You heard me saying before, we see 3 trends that will continue to grow more critical over the next 5 years: food security, health and well-being and sustainability. Based on current estimates, to meet the needs of the growing population, we will need to produce more food in the next 40 years than we have in the past 8,000 years sustainably and while matching new consumer expectations. Think about this. This is the challenge of a lifetime, I would argue, a challenge made for ADM. Let me show you why. If we think about the first one, food security, we know the world population is expected to exceed 10 billion people by 2050. And a lot of that growth will happen in the developing world. When you think about where production will come to satisfy that, it's going to happen mostly in the Americas and Eastern Europe. So you see that billions of tons, pounds, bushels, whatever your unit of measure, will have to be moved and processed to satisfy these projections. ADM is positioned to utilize our irreplicable, unmatched global position and capabilities to meet this challenge. Our footprint and asset base, whether it's origination and destination assets, transportation network ports, processing assets are essential to addressing this challenge. But also, if you think about the second one, health and well-being, we know today by consumer trends report that personal health is an emerging priority for people around the world. A lot of us are focused on functional foods and beverages to increase health resiliency. And we are extending that view to the pets we own in what is being called the humanization of pets. So these days, market segments for products associated with these consumer trends are growing at an accelerated rate. And as such, our portfolio, our Nutrition portfolio, our company portfolio has evolved to take advantage of this trend. But it's not just the product portfolio, but the capabilities we have now to deliver innovative solutions. ADM has more than 60 innovation centers worldwide, where we employ thousands of the brightest minds in food science, natural flavors and colors, fibers, plant-based proteins, microbiome solutions, innovating at the speed of our customer needs. The third macro trend, sustainability. It's a very important one for ADM, but maybe even the most important one for the world. ADM is committed to taking a leadership role in the decarbonization of the ag and food value chains. And we're going to use our scale, our supplier relationships, our partnerships and innovation to deliver a collective impact. And we have already made significant progress. Over the past decade alone, we have achieved a 15% reduction in our greenhouse gas intensity across our global footprint. Over the last 6 years, through our portfolio changes and focused efforts, ADM's carbon intensity per employee has decreased by 27%. And through our industry-leading carbon capture and sequestration efforts indicator, we have sequestered more than 3.5 million metric tons of CO2 to date. You see here our value chain, our long value chain, from the land to the customer, from the farm to the fork. And we have integrated sustainability into every aspect of this business model. And as such, we are advancing Strive 35 sustainability goals on energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water use and waste to landfill. And this integrated model is what allows us to commit to our goal of a deforestation-free global supply chain by 2030. ADM's ability to deliver outcomes at scale give us the confidence in our ability to make a growing impact. That's why I'm also excited today to announce that we have set a goal to reduce our Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2035. And this isn't just for ADM. Through our work, we are able to help our customers deliver their own carbon reduction commitments. But beyond decarbonization, sustainability is connected to growth opportunities throughout our value chain. What started as a risk, as a compliance, as a potential cost is quickly becoming a revenue and margin opportunity for our products and assets. Let me give you some data to consider. Today, 30% of global consumers will pay more for products with social responsibility claims. Renewable green diesel production will keen to pull over the next 4 years to an estimated 5 billion gallons per year by 2025. Recent announcement by the U.S. and EU government commits to support 4 billion gallons of annual sustainable aviation fuel production by 2030 and 10x that volume by 2050. Global sustainability packaging addressable market is growing a compounded growth rate of 10.3%. So simply put, every carbon reduction commitment you hear other companies make related to ag, food or oil-based products replacement is a potential opportunity for ADM. And we will hear more about this in each of the business units review. So as we move forward, we anticipate even more of our portfolio being aligned to these macro trends. And you can see this evolution in the graph over the past several years from 75% of the portfolio alignment in 2014, 86% today to maybe 93%, 95% by 2025. And this provides us tremendous momentum as we move into the next horizon of our strategic journey towards sustainable growth. So we are entering this phase with the same productivity orientation as before, every horizon builds on the previous one. But we're adding more innovation opportunities to expand both revenue and margin. Therefore, this phase is focused on 2 key pillars that we can control, productivity and innovation. Productivity, again, a continuation of the work to build a better ADM, delivering optimal effectiveness through centers of excellence, or CoEs, or programs like 1ADM and applying technology and advanced analytics to make us more efficient, to make us faster. Our CoEs are about -- and Veronica will cover a little bit more on that later, are about sharing ADM's best-in-class way of work with all the 800 locations where we do business. So everybody can experience what is the best thing that somebody does in ADM. 1ADM investment isn't just the productivity. It also delivers digital, data-driven capabilities to accelerate revenue growth, make us more efficient and make us faster to innovate. If you think about the innovation pillar, the other one, it's focused on creating sustainable revenue growth through margin expansion and portfolio actions. Remember, we started the first horizon with cost. The second one lean closer to the customer to get more margin. This one is generate revenues. It's kind of the evolution. And you've seen what we've done across our value chain. Destination marketing, you heard that before, but carbon capture, consumer insights -- consumer insights capabilities have grown significantly in ADM over the last 5 years. But we have also developed a disciplined process on where to play and how to win. And what started in Human Nutrition has expanded quickly into pet food, has expanded into the microbiome on how we think about biosolutions and beyond. And this has completely changed the way we go to market with our customers. So going forward, productivity and innovation will deliver more balanced value to our portfolio. As we look at our pipeline of things under our control in each of the pillars, we can see about $1.1 billion in each through the period. But of course, we also look into the future, and we made some assumptions in each segment where we operate. And when accounting for inflation and some normalization of margins, although to a higher base, we see potential negative forces of about $1 billion. So to put it simply, productivity and innovation are bigger than those potential headwinds. So when we look at the 5-year plan, shows that a combination of this will deliver approximately $1.2 billion in operating profit growth. So it's been a milestone of seeing the business growing from $3 per share to $4.50 per share or above that. And now we have a clear path to see $6 to $7 per share in the next 5 years, retaining our long-term ROIC target of 10%, all this while maintaining our balanced capital allocation as we move forward. So as you can tell, I have never been more excited about the future of ADM. It's actually incredible to see the transformation that has occurred across our global organization over the past decade. And this transformation is still underway and accelerating. We built a stronger company than ever before. And collectively, we are building an ever stronger company for the future. We have repositioned the portfolio for growth, accelerated by macro trends of food security, health and well-being and sustainability. And we believe there is even more upside for both the near and long term, taking advantage of new opportunities and growing markets, but I will speak of them later. So now let's transition to our business units to let them dig deeper into the reasons to believe that we are poised for long-term sustainable growth. Greg Morris in Ag Services and Oilseeds and his team will share how we continue to strengthen the already strong franchise they have. You're going to hear from Chris Cuddy and his team, and you're going to hear their excitement about how Carb Solutions continues to evolve this portfolio with opportunities across biosolutions, sustainable fuels and low-carbon products. And Vince will share -- and Vince and team will share Nutrition's plans to continue to drive growth in both sales and margins, taking advantage of opportunities in alternative proteins, microbiome and pet. So with that, let me hand it over to Greg Morris, who will take you deeper into Ag Services and Oilseeds opportunity. Greg?

Well, thanks, Juan. I'm really pleased to be here today to talk about Ag Services and Oilseeds. I'm going to focus on 3 major themes today. First, I'll talk about how we've built a better business really through executing on our strategy, allowing us to improve efficiencies and deliver value across our vast global network. Second, I want to talk about a couple of the enduring trends that Juan mentioned, food security and sustainability, and how they're driving a positive structural change throughout our industry. As part of this, I'll talk about our productivity and innovation initiatives and how they've allowed us to capture some of the tailwinds. And then finally, I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the future beyond our baseline, the significant upside potential that we have in the business. So Juan talked about how we've built a better ADM. Let me start by talking about how we've built a better Ag Services and Oilseeds business unit. Since 2014, when we did our last Investor Day, we've been executing on a returns-focused strategy, really focused on driving operating profit growth, but at the same time, driving invested capital down. We made significant improvements to our business portfolio. We divested a number of underperforming, volatile businesses like cocoa and chocolate, South America fertilizer. And even in the last few years since we created the Ag Services and Oilseeds business unit, we've been able to reduce invested capital by over $1 billion by addressing over 100 locations, including 7 ocean-going vessels. At the same time, we've expanded strategically into key growth markets. We've debottlenecked and expanded certain facilities organically. But inorganically, we've moved into some new regions and expanded our footprint. So think about our SoyVen joint venture with Cargill in Egypt, our Algar Agro acquisition in Brazil, where we expanded our crushing footprint. These 2 projects alone have added an additional $50 million of operating profits to the business. We've expanded into adjacent value-added products and services like North America stevedoring, our global structured trade financing business. We've added specialty oilseed processing capabilities as well as additional switch capacity at a number of our crushing plants. These expansions have added an additional $50 million in more stable incremental operating profits. And we've grown our ownership stake in Wilmar since 2014, securing our participation in key Asian markets. Wilmar's contribution to our operating profits has more than doubled to $370 million in 2020. The result of all this activity is an improved footprint versus 7 years ago. Today's Ag Services and Oilseeds has increased our originated volumes by 20%. Our crush volumes are up by 15%, but we're doing it with $500 million less in fixed assets. That's about a 10% reduction. And as you can see, our origination volumes are more diverse than 7 years ago as well. Today's Ag Services and Oilseeds business is a critical part of ADM's integrated model. We serve as the primary origination arm for the ag commodities that we process at the majority of our plants around the world. We supply raw materials for further processing in Nutrition, specifically in Specialty Ingredients. And we're a more diverse and global business than we were 7 years ago as well. We're growing in the right places. We're lean where we need to be lean, and we believe we're perfectly positioned for future growth. The second way we're building a better business is by substantially improving the business model. A few years ago, when we brought together the origination business unit and the oilseeds business unit and really formed Ag Services and Oilseeds, we created a more stable, less volatile portfolio of businesses. And when we combined these business units, it also served as an opportunity to refine our risk management approach. We talk about our philosophy, trading with a purpose, creating a demand pull from destinations to increase utilization rates and margins at our global origin assets. And there's no better example of this than the transformation of the Toepfer investment into what we call today our global trade business. This new approach and philosophy along with expanding into destination markets around the world has helped to reduce volatility and increase the quality of earnings in this business. We've essentially replaced the volatile earnings of the past with $200 million to $300 million in more stable, repeatable global trade results. The third way we've built a better business is by modernizing our operations and our footprint, finding new ways to unlock productivity and efficiency. And so at this time, I'd like to invite Veronica Braker to the stage to talk about some of the initiatives that she's leading across the entire ADM enterprise and their impact specifically on Ag Services and Oilseeds. Veronica?

Thanks, Greg. So let me start with how we think about productivity. So productivity for us is the outcome of our focus on both execution and also continuous improvement. We're utilizing the latest tools and technologies to drive operational efficiency, lower our cost and ensure that our 40,000 global colleagues around the world have the support and the tools they need to deliver for our customers and our shareholders. One of the most important ways in which we're advancing productivity is through our centers of excellence. We launched our centers of excellence in 2019, centralizing some core functions to allow our teams to be more innovative and more strategic. Our CoEs are enabling our teams by developing, sharing and implementing best practices to help drive further efficiencies, standardizing processes to reduce complexity and our overall cost and delivering sustainable solutions for our customers. Earlier this year, our utility CoE in South America led an effort to purchase wind power for 7 of our facilities there, thus reducing our carbon footprint by 19,000 tons of emissions a year. We had a team in Decatur, Illinois, they actually identified a way to optimize our wastewater treatment filtration system, improving our wastewater recycling, reducing the need for further freshwater makeup, ultimately reducing our overall wastewater discharge. And the list goes on and on. We're replicating these efforts across the globe to improve sustainability of our production facilities, boost our operational efficiencies, increase yields, enhance quality and our highest priority, the safety and well-being of our colleagues around the world. Some of these projects are worth millions. Some are just worth thousands. But when we scale them across the enterprise, they represent material savings for ADM. In fact, across ADM, our performance excellence measures, which is our shop floor version of Lean Six Sigma, has produced more than $360 million in run rate savings since 2017. And if we go back to 2014, we've been able to reduce our manufacturing cost per metric ton by 4.1% net inflation. Within AS&O, we're reducing losses during crush and ore refinement. We look at a project that was done in our Rondonopolis, Brazil refinery. We improved the output there. We reduced the overall solvent usage, and we also increased our oil yields by 2%. We're also improving and automating our manufacturing processes around the world through advanced analytics. If we look at our Hamburg, Germany facility, we've implemented advanced analytics model there. It significantly improved our yield and our output of that facility. We're optimizing crush capacities while reducing our overall energy intensity. Within AS&O, we reduced over 200 million kilowatt hours per year since 2019. This is equivalent to powering 19,000 households for an entire year. It also represents over $10 million in energy savings. In 2021, we'll deliver over $110 million in run rate savings for AS&O. And we're not done. We have a big pipeline ahead for AS&O and ADM as a whole. It looks at further improvements in technology and infrastructure, further capacity debottlenecking, further energy intensity improvements and also further improvements in both yield and optimization of our operating assets. I am so proud of our global team, and I am excited about how we're finding new and innovative ways to deliver for our company, our customers and our shareholders. Back to you, Greg.

Thanks, Veronica. So what do you get when you take all these things that we've done to build a better business, the portfolio improvements, the better business model, the work that Veronica mentioned in operations and technology? What you get is an Ag Services and Oilseeds business that's delivering value by maximizing volumes and margins through an irreplaceable integrated network of optimized assets and which really provides a solid financial foundation for ADM to grow into the future. Let me move on to my second major theme, how the macro trends of food security and sustainability are powering a structural change in our industry. First, food security, as Juan mentioned, is the inevitable trend of population growth along with the expansion of the middle class and the improving diets that result from that combination. And because population growth is happening in different parts of the world than where the crops are growing, there's an increasing need for our global capabilities to move agricultural commodities from areas of production to areas of consumption to meet this growing demand. Global trade flows of the 4 major ag commodities of corn, wheat, soybean, soybean meal are expected to grow about 130 million tons in the next 10 years. That's a 21% increase. This growth is going to really power and drive increased volumes through our entire global network. Sustainability is also driving opportunity. Globally, we produce over 20 billion pounds of vegetable oil a year. About 30% ends up in biofuels, and about 70% is used in food applications. Global demand for vegetable oil-based biofuels is going to grow significantly as the world looks for lower carbon solutions to petroleum-based fuels. One great example of this is renewable green diesel in the U.S. Renewable green diesel can help reduce emissions by up to 85% versus petroleum diesel. Green diesel is projected to grow at about 1 billion gallons a year for the next 5 years, getting to 5 billion gallons by 2025. This increase in grains, meal, oil, all driven by food security and sustainability, helps to really represent a fundamental and a structural change in our industry, and it is supportive of a strong margin environment. Since our last Investor Day, our global soy crush margins have averaged $38 a ton. Going forward, we expect an increase of at least $5 a ton. Our global canola and rapeseed margins have averaged $43 a ton since our last Investor Day. And again, going forward, we believe these margins will be expanded by at least $10 a ton. And the acceleration of the vegetable oil demand gives us confidence in strong refining premiums continuing into the future as well. So how are we going to capitalize on these trends? Veronica talked about our productivity opportunities. Innovation is also going to drive our growth. A great example of this is the work we've done in destination marketing. It's part of how we transform global trade, as I mentioned earlier. Since 2014, we've grown around the world to extend our value chain, delivering grain the last mile to our final customers, creating more margin opportunity, but also helping to stabilize earnings. We've doubled our destination marketing volumes to more than 23 million tons today. And we've added about $130 million of additional operating profits as a result. And we have a plan to continue this growth. We're targeting 30 million tons in destination marketing volumes by 2025. Another innovation focus is increasing our participation in growth markets, focused on capturing volume and margin opportunities. Today, we are the largest, most diverse oilseed crusher in North America, and we're continuing to expand our capabilities. Recently, we announced a crush expansion in Spiritwood, North Dakota and a joint venture partnership with Marathon Petroleum. This will be North Dakota's first-ever dedicated soy crush plant and refinery. Spiritwood is going to add 1.5 million tons of crush capacity. We'll produce 600 million pounds of soybean oil. It's part of an offtake agreement that we have with Marathon to provide feedstock again to this growing renewable green diesel market. It's a great project, and it's a great partnership that we're really excited about. I mean just imagine what ADM and Marathon can do when we come together to tackle one of the world's biggest challenges. So let's talk about what all this means. We talked about building a better business, how food security and sustainability are driving demand, creating structural improvement in margins. We've talked a little bit about our productivity and innovation initiatives and how we're capitalizing on these changes. These factors give us confidence in our current normalized earnings range for Ag Services and Oilseeds of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion, generating strong cash flows and, based on the midpoint of this range, a return on invested capital in excess of 10%. The same factors give us confidence as we think about the future. So let me walk you through the next 5 years. We believe market forces, including inflation, will create a negative impact of about $300 million, which will more than offset with our productivity initiatives adding $500 million. Our innovation initiatives will add an additional $200 million, leading us to a 2025 baseline earnings range of $2.7 billion to $3.1 billion. But our vision for the future doesn't stop with a 5-year plan. So let me turn to my third point. How we're committed to deliver upside opportunities beyond 2025. Differentiated grain is one of ADM's growth pillars. And it's an important focus in Ag Services and Oilseeds. Differentiation is about leveraging our network in new and different ways. Customers are asking more of the ag supply chain. And in many cases, they want more than traditional commodities. That can mean enhanced traceability. It can mean responsibly sourced, non-GMO, locally sourced. But in addition, there's more conversations about carbon. Customers are turning to ADM for help with their Scope 3 commitments. Petroleum customers want to drive down the carbon intensity of the vegetable oil that they use for feedstock in products like renewable green diesel. And because the majority of carbon in the ag supply chain comes from the farm, sustainable farming practices are a major part of this work. So thanks to our pharma relationships, our integrated value chain, our global footprint, ADM is uniquely positioned to help manage an increasingly complex value chain. To do this, we have a very active set of digital initiatives to help manage this complexity. And in total, our differentiation initiatives just this year alone has added an additional $25 million of incremental operating profits. So as we evolve in this area and as customer demand continues to build, we see significant upside beyond the plan. It's a bright future, and I'm excited to continue on this path. But now I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Chris Cuddy, to talk more about the dramatic evolution of our Carbohydrate Solutions business. Chris?

Thank you, Greg. I love talking about our business, and I'm so pleased that you're all here to join us today and hear about this fantastic journey that we're on. Just like Juan and Greg, I really have 3 themes that we'll talk about: number one, how we built a better Carbohydrate Solutions business; number two, how we're evolving our portfolio; and third, what's next for our business. First, let's talk about how we build a better Carb Solutions business. I've been with ADM since 1998, and never have I been as excited about the company or Carb Solutions as I am today. In Carb Solutions, we do 3 things: we feed people, we fuel movement, and we deliver sustainable solutions. And some parts of this portfolio are just ramping up, while others are mature with slower growth. But through our focus on productivity and innovation, we're pulling levers to keep this base business strong while evolving in other areas to capitalize on demand for sustainable, plant-based materials. Let's talk first about our productivity efforts and how we're keeping the base business strong to help build a better ADM. Since our last Investor Day in 2014, we've taken actions to unlock cash by optimizing our asset network to limit volatility in base earnings by reducing our exposure to alcohol and making more with less by operating more efficiently. Let's start with how we've optimized our network. Here, you see our flour mill in Mendota, Illinois, which we opened in 2019, the largest mill of its kind built from the ground up here in North America. When we opened in Mendota, we also invested in 2 other flour mills, allowing us to close 4 aging facilities. Now we have a more flexible footprint where we grind multiple wheat types and grits, different package sizes, different SKUs, allowing us to serve our customers better and more efficiently. We're also prioritizing flexibility at our corn processing facilities. Our corn processing business is a very dynamic business. And over the years, we've built in a lot of optionality and flexibility, which we call the fight for the grind, which is really focused on channeling the starch stream into multiple end products, dozens of end products. And we do that based on the margin between those products. We do it both tactically, but also longer term and strategically setting up these assets for long-term success, pivoted towards growth markets. A recent example is last year, we phased out our high fructose corn syrup production in Marshall, Minnesota. But now we're producing more starches for the packaging industry and more liquid dextrose for the fermentation industry, keeping our grind levels at a very high capacity utilization. We're also taking steps to manage the portfolio by reducing volatility. We conducted an extensive dry mill review. And while we continue to believe in the value of our ethanol business, particularly the feedstock for sustainable solutions, we did see an opportunity to reduce volatility and our exposure to fuel alcohol. And we found the right opportunity this year. We sold our location in Peoria, Illinois. As well, we're working on a collaboration with other technology providers to convert ethanol production in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Columbus, Nebraska, and Decatur, Illinois to meet the growing demand for sustainable aviation fuel. And while we'll talk a little more about this later, I do want to focus on the reduced exposure we'll have over this period by more than 1 billion gallons of alcohol or about 60%. This will create a more favorable supply and demand environment in the fuel ethanol market in order to reduce volatility for us. And combined with our historical favorable margin structure relative to our competition and versus the Bloomberg index, we expect even greater contributions from ethanol. Another part of the productivity in building a better Carb Solutions business is our focus on process improvements, best-in-class practices using advanced analytics within the plants, but also commercially, to find the right mix, the right product mix, customer mix, plant mix. Having an efficient cost structure is critical in these types of businesses. We're working diligently with the technology centers of excellence, the science and technology team as well to optimize our cost base. And we're very focused on: process automation, the use of sensors, collecting data and our ability to look at machine learning; yield improvements, certainly, a big focus today based on where commodity prices are; and water and energy reductions. Speaking of energy, we do have what we call the energy treasure hunt, which is really a point of pride for operations, and I love to tell the story about these energy treasure hunts. Over the last 5 years, we've worked with utility center of excellence to do these treasure hunts across our corn and wheat facilities, where the teams look for low cost or no cost energy improvements. And to date, we've delivered energy savings of more than 500 million-kilowatt hours, enough to power 46,000 homes for a full year and about $50 million in cost savings for us. That speaks to the power of the owner's mindset that we have at ADM within these teams. Another great example is what happened recently in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the corn plant. The team reduced freshwater use by 350 million gallons per year by reusing processed water and upgrading their wastewater treatment plant, using more reclaimed water. That's enough to fill 26,000 swimming pools. Now that's productivity, but I like to think of it as sustainable productivity. When I think about what sets us apart and keeps us the partner of choice in these segments that we operate in, it's all the work that we've been doing to build a better Carb Solutions business. It's also the connection we have with every other part of ADM, whether it be risk management and transportation with Ag Services and Oilseeds, our ability to deliver advanced nutrition in bakery and flour mixes using ingredients from our Nutrition business. That's why customers come to us, and that's why customers stick with us. And that's why our base business has stayed so strong. And our margins continue to improve across the Carb Solutions portfolio. And that's why we continue to generate strong cash flows and strong returns in a market with secular decline. We focus on building bigger walls and digging wider moats around this base business. And today, it's provided us with a return on invested capital of more than 15% and a base earnings of $700 million to $900 million, approaching the heights of 2014 when ethanol accounted for more than half of our operating profit. Clearly, we've built a better Carb Solutions business. Next, let's talk about how we're evolving and repositioning our portfolio to capture growth opportunities, driven by the enduring trend of sustainability, and how that will position us for 2025 and beyond. When I think about our 5-year plan and I look ahead to 2030 and even past 2030, innovation and that focus on innovation, that's what's going to drive our evolution. And we're making significant progress in 2 areas: our growing biosolutions platform and decarbonization. Let's start with biosolutions. 3 years ago, we combined corn processing and wheat milling to form the Carbohydrate Solutions business unit. It allowed us to approach our customers in a more consistent way, and we captured synergies as well. This year, we optimized our go-to-market strategy and developed 4 segments: sweetening and texturizing solutions, milling and baking solutions, renewable fuel solutions and biosolutions. The first 3 areas, that's our base business. That's the core. That's where we make most of our money today. But biosolutions, that will be the new growth engine over the next 5 years. That will be the new fight for the grind. We identified opportunity in biosolutions because of the growing demand that we saw for many of the products we were selling into nonfood and nonbeverage applications, really driven by the global macro trend of sustainability. While ADM already had a biosolutions business delivering around $250 million in OP, most of that was within the Carb Solutions business, we're now making a very intentional push to build on that business. We've done this in phases or we think about it in phases. Phase 1, what have we been doing, but now we're doing it better, using current products as drop-in replacements. Example would be one of the larger businesses that we have around starch as an adhesive and packaging. And how that helps our customers be able to recycle those packages and those cardboard boxes many times over. One of the next phases of biosolutions is developing new applications for product streams that we already make, that are already within our portfolio. One example that I think is super cool is dextrose, liquid dextrose, which is a plant-based, sustainable and safe replacement for formaldehyde in insulation. So think about that. Think about that value proposition of replacing formaldehyde with a plant-based solution. The efforts in these 2 phases continue to deliver. And through 2021, we'll meet our target of $100 million in new revenue wins, and we expect around a 10% annual revenue growth through 2025. But there's more biosolutions opportunities to come. We've really identified 6 markets that we're focusing in: sustainable packaging, pharma, plant health, construction, fermentation and home and personal care, all markets with a very strong growth potential. Next, we'll talk about the third phase of biosolutions, which is levering core capabilities, leveraging our footprint, leveraging technology and leveraging partnerships to develop new products. Dr. Todd Werpy is here to discuss how we'll execute in the third phase.

Thank you, Chris. This morning, you've heard Juan and Greg talk about the importance of sustainability pretty extensively. And it's truly important to our consumers and to our customers who want to actively participate in the decarbonization. We hear almost every week an announcement by companies making a strong commitment to decarbonization and sustainability. And for me, it always begs the question, how are we going to get there? How are we really going to execute this? And clearly, one option is to continue on our drive towards higher reuse and recycling. And many companies are pushing to do this. But that's only going to take us so far. Today, for example, we only recycle about 10% of the plastics that are produced in the world. And the second option, and the one that I think ADM is uniquely positioned to help with and to deliver, is plant-based products with low carbon intensity from the start of the life cycle. And I'm going to talk a little bit about how ADM's unique position is going to enable this to happen. So let me start with capacity and scale. ADM is the largest corn processor in the world with a global footprint in regions of surplus corn supply. In the U.S., our 5 corn wet mills have a daily capacity to produce dextrose of about 50 million pounds a day. That translates into about 20 billion pounds annually. And dextrose is going to be the primary feedstock for fermentation to produce sustainable materials as well as other fermentation products. And we talk about this conversion of dextrose to the next product as dextrose plus 1. Second, the access to low carbon intensity dextrose. You heard Greg talk about the importance of the farm gate and the contribution that farming makes to the carbon footprint of products. You're going to hear from Ian about what we're going to do in decarbonization through our processing at our facilities. We are committed to reducing the carbon footprint of our products, particularly in this case, dextrose, at every step of our value chain. And all of these efforts will allow us to deliver the lowest carbon intensity dextrose to the world. So another important piece of this is going to be large fermentation capacity. While we have global capacity or global fermentation assets, if you think about our 2 major bioprocessing facilities in Decatur, Illinois and Clinton, Iowa, just those 2 facilities have nearly 10 million gallons of fermentation capacity. This kind of capacity is going to be critical as we transition into a bioeconomy. And let's not forget, of course, technology and technical expertise. ADM has really been working in the sustainable material space for about the last 40 or 50 years. We have a broad patent portfolio in sustainable materials, and we have extensive expertise and experience in all of the required sciences to deliver fermentation-based solutions for sustainable products. And we continue to invest in building those core competencies in biotechnology, high-throughput strain development, enzyme development, separation technology and chemistry and catalysis. And that is really sort of our science value chain, from innovation, ideation, all the way to final product. And I think you've also heard us talk about partnerships. And ADM has a very long history of external partnership that leverage the capabilities of ADM and leverage -- frankly, leverage the capabilities of our partners. We've partnered with leading companies like Lesaffre, Greg talked about our partnership with Marathon, and we've partnered with LG Chem. And these partnerships really allow us to create significant value. So I want to take just a minute to talk specifically about our partnership with LG Chem. So recently, we've made 2 announcements with LG Chem, one for the development of renewable acrylic acid and one for the production of lactic acid to make polylactic acid, or PLA. So again, I like to ask questions. So I think it's fair to ask, why PLA and acrylic acid? So let me talk a little bit about those. So acrylic acid is a fundamental building block for superabsorbent polymers. It's used in things like diapers and hygiene products. It's also a key material for high-performance paints and coatings. So you actually get exposed to acrylic acid as a product in your daily life. Global demand for acrylic acid is around GBP 22 billion a year, and it's growing about 5% annually. So if you think about that, we need to produce an additional 1 billion pounds of acrylic acid every year to meet that global demand. And I think what's really important to consider is today, all of that is made from a petrochemical raw material. PLA is a biodegradable, compostable bioplastic. It's used in a wide variety of applications, including packaging, cutlery and fibers for textile application. The global demand today for PLA is about 1 billion pounds, but it's growing at over 15% a year. So clearly, the market opportunities for acrylic acid and PLA are large and growing. And both are going to benefit substantially from low-cost, low-carbon intensity dextrose. And what maybe is less obvious is that both acrylic acid and PLA are made from the same core building block, lactic acid. So when you think about it for me is low carbon intensity dextrose, a platform of lactic acid and 2 streams coming off, one to make PLA, one to make acrylic acid. And I'm really excited and proud because ADM developed the entire technology for producing lactic acid from dextrose. And there's no question in my mind, we've delivered a world-class process and performance and cost. So clearly, I'm very excited about the opportunities with LG Chem and with the capabilities that ADM can bring to this and other partnership. And like Juan mentioned that this is the challenge of a lifetime, and it's very exciting to be part of ADM, and I know our technology team is excited to do more. With that, Chris, I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you, Todd. Now I'd like to turn to the other part of our innovation agenda, another one where we see significant upside, other business opportunities driven by decarbonization. In Carb Solutions and across ADM, we want to lead our industry in decarbonization. It's the right thing to do, plus it's an enabler for us to grow and pivot our business by delivering sustainable solutions. Now I'd like to bring on Ian Pinner, who will talk about how we are identifying and acting on decarbonization opportunities.

Great. Thank you, Chris. So let's talk about what Chris said earlier, the Carbohydrate Solutions business, it feeds people, it fuels movement, and it delivers sustainable solutions. So I'd like to start with looking at decarbonization as it relates to feeding people. Earlier this year, we were proud to achieve net carbon-neutral status for our U.S. farming operations. It's a wonderful accomplishment. It's the first in the industry of its kind and it's the first of its scale. And we achieved it through implementing energy efficiencies, sourcing green energy products, but as well through the sequestration of CO2 at our first-of-its-kind commercial carbon capture sequestration facility, or CCS. At ADM, we already capture CO2 from some of our manufacturing facilities, and over 10 years ago, we started to sequester carbon 1.5 miles underground at Decatur, Illinois. And to date, we've sequestered over 3.5 million tons of CO2. This is the equivalent of over 750,000 cars from the road for a full year. Now we've got plans to utilize CCS and other advanced technologies that we have to decarbonize our large manufacturing facilities and lower the carbon intensity of many of the products that we make. And we're working with several leading strategic partners who will build, own and operate a CO2 transportation system. This will connect our large processing facilities at Clinton, Cedar Rapids and Columbus. This provides ADM a unique opportunity. Now we can capture the CO2 from the power generation and manufacturing processes at our large facilities. And with our partners, we can pipe that CO2 to Decatur. And then we can sequestrate safely underground and thus, we will significantly lower the carbon footprint of our company. While doing this, we'll differentiate and we'll expand our commercial opportunities and we'll have low-carbon sustainable solutions for our customers. So now let's think about that and decarbonization as it relates to fueling movement. It's reported that aviation was responsible for about 1 billion tons of CO2 in 2019. It's about 3% of all of the global CO2 emissions. Recently, the United States government set goals that would support the demand of some 3 billion gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, by 2030 and more than 30 billion gallons by 2050. In addition, other governments, commercial airlines, have set goals and commitments for using sustainable aviation fuel. And recently, we saw airline test flights successfully using 100% sustainable aviation fuel. 2030 really isn't very far away. For this huge demand growth opportunity into perspective, the current U.S. annual production of sustainable aviation fuel, you see some 4.5 million gallons. It's about 0.01% of the total jet fuel used by commercial airlines. So this brings us back to what Chris talked about earlier. We have a unique opportunity to convert 900 million gallons of annual ethanol production to service feedstock for producing some 500 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel. In addition to the 900 million gallons, the remaining 600 million gallons of our ethanol production could find its way to that market as well. And we're working on this conversion to be without any significant capital investment by ADM. You heard Greg speak earlier about our capabilities and how ADM and our value chain, we're working with farmers to source low-carbon intensity crops for us to process. Then we removed the CO2 from our production processes, and we sequester carbon already safely underground. We're working to decarbonize our production assets, and we're going to bring pipelines to our carbon sequestration. And from all of this, we'll produce low carbon intensity products. So with these unique capabilities, we've got a brilliant opportunity to produce the lowest carbon intensity, sustainable aviation fuel from in the industry from the largest production assets in the industry and for a market that's got strong demand, huge growth potential and very few alternatives to decarbonize. So to capture this opportunity, we're already advancing our partner discussions around sustainable aviation fuel production, and we hope to have those finalized in early 2022 to be on target for first production as soon as 2025. So I'm extremely proud of the leadership position that ADM is taking with decarbonizing the industries that we operate in. We're using our industry-leading asset base and technologies to deliver significant earnings opportunities from fast-growing, enormous addressable low-carbon markets. Chris, back to you.

Thanks, Ian. ADM is better positioned than anyone to capture the opportunities Ian just talked about. We have the right footprint, and we have the right expertise. Those things continue to help us win in our base business, and it's why we're leading the way in plant-based solutions and carbon capture sequestration and using innovative technologies to involve -- to evolve into new areas like SAF. Never before have I felt the pull that we're seeing now with sustainability and decarbonization. The pull from consumers, customers, shareholders and ADM colleagues, that's where I can start the picture for the next chapter in the evolution of Carb Solutions. So let me wrap up, and we'll walk through the reasons to believe in the future of Carb Solutions heading into 2025 and beyond, starting with our current baseline. As I shared earlier, the work we've been doing has kept our current OP baseline at a healthy $700 million to $900 million. And as we start to realize the benefits of some of the projects I've been talking about, we expect some headwinds, negative forces, inflation, $500 million, offset by productivity and innovation of $400 million and $200 million, respectively, all this in a mature market for high fructose corn syrup and ethanol that will lift our new baseline earnings to $800 million to $1.1 billion by 2025. And what I'm most excited about is what you've heard from Dr. Werpy and Ian on the work that we're doing to continue to evolve Carbohydrate Solutions. The opportunities that they described should allow us to get to the upper end of this range but more importantly, provide us with a catalyst for significant earnings growth beyond 2025 and totally transform the Carb Solutions business with another $500 million in upside from biosolutions, sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture and sequestration. With that, we're going to take a 10-minute break. [Break]

Welcome back. I'm thrilled to be here today to speak with you about ADM Nutrition. Similar to Chris, Greg and Juan, I have 3 main points today: how we built a better company with Nutrition, how Nutrition's global capabilities align with the global enduring macro trends, and how our business is positioned for growth to 2025 and beyond. Let's start with how we are building the leading global Nutrition business. I want to focus in 3 areas: how we are driving revenue; how we are delivering operating profit; and how we are differentiating ourselves from our capabilities, go-to-market and our portfolio. Let's start with revenue. Our aim from a revenue perspective is to outpace the market and outpace our competitors, and we are winning. We are winning in a big way. When you look at our revenue on a constant currency basis, we are growing double digits. We have a heavy focus on organic growth, and it all starts with our customers. The customer is in the center of everything we do. And those customers are small startups. They're mid-tier companies, multilevel marketers all the way through CPG multinationals. Next, let's move to operating profit. At our last Investor Day, ADM had just acquired WILD. And WILD, in the legacy ADM Specialty Ingredients, served as a foundation to what is today ADM Nutrition. In our first year in existence in 2015, we delivered $300 million in operating profit. As you fast forward and we near the end of 2021, we are approaching $700 million in operating profit. Again, that's based upon our relentless customer focus, our outstanding execution and a portfolio that is differentiated. Let's talk about that portfolio. ADM Nutrition delivers $6.5-plus billion in revenue. The business is comprised of Human Nutrition and Animal Nutrition. If we go a little deeper into the business -- let's start with flavors, natural colors, natural flavors. The flavors business delivers our systems DNA. We've invested in this business. We've done strategic bolt-ons to bolster our capabilities in food base, citrus and vanilla. We've expanded facilities to meet our increasing demand. We've increased capacity in Berlin, Germany. We recently came online with a fully-automated flavor production facility in Pinghu, China. The flavors business represents about $1.7 billion in revenue and operates an EBITDA margin range of 20% to 25%. Next is our Specialty Ingredients business, focused on alternative proteins, wholesome ingredients and emulsifiers. We've invested in this business as well. We built the soy protein complex in Campo Grande, Brazil. Last year, we came online and built a pea protein complex in Enderlin, North Dakota. This business drives $1.1 billion in revenue, and this, too, plays in the EBITDA margin range of 20% to 25%. Let's move to our Health & Wellness business. This business is based upon the legacy fiber and natural health and nutrition business, but it's been buoyed by the acquisitions of Protexin and Biopolis in the bioactive space. Revenue in this business is a bit smaller, $350 million with enormous upside opportunity, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. From a margin perspective, Health & Wellness operates at the very top of the range at 25-plus percent margins. We move to Animal Nutrition. Our Animal Nutrition portfolio, complete feed, specialty ingredients and additives, aquaculture, pet. This business is largely built on the investment in Neovia in 2019 and has provided a global footprint for our entire Animal Nutrition business. This business generates $3.4 billion in revenue and has margins in the 5% to 8% range. However, we've identified significant opportunities to margin up this portfolio. The reason why we're growing so well in this market is simply because, again, the relentless customer focus, our outstanding execution and our go-to-market. I want to talk about our go-to-market and go a little bit deeper here. If you look on the Human Nutrition side and our revenue split, a heavy presence in beverage, largely from the WILD business and legacy ADM business. You see a fast-growing, globally expanding foods business. And we see significant white space opportunities in dietary supplements and sweet and dairy. If you look at our geographic split on the human side, greater than 50% of our revenue comes from outside of North America. We've outperformed in the mature markets of North America and Europe, but we see incredible upside opportunity in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America, where we are investing. If we move to Animal Nutrition, from a geographic standpoint, you see a much more even distribution on a worldwide basis, with Latin America being our largest region. Again, that is really due to the Neovia footprint. If you look at our segment and product, you see a heavy concentration in complete feed, but I want to draw your attention to pet. We see pet as an enormous opportunity in our business. In fact, the pet market is worth $100 billion and growing at a rate of 4.5% compound annual growth, pet treat, pet supplements and pet foods. This is a place where we want to play. We've invested in this place. We bought Crosswinds in 2017. We recently announced a 75% stake in PetDine, Pound Bakery, Pedigree Ovens and NutraDine. This will enhance our capabilities in the pet treat and supplement area as well as increasing our overall capacities. Additionally, we've taken our best practice go-to-market from sales, marketing, creation design and development, and we have formulated a team that is fully focused on the pet solutions segment. We're investing in this space. Pet solutions drives us to our second point: how do Nutrition's global capabilities align with the enduring macro trends: food security, health and well-being and sustainability? We have outsized exposure to these trends. We distill them even further into the leading consumer trends, and they align very nicely with our portfolio. You think about holistic wellness and the focus on the gut microbiome and our bioactives portfolio. We hear about lifestyle diets and flexitarianism, perfect fit with our alternative proteins. We just discussed the humanization of pet. Then you look at our naturals portfolio and you see the opportunity for sustainable goodness in clean and clear. This is how we drive alignment and differentiation. But when we put it all together, what drives our ability to win at the customer? This is where we talk about our systems. You hear a lot of talk in the industry about systems. People -- everyone says they do systems. Blending 1 or 2 ingredients, stacking 1 or 2 ingredients does not constitute a system. How we develop systems is we have the broadest and deepest pantry in the industry, and we marry that with technical capabilities. We take these ingredients. We put them in the right order of addition. We understand how they interact with one another. We develop a formulation. We develop a recipe that will give our customers differentiation in the area of nutrition, function, texture and taste. We put that recipe all together, and we can build that product and formulate that product through our co-manufacturing network on a global basis. We give our customers finished products that they can then take to the consumer for validation. So we go from concept to market, and we do it at record speed. I think if you synthesize what I'm saying about our systems and you think about an all-natural isotonic sports drink, and you think about 1 ingredient and then there are 2 ingredients in there, at ADM Nutrition, we give you everything in the bottle. I'm excited about the upside opportunities. And we have 3 colleagues here today that will further expand upon those opportunities. We have Marie Wright, our President of Creation, Design and Development. Her global team along with Dr. Werpy's team is largely responsible for bringing our systems to life. We have Leticia Goncalves, our President of Global Foods, and we have Mark Lotsch, our President of Global Health and Wellness. Marie, over to you.

Thank you, Vince. So let's go back to that ADM system slide. Just think about that powerful advantage that we have. Building systems has been in our DNA. It's in our blood. We already had a strong presence in the large beverage market with legacy WILD. But with the power of ADM, the power of the portfolio, the power of the technical expertise, we are outperforming the market. Take a closer look at the slide, and you'll see the story of ADM's success is depicted there. But for me, it's missing something, it's missing a secret ingredient. And that's the commercial technical team of over 600 talented scientists who collaborate with our go-to-market teams, work closely with our customers, and they bring consumer-loved solutions to life. I love our culture of entrepreneurship. We are entrepreneurs. Because we're entrepreneurs, it means we can innovate, we can build brands, we can build product experiences with culinary integrity. We are the engine of growth. And we have another powerful advantage: speed. We are fast, we're really fast, and our customers love us because we're fast because speed matters. We have a rapid prototyping approach called InnoSprint. And I know you might be thinking we've heard of other companies with a rapid prototyping approach. But ours gives our customers an edge because it delivers on rapid commercialization. I'm going to share with you another secret, a compelling story. One of our large CPG customers came to us wanting to develop a specialized nutrition bar with low sugar. They wanted to work with us because their traditional product development life cycle -- that cycle, sorry, is -- takes from 18 months to 2 years. They wanted to work with us because of our ingredient pantry, our technical expertise and because of our co-manufacturing network. So they came to us on a Tuesday. And at the end of that day, day 1, we had 5 delicious tasting concepts. On day 2, we iterated so that when our customers were walking out of the door, they had prototypes that were 85% of the way they're ready for commercialization, and they were calling their go-to-market team about launch. So within 3 months, those products hit the market. That speed. I'm incredibly proud to lead ADM's CD&D team to be part of that team. I believe we have the highest performing commercial technical team in the industry. But I always tell the team, we're great but we need to be better. So this year, we implemented gold standard processes so that we could improve on our project execution. We made our portfolio smarter to serve our customers better. We already had very strong win rates. And I've been in the industry for many years. And I can tell you, those win rates are already exceptional. If you imagine how thrilled we are that in 1 year, Human Nutrition win rates have improved by 30%. We have an amazing high-quality portfolio. More importantly, we know what to do with it and we know how to get customers to market faster. So we're positioned to grow in expanding markets, which is just what Leticia and Mark are going to talk about. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Leticia to the stage, my friend and my good colleague.

Thank you, Marie. I am really excited about the growth and innovation opportunities for ADM in our Foods and Specialty Ingredients business. As both Juan and Vince said, there are many global consumer trends impacting the future of food. Plant-based lifestyles, clean and transparent sustainable sources, which all bring a tremendous opportunity for ADM to create and capture new value in growth segments such as alternative proteins. Has anyone here tried a plant-based burger in the last few years? If you're all in the same room, I'm sure you'll see a lot of hands up. That's the first thing most people think of when they hear about alternative proteins. But the market extends far beyond the burgers, and it's growing. More than 50% of global consumers are becoming flexitarian. And they are looking to diversify source of protein in their diets. When you look at just 2 market segments, alternative meat and alternative dairy, they continue growing rapidly, and we expect them to approach 10% of the overall market by 2030. That means global retail sales of over $100 billion. We, as ADM, are in a unique position to leverage our vertically-integrated company from farm to fork and our broad and deep portfolio to be the partner of choice for our customers at every step of the value chain from single ingredients to differentiated food systems. ADM offers more than 30 distinct and sustainable sources of alternative proteins, which combined with our complete pantry and formulation know-how the Marie talked about, give us an edge in developing leading solutions for alternative meat, alternative dairy, specialized nutrition, ready meals, pet treats and many others. Also, we have direct-to-consumer plant-based food through our joint venture with Marfrig, PlantPlus Foods. And as the market grows, we plan for ADM to be the industry shaper, differentiating ourselves and growing faster than the market. And here's how we're going to do it. First, we are innovating in ingredients, processing and systems. We are investing in the next-generation technologies such as cell base, microbial fermentation. We're also upgrading our technical capabilities to provide customers with protein nutrition systems rather than just single ingredients, such as what we've done in our recent plant-based innovation lab in Singapore. Second, we're expanding our global capabilities to improve product mix, margins, geographic mix and keep up with the global demand. We are expanding capacity in our existing assets, and we're investing in new ones, such as the Sojaprotein acquisition, Serbia that now brings us non-GMO, locally produced soy protein to service the Eastern Hemisphere market. Third, we are transforming our go-to-market approach to focus on market segments, which, by the way, aligns more closely with how our customers are organized. We are driving more cross-selling of our entire Human Nutrition portfolio, Flavors, Specialty Ingredients, Health & Wellness and Foods. We are unlocking many new customers and new channels, food service and private label and leveraging our downstream partnerships such as PlantPlus Foods. The future of food would not look like the past. You'll take extraordinary leadership and innovation to develop more sustainable, healthier and secure food supply chain that enables consumer choice. As a leading global food solution provider, we remain focused on unlocking the next wave of food systems. We are at the forefront of consumer emerging trends and pioneering science and technology that will change the world for the better. As we said, we have a fast-growing foods business that is fastly globally expanding, and I am confident we will deliver extraordinary results and will double our revenue to $2.2 billion in foods in the next 5 years. With that, I'm going to invite my colleague, Mark Lotsch, to talk about our Health & Wellness business. Mark?

Thank you, Leticia. At Health & Wellness, we're building the foundation for tomorrow's health and nutrition based on leading science and best-in-class biotics and botanicals to be at the forefront of macro trends as well as consumer trends. Consumer research has pretty much 2 key trends in common. Consumers increasingly believe in the relevance of the Gut Microbiome for their overall health. And in the years to come, consumers will be looking for more products with a functional with a health benefit that is more tailored, more personalized towards their specific needs. With our B2C products like Bio-Kult and Protexin, we have firsthand consumer insights that confirm the trends we're seeing. And already today, the addressable category is around USD 9 billion with increasing growth rates. We, at ADM, are convinced that the health of the gut microbiome is key to drive holistic health. And the National Institute of Health here in the United States has provided the scientific evidence for that, that has since triggered a lot of research in that space. And exactly here, is where our science is anchored in the gut microbiome, the epicenter of tomorrow's health and wellness. We have a very clear focus our scientists, pharmacists, medical and veterinary doctors, research, sequence and clinically proof and as important now, the mode of action behind the functional benefits. Science here is developing so quickly, providing us with pioneering results in areas from digestive health on one side of the chart you see through different conditions of physical health all the way to mental health and even into pharma solutions. And this creates huge opportunities and new areas for innovation. With this, we are truly at the edge of unveiling and making use of the treasure we are carrying in our gut for future nutrition, for supplements and even drugs. And similarly, for pets and animals. This takes me to an exceptional new biotics category, the post biotics. Let me briefly put the biotics and the postbiotics into context in a very simplified way. If you look at the chart, you can think of the prebiotics being the fuel going into the factory, being the probiotics and one of the outcomes being the postbiotics. So postbiotics are produced in our gut or -- and here it becomes super exciting. They can be produced outside our body and then being added to food and beverages to modulate our gut landscape. And that becomes possible because they are heat-stable biotics. And ADM is on the pioneering edge of this new postbiotics category that opens up so many opportunities in food, in beverage, in pet solutions. And the outstanding work is being recognized. Our wonderful team and unique portfolio keeps winning industry awards, recognizing the clinical proof of our leading science. And it takes me to future opportunities for applications that are arising due to these new technologies. A great example here is the work we're doing with Nourished. You see that product on discrete, the [ D3 ] print, personalized functional gummies including postbiotics for weight management. And the way it works, they take their input from the consumer based on this, they put a personalized recipe together, which is then printed in different layers, as you see on the picture. And this gives us a flavor of where personalized nutrition is going, linking science on one side with the consumer on the other side in an integrated, digital and AI-driven ecosystem. So in summary, we have it all, the consumer insights, the science, the know-how. And now we're scaling our capacity around the world to supply the growing demand here. In Spain, we're setting up a new factory that is 5x larger than our current factory. Together with our JV partner, Vland, we're setting up a setup in China that is going to be 3x larger than our new setup in Spain. And here in the United States, we're getting all the new opportunities and capabilities through Deerland, this wonderful team is joining us now. So here is certainly a huge growth opportunity arising, potentially the growth opportunity of the decade. And we, as ADM, are geared up to take a great share of this with a strong positioning we have in food, beverage, supplements and pet solutions. To put this into numbers, our aspiration is to grow the Health & Wellness business from today, roughly USD 350 million to $2 billion over the next 10 years. And we're on our way to realize our aspiration. Vince?

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Leticia and Marie. I share your enthusiasm for the opportunities in front of our global nutrition business. That brings us to our third point how will we grow? And what is that upside opportunity. We've talked about where we play and we talked about how we're driving revenue. We will continue to drive revenue in virtually every category we play in, in double digits. We'll see acceleration of that revenue growth in the Health & Wellness area. On the EBITDA margin side of things, we'll continue to play at the highest end of the ranges. And again, we'll see acceleration in health and wellness. We will also see acceleration in pet solutions. In fact, the dramatic increase in margins in pet solutions will margin up the entire Animal Nutrition business. So what can you expect from us? 15% organic growth annually. 3% to 5% accretion from M&A, therefore, driving growth to 15% to 20% annually from ADM Nutrition. So let's put it all together. We talk about 2021 baseline earnings approaching $700 million in operating profit. We will experience inflation and market forces, which will be immediately offset by our productivity initiatives we've already identified. Then we will grow via innovation, and we will grow with all the things we've talked about today, a relentless customer focus, outstanding execution, a differentiated value proposition backed by science. We will grow with innovation at $700 million. You've heard me talk previously about a goal of $1 billion in operating profit by 2024. But when you put it all together, we arrive at a range of $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion by 2025. Aggressive, yes; doable, yes. In fact, I'd like to challenge our team to achieve the very highest end of that range and deliver $1.5 billion in operating profit by 2025. I tell our team all the time, this is the opportunity of our careers to build the world's leading nutrition business inside of a Fortune 100 company, and there's never been a better time to be at ADM. Thank you for your time today. With that, I will turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young.

Thanks, Vince. So good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are around the world. It's great to be with you again today. Over the next 15 minutes, I'd like to cover 3 themes with you. First, I'd like to revisit the last Global Investor Day back in December in 2014 and review what we said. And then what we actually did do to build a better company, not just operationally, but financially as well. Secondly, I want to talk about growth, leveraging the 3 enduring trends that Juan and the business units talked about, and preview with you what 2025 could look like. And thirdly, I want to talk about upside what's possible beyond the plan, leveraging the capital allocation framework that I'll review with you. So first, let's talk about building a better ADM. Now back in 2014, we laid out for you a revised balanced capital allocation framework. We said that we would reduce capital spending from a run rate of about $2 billion down to $1 billion or approximating depreciation and amortization. 30% to 40% of our operating cash flows would be invested in capital spending in small bolt-ons. The remainder, we will invest in strategic M&A and return of capital to shareholders. We indicated that we would increase our dividend payout ratio from then the historical range of 20% to 25% to 30% to 40% of earnings. And from a financial perspective, we said that we will have a returns-focused orientation with the goal of achieving a long-term ROIC of 10%. Now in early 2015, we provided some additional context. We said that the 2014 baseline would be about $3 a share, and we would grow $1 to $1.50 a share over the next 3 to 4 years, implying that we should have the next earnings milestone at $4 to $4.50 a share. So what happened over this period? Well, clearly, from 2015 to 2020, we were impacted by a number of large exogenous factors. First, there was a large global oversupply of commodities, which depressed margins, particularly in Greg's Ag Services and Oilseeds business. Secondly, there was a large imbalance in terms of ethanol between supply and demand. And that brought industry margins on ethanol significantly below what we were expecting back in 2014. And thirdly, in the most recent years, there was African swine fever that caused some level of demand destruction for feed from China and also U.S.-China trade tensions, disputes, which caused large imbalance in terms of agricultural trade flows during this period. Now despite these headwinds, we remain focused on improvements, including some of the operational excellence initiatives that Veronica talked about. Eventually, all this came under the readiness umbrella. And we said that we would focus on improving underperforming businesses, we said we're going to drive efficiencies across the business units as well as the centralized staff. And importantly, we said we will continue to target investments for strategic growth, especially in the nutrition business. From a financial perspective, we remain disciplined in capital allocation and a focus on cash flow throughout the downturn. We generate operating cash flows during this period of about $14 billion, or over $2 billion per year, exceptionally strong for a downturn, and we returned $8.6 billion to shareholders. And we did lower capital spending to depreciation and amortization. And in fact, in the latter years, we went below depreciation and amortization. After we funded the WILD Flavors acquisition in late 2014, we continued to invest. In fact, we invested over $3 billion in M&A, including our platform acquisition, Neovia in the animal nutrition space as well as other smaller bolt-ons. And we primarily funded these investments through monetizations of noncore assets. And we maintain ROIC above our long-term WACC of 7% on average, thereby continuing to create value for our shareholders through the downturn. Now what I'm most proud about is that we maintained a solid balance sheet throughout the downturn with solid credit metrics. So to sum up, we remained disciplined during a downturn. We continue to have a returns-focused orientation. We continue to build a better company, not just operationally, but financially, and we invested prudently for future growth. So where are we today? Well, from the $3 base back in 2014, we are going to be achieving the $4 to % 4.50 milestone this year. 2021 actually will be well above our 2021 base due to some exceptional margins that we're seeing in the origination, crush and ethanol business recently. Now we'll talk more about our 2022 views during our fourth quarter earnings call at the end of January. But when I take a look at kind of where we are right now, if I look at Ag Services and Oilseeds, clearly, the structural changes that Greg talked about as well as the improvements that he's driven in his business has increased the base for Ag Services and Oilseeds from 2014, and has added about $0.70 per share of earnings to our normalized earnings range. Carb Solutions, as Chris has talked about, is managed exceptionally well through, what I would say, one of the most challenging ethanol environments that we've seen with margins clearly lower than we were during 2014. As a result, we've probably seen a $0.55 per share deterioration since 2014 in terms of our normalized earnings. Nutrition has grown as expected through M&A and organic growth, and that's added about $0.55 a share to our 2014 base, thereby offsetting some of the deterioration that we've seen in Carb Solutions. Now corporate expenses, we've continued to invest as part of our business transformation, the 1ADM program, that's added about $0.40 a share in terms of additional expenses, but that we will capture those returns over our business plan horizon. We've clearly benefited from a lower effective tax rate. That's added about $0.55 a share, and we have repurchased shares as planned, thanks to the strong cash flows that we've generated and that's added about $0.65 a share. All in, we've added about $1.50 per share from our 2014 baseline to get this really to a starting point in 2021 about $4.50 a share for a strategic plan. Now just as important as increasing our earnings base is what we did to the cash flow and earnings profile of this company. It is clearly far more robust and far less volatile than it was in 2014. We've replaced close to $1 billion in profitability from our ethanol business from Toepfer, from other trading activities in 2014, representing about 1/4 of our total operating profit with about $1 billion in profitability from our Nutrition business and global trade that Greg talked about. In our 2021 baseline has a lower share count and lower effective tax rate, which I would argue represents structural improvements to the earnings power of this company. So in summary, clearly, we've built a better company financially with higher earnings, returns approximately 10% in the far less volatile profile. So where are we going? Well, the business unit presidents did summarize their view of the ranges for 2025. In Ag Services and Oilseeds, Greg talked about a range that centered around $3 billion in 2021 and from a base of about $2.5 billion. Carb Solutions, Chris talked about a range of $0.8 billion to $1.1 billion, so about $1 billion in 2025 from a current baseline of about $900 million. And Vince talked about a range in 2025 of $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion from a base in 2021 of roughly $0.7 billion, representing 15% to 20% per annum compounded annual growth in profitability, effectively doubling the profitability that he has in his business by 2025. So all the business units are contributing towards growth with a significant amount coming from the Nutrition business. And a lot of the recent M&A activity that we've done will be contributing towards our earnings growth in the future. And these recent M&A activities will generate returns over the business planning horizon exceeding -- with ROICs exceeding WACC. Now if you add other segment operating profit in 2020, it's expected to be between $4.9 billion and $5.8 billion, from the baseline in 2021 of roughly $4.2 billion. Net corporate expenses are expected to be flat with the reductions in corporate expenses, offset by some higher assumptions in terms of short-term interest rates. With respect to our effective tax rate, we're making an assumption of 20% in 2025, up from our 16% number that we planned for this year. We're simply making some assumptions in terms of the direction of global minimum tax rates as well as U.S. statutory rates. This is simply assumptions that we're making. And thanks to the strong cash flows that we're going to be generating over this period, we expect to repurchase up to $5 billion in share repurchases over the planning horizon. As a result, we should expect an EPS range by 2025 of $6 to $7 per share, which will represent our next significant earnings target milestone. Now in the context of the $4.50 per share base, this represents high single-digit percentage EPS growth. You should also expect that this is not necessarily going to be a straight line going to 2025. As I explained, 2021 is going to be an outstanding year, well above our baseline. And the earnings progression will reflect the accretion from the timing of investments. So for example, the Spiritwood facility in North Dakota won't come online until 2023. Now during this period, we're going to maintain a strong balance sheet with healthy credit metrics to provide maximum flexibility to handle downturns or seize on opportunities. Stated another way, if there's a better opportunity to deploy some cash to enhance shareholder value beyond share repurchases, we will consider it. Next, I'd like to review the financial framework of shareholder value creation. This chart here is a variation of a chart that I reviewed with you back in December 2014. And the most important point is it's still applicable today. 30% to 40% of the cash flows that we generate will be invested in capital spending in small bolt-ons. 60% to 70% of the cash flows will be invested for M&A, strategic growth or distributions to shareholders. M&A investments we based upon returns and the best use of capital, distributions comprise of dividends and repurchases. Again, we're going to focus on -- with a dividend payout ratio of 30% to 40% of earnings. So similar to what we talked about back in 2014. And share repurchases would be based upon the strategic needs of capital of our business as well as our balance sheet position. We will ensure a solid balance sheet during this period to withstand cycles to seize on opportunities, including the many upside opportunities are not part of the baseline projections that the businesses reviewed with you today. The bottom line is that we're going to execute a capital allocation framework similar to 2014. We believe in consistency, we believe in no surprises. So what should you expect from us over the planning horizon from key metrics? First, the earnings metrics. You should expect high single-digit percentage EPS growth from us to get towards a $6 to $7 per share EPS target milestone by 2025. A major driver of this will be our Nutrition business. You should expect us to drive the Nutrition business towards a $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion operating profit number by 2025. From a cap allocation perspective, you should expect us to follow the framework that we laid out. Now in the near term, you should expect capital spending to be above depreciation, amortization near term. As we seize on the organic growth opportunities that particularly Vince has talked about, but as well as Greg with the Spiritwood expansion, you should expect CapEx with small bolt-ons to approximate 30% to 40% of our cash flows during the planning horizon. And you should expect that with the significant cash flow generation, absent significant M&A, you should anticipate about $5 billion of share repurchase during this period. From a returns metrics perspective, you should expect that we will maintain our ROIC target of 10% inclusive of working capital, it may dip a little bit in initial years due to some of the recent M&A activities that we've had. And you should expect our spread between our 10% ROIC and our 7% long-term WACC should create EVA or economic value added of $1 billion by 2025, significantly higher than the $200 million that we generated in 2020 using the 7% long-term WACC. In summary, we believe we have a significant value-enhancing plan for our shareholders. Now what gets me even more excited are the upside opportunities that the business units talked about. Greg talking about differentiation, digitalization. Chris talking about the evolution of Carb Solutions, the opportunities in SAF, decarbonization, biosolutions [ 3.0 ]. And Vince and Mark talking about a health and wellness space, with Mark talking about the opportunity of the decade in the biotic space. These upside opportunities are not part of our current plan. And when we do develop them into value-enhancing projects or businesses, you could see the 2025 earnings at the top end of the $6 to $7 earnings per share milestone we talked about, EVA beyond $1 billion and more importantly, continued robust earnings growth beyond 2025. With that, let me turn it back over to Juan to say a few words before we go to Q&A. Juan?

Thank you, Ray. You probably see why I'm so proud of this team. And remember what I said at the beginning, they do what they say. So as we close the formal presentation, I promise to leave you with a glimpse into the future, a little bit of a pick into the thinking that we're going to do forward. So of course, we've seen we have a concrete plan to deliver high single-digit earnings growth, that should take us well beyond $6 per share in the next 5 years. And we will manage this commitment with the same discipline you have come to expect from this management team. But as important as it is to know how to win today, and you heard that from the team, it is also important to prepare for the next game. So ADM's evolution from a strategy perspective continues even as the team focuses on executing this plan. We're already thinking about the fourth strategic horizon and we have already started investing in it. Let me highlight some opportunities currently being incubated. And I pick 3 here for effect. Climate solutions, personalized nutrition, microbial solutions. We believe each of them has the potential to provide additional upside and continue to add to our growth well beyond 2025. These are technologies and market opportunities that are at a very early stage in their life cycle. That's providing a strong opportunity for acceleration as they mature. And we are positioning and we have positioned ADM to be part of that growth trajectory. So let me give you a sense of the potential in each of them. You heard Chris and Ian share the significant upside that decarbonization opportunities provide to our Carbohydrate Solutions business and assets. And we have not included the majority of these in our 2025 forecast. The reality is the phone continues to ring, and we continue to unveil more opportunities in this space. That's why I'm joking, it could become Climate Solutions instead of Carb Solutions in the future. You hear Mark speak about the huge head space we have for growth in Health & Wellness. Think about the possibilities now that probiotics has become also postbiotics, not limiting the applications we can go into. Think about the possibilities when we are talking about personalized supplementation with Nourished into personalized nutrition. Huge opportunities. Don't showcase the continued advancement of our fermentation and microbial technologies to support growth. We know that every company out there working in this space and needs 3 things from a partner. They need low CI feedstocks sells in large quantities. They need fermentation technology and knowledge, and they need fermentation capacity to get to market. Well, we check all 3 boxes. Leticia pointed to the massive for a variety of protein sources beyond animal or plant and into new territories, such as microbial-based proteins. That's why you have seen our recent partnership announcements in support of all these. These are investments that we have made, and we are very proud to be associated with these companies, but they are not just investment. These are strategic collaborations because of what we bring to the table. And you can see the names here behind me, but imaging the upside potential for ADM as these opportunities develop. When you think about the confluence of computer science, biology advancements and technology, all these come in to help in shaping the future of Ag and food industries as we face the challenge of a lifetime. And we have positioned ADM to be a key player in that future. So as we close, I hope the team has been able to show you clearly how we have built a better ADM. We are positioning our portfolio for growth today and into the future connected to critical enduring trends and that we have significant upside potential as we dynamically evolve our portfolio and capitalize on emerging market segments while driving the next phase of growth. So thanks again for your support as we guide ADM towards new horizons. With that, we're going to take a 10-minute break before moving to Q&A. Thank you very much. [Break]

Welcome back. We are excited to start the Q&A portion of today's event. We will be taking questions both from our analysts via the phone and also those submitted through the webcast portal. [Operator Instructions] With that, let's get started. Our operator today is Selina. Selina, please open the line for our first question.

Absolutely. The first question comes from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs.

I guess my first question is think about the 2025 target. And you -- I think, you outlined kind of has been through market forces that you anticipate to offset from productivity. Can you just talk a bit about the cyclical conditions that underpins your view on the growth in the businesses? And specifically, what kind of market environment do you anticipate to achieve the long-term target?

Juan, would you like to take that question?

Yes, sure. Listen, as we look into the future, we look at the volumes. We look at the margins of all this. But we look at other things. We look at inflation. We look at an energy transition into that. And we look at some normalization of margins. If I have to describe it physically, margins are better than historical levels that we are prognosticating for the future but maybe not as high as they are right now because we wanted to have a 5-year view into this. The way we think about these 3 buckets, if you will, productivity, innovation and market forces is market forces are relatively outside our control. So these are things that maybe we can influence, certainly, we will react to but we cannot act that much on them. So whatever that number is, what serves as a motivation to increase the productivity of an innovation to make sure we are bigger than that. I would say, in general, we see a robust demand in the several segments. You heard from our colleagues, we have plenty of opportunities we are evaluating. So I think that the underlying businesses, they are remaining very strong through that. You see Oilseeds margins, and I think Greg mentioned we expect higher margins going forward for soy crush and also for canola crush or softseed crush. I think beans will continue to grow. And there are many opportunities in the area of Greece to continue the solid base but also have upside potential. So that's probably a simplistic way of characterizing a very complex scenario, 5-year planning exercise that we've done.

The next question comes from Ben Theurer with Barclays.

So my question is around the Nutrition business. And clearly, you have the target to get to about $1 billion by 2024. And now you're upping that to $1.25 billion, so almost about $1.5 billion by 2025. Now you've talked and alluded a little bit about it, but can you go into more detail how much you think strategic M&A and maybe bigger M&A needs to play a role to actually get the growth acceleration to that close to 15% to 20% annual grow rate in order to reach those targets, particularly as you set the challenge to get to $1.5 billion by 2025 to actually make that high end happening? So how much of M&A part of that?

Vince, would you like to take that?

Sure. When we think about -- so we've done some things from an M&A perspective, obviously, in Nutrition with the platform deal of WILD, the platform deal of Neovia. And we've done many strategic bolt-ons that have bolstered our capabilities primarily in the area of science, talent, geographic expansion. So we'll continue to look for those things. But M&A is, as spoken, our strategic wheel. We're focused on our organic growth and how we'll continue to drive our business. You heard me speak, 15% to 20% growth. 3% to 5% of that was accretion from our M&A. So obviously, as we drive this business, we'll continue to look. We'll look for things that bolster our portfolio, but we are predicated on organic growth. And then we take the M&A, and the best things we get from those companies. And we deliver synergies on the cost side and on the revenue side. We integrate these businesses, and we drive them at an accelerated rate from a growth perspective. So when you put it all together, that's how we get to that road map that gets us to the $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion. So certainly, M&A will play a role, but it will play a role in conjunction with everything else that we're doing.

The next question comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

Juan, could you talk a little bit about carbon pricing? And when you think about your sequestration opportunities, what assumptions you're making about the value or the price of carbon, whether it's in the United States or ultimately in other regions to the extent that you have opportunities outside of the U.S.?

Yes. Thank you, Vincent. So one of the ways that we're planning to monetize that is, of course, you've seen it a little bit in our announcement we made this year on milling, having the first U.S. operations carbon neutral. So we're planning to apply to some of our products on our credits. But maybe to provide more specifics, we have our sustainability guru here, Ian Pinner, and maybe he can help us with that. So Ian?

So I think as Juan said, there's huge opportunities. We're looking to decarbonize our assets. I think there are several areas. We've got the benefit from the carbon sequestration that we already have and as we expand that. And then think about the time lines and the wells that we talked about to be able to take significant carbon reductions from the assets that we already have. And then as the offset of that, which is eventually if there's a need for carbon pricing and carbon trading, we're already mitigating a significant amount of what that potential future cost could be. And as well as that, we're working very hard to do this from a minimum capital investment from ADM. And so we're working with our partners who are experts in certain areas and have capabilities that we don't necessarily have. And they're ready to invest in us as a partner in creating these capabilities, which connects together everything that we need to make sure that we're continuing to drive down and reduce the carbon emissions of our company, not just here in North America but this is a globally focused operation. And then in addition to that, all of the work that Veronica and her team are doing, as she mentioned, to drive further sustainability benefits and reduce carbon emissions across our entire operations footprint.

We have a question from the Web. What do you see as the most significant risks to this plan you've put forward. Juan, would you like to take that question?

Yes, of course. Thank you, Vikram. Given all the opportunities you heard today, what occupies most of our time, to be honest, looking forward is prioritization. We have so many things. And we spend a lot of time analyzing all this optionality to see what creates the most value for the shareholder. And I think it's that transition between you keep on analyzing optionality and you narrow some of them down and you start executing. So certainly, we are in the middle of a volatile environment from everywhere, all the way from COVID to other things. But those are risks that we have managed in the past, and we've done well. I think we reflected on the last 10 years' period where we went through a downturn in the commodity cycle and the pandemic and African swine fever and trade tension. So we know how to react to that. I think that the organization is prepared to that. But if I reflect on the past, we never deviated on any of these things from our objective. So we delivered 10% ROIC. We delivered $4.50. If anything, it delays us maybe 1 year if we have some of this confluence of factors. So am I confident in the $6 to $7 per year? Yes, absolutely. If the risks happen, it may happen on the timing on when we deliver. It's a little bit like Vince's story, whether it's $1 billion or $1.5 billion. Directionally, that's where we're going. And I think the same for ADM. So I have the utmost confidence. And it's not that whether it's going to happen, it's maybe the timing of when it's going to happen, depending on the headwinds.

Our next question is from the web. Can you provide some insight on why ADM has seen such a large increase in the win rate within Human Nutrition? Tailor-made for you, Vince.

Yes. Thank you. Yes. I mean something we're very excited is our win rate, obviously, in the growth. We're in year 7 of this business. And what you're seeing is our differentiation and our value proposition is resonating. When I think about approach to the customer and the level of customer intimacy we've achieved from our selling organization, our marketing organization and Marie's creation, design and development organization, that intimacy is allowing us to get involved in early in the process, have more customer engagement. And then you get to what I talked about earlier in the presentation is our ability to do systems and bring something different. Again, we'll sell ingredients all day long. But it's how we take those ingredients and formulate those and give our customers unique products that define their products in the marketplace. So it's something -- again, I think our value proposition is really resonating. And I think you'll see us continue to grow and expand upon that win rate as we venture into other areas. We've structured organizations in Mark's area in health and wellness that will drive our win rate in health and wellness. I talked at great length about pet solutions. We've set up an organization that will drive win rate in our pet solutions business. So we're taking our best practices and applying them across the entire business. But again, make no mistake about it. It's due to the incredible relationships and the trust we've built with our customers. As I said earlier, customers are at the center of everything that we do.

Okay. We've got another question from the web. Can ADM monetize its carbon capture efforts for use in other products, either it's own or other industries such as the beverage industries? I know we partly answered that question. But Chris, maybe you can build on that?

I will, Vikram. I think of this really in 3 ways. First, as I mentioned in my talk, helping our core customers that we already have and differentiating the products that we already sell. One example was the carbon-neutral milling that we have and really building those bigger walls and digging wider moats around the base business, helping them offset their Level 3 emissions. And so that's number one. The second is bringing in partners like Dr. Werpy mentioned, like LG Chem that want to come to our campus where we can provide utilities, water, wastewater treatment, technology, low CI dextrose. As well, they can use those carbon sequestration wells that we have. So that's adding value to the complexes that we already have. The third opportunity would be just direct use of the wells for others to bring in CO2 and sequester them either through the pipeline and directly into the wells that we have already developed. And these wells are massive wells. I mean they can take tens of billions of tons of CO2. So we see a long lifetime for these facilities and really tremendous upside in the value of those.

The next question comes from Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal.

My question is, where do you expect to use your CapEx spending? Is it more on capacity expansion? Or will it be more on cost savings? And how much return will you expect to get on that? What is your return on invested capital on your CapEx spend?

Ray, would you like to take that question?

Thanks, Ken. In the near term, you should expect our capital spending numbers to tick up above depreciation and amortization. We're still working through 2022 right now. But a number like $1.3 billion in CapEx is not unreasonable for 2022. And again, as I indicated or as the business unit president has indicated, there are organic growth opportunities that we need to seize on. Frankly, we're out of capacity right now in many of our businesses. We could sell more if we had the capacity in markets that are growing. So in the near term, a lot of our CapEx is to support organic growth, whether it be Nutrition business or whether it be in Greg's business. We're talking about Spiritwood facility, which we publicly announced, about $350 million. So I would have to say, Ken, the mix in terms of CapEx near term is heavily tilted towards growth investments. Naturally, we're going to support cost reduction initiatives, and we'll continue do that, right? And then the last element is our business transformation program, the so-called 1ADM program. We are in the peak spending years of that program right now, 2021, 2022, our peak spending years. And there's capitalization of those expenditures that do go into the capital spending budgets that we have right now. So in summary, that's how I kind of think about the CapEx spend in the near term, Ken.

The next question comes from Ben Bienvenu with Stephens.

I want to ask about kind of a follow-up on Adam's question about the $6 to $7 per share guidance range. My understanding is the bottom end of the range versus the top is more about each respective business unit's ability to achieve kind of a more conservative or more aspirational case around the goals that they have and less about variability in the internal environment. Given the comments that you all made about replacing $1 billion of operating profit from ethanol with nutrition and the inherent stability in earnings that comes with that. If you can help us think about, within that $6 to $7 range, what the level of variability might be from that driven by external factors today versus maybe what that looked like 5 years ago? And if you could put numbers around that, that would be great. If it's a qualitative discussion, that would be helpful, too.

Ray, would you like to take that?

Sure. The way I kind of look at it is the fact that clearly, as we talked about, the earnings power currently far more robust, far less volatile than we were back in 2014. How you want to think about this is that as every year ticks by, going from '21 to '22, '23, Nutrition is growing. That's a very stable earnings base. As every year ticks by, in Chris' business, we expect the risk of ethanol to also diminish as we execute some of the strategies that Chris talked about. And then as every year ticks by, productivity and innovation builds on itself. So the way I think about is that the floor, right, and we talk about $4 to $4.50 kind of starting point for 2021, the floor is going to increase every year as we go through the plan. And frankly, the standard deviation of earnings and cash flows will diminish as, really, productivity, innovation, nutrition contributes to a greater portion of our earnings base going forward. That's how I think about that.

Our next question comes from the web. The longer-term trajectory and opportunity is very exciting. But can you provide some framework for your expectations in 2022? Maybe you can level set growth expectations in 2022 relative to the high single-digit growth through 2025? Ray, would you like to take that?

Yes. Let me -- again, Tom, as I indicated, we're going to give you a lot more perspectives on 2022 during our fourth quarter earnings call at the end of January. What I can share with you is just some perspectives we see right now. First, we're going to be exiting this year with a lot of positive momentum across all 3 businesses. So as I always tell the business unit presence how you exit the year represents how you enter the year, right? And so I expect that we're going to exit 2021, enter 2022 with a lot of momentum. So that's point number one. Point number two, when I look at some of the fundamentals right now, I look at ethanol, Chris' business, ethanol inventories are like 20 million barrels, right? It hasn't gone up. Normally, after Thanksgiving, I look for inventories to creep back up again. We haven't seen that, right. So that's a positive fundamental. You're seeing the renewable green diesel capacity come online. That's going to be additional pool and vegetable oil. You're seeing continued strong demand for meal around the world. So if you kind of look at the fundamentals in terms of both Ag Services and Oilseeds and Carb solutions, the demand environment is very strong. And then third, if I look at Vince's business, he continues to have momentum. And we've closed on a lot of these transactions in the third and fourth quarter of 2021. They're going to be value accretive in 2022. So these are just some perspectives to think about of 2022. Right now, I see a lot of positive momentum entering 2022. But we're clearly going to provide you some more perspectives at the fourth quarter earnings call for the rest of 2022.

Okay. Our next question comes the web. Greg, this is specifically a question for you. Is there a risk to renewable diesel demand from the food versus fuel debate? Is there anything to take from the recent RVO with respect to that debate?

Yes. Thanks for the question. When I think about food versus fuel and maybe some of the past discussions that happened back when the ethanol industry was taking off, I think we're in a different place today where you have to think about food and environment and how do we satisfy both of those interests in the future. And what you see today with renewable green diesel capacity coming online is that, in some cases, the market's been shocked a bit and prices responded. And as that happens, trade flows get reconfigured. Feed rations change a bit. And you actually start to spark the innovation opportunity in that space, too. So think about seeds of the future that could contain higher oil content, for example, or food manufacturers that maybe start to rethink the oil mix that they use to free up soybean oil to go into renewable green diesel or maybe canola oil goes into a food application. And so I think the discussion has to be more of a food and environment and how do we satisfy both of those interests going forward. As for the part of the question regarding RVOs, the biodiesel and renewable green diesel space certainly are impacted and influenced by the RVOs at the federal level. But what's also equally as important and then maybe even more so, in some cases, is the state programs like the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program or other states and the adoption rates that they have to try to adopt a renewable fuels program to try to drive change in their fuel mix. And so I think the discussion has to evolve to how do we accomplish providing food and satisfying the environmental needs. And I think certainly, public policy is important but it's more than just the federal RVO.

The next question comes from the web. How will ADM strengthen its business synergy to expand results, profits and overall customer experience and shareholder value? Are there opportunities to leverage learnings from one business into another to speed the collection of results? Juan, tailor made for you.

It's a great question. We think about it all the time. And I think you -- the short answer is yes. So you've seen us doing that over the years. Remember that when we started, Ag Services was a different business than Oilseeds, and now they are combined. And you can see the synergies between that Ag Services and Oilseeds business and the risk management and the supply they provide to Carb Solutions. That's how they make each other better. We see Carb Solutions when it was a different business than milling. Corn was different than milling. We put them together in Carb Solutions because they were facing similar problematics that require similar capabilities to be developed. And we have seen the synergy between those 2 businesses. And I think I mentioned in my remarks, when we have the go-to market, how to -- where to play and how to win discipline that we have that started in Human Nutrition and expanded and now is being used either in pet food or is being used in biosolutions. So it overflowed the Nutrition business, if you will. So more and more, we work altogether. We meet every week. And we constantly look opportunities to leverage. And now that we're looking into things like sustainability, that overspills everything in the company. It goes all the way from how Ag Services procures and works with farmers on grain, all the way to the product we deliver. So think about it. If we deliver a plant-based solution in Asia, we can certify that nobody has touched that product. And we know exactly the traceability of that product all the way to those farmers acres in Iowa maybe that we certified. And we originate the grain on certain conditions. We transport it. We store it in our elevators. We process it in our Oilseeds facility. It goes into a specialty ingredients plant. And then we formulate it and then we deliver it, all within ADM. So I think for us, we work internally in this, we see the strength and the connectivity of that and the incredible synergies that, that creates.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Eric Larson with Seaport Research.

Yes. You've certainly given us a lot to think about. So I just want to kind of look at -- it kind of goes back, I think, to Adam's first question. So the time frame that you have given us for your new outlook, it's a 3- to 4-year time frame. And if you look at the global agricultural markets, I don't think we have seen as strong a growth outlook for total demand, be it food consumption and/or fuel consumption that we've had in some time. So I think partially, that derisks a lot of your story. So when you look at Greg and you look at Chris and their businesses, so we're going to structurally change the global soybean market here. And we're going to become the next quarters of mill. I'm curious on Greg's thoughts about that. But the demand should be very strong. We're building the capacity in renewable diesel. The same is true in Chris' industry with what they're doing with dextrose and aviation fuel. And I don't think I've asked this question in about 25 years. I mean is there a possibility that we see some new wet mills being built at $1.5 billion to $2 billion to produce dextrose? So the time line you've given us is really a very bullish period for the global ag markets. And I'm not sure that we've discussed exactly how powerful that trend is. So could Chris and Greg address those 2 questions?

Greg, would you like to start first, please?

Sure. So the reason I'm more optimistic about crush margins going forward is for a couple of different reasons. First, structurally, a lot of things have changed in the last few years. And if you think about regionally what's really influencing crush margins in Brazil, North America and Europe, it's a domestic factor. So in North America, of course, it's the renewable green diesel demand and the acceleration of veg oil. That's clearly driving an improvement in profitability and crushing oilseeds in North America. In Europe, it could be a story around reducing the dependence on palm oil as part of the biodiesel supply chain over there and increasing demand for more soft oils like soy and rapeseed oil. In Brazil, it's a story about increasing demand for livestock production there. And ultimately, what happens is, I believe the competitiveness in Argentina has actually slipped a bit in relation to those other regions that I just spoke to because of the significant reliance on the domestic market in each of those regions. So I believe the profitability, as I mentioned in my presentation, is going to improve especially in the area that we happen to have a footprint in, both in Brazil, North America and Europe. I would say in addition to that, we have high expectations from our team. And our team has consistently been able to deliver better than what the market gives them. And Juan talked about that earlier. And we've been able to arm our teams with better tools and technologies so that while they've been going to market and winning and bringing home results better than what the market gives them, we have higher expectations from them going forward given some of the tools and technologies that we put in their hands, the synergies that we've extracted as we brought together the origination business unit and the Oilseed business unit, and the beneficial impact that I see that we've had as we've integrated those teams and have a more holistic approach to how we manage risks. So all those reasons give me a reason to be optimistic going forward. You asked specifically about soybean meal exports out of the U.S. And I think it is the enhanced competitive position that the U.S. is going to find itself in is going to allow us to participate in some destinations that maybe traditionally we haven't been able to participate in, which is why we located our expansion in Spiritwood. It's a direct shot to the West Coast export program. And I think there's -- I think that's something that needs to be taken into consideration as you think about expansions going forward in the region.

Chris, would you like to build on that question related to wet mills?

I will. Yes, Eric, I hate to speculate on whether others would invest in the industry or not and add new capacity. It is important to note there has been a shuttering of capacity in the last decade as the decline in the need for high-fructose corn syrup has changed the landscape a bit. And folks have closed some capacity, albeit the industry still runs at a pretty high-capacity utilization really based on the items that we talked about earlier today and the flexibility and optionality that we have in these big facilities. I think that this demand for dextrose is real. You look at sustainable aviation fuel and other plant-based solutions that we want to provide via our biosolutions platform. And we're going to see that pool that I mentioned. And also, Dr. Werpy talked about, even within our own complexes, we have over 20 billion pounds of dextrose. So there's already a lot there for us to move around. And we love the fact that we have this optionality within these plants to have a fight for the grind. So that's how we're thinking about the 20 billion pounds and where it could go in the future. But we see the demand on the horizon being strong.

The next question from the web. Partnerships are a large part of the world today, gaining access to insights and knowledge from nontraditional industry companies. What does ADM look for in partners when it is considering how to address innovation in a meaningful way that drives that differentiated value proposition? Juan, please.

Very true. The way data is generated today at the speed that we generate, no company, no person can have -- can know enough. And I think that, that idea of somebody knows something is probably obsolete. So we work a lot to make sure that we are a learning organization and open organization to other companies. And we have different levels of partnership. We have had a partnership like with Wilmar for the last 20-something years that gives us -- in the sense of what do we look for, gives us something that we don't have. It gives us -- Wilmar originally, it's like a plantation company. I mean we are not. So they are in things like palm oil, the largest oil in the world, or things like sugar, we are -- it's important to us but we are not directly, where they are a consumer products company in China. So we get a lot of information and a lot of insight from that and it complements our information. But we also look for that in the companies that we work with. You heard me on my ending, the companies that we invested in. This is not about putting money in companies. We have put money in companies through our ADM ventures with a very specific screen, which is what of these companies can we help with technology or they have something that we need. That's what you see there, people that make milk without the cow, meat without the cow, collagen without an animal. So I think that these things are complements to what we do. But we know the technology. We have the asset. We have the footprint. We have the feedstock. And I think we manage humbleness, if you will, in our approach to all our acquisitions. When we acquired WILD, we never said it was an integration. It was us overtaking the company. That's why you have Vince here and you have Marie and all the people coming from WILD. We think about these integrations as an attachment in which we combine their knowledge. And as such, they significantly improve us in terms of dealing with small companies, bringing the concept of delivering solutions that we never had before we were an ingredients company in that sense. So I think that we think about this all the time. And it's a key way to create value going forward, not only for ADM but, I will argue, for every company out there.

The next question from the web. How will your network best serve the food security needs of those key areas of growing population and food consumption that Juan highlighted? So perhaps, Juan, you want to start and Greg can build on that?

Yes. Well, as I said in my presentation, I think that it is clear, this gap. I always said Argentina has 40 million people that can produce food for 400 million people. China has 22% of the world population, 6% of the water or the arable land. So there are places in which there is a lot of excess of food. And there is places that there's always going to be a deficit, and you need to match that. Matching that in the quantities that you have to think about it requires an enormous scale. And it requires the fact that we manage like 200 ports around the world, the oceangoing vessels, all the transportation network but also the origination that we have in North America, South America, Eastern Europe and also the destination that we have to make sure we make those connections. So that's why I think it is replaceable to a certain degree. I don't think that you can get today enough capital to put all those dots in the map, if you will. This is -- it is truly irreplaceable. And I think that the value of those assets as we need to match this demand with supply will continue to go up over in the future. So generally, that's what I think about it. But I'm sure Greg has more interesting things to say.

Maybe I'll just build on that. When we went through the pandemic and the world was counting on us to deliver -- or when we went through 6 main storms hitting New Orleans, when the world was counting on us last year, when Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans and the world counted on us to get back on our feet. I think -- that's what I think about when I think about the role that we play in connecting areas of surplus to the areas where consumption is really happening. When you do business with ADM, you know you're going to get delivered. And we're going to be there for you as a credible counter partner and we're going to be able to deliver. Whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a storm, whether it's this, whether it's that, the team steps up and it's a muscle that's embedded in the organization.

So next question from the web. You recently adjusted your ownership in Wilmar. How do you view your relationship and investment in Wilmar? Ray, maybe you want to take that?

Thank you. Couple of observations. Number one, we've actually increased our ownership in Wilmar since 2014. So if you recall, back in 2014, we had about a 16% ownership position. We're about 22% right now. We did take it down a little bit from 24.9% to 22%. That's just fine-tuning, right? That's just fine-tuning our ownership position because from our perspective, having a plus-20% position represents a very strategic investment that we have in Wilmar. So that's point number one. Point number two, as Juan kind of indicated, they're very important for our strategy. They're a very important part of our emerging market strategy. They are the largest packaged food company in China through Yihai Kerry Arawana. There's no way ADM can replicate that, right? And then you're playing in the largest consumer market in the world. They have positions in India, strong positions in Southeast Asia, strong positions in Africa. We don't have that. So they represent an important part of participating in the emerging markets. Our relationship with Wilmar is very good. Both Juan and I interact with the senior team regularly. And we talk about how else we can -- what else can we do in terms of partnership opportunities, how we can support each other. So In summary, it is a strategic investment. It's a very important relationship. It is important for our emerging market strategy.

Next question from the web. You recently invested in the pet food business but are showing relatively low margins currently. How does this fit into your current Animal Nutrition portfolio? And what gives you confidence you can increase the margins to your target levels? Vince, would you like to take that?

Sure. We're excited about our Animal Nutrition business in total. And we have opportunities to margin up across the portfolio. We've isolated pet just to the sheer growth of the category and our opportunity and how pet solutions fit within the context of our entire business. We formulate products in the pet solutions arena, the exact same way we do on the human nutrition side. And Health and Wellness sits at the convergence of that. So we view that we have -- and we've proven. Look, we've acquired other companies, and we've played in other spaces. And we've margined up across our portfolio. We've margined up our beverage business. We've margined up our foods business. We'll take the same approach from a pet solution standpoint, both around margins and revenue drive, customer intimacy and how we formulate products. So that's why we're optimistic and think pet solutions are great investments and -- especially in the positions we've taken of late.

We have a follow-up from Ben Theurer with Barclays.

A different topic and maybe one more for Leticia. I was wondering in regards to the joint venture and PlantPlus and what you've been seeing on the alternative meat market and plant-based. So it feels like there's a little bit of a deceleration in growth. But obviously, you have your own exposure through PlantPlus. But then you're also obviously a supplier of many of those like ingredients and solutions to other players. So how do you feel about plant-based and also in light of what you've been doing on the venture capital side for some of the investments? Juan just recently mentioned around milk without a cow, meat without a cow, et cetera. So how do you balance the thoughts around here? And how -- where do you see growth heading in plant-based?

No, that's a great question. So the way I think about this, so first of all, the need to increase protein consumption based on the population that is growing as well as consumers diversifying source of protein. We'll call for all the protein sources to continue making a big part of consumers' diets, from animal protein, plant-based protein and next-generation proteins that will come in line in the next decade from cell-based fermentations. Again, there will be room for all those proteins to make the needs of the population to get their protein in their intake. When you think about PlantPlus, your first question, so first of all, we are looking at plant-based opportunity to really meet the needs of the customers, from single ingredients to food systems. And we have our own PlantPlus Foods JV that gets into the final consumer with direct-to-consumer products. And it is complementary, right? First of all, PlantPlus Foods is not going after the existing market. It's looking for new white spaces, new channels, plant-forward solutions that don't exist in the market to expand the category and create new opportunities and tastier, healthier and more sustainable plant-based food products. So again, we feel there is a place for all. We believe the category is going to continue growing double digits. And we want ADM to differentiate itself in growing faster than the market.

Thank you. With that, we come to the end of the Q&A session. I'll turn it over now back to Juan for closing comments.

Thank you, Vikram, and thank you all for joining us today as we have shared our vision for ADM's long-term sustainable growth. On behalf of the ADM team, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday season. And we look forward to connecting with you in the next year. Thank you.