International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'm honored to welcome International Flavors & Fragrances to CAGNY. With us is Frank Clyburn, CEO; CFO, Glenn Richter; and Head of Investor Relations, Michael DeVeau up on stage. After years of rapid internal and external growth, IFF found itself at the center of the storm over the past 18 months, navigating challenges from supply chain, volatile inventories and the suddenly constant need for pricing. Fortunately, IFF remains at the center of innovation and growth for the CPG industry, including many of the presenters who presented this week. Frank and his team have already made great strides in the little over a year since he's joined and he's here to tell us more. Frank?

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. And first, it is a great pleasure to be here for my first CAGNY meeting. And as John mentioned, it has been actually a year. And what we'd like to cover for you today -- and let me first start with our cautionary statement and then also our non-GAAP financial measures. Here's the agenda what we'd like to speak to is, one, we want to give you a glance into IFF; two, talk about the transformation journey and the strategic evolution that we are on; three, our long-term aspiration; also four, talk about our financial performance. And then have some time for Q&A. Before I get started, I wanted to share some reflections after 1 year at IFF. And I feel very excited about the future. I think within the first year, as John mentioned, we made really good progress, growing our top line at 9%, recouping pricing impact from inflation, also driving our portfolio and really bringing in a strong cost and productivity mindset into the company. But I also need to reflect on something that we need to do a better job as a company. And in the fourth quarter and on our earnings call, we actually missed our expectations in the fourth quarter. Now many will say, and as we said, there were a lot of macro factors involved with that. But at the end of the day, we own it, we're accountable for it, and we need to do a better job of communicating. And that's something as a team that we are taking very seriously. So I acknowledge there's work to be done to realize the full potential in this company, and we're focusing on executing against that. In addition, as I think about 2023, this is a very important year for IFF. We are going to be focused working with our commercial teams -- and you'll hear me talk about that today -- on improving our market share and driving volume growth. We're also going to continue to focus on our productivity agenda. And we did make the announcement that we are going to, on a short-term basis, focusing much more on cash flow, reducing our overall inventory to improve cash flow, and then also making sure that we are doing everything we can to build a sustainable company for the future. And we do think that focus on cash flow in the near term is transitory as some of our inventories come down. And we'll talk more specifically about '23 as Glenn goes through the financials here in just a bit. But I wanted to highlight a couple of things. And now after 1 year, just to let you know why I'm as excited today as I was 12 months ago. We have a tremendous opportunity at IFF. This is a great industry. This is an industry where we have an attractive sector, strong growth fundamentals. We have a good, good value of scale, strong, stable cash flows. So I start and say we are in a great industry as a company. We also at IFF are starting from a position of overall strength as a company. We have a strong foundation. In most of the categories in which we compete, we're 1 or 2 in many of those categories. We have a world-class research and development organization, and I will speak more about that, that is aligned to consumer trends. Highly diversified business and then also a very expansive global network and a good presence in the emerging markets. And you can see some of the chevrons here down at the bottom are some of the quotes that we've received from customers. So we are going to focus on leveraging our strong foundation. We spend from an R&D perspective the largest absolute dollars in the industry. This is an innovation-focused company. We are focused on doing everything we can to get the right people, talent, and we have tremendous platforms, which I'll share with you here in a second. And it helps us to really drive innovation with our customers. We have over 3,000 scientists and engineers at IFF, and this is a key underpinning of our growth potential as we work with our customers around the world. Some fun facts. If you look at IFF, 1 out of 3 probiotic supplements contain an IFF product. We have one of the broadest and largest biotech capabilities, microbiome, fermentation capabilities in the industry. We also have 1 out of 3 yogurts that you consume are made with one of the IFF cultures. We have a tremendous global presence across many consumer products. Most importantly, we're going to leverage this and really use our leadership in biosciences to continue to drive innovation, focus on sustainability and drive growth in the future. We are also a company that is very well represented globally and very diverse from a global perspective. 31% of our sales are in North America, 34% Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Asia Pacific represents approximately 23% of our sales. And then you have Latin America, which represents 12% of our sales. This expansive network allows us to work with large customers on a global basis, but also many small- to medium-sized customers locally and to be able to tailor offerings on a local basis and what that customer is looking for. Whether it is a specific flavor in Latin America or something that is going into one of the home and personal care products in Europe, we have the ability throughout our network to be able to do that effectively. We also have really focused on the importance of ESG as a company. We have third-party validation across multiple ESG platforms. If you look at some of the ratings that we have received from Sustainalytics, from MSCI, also from Bloomberg, very strong ratings, good rankings and a number of partners from an ESG perspective. And obviously, this is critically important as we focus as a company on sustainability. So we're positioned well today. I'm going to share with you still work to be done for the future, but a good ESG position as we sit today. We also have spent a lot of time -- when I came in -- with the management team, making sure we are doing everything that we can to really understand our portfolio. We want to bring into IFF, and we have started to execute against this, a very strong focus on a return on invested capital mindset, mentality and framework that we're going to use to really determine where our resources go in the company. We shared this at our Capital Markets Day. This is a playbook for us as we move forward as a company. We have our portfolio now divided into 3 areas: one, where we're going to focus on really reinvesting to fuel growth and to focus on fueling growth in those categories above the market. And that is something that we are going to be laser-focused on and really work with customers to make sure that we can win and gain share in the reinvest to fuel growth area. We also have a number of areas that are really important to us in the maximize category, and I'll share with you those here in a minute. But we think we can efficiently manage the performance there, grow at the market rate really good ROIC businesses for us. The combination of those 2 represent about 80% of our overall portfolio. And then we also have really looked at the optimized category. And this is an area that we are going to focus on either improving our return on invested capital or exiting some of these businesses, and I'll speak to that here in just a minute some of the activities that are already underway that have been announced. But this playbook allows us to really frame up the choices that we want to make as a company. You can see some of the categories and some of the businesses that align in the 3 areas. If you think about the opportunity that we have in fine fragrance, in flavors, in cultures and food enzymes and health, we looked at not only the opportunity today in the near term, we looked out over the next several years where are the end markets, where are the consumers going, what are they looking for. And we also map that to these categories. So in the invest-to-win categories, this is where we're going to focus a lot of our resources and efforts. We also are excited about the core. Home and personal care enzymes, big opportunity for us, and we have really good, strong presence and good biotechnology and good capabilities in that area. The same I would say with regards to what we're doing in food protection. And also, you saw last year a very strong business performance from our Pharma Solutions business. And then you can see the optimized area that we've been discussing. And we clearly are looking at that to do everything that we can to either improve our ROIC or to make sure that we think about exiting those businesses over time. If I think about IFF, and I've reflected on this a lot, of what is the value creation opportunity for us as a company as we go down this journey of change in the company. And what we came up with is really focusing our organization on do what matters most in the world. It's powerful, it's impactful. The presence that we have across so many consumer products, I kind of think of us as the Intel within many consumer products. And we're focused on 3 things: be, build and become. We want to be the premier partner for our customers. I acknowledge we have work to do here, and we have highlighted the fact that we have to improve our customer service. We've got work to do, and we're making good progress on how we engage with our customers, how we work with them with regards to co-creation, how we build stronger pipelines. Revenue synergies is something that we've spoken about. And we think with our portfolio, we have a significant opportunity to really work across many of our different product offerings on behalf of our customers. And then also we believe that the emerging markets, in particular, certain parts of the emerging markets give us a great opportunity to invest in the right way to drive future growth, building our future around innovation, productivity and our portfolio. And then I've spent a lot of time talking about the importance of talent and culture in becoming One IFF. And that is something that we are focused on. And then embedding ESG in all that we do. And then I'll speak here in just a second around how this all translates to delivering on our financial commitments. The full potential from a growth perspective. This is so key for us as a company because we know that the value that we really create is when we can drive good, sustainable volume growth over time. We are focused on the 4 areas that you see on the screen. I've touched base on some of those. But just to highlight them again. Service, making sure that our customers see IFF as the premier company they work with, a reliable supply, service, on time, when they expect it. It's a major focus. It's a major KPI for us as a company and as a team. We are making really good progress there. Still some work to do in certain areas, but really good progress. The commercial organization and how we engage with our customers. We really want to do everything that we can to build new capabilities and especially around analytics and really understanding what is it that our customers are looking for. And then also using consumer insights where we get a lot of great consumer insights that we can bring into IFF and then also share with our partners. We think that's going to be really key for the future and part of our model. Synergies we've spoken about. We've redesigned our incentive program at IFF for our sales teams and also making sure that our incentives are aligned for our senior leaders and senior managers focused on total shareholder return and return on invested capital. And lastly, the emerging markets, clearly something that will be a focus for us as we move forward. To transform the business and to really unlock value for the future and to drive margin expansion, it is going to continue to be about innovation. It's going to be about greater differentiation through our R&D investment, our microbiome program, our [Technical Difficulty], what we are doing with regards to our scent business and transforming the catalog into natural products ingredients. That is going to be a key underpinning for us. So it starts with innovation. And we are at the forefront of that and have the technology and capabilities to do it. It also, though, makes us really have to embrace as an entire team and organization what we're seeing in productivity. And productivity for us, we have already mentioned in our previous Capital Markets Day that we are going to deliver and focus on net productivity of $350 million to $400 million of benefits between this year and 2025, which will allow us to invest in the areas we need to invest but also will allow us to expand our margins. We've also mentioned based on some of the challenging macro factors that we are accelerating our cost reductions into this year, and that is something that we are looking at to be best in the industry from an SG&A perspective. So clearly, productivity is a key part of our agenda as we look going forward as a company. And then the portfolio. We're going to continue to evaluate our portfolio, but we've already made really good progress this past year. We have announced the completion of our microbial control and fruit preparation divestitures. We've also announced most recently the divestitures of our Savory Solutions business and also our flavor specialty ingredients. And we're going to continue to evaluate our portfolio as we go forward to make sure we have the right portfolio for our customers, but also making sure it aligns and helps us to focus on our deleveraging of our balance sheet, which we have communicated in the past. So clearly, transforming our business around innovation, productivity and the portfolio. We also are focused on improving the execution and accountability of our team. This is something that since day 1, as I've joined, it really has been a lot of where I'm spending my time of making sure we're doing everything we can to make sure that our operating model and how we show up with our customers aligns to how they're looking at future growth opportunities. And we've made the decision to move from 4 divisions to 3 businesses that better align to the end markets and to the categories we think are going to be really important in the future. Talent and culture is front and center at IFF. We want to make sure we have the right people in the right roles in driving a strong culture of collaboration, accountability and execution, a major focus for myself and the management team. And then also continuing to build out our digital capabilities. But not just digital for digital's sake, capabilities that help us in our R&D efforts, whether it's with machine learning, whether it's using artificial intelligence to better identify opportunities, whether it's in our commercial organization with our CRM tools or whether it's in helping our end-to-end productivity and manufacturing and operations. So clearly, digital capabilities are going to be a key part of what we're building. 2030, we have ESG+ goals, and this is also really important for us as a company. You can see there are 4 strategic pillars that we are focused on: one, climate and planetary health; 2, equity and well-being; 3, transparency and accountability; and 4, sustainable solutions. How does this translate to our long-term financial targets? We expect average performance over the '24, '25 and '26 period of top line sales growth in the range of 4% to 6%, currency neutral EBITDA growth, strong leverage of 8% to 10%, free cash flow of $1.5 billion annually and then also focused on reducing our net debt to credit adjusted EBITDA. These are the 4 financial metrics that we're focused on, and obviously being competitive and growing our dividend. So I hope that as you think about IFF. I want to leave you just with a couple of things. One, '23 is a very important year for this company, and we're going to be laser-focused on executing against our plan. And yes, we've had some stumbles, as I mentioned earlier, but we are focused on doing everything we can to make sure we deliver on what we have in front of us and to realize the full potential of this company. We're implementing a growth-oriented strategy. We have the technology and the capabilities to grow this business. We have work to do, but that is our focus. Cost and productivity is going to be in the DNA of this company. We're simplifying things from an operating model perspective. You've heard me mention about ESG. And then clearly, we're going to continue to focus on our portfolio as we go forward. So with that, I thank you. I'm excited to be here, and I want to turn it over now to Glenn Richter, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide some additional perspective and updates. Glenn?

Thank you, Frank. Appreciate it. John, thanks for the very generous introduction. We appreciate that. Normally, I would wander around the stage, but Frank requested I'd be next in in case he needs to kick me because I don't say the right thing. So just so you know. But I actually have some notes. I want to make sure we are very clear relative to sort of where we are for expectations this year and then the future state as well. So there's 3 things I'm going to cover. Very quickly a financial snapshot of last year '22, talk about what worked and what didn't work. Secondarily, I want to dive into 2023 and talk about our algorithm in a very sort of fluid environment and then more importantly, really talk about our aspirations and give you the financial algorithm of basically how we do that. So we'll start off by actually moving to a snapshot of last year. So as Frank said, last year, our results were mixed. On the positive note, something that we don't really highlight an awful lot about, but we finished the second year post the integration or I should say, the combination with the legacy DuPont as well as the IFF businesses are the tremendous amount of work that has been accomplished. Undoubtedly, that has, to some extent, taken a lot of effort from the organization, but we're in a much better place from that. Secondarily, as Frank had mentioned, we delivered a 9% currency neutral growth. That was done via pricing. So the tsunami of inflation that hit us at the end of 2021 into '22, we were very effective of offsetting $1 billion of cost inflation, raw materials, energy and logistics cost to the system. So the team executed that well. Third, as Frank had mentioned, we are executing against our productivity plans. We delivered $150 million of productivity last year and made very good progress on that. And we're ramping that up in part to expand our margins, and in part, obviously, to invest to help our top line. And the fourth, as Frank had mentioned, over the last 2 years, we have successfully closed the sale of Microbial Control, announced the sale of Savory Solutions and our FSI businesses. Those 3 businesses, noncore, cumulatively resulted in $2.5 billion of gross proceeds. On the flip side, we have some gaps relative to last year. Perhaps first and foremost, is volume. We did not deliver against our expectations. So we started off the year very strong with a plus 5%, but we had a very, very large reduction in the fourth quarter, notably in December, double-digit decline in volumes in December of last year. Overall, our volumes were slightly down for the year. A lot of what we're focused on is accelerating the top line and making sure that we're able to deliver against the market. Secondarily, because of a combination of working capital inflationary pressures on working capital, we did not meet our free cash flow objectives. So we were negative in terms of free cash flow from an enterprise. That resulted in us not hitting our deleverage target. So we ended the year at 4.1x versus an expectation of doing substantially better than that. And then lastly and very importantly, while we delivered a 4% year-over-year like-for-like growth in EBITDA, we did not meet our expectations. We did not deliver against what we communicated to you for the full year, and we were $50 million below the low end of our target. So we recognize that. So as Frank mentioned, major focus for us going forward is to make sure we're able to deliver and making sure we're overcommunicating relative to those levers in the business. So with that, I want to turn to 2023. So a couple of slides. The formula, which we communicated at Investor Day, we updated recently at our fourth quarter call. Overall, we are projecting $12.5 billion of reported results for the year from a revenue standpoint. Basically, a 6% or I'd say mid-single-digit currency-neutral growth, that is all related to pricing. Our volumes are planned to be flat this year. Our volumes are expected to be down in the first quarter, very consistent with the fourth quarter. A lot of that has been from the destocking pressure, modest decline in the second quarter and then growth in the second half from the volume standpoint. So working our way through the current volatile market. The inflation on costs offset from price or the pricing offset of that cost, we expect that to be fairly ratable through the year. As I mentioned, mid-single-digit. To some extent, that's a carryover of the pricing we implemented midyear as well as the carryover of inflation that's basically running through inventories. We have seen some movement relative to deflation. Energy prices have come down fairly significantly. Logistics are improving, and we're seeing some nice movement in terms of declines in raw materials as well. So that's something to sort of look out for, for the balance of the year. Productivity is a big driver of how we get to our bottom line. So we're expecting a like-for-like basically 0 or flat results in EBITDA at $2.34 billion on a full year basis. There are a lot of moving parts to that. Very importantly, we are adjusting our production volumes in order to correct for our inventory position. We are targeting to deliver adjusted free cash flow this year of over $1 billion. That requires us on flat sales volumes to reduce our production volumes by 5%. The impact of fixed cost, negative absorption for us this year is $100 million. So think about that as onetime in nature, one and done. So immediately for next year 2024, we get the upside basically of that. That will result in us bringing in excess of $350 million of reduction of inventory this year. It's a very important trade-off that we've decided to focus on making sure we maximize cash flow and get our inventories in the right place going forward. So I wanted to note that. So on an apples-to-apples basis, adjusting for that, we're about 4% growth over the prior year on a like-for-like, as I mentioned. Just to talk a little bit about our operating priorities, and then we'll move into our longer-term financial objectives. These priorities for this year are controlling what we control. And by the way, they are the same priorities that we will carry into our future long-term goals as well. Number one, we are focused on accelerating sales growth. As I mentioned, as Frank had mentioned, we're not executing to the degree we can. Some of that undoubtedly is attributable to the integration that we've been undertaking. Some of that's been capacity constraints in the system. So unlocking capacity and executing better and also, as I mentioned, investing, so taking some of our productivity and putting it back against innovation and our commercial teams to drive top line is important. Related to that is item 2 is we are much, much better positioned relative to service levels and our supply chain efficiencies. The market is much, much better, as many of you know, relative to where we've been over the last 2 years. We still have some pockets of disruption, but generally, we're in a good place. Generally, our service levels are dramatically improved. Our inventory levels are obviously more than adequate at this point, and we've added capacity in some of our higher-margin products. Productivity, as Frank mentioned, is to do 2 things. One is to expand margins. Our longer-term goal is basically to expand our margins by 250 basis points. But in addition, we're using some of that productivity, $150 million over 3 years to reinvest and drive the top line. And lastly, as I mentioned, is really driving cash flow. Cash flow is a combination and deleverage ultimately, our goal is to get below 3x by the end of next year. There are 2 things we're doing is we're operating disciplines to make sure we're maximizing the cash flow of our business. In addition, on top of the divestitures that we've already announced, we are reviewing the portfolio and looking at other noncore businesses for us to think about relative to divesting as well to help us get there. So let me move now on to 2024 to 2026. So our financial algorithm is fairly straightforward. It starts with the top line. By the way, we're assuming we're in a more normal inflationary environment, i.e., modest 1% annual growth in inflation. Our goal is to drive a currency-neutral growth of 4% to 6% per year over the 3-year cycle. We think about that as basically 3 to 5 points of that is volume. So think about that as the market plus and 1% basically is inflation. For our purposes of our financial equation, we assume price equals inflation, it's a net neutral relative to the business. Secondarily, as Frank had mentioned, we are going to deliver $350 million to $400 million of net productivity. So that's a gross number of $500 million to $550 million with a $150 million investment back in the business, that will deliver an 8% to 10% growth over the 3 years. I would note that with overlapping the negative absorption from this year of $100 million, that is a net positive to this equation would move us to the upper end relative to that as we overlap this year. That will generate 250 basis points plus in terms of our overall margin. Very importantly, as I mentioned, we are committed to getting below 3x in terms of our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio by the end of next year. Some of that will be delivered by continuing to accelerate our cash flow focus, some of that by the transaction is yet to close. Those are basically circa $1.1 billion of gross proceeds and some of that basically is continuing to look at the portfolio. And we're going to be very cognizant of our CapEx needs fitting into the schedule or the diagram that Frank had showed you, 5% CapEx, very much focused on the businesses that delivers the highest return and the highest opportunity in terms of growth for the enterprise. So if we can actually then bring that down a little bit more, I wanted to spend a couple of minutes or a minute here just talking about the framework that Frank shared with you because oftentimes everybody translates, there's 3 baskets of products or different businesses between the winners, the maximize and then the optimize and they conclude that the playbook is the same for each of those buckets have a different playbook but they don't. In some sense, there are common set of goals across all 3 of those archetypes. Revenue synergies are important across all those businesses and productivity is an opportunity across all those as well. However, where we differentiate, as I mentioned, is where we are making our investments. So our CapEx that is focused on growth, 75% of those dollars, not surprisingly, sit in the investing winners. In addition, we are looking at working capital dynamics, and we will be actually much, much more focused on the right side, the way to get the ROIC is not only making sure every earnings profile, but really being thoughtful on total capital invested in these businesses as well. And the margin management is something that we're going to optimize relative to product mix, SKUs, customer mix, et cetera, more on the right side. Very importantly, I would note that you will see that the portfolio restructuring falls in between maximize and optimize. The optimize bucket does not basically mean that, that's a divestiture bucket because some of those businesses are important from a revenue synergies and basically from a customer service standpoint. So you should think about the right side of doing that. This is an ROIC framework, not a framework that's comprehensive in terms of the overall business. So I just wanted to make sure that we noted that. Then productivity. So focusing first on getting the top line to the 4% to 6%, really volume driven. Secondarily, productivity as mentioned, there are 2 goals from productivity. One is delivering more to our shareholders from a margin expansion and then secondarily, generating $150 million of reinvestment, which I'll get to on the following page. But are -- basically, from a growth standpoint, in order to build from our current state of 2% to 3%, that's an average over the last 3 years. We've taken out sort of the abnormal inflation. It's about a 2-point volume growth and think about it as a 1-point normalized inflation growth. Our goal is basically to get that up to 4% to 6%. As I mentioned, that's a 3% to basically 5% volume growth number. Importantly, we've spent a lot of energy, as Frank had mentioned, pulling apart the components of our performance and where we have opportunities. And there are 4 buckets. One, as I mentioned, is supply chain. I would say that those are largely fixed. We actually have our service levels in the right place. We have incremental capacity in terms of production volumes in some of our core products as well, and we're in a very good shape from that. The second is accelerating our focus on revenue synergies. To date, through last year on a cumulative basis for the 2 years, we've generated roughly around $80 million of revenue synergies. We are still committed to driving the $400 million over the full cycle here in terms of our growth. And then to the right, it's leveraging our innovation pipeline, so how do we bring more products faster to the market from a commercialization and then very much interwound with that is the last bar to the right, which is really focusing our investments and our execution on our highest return, highest growth businesses and importantly, markets. So as Frank mentioned, emerging markets, particularly Greater Asia as an area for us to basically out index relative to the growth going forward. So we've been very thoughtful on how we think about geographies and businesses, not only from an investment standpoint, but also the algorithm of growth as well. The next slide basically talks a little bit about the nature of the investments, as I mentioned. There's really sort of 4 buckets. It's a supply chain. We're largely CapEx investments. We're actually in a fairly good shape in terms of where we are. The ones to the right really are -- represent the $150 million of investments over 3 years -- so think about that as we're embedding another $150 million of run rate cost into our business in year 3 being 2025. And that's a combination of more resources to support our higher opportunities on the commercial front, more investment in our innovation relative to our R&D. And then lastly, technology. So as you think about digital support of our customers and our commercial teams as well as basically moving to a more integrated ERP system over the next several years as well. So next, I was beginning to talk about productivity. Productivity, as I mentioned, our goal on a gross basis over 3 years. So think about this in our P&L we are targeting on a gross basis to deliver between $500 million and $550 million by the end of '25. Of that, we're going to be investing $150 million back, as I mentioned. Those productivity initiatives have been underway now for a year plus, and we're picking up speed. They basically are split roughly 70% directly against cost of goods. It includes a ton of operational improvements across our plants and facilities. It also includes specific initiatives on supply chain and the procurement team as well. And then we have additional opportunities for productivity and cost synergies within our shared service organization. That's inclusive of a recently announced and soon-to-be launched $100 million annual reduction in our G&A spend. We expect to capture around $70 million to $75 million of savings this year from that, and then we'll be at the full run rate at the end of the year in terms of those savings standpoint. So it's a balance between squeezing out productivity dollars in lower value opportunity areas and putting money back to help where we can help drive the top line. Cash flow, as I mentioned, is incredibly important. We did not deliver against our expectations last year. Our goal for 2023 is over $1 billion of adjusted free cash flow. Our goal for '23 through '26 in aggregate over that period on average is $1.5 billion. So as I mentioned, that's a combination of achieving the EBITDA growth results. In addition, we continue to be very disciplined in terms of our capital spend. And then lastly, continuing to move to best-in-class working capital metrics as well across the enterprise. And then as we think about our capital allocation priorities, we've shown this chart many times in the past, and these priorities have not changed. Our principal goal is to get our balance sheet in a better place. So #1 and #3 are very linked together. So we want to basically use cash proceeds from the operations of the business and from sales basically to get below 3x, as I mentioned. And as I mentioned, we're continuing to evaluate the portfolio. To the right, item 2 is we're committed to our dividend policy, and we want to consistently grow our dividend year in, year out. And then lastly, when we get below our 3x target of net debt to EBITDA, we will be expected to reauthorize our share repurchase program and get back into the market from a repurchase. But our first priority is getting the balance sheet in order before we launch an additional -- a new share repurchase program. Two other slides. One, what I talked a lot about is the what, i.e., what our financial objective is. This slide is intended to talk about the how. So as Frank had mentioned, an awful lot of work over the last year has been thinking about sort of what's working, what's not working, what do we need to do differently from a structure and an execution in order to achieve these goals. And to the right is basically about a half a dozen of things, different initiatives. The first 2 are really top line driven. There's intense focus on looking business by business, where our execution is not up to par and how we think it is particularly against those businesses that deliver the highest return results of making sure that we're generating a better pipeline and actually closing, i.e., new wins in a much, much stronger and preserving the business. In light of that, as Frank had mentioned, we have implemented a centralized commercial center of excellence that's really helping the key account teams globally, the regional teams, our pricing teams execute better and taking the best capabilities vertically across the 4 different businesses. Pricing center of excellence. We've made a lot of progress. There's lots of opportunity in this business to continue to refine our margin capture as a business. That's the second area. Very importantly, the multiple productivity initiatives I outlined, we have a very tight management process in terms of specific deliverables for each one of the work streams or the swim lanes of productivity with milestones to hit accountabilities in terms of delivery. Fourth is ERP. We're going to be on a 5-year journey of basically moving to a single ERP platform. Today, we're on 3 different incidences of SAP and moving to a single one. What we will be doing is actually selecting one of them and basically moving their -- so it's not replacing all the pipes in the business. Working capital, as I mentioned, we have a dedicated full-time team working with the businesses, working with operations and the finance teams relative to our commitments of getting to best-in-class. And finally, as Frank had mentioned, aligning incentives. So for this year, our incentives are aligned against currency-neutral sales, EBITDA and cash conversion cycle. So very much focused on cash. Our longer-term incentives for the management team 3-year is TSR and return on invested capital. So making sure people understand that if the shareholders win, the management team needs to be aligned with that in terms of delivering. So with that, I'll close, and then we'll open it up for your questions and where Frank started. IFF is a great company. Very importantly, we're in a very, very attractive industry that has a lot of inherent tailwinds relative to the growth and the margin and resiliency of the industry. We are intently focused on realizing the full potential. It is a very good platform in terms of the combination of the legacy N&B business from DuPont as well as IFF. 2 years into the integration, we still have more work to do, but we have a tremendous potential. And it really starts with actually the archetype framework on ROIC and how we focus our time, energy and investments on delivering the best returns ultimately to the shareholders and with a first focus on the top line, getting that top line going more is a major priority. Behind that is productivity. Some of that goes to margin enhancement. Some of that helps invest across the top line, a deeper focus on cash flow and getting our balance sheet in the right place. And as I concluded, very much around the organization, making sure we have the right people with the right objectives around execution. So with that, we will actually turn it over to Q&A.

Adam Samuelson, Goldman Sachs. Maybe this is for Glenn. As we think about cash flow and kind of that being a real priority for the business, you talked about top quartile cash conversion being the target. Can you define that and scope the size of the opportunity because we're going to average over $1.5 billion over the 4-year period, it would seem like you're ending that period closer to $2 billion from 0 last year. And so just help us think about kind of the working capital piece of that magnitude of improvement.

Good question. So in respective parts, as it relates to inventory, we're 30 days too high. That translates into $600 million of volume-related inventory. And I mentioned volume related because it doesn't assume any deflation. There's obviously a big driver of last year was the cost of the raw materials went up pretty substantially. So I'd say in a deflation environment, that can be better. None of that has been factored in, but the $600 million has been. And top of that, we have another $250 million of improvement of getting a combination of our receivables and payables up to sort of the right standard from the standpoint. And our objective is to get there over the next 3 to maybe 4 years in terms of our overall goals. We're working very aggressively this year, particularly on the inventory equation to get that one corrected, as I mentioned, our target is 350 plus for this year in terms of the inventory alone. Thank you.

Maybe we'll run here to Mark.

I guess, first of all, what's the assumption for underlying global consumer volume growth for the year relative to your target of flattish volumes? And I asked it in the context of your volume performance in certainly last year being below peers, but arguably even in recent years below peers. So how do you think about those 2 pieces? What drove the underperformance versus peers? How do you improve upon that? And then more broadly, sticking to the volume piece, you just went through all the things that are going to happen in this business in '23 from cost savings to portfolio optimization, CapEx increases, inventory normalization, et cetera, how does all of that not become a distraction looking towards improving volumes?

Yes. Maybe I'll get started, Mark. So one on the second part of your question, the distraction piece. We have really taken our commercial team, Mark, and kind of put them aside. And in fact, just this week, with our key account management team, we are working laser-focused in looking at the pipeline opportunities. We are looking at what our current win rates are by business and really focusing our commercial teams on what do we need to do to improve the volume picture. So while we have parts of the organization clearly focused on the productivity agenda to your point and some of the other things, our commercial organization is spending all of their time really in focusing on what do we need to do to improve the commercial excellence and how we win with the customer. So that's the distraction question. On the volume piece, if you look, Mark, over the last couple of years, 2 years, and I think Glenn mentioned on average, it's been in that 2% to 3% range. In fact, in '21, I believe our volume grew approximately 6% versus 20%. So clearly, you have some moving pieces from a volume perspective. But there are 2 areas that we have highlighted that we have not performed as well. And actually, that's one of the challenges is our biggest business within the Nourish division, ingredients was down significantly, and that's where our protein solutions business is serving end markets such as beverages, snacks, bars, that did not perform as well, and we're putting a laser focus on how we improve that business. And then we did see a very significant challenge, and we've mentioned this in our health business under Health & Biosciences, which is a fairly substantial business for us. Now some of that was clearly in market demand. Some of that was clearly destocking and what we saw in North America, our largest region. However, some of it also was some market share challenges with the products that we provided, supplying ingredients in actually didn't do as well as some of the other products in North America. So we're laser-focused on what we need to do to improve that. We've identified the businesses and we've got a very strong weekly cadence from an execution perspective where we're spending time with our commercial teams really seeing what we need to do to improve.

Yes. I would add 2 things, Mark, is actually, in many ways, we are more stable now than we've been in 2 years. You can't underestimate the level of work and distraction around the integration. So when the deal was put together, we've been through 2-plus years of unplugging DuPont systems, getting people in organizational structures, making sure people understand account is realigning benefit programs, some simple things like that, that is largely done. There's a few additional system things that need to be done. So in some sense, the organization is much, much more stable today than it's been in 2 years because of One IFF. The other thing, you're absolutely right. We have lots of moving parts, but we have defined direct accountability in terms of who owns what swim lane. So we have a very dedicated group against the productivity. As Frank had mentioned, the commercial resources and the innovation resources are very focused on the top line. We have a working capital teams, operations is. So we've organized our way to basically make sure that people understand what they need to execute. But it's a good question.

Lauren over here.

So in your industry, the things people talk about is the win rates, right, the goal of improving the win rate, there's the freezing process for this and fragrance and so on. But something we don't talk about is the loss rate. And I was just wondering if in looking backwards we want to look forward, but in sort of diagnosing the path in order to move forward, what you have learned if you've looked at it this way on the loss rate, right? What are you hearing from your salespeople from the people that are in touch with the customers, from the customers themselves on what business it is that you're losing, frankly, right, that you're not winning?

Yes, I'll start, Lauren. I think the -- it's a good way to maybe flip it over because you're right, we talk about win rates. And by the way, our win rates have been relatively steady across most businesses. We can't point to any major significant shift there. However, if you go back to last year and what we highlighted is that we did have some pain points when we couldn't supply certain customers from a capacity perspective. We clearly lost momentum. We lost some business. And actually, in some cases, we had to make trade-offs for certain customers to supply them and have to not be able to supply others. So that's clearly one of the key takeaways. And when that happens, you have work to do to either come back to those customers. So that's something that we heard from our teams as well as not only coming back to them, but coming back to them to make sure that they know that they can have reliability going forward. So that is one of the key, I'd say, takeaways I've heard a lot from our sales team that we have work to do there. The good news on that is the capacity, those challenges are pretty much behind us, Lauren, but it's clearly something that we need to recognize and understand that was one thing. The second area I would say that when I look at where have we lost or where could we be better, I do think there are opportunities for us in a couple of areas. We've highlighted them, I think, in certain parts of our portfolio clearly in Nourish. There's opportunities that while we have done well overall as a company in flavors, I'm not happy with where we could be or should be based on the technology and capabilities. And some of those losses are maybe due to competitors providing something a little bit different from an ingredient perspective, but some of this is not enough focus on really what we need to do, making sure our briefs are right, making sure that we're really in touch with the customer. So that's an area that we're getting after. The other area that I think we have opportunities and some of it has been and we think why we're under-indexed in the emerging markets, some of it is more local competitors in some of those markets. Some of it is pricing dynamic, et cetera, but there's opportunities for us to do better in some of the emerging markets in Asia, in particular. I think there are clearly things that we need to do better to improve our performance there. So that would be some of my takeaways from what we've kind of seen in the win-loss rate.

Great. I think that's all the time we have. Please join me in thanking IFF for their presentation. And a reminder, they will be next door in the break room to take any more of your questions.