Corteva, Inc. (CTVA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Corteva, Inc. 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I will now introduce our first presenter, Gregory Page, Chair of the Board of Directors.

Good morning. I'm Gregory Page, Chair of the Board of Directors of Corteva, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to our 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We appreciate your participation in today's meeting and your ongoing support for Corteva. I'll start the formal business of this meeting by introducing Cornel Fuerer, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, who will serve as secretary of this meeting. To continue the introductions, I would like to recognize our other directors: the Chief Executive Officer, Jim Collins; Lamberto Andreotti; Robert Brown; David Everitt; Klaus Engel; Janet Giesselman; Karen Grimes; Michael Johanns; Lois Juliber; Rebecca Liebert; Marcos Lutz; Nayaki Nayyar; Kerry Preete; Lee Thomas and Patrick Ward. As previously announced, Robert Brown, Lois Juliber and Lee Thomas will each retire and not stand for reelection. We would like to thank each of them for their important contributions to our Board. We will dearly miss their insight, experience and extraordinary dedication to our Board. Additionally, I would like to introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Dave Anderson; and our Investor Relations Director, Jeff Rudolph, joining us on the phone today. Finally, also joining us are Gray Lambe and Michael Ayres, representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm. The meeting will now come to order. Cornel will now review the formalities to be observed for our meeting today. Cornel?

Thank you, Greg. Good morning. Our website and virtual meeting platform contain a copy of the agenda and rules of conduct for this meeting, which will ensure that stockholders have an opportunity to raise questions and our meeting proceeds in a fair and orderly fashion. If you wish to raise a question, please click on Question for Management, and type in your question. As noted in the rules of conduct for this meeting, personal grievances and matters outside the scope of the agenda for this meeting will not be permitted to be raised in today's meeting. If we run out of time to address your properly raise questions fully or at all during the meeting, we'll post the questions and our answers to our Investor web page. Discussions on matters will be eliminated if they are repetitive or in violation of our rules of conduct. Broadridge Financial Solutions has been appointed Inspector of Elections, and its agent representative will tabulate today's voting results. I have received the inspector's written oath of office and he has presented me with evidence that notice of this meeting was properly given to all stockholders of record as of the close of business on the record date. This notice will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. I have determined, based upon the inspector's report, that there are stockholders represented at this meeting holding common stock representing at least a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at this meeting, which is sufficient for a quorum and for transacting the business of this meeting. With a quorum met, the polls for voting are now open. Now we will have a few words from Corteva's Chief Executive Officer, Jim Collins.

Thank you, Cornel, and good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. Since Corteva came to life nearly 2 years ago, we have continued to execute on a strategic plan that is focused on 4 basic elements: delivering a pipeline of high value-added differentiated products, providing multiple points of grower access through our multichannel and multibrand route to market, driving ongoing cost and productivity actions and maintaining a balanced approach to capital allocations. In 2020, Corteva came together as a team to deliver against the backdrop of a historic operating environment. This last year has no doubt left an indelible mark on all of us having shaped our society and systems in a number of ways. At the center, the global pandemic shifted the ways that we lived and worked throughout the year, while at the same time, historic events of social injustice inspired crucial urgent progress on matters of equity. As I reflect on 2020, I could not be more proud of our Corteva team. This team navigated unchartered territory while continuing to prioritize the health and safety of our colleagues, customers and our communities. Despite this truly historic year and its intense complexity, together, we demonstrated our strength, resilience and total focus on execution. When you couple these results with the strong results we delivered in the first quarter of 2021, the dedication of our Corteva team is clear. We entered 2021 with substantial momentum behind us. Our first quarter performance proved that we have a substantial opportunity in front of us as well, and we are fully committed to carrying this momentum forward. With the pieces in place to generate meaningful margin expansion and create significant shareholder value, our global teams continue to drive important progress against our commitments. We are doing this in a number of ways, but this work begins with our balanced and diverse portfolio of innovative solutions and the value we are creating for Corteva and our customers around the world. Let me share with you a few examples. We continue to see exceptional momentum around the accelerated ramp-up of our Enlist system and are driving ongoing headway on our trade independent strategy. We are accelerating the launch of Brevant into the retail channel in the U.S., building on prior launches and strengthening our position in this important channel. We are also driving ongoing progress for our Crop Protection portfolio transformation, focusing on high-margin and differentiated technologies, including expanding our existing leadership position in sustainable chemistry. Taken together, our portfolio and pipeline are industry-leading. Our optimized route to market enables us to provide greater choice and value to our customers and our digital capabilities provide a solid foundation for transforming the way our teams innovate, how our operations run and the services that we provide for our customers. As we further strengthen these competitive advantages, we remain laser-focused on driving cost and productivity actions across the company, including our ongoing focus on Crop Protection manufacturing and supply chain optimization. Additionally, our balance sheet remains strong with an investment-grade credit rating, and we are -- remain committed to delivering substantial capital returns to shareholders while investing for long-term growth, right in line with the commitments that we've made. Beyond driving business results, we also remain committed to advancing our mission to contribute to a more resilient global food system. We're taking powerful actions in partnership with our global stakeholders to lead the future of sustainable agriculture. Last year, we launched our 2030 sustainability goals, reinforcing our commitment to help ensure better outcomes across the industry on behalf of farmers, the land they support, communities and the company's operations. As part of these initiatives, we remain focused on enabling more productive and sustainable farming practices, climate resilience and more sustainable operations through waste reduction, water conservation and enhanced biodiversity. Put simply, we see it as a business imperative to enable a global food system that sustains lives and enriches our planet, and we are deeply committed to fulfilling this common purpose. Another vital area of focus for Corteva is embracing inclusion, diversity and equity in everything we do. Diversity of perspectives together with equal access and opportunity are essential to driving progress in our business, in our industry and in the world we wish to build for the future. We believe strongly in the power of an inclusive workforce, supply chain and culture of belonging to catalyze our innovation and best serve our global customer base. Reflecting this, we are approaching our inclusion, equity and diversity initiatives with a sense of urgency, and we've identified a number of goals for workforce diversity and equity across industry stakeholders. Our leadership team and Board intend to hold ourselves accountable to do the hard work and drive measurable progress. Let me be clear. We have made strong progress in our short history. However, we have more to do, and we remain focused on accelerating this progress in all areas of our business to achieve our goals. We are aligned on the value creation opportunity we expect to deliver and fully focused on excellence in execution. The foundation for our continued success is this regard in our culture, a shared sense of accountability and delivering on our commitments to all of our stakeholders. The Board and leadership team are united in this approach. As you may know, we have recently welcomed 2 new leaders to our executive leadership team. Sam Eathington, a highly accomplished leader in agriculture innovation, joined us last fall and he's off to a running start. In April, Dave Anderson joined Corteva. Dave has an established CFO track record leading world-class financial functions at both established companies and start-ups. Both leaders will be instrumental as we continue to deliver on our growth strategy and the commitments we've shared. With this, I want to express my sincere thanks to my management team, my fellow directors for their extraordinary contributions to Corteva. Their thoughtful guidance and unmatched resilience in the face of remarkable challenges have been critical in navigating through this historic operating environment, building the momentum we have today. And lastly, I want to thank all of you, our shareholders, for your continued support of Corteva. We are clear about the work underway, confident in our potential to lead the industry and committed to best-in-class execution. So at this time, we will now hold a brief session to answer your questions. Jeff, could you please provide the first question?

Thank you, Jim. The first question is as follows. Would the company consider virtual access to future in-person meetings for those stockholders who cannot attend?

Thanks, Jeff. Yes, I think this pandemic and the use of many of the virtual tools throughout the last year has shown us that the consideration of additional virtual access to our meetings in the future would be warranted.

Great. Our next question is in respect to the background of our Board members in agricultural sciences. Specifically, does Corteva have plans to add Board members who are weed scientists, crop scientists or those with ties to land grant universities or equivalent academic institutions?

Thank you, Jeff. We already have a number of Board directors who have deep history and experience in both agricultural and pharmaceutical sciences. In addition to that, one of our Board Directors, Janet Giesselman, is a degreed plant pathologist and provides important oversight in our Science and Innovation Committee. As far as land grant universities, a number of our directors are very well and deeply connected to many of our land grant universities across the country.

And at this time, I can confirm there are no more questions.

Great. Thank you, Jeff, and our Q&A session is now closed. Thank you for those questions. And certainly, thank you for your interest in Corteva. Cornel, back to you.

Thank you, Jim. Our question-and-answer session has now concluded and the polls remain open. The first item of business on our agenda is the election of our 13 director nominees to serve until the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or wait until their respective successors shall have been elected and qualified. There were no nominations by stockholders pending before the company and properly submitted prior to this meeting in accordance with our bylaws. Therefore, I declare the nominations closed. The second item on our agenda is the opportunity to cast a nonbinding advisory vote on the compensation of Corteva-named executive officers. The final item on our agenda is the ratification of the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2021 fiscal year. With the conclusion of our final agenda item and our Q&A session, I now declare the polls for these meeting is closed. The report of the inspector of election provides that each of the director nominees listed in the company's proxy statement has been elected. The advisory vote on executive compensation has been approved. And the ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers, as the company's independent public accounting firm for 2021, has been approved. I hereby direct the results of the voting to be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The business for which this meeting has been held is now complete, and I declare the meeting formally adjourned. Thank you all for your participation.

Thank you. The Corteva, Inc. 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders has officially concluded. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.