FMC Corporation (FMC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Back and glad to have you here with me, and it's a pleasure here to host this next session with Andrew Sandifer of FMC. He's the CFO. He's been with the company a long time. He was previously a long time back with Rohm and Haas and -- so we'll dig in here and welcome your questions as we get through.

So Andrew, why don't we focus here more near term or a couple of months into the quarter, had some -- got some headwinds in Brazil, that's been -- seems to be a topic that has come up many, many times in the last 24 hours, at least at this conference that it is a more challenging region to monitor the channel than I appreciated in the past. But perhaps give us a bit of an update on how things are going. You're 2 months into the quarter, is it going better or worse than you thought? And what's your near-term outlook?

Sure. And look, I think it all starts from the basis that for FMC and for crop protection industry in general, 2023 is a pretty awful year, an overcorrection, I would say, from overbuying in 2022, where we saw a lot of our customers really buying ahead of need because of concerns around the long [indiscernible] of supply disruptions of rapid price increases and bluntly, capital is cheap. As you get through '23 and the correction we're still living through this quarter, capital is not free. And I think the distributors and retailers to which we serve are feeling much manufacture's ability to supply them. So that's the big correction we're a part of. And I think as you pointed to, Q1 itself is a continuation of this theme. The big channel inventory dislocation we've been living through really began in the latter part of Q2 of '23. And almost Memorial Day, not quite, but right before Memorial Day holiday, the industry just seemed to hit a wall. So when you think about how that fits in the calendar, Q1 of this year, we're comparing back against what was a pre-disruption quarter. So Q1 of '23 was still -- it was a relatively strong quarter. Q1 is largely dominated by Europe and North America, but it's finishing out the Latin American season. So we are guiding to a particularly underwhelming Q1, I have to say, with significant -- sales down, not dissimilar to what we've seen in the last 3 quarters as we've been proceeding through this channel correction. But a little more pronounced on the EBITDA side, in part because of carryover, a high-cost inventory and unabsorbed fixed cost, we can click down on that if there's interest as we go ahead. But Steve, to your specific question around our outlook for Q1, look, we've been saying and I've been saying to anybody who would listen to us that Q1 was going to continue to be a challenging quarter. The consensus didn't reflect it, despite our best efforts to educate and communicate about what we thought was going to be really a year to really anniversary this disruption in its reset in the marketplace and that you should expect pretty substantial declines in year-on-year comparisons in Q1. So when we guided for Q1, again, 26% down revenue, 59% down in EBITDA, not exactly an overwhelming quarter, but something that makes sense, given, again, the dynamics of this channel correction, we really need to see through a reset of the inventory and get through what was a very normal growing season and buying season in Europe last year in Q1. So what are we seeing so far in Q1? And what I'd say is we're seeing what we expected. We expected a challenging quarter, but we are starting to see the signs of a return of visibility. And that's the first step towards what we think is coming around midyear, sometime in Q2, a real turn in the business. So what are we -- specifically are we seeing? I think, one, sales through the first 2 months of the quarter have been pretty much in line with our internal forecast. That's the first time that's happened in 3 quarters. Now in that crop protection space, the preponderance of the business gets done in the third month of each quarter. So as I've become more humble in my approach of forecasting, I will say I'm pleased to see the progress to date in the quarter, but we're not done by any means. But it's a good sign, right? So we are tracking the expectations we started the quarter with. I'd say second, the nature of conversations with customers has changed. Our industry, Steve, as you know, we have a really long supply chain. When we're humming and running at normal space, we turn inventory about twice a year. So you're thinking about 6 months from the time we buy raw materials until we're selling a finished product. We need to have an ongoing dialogue with our customers well ahead of the growing and new season, to understand what their needs are, where they think demand is going to be, what the mix of crops is going to be, what on-the-ground intelligence they have around where they think pest pressures are going to be, to be able to effectively plan demand and to plan commercial activity. Now starting about June of last year, those conversations shut down. Our industry went very much to a buying hand-to-mouth kind of operation in an industry with very long supply chains where you just can't operate like that in the long run. So as we started to burn down channel inventory, we are starting to see people recognize that, that buffer they've been living off of for the last year, yes, excess channel inventory, it gives you a little bit of more security of supply. You don't have to plan as far ahead. But as our customers or the distributors and retailers downstream of us start bringing their inventories back to more normal levels, they know and they're starting to have that dialogue with us again. So in particular, in Brazil, where -- look, we're finishing up the Brazilian season. It wasn't a great Q4. We had some dry weather at the end of Q4 that had us fall short of our expectations for Q4. And it has a lingering impact into Q1 to where those sales won't be caught back up and sort of impact our view on the first half of the year. But it does mean that we're -- as we're looking ahead to the next growing season in Brazil starting in September, our expectations are the same, that we are clearing out the channel inventory. There might still be a bit high in places or in specific products, but it's getting more normal such that when we get into the new selling season, the new growing season in Q3, we'll be starting from a more healthy base. So that doesn't mean a rapid, all of a sudden, magical return to 2022 overbought conditions, but it does mean that comparisons to quarters like and the second half that we had and say, 2020 or 2021, aren't unreasonable. And the blunt truth is that the comparable is so low that, that translates to pretty aggressive, pretty high sounding percentage growth year-on-year, such that if you parse our guidance for the year, down pretty strongly in Q1, revenue up 15% in Q2 through Q4, profit up 34%. EBITDA, up 34% Q2, Q4. Now what's misleading about that is those are percentages from a much smaller base. So again, if you normalize, think about it in dollars or a size basis rather than just a percentage basis, you really are just coming back to more of a 2021 size of business in the second half to balance out the year. But that beginning of the year, thinking about Q1, I'd say the 2 biggest things right now, we are tracking to what we've been -- we expected for the first 2 months, and we're having real conversations with customers about their needs on a 6, 9 longer month horizon to where we can anticipate and plan and where we start this more normal dialogue, it does provide greater visibility, not perfect visibility by any means, but greater visibility into demand and business outlook than what we've had for the past several quarters.

And besides demand and volume, how would you assess the outlook in Brazil for competition from generics? Is that a factor that's looking greater than you had in the past and why? And what about pricing? Maybe you could comment about those as well.

Sure. Look, Brazil is the largest, most dynamic, most competitive agricultural market in the world. So it's not -- should not be a surprise that the most price competition you have is going to be in Brazil. Everyone wants to succeed in Brazil. And we have seen pricing pressure. We had low single-digit price pressure filtrated for this current quarter. We faced high single-digit price pressure almost double digit in the fourth quarter. So we have seen some pricing pressure in Brazil. That pricing pressure is less to do with generics and more to do with the inventory correction. We have not seen anything in the data for the products that we sell that suggest any increase in volumes of generic product coming into Brazil. We have not seen any real change in competitive activity with our more generic competitors. Other than a difference in approach, we have been pretty disciplined about limiting price discounting and not pursuing volume in a weak demand environment. Several of other players, particularly more generic players have been more aggressive about price -- cutting price and trying to get volume and have worked their ways into negative EBITDA margins. Now we had the most abysmal year, I can imagine in 2023, we still posted a 22% EBITDA margin for the year. And part of that is a discipline around managing pricing. So I don't think it's a generic issue, Steve, for us in Brazil or anywhere with pricing. But I think in Brazil, a part of it, and Mark spoke to this in our Q4 earnings call, a part of it is where we have excess inventory, providing some accommodations to customers in the form of rebates or credits that help them offset high-cost inventory that they're carrying. That flows through as a price for us. Doesn't mean we didn't have any impact on our price list and on the price in which we'll be selling as we start the next season, but it does flow through as a price reduction. So about half of the price headwind that we had in Q4 in Brazil was literally customer accommodations around existing inventory as opposed to change in any kind of list price.

And what would have happened if you didn't give them the rebate..

I think we would have seen even steeper volume drop offs than what we had because I do think people are still being very cautious about their purchasing. So it's a bit of helping each other out kind of situation. And I do think that sometimes you have to have that kind of cooperation and investment in your customer to maintain that long-term relationship. So short-term painful, but I think long-term supportive of maintaining both margins rupture pricing of our products going forward and maintaining position in the marketplace.

There were a couple of fertilizer companies yesterday that were commenting on Brazil, specifically on the -- in the challenges of knowing how much is in inventory. So it's not just a crop protection issue. And do you think that there's potential for that to improve or anything that you're trying to take on as a different approach to give you more visibility?

Yes. Look, I think this is an issue bigger than Brazil. I think our industry, unlike many other industries, and you think about consumer products, consumer electronics, where you literally have POS level data at retail flowing all the way back up the channel. We have a very opaque channel. Our retailers and our distributors and back to us and just the fragmentation that we have in many markets make it very hard to have that kind of high visibility. We are -- and Mark talked a little bit about this on our Q4 call as well. We're working very hard in each country we operate in to look for different and new data sources to augment the way we've done this traditionally. And it really is, like I think, an important factor to understand about our business. Once you formulate a product, package it and label it, it is no longer fungible. It is dedicated to the market in which you have done that in. So you're dealing with independent country markets. You're not swinging product from market to market once you've got that inventory. So you really have to think manage all of this intelligence at a country level and even within regions of a country and larger countries like Brazil and the U.S. We've traditionally used a lot of formal and informal sources conversation, observation as well as third-party data and our own proprietary data. And we're investing into further tools with either industry-wide cooperative group efforts to track and monitor at retail level where better information on what's flowing through. The U.S. is the most advanced of this, where we can actually see much more clearly what our sales through at level retail is. We're in the process of implementing a similar kind of approach in Mexico. In Brazil, the channel is just not prepared to do that. So it has to do with using more third-party studies, spending time on the ground and augmenting the information we have. Now I don't want to leave anybody with a sense of despair around visibility in the crop protection industry. The crop protection industries was all of the ag input industries. We've always had volatility in our demand. We're subject to weather volatility. We're subject to crop price volatility. We're subject to pest pressure to bugs and weeds show up. They do vary. These are natural processes. But for the long period of time prior to this big dislocation in 2023, we've been able to manage that and incorporate all the different data points and source -- data sources we had to manage and make realistic expectations that we could deliver on with The Street. And look it's [indiscernible] at this point. But at the 21 quarters that we existed in our current configuration as a focused agricultural chemicals company before this correction in Q2. Of those 21 quarters, we missed our midpoint of guidance once. We were above the high end of our EBITDA guidance 10x. So whether or not the industry has become more volatile, we can debate, but in an industry that's volatile, we had historically been able to set reasonable expectations and deliver against them. This dislocation went way beyond the ability of our processes and our analytics to be able to handle it. I don't believe this is the new normal. I think this is a generational dislocation. That's a second derivative of COVID. I think it will settle out. I think it will take a couple of seasons to normalize. We are investing in new tools and data that will improve our visibility. We're never going to have perfect visibility, but with improved visibility and the ability that we've had for many, many years to manage and balance across the different sources of volatility, I think we'll get back to being able to be much more predictable and much more consistent in delivering on expectations than what you've seen in the past several quarters.

Let's talk a little bit about what's in your pipeline that can drive new growth? The prior panel was on biologicals, which is also an area that you clearly have in your pipeline. But what would you highlight in your pipeline on the synthetic side and on the biological side?

Yes. So on the synthetic side -- and look, we did a big Investor Day back in November, both our Chief Technology Officer, Seva Rostovtsev; and our Chief Marketing Officer, Diane Allemang, dedicated a lot of their time to new product pipeline. So if you'd like to get a little deeper than what I can cover in a couple of minutes here on the fireside, I would certainly refer you back to that presentation. But in terms of the new synthetic actives, there are 4 active ingredients that we expect to contribute about $2 billion in sales by 2020 -- by 2033. Two are in the -- are already in early stages of commercial introduction. Two will be introduced in the coming years. So first, Isoflex which is a cereal herbicide that we initially launched in Australia. We've recently launched and expanded that launch in Argentina, and in 2025, we'll launch in Europe. Very strongly positive reaction to that, giving our farmers additional tools to deal with difficult weeds in cereal crops. The second is fluindapyr, a fungicide, introduced in Brazil and Argentina late last year, part season, not full season, very useful on Asian soybean rust and soy, but also in a number of other crops. We'll be introducing that in additional markets over the next several years as well. Then coming in 2026, a really interesting product, Dodhylex, which is a rice herbicide. And the first new mode of action for rice herbicides in decades. And this is one of the places where not only being a company that doesn't have a seeds business has its advantages. It is unlikely that any one of our seed linked peers would have invested the money to develop a rice herbicide in a crop that you don't really have a seed business work, not in the same way. We find it an interesting space. It's a particularly challenging one. Rice, for those of you who may not think about it this way, Rice is a grass. And invasive grasses -- there are also weeds grow in rice fields, rice paddies. This is a herbicide that kills grasses, but doesn't kill rice. So very, very strong expectations where we'll be starting introduction '26, '28, principally in Asian countries, and then we'll take it to the rest of the world. So very excited about Dodhylex. And then the last of the 4 is Rimisoxafen. It's a dual mode of action herbicide, used to deal with herbicide-resistant weeds and row crops. That we'll start launching commercially in 2028. Very, very interesting profile here, broadly applicable across a lot of different crops in different geographies. So that build to $2 billion, look, the next -- this year, 2024, '25, good contribution to growth from Isoflex and fluindapyr. It really starts to accelerate in '26, both from the Isoflex and fluindapyr, but with the addition of Dodhylex and then further accelerates as we get later in the decade. And again, well on track to that trajectory of $2 billion by 2033. So that's the synthetic pipeline, Steve.

Okay. Let's jump to biologicals. I thought your demonstrations at your Investor Day were very interesting in biologicals. You have some folks in there that are doing some pretty interesting things, particularly in the pheromone technology, but what would you highlight?

So look, I'd highlight a couple of things around our biologicals portfolio. First, the existing portfolio, a big chunk of biologicals is biopesticides. Those are very fragmented products There's not a block -- you're not going to have a global blockbuster and a true biological biopesticide, just the nuances of how the products get used and some of the limitations on how you can move things that are derived from an organic -- from an organism across borders, who's going to limit the scale at which any single product will be. But I think if you have interest in those products, Slide 64 in the Investor Day presentation and Bénédicte's presentation on our Plant Health business gives you a good rundown on the entire biopesticide product line. But I think, Steve, you touched on the thing that I think is most exciting in our plant health broadly, in biologics platform, and that's pheromones. And pheromones are really a different class because they help you control insects in a fundamentally different way. Pheromones don't kill insects. Pheromones confuse insects so they can't find each other to mate and reproduce and produce the next generation of insects. So it's a fundamentally different approach for controlling insects. Now it's one that's been around for a while. You'll find synthetically produced pheromones in high-value crops and greenhouses, controlling pests and used in conjunction with synthetic pesticides. But they're very, very expensive in the way they're currently manufactured. The real breakthrough here, a company called BioPhero, we bought in 2022. We've been invested in it as venture investors for a couple of years, had a technology where they've done gene editing of yeast and are using biological process to produce remote. And that is a more than order of magnitude difference in manufacturing cost and dip versus synthetic chemistry. So we're going to be able to take proven technology in terms of an approach of controlling insects that's complementary and reinforcing of use of pesticides. And take it to row crops and broader -- into a broader application into markets where it just can't play today because of cost prohibition. It's just too expensive. So we'll start introducing in 2026. It will be our first commercial launch product for fall armyworm, which is a pest in a lot of crops, but not the least of which soy. Then we'll go after diamondback moth, corn borer or East -- European corn borer between '26, '27, '28. We think there's $1 billion in potential in these products in a decade. And we think this is largely complementary and synergistic with insecticides. You're always fighting resistance. You're always looking for multiple ways to control pests. You're going to need both, a pheromone takes time to reduce the pest pressure in the field, whereas an insect can be much more -- an insecticide is much faster acting. So we think this is a part of what we think the natural evolution of the business it will be. And that there's a real synergy between biological products and synthetic products. And it all comes down to what is it we're fundamentally trying to sell to farmers. We're trying to sell them the yield, helping them drive higher productivity from the true scarce resource, which is how much arable land do we have. And in the climatic environment that's becoming more volatile and where we need increased tools to be able to deliver the higher yields, we need to feed a growing population. So if I sound a little bullish about pheromones and agriculture, it's because I am. I know it's not the most popular time to be talking about crop protection given the -- where we are in the industry cycle and this reset, but I do think there's a very promising future with pheromones, and I think there's a very promising future with the combination of strong synthetic chemistry and strong biological processes.

We found it very compelling too, though, Andrew. Your research leader, I think her name is...

Bénédicte.

Bénédicte, formerly with Chr. Hansen, I mean, as I understood, she used the gene editing capabilities to alter the bacteria or yeast, to produce these synthetic compounds, but is -- then is it effectively a biologic?

You know what, I think we're going to have shades of gray on that issue. There are some products in the marketplace today that are made in similar kind of bioprocessing. I think the answer for me is bluntly whether it's -- whether you want to call it a biological or not, it's a very effective tool in helping farmers drive yield. It has less off-target impacts and less externalities than existing solutions. It will create value for the world and create more -- both more productivity and less impact. It's a great thing. Call it what you want. I call it a good thing for agriculture in the world.

We had a pheromone company at this conference, I would say, 5 or 6 years ago, but it was just so costly because it was difficult to produce. And then it all -- it wasn't something that could be aerially sprayed. It had to be put in these canisters that would attract the males when they wouldn't get out or it was something like that. It was just very clumsy. It didn't seem to work, but the technology and the concept of interrupting mating behavior of insects has been around a while. It's just not been very cost effective.

It's not been cost effective. And I think you're touching on another place while this is a particularly interesting opportunity for FMC. Look, it's a pretty technical space. Bénédicte, may be more formal -- Dr. Bénédicte Flambard, who is the Head of our Plant Health business. There's an army of scientists working on these in terms of fine-tuning the biological process to produce, but there's a piece of this where you really need the legacy FMC and that comes around formulation. And that comes around as you're talking about the delivery mechanism for pheromones to make it viable in large areas rather than constrained spaces. So more to come on that. We'll talk some more as we get closer to commercial introduction. But I do think there is a reason why this pheromone business fits very well in FMC. And I think that value proposition is there to be filled.

All right. Let's get into the diamides. It seemed like your diamides, the ones that you sell under your own brand versus the active ingredient that your partners sell they had more challenges than you did. Is that a correct interpretation?

Yes. No -- I'll start with a different CH word. I think they made different choices. I think all of the -- I think if you look at all of the crop chemical companies, all of them greatly reduced purchases from suppliers, whether that was raw material suppliers or active ingredient suppliers. So in the case of our diamides partnership business, we -- by and large, we sell active ingredient, the core ingredient to our partners who then formulate their own products from it. They're bringing their inventories down just like we are. So they've made a choice to manage down inventory. That part of our business, I think, is going to react more quickly to changes in inventory holding decisions and internally produced product. Because you have the ability to wait and buy from us at a later time. Now there's some contractual commitments both ways in our supply agreements. But I do really think that really, it has more to do with our partners choosing to manage down their inventories when they have too much capital tied up in other products as well, not just ours, than it does with any particular commercial difficulties. I think, look, if you look at the diamides for us, as you pointed to, our total business was down 23% last year. The diamides were only down, branded diamides, our direct sales were only down 7%. Total diamides business was only down 15%. So while our diamide partners took less than they did in the prior year, still performed better than the rest of our portfolio. So it's still been a very, very strong franchise.

And then any update on patent infringement litigation in India, China, anything along those lines to talk about?

Look, I will say this. Patents are certainly a part of the strategy for protecting and maintaining and expanding the value of our diamides franchise, and they're an important part, but they're not, by any means, the only part. Brands matter particularly in markets like India and other markets where we have highly fragmented end customer base as well as continued innovation, new formulations, many of which are themselves are patented. But to the specific question around patents and registrations. In India, we continue to litigate against 4 producers who we firmly believe are infringing on our manufacturing process patents. The burden of proof in Indian courts for proving infringement on manufacturing process patents is higher than the burden of proof for infringement on composition of matter patents. Now that those composition of matter patents have expired, people are testing it. We are suing them and the cases are progressing through the Indian courts, moving more slowly than we might like. Those are expected to go out a trial this year in the first half. We'll monitor that closely, and we'll update as it progresses. In the interim, those 4 companies are required to track and report any sales they make of diamide products to the court such that if we prevail on merits that we can seek damages based on their actual sales. I will tell you from our observation in the market, their penetration has been pretty modest, not fundamentally changing our business there. In other parts of the world, in Brazil, the one generic entrant who attempted to cut the line and getting registered ahead of the patent expirations, lost the court cases. Despite what others might have stated, they did lose and they had gone back to the beginning of the line. It will be another several years before there is a legal generic entrant in the Brazilian market. We got a number of -- I mean, we just got awarded damages in China for infringement on patents in China. So look, this is a constant battle, and it's not one that any single case is going to win the war. And again, I'll reiterate, patents are an important, but not the entire part of managing our diamides franchise. We have other active ingredients that have been off patents for decades or more, where we make more money on them now than we did when they were patented. We think through brands, through continued innovation, both patented and unpatented that we can continue to bring value to farmers. And as the volume and the market size grows because as generics come in, they're going to go for lower value applications, we don't address today because the returns just aren't that interesting to it. There's a lot of space out there for the diamides to grow that doesn't directly compete with what we're doing today. We will see this platform mature. We will see the growth taper, but we expect to deliver strong value from this franchise for many, many years to come. And as we talked about in our Investor Day in November, we see low to mid-single-digit growth for the diamides as a franchise through the end of the decade. We don't see this fading away. And during that time period, we'll be ramping up the sale of new pheromones and creating a new value proposition there. We'll be bringing $2 billion worth of new active ingredients -- new synthetic active ingredient products to market and reshaping the portfolio to where diamides continue to be an important part of our portfolio, but not the part that drives all of the value growth.

And also formulations with these, right?

Absolutely. We've had tremendous success basically cannibalizing our older products. And certainly, in advance of new -- look, I'll give you an example. In Brazil, the liquid formulation of Rynaxypyr that we sell called -- sell under the brand [ Corprima ]. It's 1 component, more basic formulation. When the patents run off and registrations get issued, that's what the generics will go after. So in Q4, we introduced a new formulation based on Rynaxypyr, but also including another insecticide bifenthrin, added formulation, gives the farmer a broader applicability, faster, better balance of property, but a better value proposition, creates high value. So in its first quarter, we sold tens of millions of dollars of this product, and we're going to -- and what was not a particularly strong market condition. We expect to continue doing those kinds of innovations higher concentrations, multiple -- multi-active ingredient formulations that bring fundamentally more value to the farmer and move the bar to where the high value -- the conversation around I want to drive maximum yield and have the best product is going to still focus around high value, high differentiated products from FMC, lower-value applications, there'll be room for generics. And I think that's intentional. I don't think this is anything new. This has been a part of our strategy since we started working on this in late 2017 when we bought these molecules, and we've been executing against this for a long, long time. We're very confident we can maintain that value.

Well, very good. We're out of time. Please join me in thanking Andrew.