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DuPont de Nemours, Inc. (DD)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 26, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the DuPont second quarter 2016 conference call. My name is John and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. And I will now turn the call over to Greg Friedman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Greg, you may begin.

Gregory R. Friedman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, John. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for joining us for our discussion of DuPont's second quarter 2016 performance. Here with me are Ed Breen, Chair and CEO; Nick Fanandakis, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Jim Collins, Executive Vice President, responsible for our Agriculture segment. The slides for today's presentation and corresponding segment commentary can be found on our website, along with our news release. During the course of this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements, and I direct you to slides one and two for our disclaimers. All statements that address expectations or projections about the future are forward-looking statements. Although they reflect our current expectations, these statements are not guarantees of future performance, but involve a number of risks and assumptions. We urge you to review DuPont's SEC filings for a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. We will also refer to non-GAAP measures. We request that you review the reconciliations to GAAP statements provided with our earnings news release and today's slides, which are posted on our website. Our agenda today will start with Ed providing his perspective on our performance. Then, Nick will review our second quarter financial performance and 2016 guidance. Third, Jim will discuss our Agriculture business. We will then take your questions. With that introduction, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Ed. Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Today, I would like to give you my perspective on the second quarter and update you on our progress with our strategic plan, as well as our mergers with Dow. This was another solid quarter across the board. Our results indicate our plan is working. We posted operating earnings…

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Thanks, Nick. Today, I'll take you through our view on market conditions, our financial performance and update you on our three priorities for Ag. Agriculture markets continue to face challenges. As farmers endure tough economic conditions, seed and crop protection suppliers have elevated inventories and credit remains tight. We recognized that the Ag market was entering a challenging period back in 2014, and at that time, began taking actions to enable us to maintain our competitiveness. Fast forward 24 months, and our strong results in the first half of the year demonstrate the benefits of those disciplined actions. And because Ag is a seasonal business, I'll focus my comments on the first half performance. Our sales in the first half were 2% lower, as higher prices and corn volume gains more than offset by currency, lower soybean, and crop protection volume and portfolio changes. In seeds, a stronger mix of Pioneer's newest corn hybrids resulted in higher net corn price globally, which was led by North America. Additionally, we grew corn seed volume with uplift from Leptra, our newest technology, which has enabled a multiple point share gain in the competitive Brazilian Safrinha market. Also a positive for our Pioneer business was our continued penetration in the digital Ag space. Interest in our Encirca services remained high, as growers began to plan for the 2017 season. To date, our Encirca offerings were delivered on over 2 million acres, more than doubling last year's footprint. Now, moving to our crop protection business, we were again able to fully offset the currency headwinds we faced in Brazil through increased local pricing, which helped to minimize the negative impact of lower volumes due to insect-resistant soy, weather conditions and higher inventories. From an earnings perspective for the first half, I was pleased that…

Gregory R. Friedman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks, Jim. We'll now open the line for questions. John, please provide instructions to enter the queue.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. And our first question comes from Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Jeff.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. One, the goal of putting Dow and DuPont together right now is to gather cost synergies and then split the company into three pieces. Because that's the operating plan, is the probability of M&A activity in 2017 that significantly low? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: It's – Jeff, this is Ed. It's – any M&A activity will most likely be low. However, technically, we are allowed to buy and sell businesses during that timeframe. The chances of us I think doing it of anything of any size are pretty minimal.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Secondly, interest rates have really come down quite a lot. How does that affect the pension liabilities of DuPont or the combined DuPont/Dow entity? And will it change your funding requirements over a multi-year period. Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hey, Jeff. It's Nick. So, let's just talk magnitude, so you can get a sense of the impact it might have.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: This last earnings cycle here, when it just came out, we talked about the re-measurement we had to do because of the restructuring that was completed. The interest rates dropped 73 basis points. The 73 basis point reduction had over $2 billion of impact on the unfunded pension liability. So, you can see its dramatic swings, and those swings obviously can go either way, up or down. As interest rates start to increase, you'll see those unfunded liabilities drop rather dramatically as well. And everything I'm talking to you about is from an accounting standpoint, not necessarily from a cash funding standpoint and that would be handled through the Pension Protection Act, and that's done over a different smoothing of interest rates over a longer period of time with a MAP-21 process that's used there. So, it's not as dramatic an impact in any one year because of those interest rate changes, as you would see from an accounting standpoint. We will obviously be looking at the funding, and we obviously fund the pension plan to whatever is required from us in any given year and that will be done obviously as we go forward with the merger and the spins as well.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. Vincent Stephen Andrews - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. A question on Ag. Just as you look in the second half, I recognize the credit issues that are down there, but you've got the new Leptra hybrids and the local corn prices in Brazil in particular are quite attractive, plus the FX rates are favorable to the farmer. So, is it really credit that has you most concerned? And as you switch to the agency model, will you have to be issuing more credit? Or how are you really thinking about the second half down there?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Yeah. This is Jim. We're looking at that market from a number of different angles. Credit is one area that we constantly take a look at. We feel like we're not seeing any kind of bad debt rates that are above anything that we would normally see. But we're constantly watching it. What's really happening is because of the lack of credit out there, growers are delaying a lot of their purchase decisions. And you sort of see that in our guidance for the second half. As we talk about a much lighter third quarter and then a much stronger fourth quarter, it's part of that shift that's going on. We mentioned a little bit of the shift that we're seeing as a result of some fine-tuning of that route-to-market model, and we already have operations in Brazil that are connected to that more direct route. So, this is not a real big change for us. It's a subtle change; could be $0.01 or so. And then, we had some business that was primarily in the third quarter in the past that really landed into the second quarter. About $0.03 of the total here was because of that. And that was mostly in Asia. We had insecticide volumes and corn volumes. So, you're right on momentum. We're going to carry some strong momentum with Leptra going forward. The summer launch has gone really well. Clearly, one of the largest ramp-ups in our Pioneer history down there. And a few of the comps actually will look pretty good, too, in the fourth quarter compared to last year, when you think about what happened to that insect control market. So, that explains how that sort of lines out. Vincent Stephen Andrews - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: And as just a follow-up, in the U.S., for next year, it looks like the crop people keep revising their yield forecasts higher. You referenced there's plenty of seed inventory around already. Did you – from a seed production perspective, did you sort of curtail your production plans for next year? So, do you think inventory of seed going into next year – if yields stay where they're expected to go, do you think the inventory situation is going to be better or worse in 2017?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

We already had a pretty aggressive inventory plan going into 2016. As we said before, we started making adjustments in our operating plan a year and a half or almost two years ago, seeing this real tough commodity price market coming at us and knowing that we had to get out ahead of that to manage inventory. So, yeah, we did take some adjustments as we went into this season, and we're taking a real hard look at that as we go forward. You know that the crop that went in the ground and the seed production that we have in the ground looks really, really good right now. Yields look good. Market conditions look great. So, even though we dialed it back, we could still see a little upward pressure there on overall inventories.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Bob Koort from Goldman Sachs. Robert Andrew Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks. Maybe continuing on with Jim, if I could. Jim, I was curious on plans for Intacta in South America. I know you've got a license in Brazil, but you're also moving forward with the Dermacor product. So, are those mutually exclusive or are they additive? And then, also, could you talk more about what led to some of your soybean volume decline?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Yeah. So, you're right. We just recently announced the Intacta license and the ability to introduce that product into the Brazilian market. The way I, first of all, look at it is I think about that technology opposite the discussions that we're having with Dow and the opportunity with Contesta. (34:02) Today, Intacta is commercialized. It's available to us. It allows us to practice in that technology. And then, we remain excited about what that future looks like as well. So, we don't see those two technologies as competing. We see that, over time, there's an opportunity. It allows us to offer many more choices in the marketplace for our customers. When you look at seed treatment, Dermacor, we see that as a complementary offering when we compare it and combine it with the Intacta and the rest of our varieties that we sell into that market. So, on soybean share/volumes, clearly, our volumes in Latin America were impacted by the lack of technology that we had available to us and this license helps us solve that. And in North America, we've been going through a pretty dramatic conversion of our base varieties. You'll recognize the T Series launch that we've talked a lot about. We're approaching now this season, about 80% of our lineup has been converted over to T Series. And we use the new breeding techniques, this advanced yield platform that we have with Pioneer. So, it's just a conversion. We're excited about the momentum that we're carrying going forward. And now that we've got this full technology lineup, we'll see how things shape up 2017 and beyond. Robert Andrew Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And if I might ask on corn, you had a quite commendable result there. You actually got some pricing, which seems pretty impressive given what's happened in the commodity markets. So, now, we've got corn even lower. Do you worry you'll compromise the ability to get price going into next year? Is it possible, like, back in the pre-biotech days, you could actually have new hybrids come out without a price lift? Or how do you sort of size up the market in light of this even more crimped farmer income situation?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Yeah. Thanks for acknowledging the performance in the first half. You're right. A lot of that price came from mix, and it's a tribute to the new technology that we had out there in the marketplace, especially in corn, in North America that really led the way. So, when we think about pricing going forward, it clearly is a value equation. We price for value. We price for the genetic mix that we have out there. When you look forward to 2017, it's a little early right now to really be speculating on what that market looks like. I think you're right. We've got a crop in the ground that looks really darn good, and it will put some downward pressure on corn commodity prices. And so when we think about our price launch here later this year, we take two or three factors into the equation. First, the technology lineup we have. Second, the mix and the geographic lineup. And then, third, the economic conditions that our customers are facing, and we'll price accordingly to the value that we're delivering.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonas Oxgaard from Bernstein. Jonas Oxgaard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Good morning. Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Jonas. Jonas Oxgaard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: So, actually, continue talking a bit about the soybeans in North America. I – your main competitor also reported reduced soybean volumes. And I guess what I'm wondering is, so if you guys didn't sell soybeans, they didn't sell soybeans, who sold the soybeans?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Well, again, it's a little early to speculate until we, kind of, see final yields and final data that comes in. This was a really competitive environment that was out there this year. And so, we're evaluating that. You think about the year-over-year acre numbers that we saw the USDA recently published USDA acres. I think you're seeing some of those volumes consistent with those acre numbers. So, overall, we'll see how it shakes out. But my view might also be that local, regional and some of the retail brands also had pretty strong performance this past year, so... Jonas Oxgaard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Okay. And a follow-up, if you don't mind, on the crop protection side. So, in Q1, you had an 18% drop in crop protection due to the closure of La Porte. La Porte is still closed, as far as I know. So, where did all this volume come from?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Yes. So, as we look at the second half of the year, a couple of things going on with La Porte. Last year, we sold Lannate out of inventory that we had carried over after the site closed. So, we were really working off of inventory that we had. When you then compare that to the second half of this year, we've essentially replaced our methanol volumes from – by sourcing from third parties. And then, overall, that market is down a little bit. So, the methanol year-over-year is actually about awash. Where the crop protection insect upside is coming from is really in Asia-Pacific. We saw the lead edge of that here in second quarter with the early onset of the monsoon and some favorable markets there. And then, we continue to drive the volumes of Cyazypyr with those launches. And then, our new fungicide Zorvec was also launched in Asia-Pacific, and all of those things really add up to those volumes in the second half.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank.

David I. Begleiter - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. Ed, the success you've had in the cost savings year-to-date, did that increase your confidence in realizing the cost savings that the combined Dow/DuPont are perhaps exceeding that $3 billion target? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I mean, look, we're off to a very good start six months into it. In fact, we're very far through the billion-dollar cost reduction on a run rate basis that we talked about for us this year. So, yeah, we're feeling very good about it. I wouldn't say my confidence is higher because of what we did this year. My confidence in the $3 billion of synergies on the Dow/DuPont merger are more because we now are digging line-by-line into all the detail. And as we mentioned earlier, we've identified 80% to 85% literally line-by-line of where the cost reductions are coming from to get us to at least the $3 billion. So, we do have the teams shooting higher than $3 billion. I don't want to target that number yet and get that out there. I think it's a little bit early, but we are targeting higher than that. My personal opinion, having done this many times before, is that once the purchasing teams can really dig into the detail and they can't do everything yet because we're not merged and that's one area you're not allowed to overlap on any contracts. But when they're allowed, with a $37 billion spend between Dow and DuPont, I'm used to seeing numbers on savings that are more significant than the numbers that we have highlighted to you so far. So, I'm viewing this $37 billion pot of opportunity as an area where we can get some upside to the plan. And it would be awful nice…

David I. Begleiter - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Very good. Ed, just one more thing. When you look at the potential combination, the ultimate three-way separation, any further thoughts on the optimal structure of the new companies? Is this three-company structure right now the best approach? Could it be four or five companies? Any further thoughts on the ultimate separation of Dow/DuPont? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes – no, look, I would just say, David, that, look, obviously, this is the agreement that we came to think it's very good the way we have it structured. If Dow and DuPont and Andrew and I or any of us, we think there's something more optimal to do with the mix of businesses, we certainly can look at that in MergeCo., and that would require a 2/3 vote of the MergeCo. board to make a change like that. But we'll always look at things if something could create better long-term value for shareholders. But the path we're all on is the path we're on and headed down right now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Byrne from Bank of America.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Yes. Thank you. Ed, I was wondering what your view is on this next stage of antitrust review. What country or regulatory agency are you most concerned about either requiring potentially the most concessions or maybe just the uncertainty and timing of it all that may drag it out? Where are you the most concerned? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I mean, there's four large markets that really matter significantly here. China, Brazil, and I say countries but one's a region, the EU and the U.S. So, that's the four big regulatory ones. Dow and DuPont are already in deep conversation with all the relevant agencies in those jurisdictions. So, we're not beginning. We're getting deep into it. You might have saw the other day. I think it came out that there might be some remedies. We always went into this saying we would be ready on remedies, if that were needed. So, we're hoping that that helps out the timeline. So, having said that, I'm not naive. This is a huge merger. Although we are going to split into three, but it is a huge merger and I'm sure it's going to get a thorough review. But looking at the timeline, I still think we're on a timeline by the end of the calendar year to accomplish this.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And then, one for you, Jim. As you think about the impact of lower crop commodity prices on demand for crop chemicals, are you more concerned that it could just lead to less demand, more discretionary use of crop chemicals or a shift down in – to more generics? And do you think you can offset some of that with your approach to offering financing to growers and attracting both seed and chemical purchases at the same time?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Yeah. Steve, you're right, it's always a possibility in a difficult market like we're facing now and that we're heading into that as a grower prioritizes the spend. Clearly, the focus on seed and to get my equipment and my land rented. get all of my inputs and fertilizer paid for, that crop protection spend is usually the last dollar spent. So, we've got a lot of experience with that. At the same time, productivity is the name of the game. And even in a tough market like this, growers will invest in a crop to drive as many bushels off of those acres as they possibly can. So, that's clearly a balance there. And we like the lineup of products that we have out there in the market and we price them right to deliver the right kind of value for that. And we're always looking for other ways to deliver those type of products, whether it's through seed treatment and other key routes. So, we've been here before. We know how to operate in these markets, and we've got a good team that's heavily focused on it. Eyes wide open, we're looking forward here to make sure that we're taking the steps right now today to continue to be competitive going into that 2017 market.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from P.J. Juvekar from Citigroup.

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yes. Hi, good morning. A question on R&D. In the first half, your R&D costs dropped by $125 million to $850 million. So, what do you think should be the run rate R&D expense for DuPont standalone and then maybe some comments on R&D synergies with DuPont/Dow or Dow/DuPont? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Look, the standalone – and probably, this has historically been the number on R&D for, gosh, the last ten years whether you look at it as a percentage of sales or just a dollar basis. Look, we're running it and sort of annualizing your number. We're running around $1.7 billion in total spend, and that feels about appropriate. The two years before that, it was just – as you've mentioned, it was slightly higher, but the run rate historically has been kind of running right around that on a percentage of sales basis very similar also. But once we do the merge, our anticipation is there's very little of our cost cutting. It's only going to be where there's really overlap on identical things in the R&D area. We obviously want a hefty R&D. We especially want it in the Ag business. We want to be one of the top spenders, if not the top spender in R&D in Ag. But we'll move some of that around to some other new product areas that we can work on instead of duplicating some efforts with Dow. I think probably that will be just great for the farm community and our farmers and our customers, there'll be more choice for them over the ensuing years, if we get that right.

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. And on seed pricing, can you talk about pricing regionally? Maybe talk a little bit about U.S. versus Latin America. And how much of the FX impact in Latin America were you able to recover through pricing? Thank you.

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

So, on the seed side, as I mentioned earlier, a big part of our price increases came from mix and it was tied to the lineup of new genetics that we had out in the marketplace. The majority of our crop protection price increases were aggressive actions that we took specifically to offset the negative impacts of currency in Latin America. So, as I said earlier in the opening comments, this is the second quarter in a row where we've been able to fully offset the impact of the currency because we have it out there ahead of it. And then, again, we talked about pricing before. Overall, we take a holistic look at price. Some of it is mix and technology. And a lot of it has to do with the value that that product delivers, and we differentially price our products in core markets almost down to the zip code level, so you see a lot of differences in the way we position. The final aspect of price for us globally that has been very positive in Latin America has been the launch of our new technology with Leptra. We had a good view of it in the se premia (50:41) season. This ramp-up in the summer season is probably one of the largest ramp-ups in our history and where we're going to feel the benefits of that as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Frank Mitsch from Wells Fargo Securities.

Frank J. Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen, and nice results. Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Frank.

Frank J. Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

What are the chances that this is the last DuPont conference call in DuPont's current configuration? Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: My gut is there's one more.

Frank J. Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

It'll be close, I think. Don't you think? Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I hope.

Frank J. Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Fair enough. Hey, a bigger picture question, Ed. You mentioned early on that you were pleased with the performance of the company and the sales figure, although down 1%. It kind of caught me a little bit cold, I guess. But I understand that it is a difficult macro environment. You also mentioned that volumes were up in all regions except for Europe. Can you expand upon what are you seeing from a pace of business perspective around the world and what the expectation is? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Frank, one of the reasons I made the comment on sales – I sure hate to brag about a sales number that's around zero, but – and I'm not. We always want to strive to do better. But just to give a little backdrop, the reason it feels better is we were plus 1% organically. For the whole company, we were plus 2% on a volume basis. And the quarters before that, four or five quarters before that, organically, we were kind of running a negative 2%. So, we've seen a shift of about 3%, which is not insignificant. So, that's really, I think, the key change there. But I think to the bigger backdrop of what you just said, I mean, the global economy is – industrial production globally is growing 1%, and that's even down a little bit from last year. GDP has been lower because of Brexit, maybe, with Europe, so that's kind of running around 2% to 2.5%. So, we're kind of not running out of line any differently than anyone else. And probably, you were accurate on your points on a worldwide basis. Our volume was up in North America, it was up in Latin America, it was up in Asia and it was down some in Europe. So, again, that was an improvement from where we had been running also. We're not planning on this environment changing. We're planning our rest of 2016 and 2017 to be just kind of how the world is right now. And so, we'll make smart decisions. And if things do improve for us, all the better for us, but we're not going to plan that way.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from John Roberts from UBS.

John Roberts - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Ed, what's the timetable for announcing the full board of Dow/DuPont? Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, it will be announced before the merger, for sure. I'm hoping not too far here down the road. We're pretty far along at both ends on who those candidates will be. We're just working on a couple still. And hopefully, not too far from now, we'll get it out.

John Roberts - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

And then, you gave volume growth by region and you gave it by segment, but we don't get the matrix. The 1% volume growth in North America, at least directionally, could you parse that apart a little bit for us? I assume Performance Materials was up a lot against the outage a year ago. Was that largely offset by the Protection Solutions segment, given that oil and gas weakness and military would have largely been in the U.S.? Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. And when you look at it, in North America, we had volume up in Nutrition & Health: it was up about 3 percentage points. Performance Materials, as you said, was a big part of it because of the unplanned outage and the comp that was being looked at there. And we also saw volume increases in Industrial Biosciences, about 3%. So, those are the ones that contributed very positively. And as you pointed out, Protection Solutions continues to be dealing with the rather depressed oil and gas segment, and that obviously is impacting some of their volumes. Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And military. Nicholas C. Fanandakis - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And military as well, yeah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question... Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And electronics also is one where we're seeing, on the consumer electronic side, probably I think as everyone else has been reporting for the last three to four months, softness on that end of the market. And we think that picks up slightly in the second half. Originally, we are planning a bigger lift, but we've kind of dialed that back a little, thinking we'll just see a slight lift as we go into the holiday season.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets.

Daniel DiCicco - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Hi. This is Dan DiCicco on for Arun. Thank you for taking my question. Just wondering if you guys could talk about your outlook for ethylene prices in the back half of the year. We've seen spot kind of come up recently. Do you guys think this is sustainable? And then, what happens kind of following the heavy maintenance season here as we have crackers restart and then some new capacity comes on?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

When you look at our ethylene play or our presence there, it's relatively small, right? We're about 2% of the total U.S. capacity. When you look at how our product is handled, about half of our ethylene is consumed internally. And then, of the other half, half of that is on a long-term contract and then that last 25% is sold in the external market. So, relatively small in the external market. More specifically around your question of where do we see some of that spot market going, we see the quarter three continued decline somewhere in the mid- to upper-teens from a percent basis and pretty flat from in quarter four.

Daniel DiCicco - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks. And then, just as a follow-up, excluding autos, are you guys seeing any strength out of any particular end markets or regions that you guys would like to highlight? I know you mentioned some previously, but is there anything else you guys might be looking at?

James C. Collins - Executive Vice President-Agriculture

Management

Well, I mean, we saw strength, as you mentioned, in Asia, but specifically in China is where we saw a tremendous amount of the strength as well as North America. Those would be the two key auto markets where we saw a lot of the volume increase being driven from.

Gregory R. Friedman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

And we're up to our last question.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Sandy Klugman from Vertical Research Partners.

Sandy H. Klugman - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Good morning. Ed, you've highlighted in the past the $1 billion opportunity in working capital, but noted that this would take more time to achieve than other productivity initiatives. Could you provide an update on where the company currently stands relative to your longer-term working capital targets?

Gregory R. Friedman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yeah. Sandy, we just launched that program just about a quarter – I guess the middle of the first quarter. We didn't start that with everything else we had going on for a few months. And I actually feel good about it, the traction we have. So, half way through the year, our free cash flow is about a billion dollars better year-over-year than last year. So, that was a nice improvement. But what was nice we got some initial traction out of the chute on working capital, about $200 million of that billion-dollar improvement in cash was from working capital. Almost all of the working capital improvement was on the inventory side and in the receivable side because of what Jim Collins talked about on Ag. My gut is it's just going to be harder to move the needle as quick, although we have programs. We're working on it. But – so having said that, I think getting $200 million kind of almost one quarter into the program on our billion-dollar opportunity was pretty darn good. And again, over the intermediate period, I do think we're entitled to about $1 billion, maybe a little bit more of opportunity. But I will tell you, Nick and I, as I said in my prepared remarks, we talk about this in every operating review meeting with the presidents. We all have very detailed programs now. It's just like anything else, when you focus on it and spend time on it, you will get it fixed. So it was nice to see the initial traction, you know, so far.

Sandy H. Klugman - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then, a follow-up on the cost-saving opportunities in Ag. Beyond the $1 billion, I think there were some additional opportunities highlighted from the potential for the Ag business to migrate to an existing SAP platform rather than establishing a new platform. I was wondering if there were any updated thoughts on this area. And if so, what type of upside potential do you see. Edward D. Breen - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. We haven't scoped the full upside potential but it's down the road, and we're just not spending time on that. To give you the overview, we're waiting on a more integrated system until we get to the spin stage. What we've got to do in the interim is come up with a high level layer that makes all the systems talk to each other. Jim Collins and the team are going to make sure obviously that's happening in Ag, that will happen in the specialty company. Dow will obviously stay with their SAP system and layer on our Performance Materials business onto that fairly easily. But what we will then do when we get closer to spin is really start to work – actually, DuPont had spent a lot of time on the latest SAP system and start an integration process then. And that's where we will get G&A savings when we get to that point. But that is clearly going to wait until we get through the synergy work with MergeCo and then we'll launch into that.

Gregory R. Friedman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you for joining the call today, and we very much appreciate your interest in DuPont.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.