Earnings Labs

FMC Corporation (FMC)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 6, 2018

$15.17

-2.57%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.37%

1 Week

-2.86%

1 Month

-5.06%

vs S&P

-1.05%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Release Conference Call for FMC Corporation. Phone lines will be placed on listen-only mode throughout the conference. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer period. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Wherley, Director of Investor Relations for FMC Corporation. You may begin.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to FMC Corporation's third quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Pierre Brondeau, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; Mark Douglas, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Andrew Sandifer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Pierre will review FMC's third quarter performance and provide the outlook for 2018 and the fourth quarter. Andrew will provide an overview of select financial results. All three will then address your questions. The slide presentation that accompanies our results, along with our earnings release and the 2018 outlook statement, are available on our website, and the prepared remarks from today's discussion will be made available after the call. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning specific factors, including, but not limited to, those factors identified in our release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Information presented represents our best judgment based on today's information. Actual results may vary based upon these risks and uncertainties. Today's discussion will focus on adjusted earnings for all income statement and EPS references. A reconciliation and definition of these terms as well as other non-GAAP financial terms to which we may refer during today's conference call are provided on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pierre.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Q3 was another strong quarter for both businesses at the revenue and earnings level. It also was a quarter for executing on our commitments. The Ag Solutions business performed very well in a seasonally weak Q3, driving 5% pro forma sales growth, which was about 300 basis points higher than our forecast, despite an estimated 4% to 5% headwind from foreign currencies. Revenue synergy continued to boost results and demand in Brazil was very strong in the quarter. As a reminder, we do not have precise data from DuPont in 2017 to calculate exact year-over-year impact from FX, pricing, or volume, but we base our FX estimates on what we saw in our legacy businesses. In Q3, we successfully transferred to FMC delayed sites and country from the DuPont acquisition. As discussed on our last earnings calls, these transfers did result in a shift of revenue into Q4 that was in line with our expectation, but they will not result in any missed sale for the full year. There remain one more delayed transfer, a small formulation site in India, that will occur in the second half of 2019. We expect no impact on business results. On business integration is on schedule and we have begun the systematic rollout of the new SAP S/4HANA system starting with our corporate finance function. The complete rollout will be implemented by the end of 2019. On the technology front, we are on track to launch our first new active ingredient from the legacy FMC R&D pipeline in North America in the first quarter of 2019. This fungicide will be branded Lucento, and is based on the active ingredient Bixafen. Our Lithium segment performed strongly in Q3, and we successfully completed the IPO of approximately 15% of…

Andrew David Sandifer - FMC Corp.

Management

Thanks, Pierre. I'll start this morning with a few specific income statement items then move to the balance sheet and cash flow. I'll also provide an update on the use of proceeds from the Livent IPO. Corporate expense was $29.7 million, $7.6 million above the quarterly pace of expense implied by our guidance at our last earnings call. This increase in expense was driven primarily by foreign exchange impacts on inter-company fund movements. We are currently operating in a dual IT system environment, which makes it more challenging to address currency imbalances on inter-company fund movements. While a large portion of the impact in the quarter was non-recurring, the system challenges are likely to cause some volatility in our corporate expenses on the order of plus or minus $1 million to $2 million per quarter. This variability will go away as we exit the DuPont TSA in late 2019. We estimate foreign exchange was a 4% to 5% top-line headwind in the third quarter for our Ag Solutions segment. Importantly, in Brazil, we estimate that we offset 100% of the impact of FX on earnings in Q3 through significant price increases complemented by our hedging activities. For the Lithium segment, FX had virtually no impact on revenue and with a modest tailwind to earnings in the quarter. We lowered our guidance for adjusted effective tax rate for the full year to a range of 16% to 17%, a reduction of 50 basis points at the midpoint of the range, driven by our updated forecast and the mix of earnings across various jurisdictions. The 14.6% adjusted effective tax rate for the third quarter brings our year-to-date provision for taxes in line with this updated guidance. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow on slide 9, FMC generated adjusted cash…

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Thank you, Andrew. I could not be more pleased with where we are today. We are preparing FMC for a long period of growth, while delivering exceptional results in the short-term. We are delivering on every front, the 10% global revenue growth rate for Ag business in 2018 on a pro forma basis, much above the market, with a strong EBITDA margin close to 29%. We are flawlessly integrating the DuPont business and realizing early sales and cost synergies. We successfully completed the IPO of Livent in challenging market condition. Our SAP implementation is on track. Our cash flow is strengthening. We are paying down debt quickly and returning $200 million to our shareholders through a stock buyback. More importantly, we have a strategic plan firmly in place which leverages our core competencies, the strength of our current portfolio and our unique ability to develop short- to long-term technology. As I said before, our team is delivering on every front. I cannot wait to discuss the future of the company on December 3 with all of you. I will now turn the call back to Michael Wherley.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Thank you, Pierre. As Livent has just had its own conference call, we'll keep this Q&A session focused on our Ag business, other than to answer to any potential questions you might have on the Livent separation plan. Operator, you can now begin the Q&A.

Operator

Operator

And your first question comes from the line of Christopher Parkinson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Great. Thank you. Given your new ever-evolving portfolio on a geographic and product basis, how should we think about your long-term outlooks given your newly found independence? I'm sure you guys don't want to front-run yourselves on the Analyst Day, but just how should we perceive your own thought process regarding acquired R&D platform from DuPont? And maybe just a quick comment on the strategy regarding the FMC of old, if you want to call it that, in acquiring mid- to late-stage molecules. So, just any comment on that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Thanks, Chris. I appreciate the question. But as you can guess, really discussing technology in depth would require a lot of time, which we intend to do at Investor Day. We'll have our Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Technology Officer going deep into our technology capability. What I would say is we do have, with the combination of FMC and DuPont, the DuPont business we acquired, developed a capability which is quite unique. We do have now coming from DuPont a very strong discovery organization and ability to bring new molecules, new active ingredients, new mode of actions towards development stage. FMC is bringing a formulations technology which DuPont didn't have before, enhancing the value of those active ingredients which are being developed by DuPont. Third of all, FMC and DuPont have complementary capabilities in terms of technology development and field testing in each of the region of the world, allowing us testing, data gathering, but also the fast development of formulation for local requirements. So we will describe all of these, but technology and blend of short-term, mid-term, long-term technology will be a very key driver of FMC growth in the future. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: And just a quick follow-up. Just given the role for the TSA, the eventual refined corporate cost structure as well as your, let's say, greater geographically balanced portfolio with better Asian exposure, which to my understanding is better payable terms. Can you just give us any sense on just how you're thinking about your future cash flow generation versus history, especially given your relatively low maintenance CapEx requirements? Just any broad color there would be appreciated. Thank you.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Yes, Chris. Broad color and as Andrew said in his comment, we want to make cash deployment a very critical topic on Investor Day. You will start to see in 2019 a significant increase in the cash generated by the company and the real step-up will be in 2020. The reason for which 2019 will be a little bit less than the following years is because we'll still have SAP implementation cost and some integration cost. Then you have a real jump into 2020 all the way to 2023. If you look at the cash we will be generating, including the structural saving which will take place with the S/4HANA implementation, if you look at the capital spend, and we'll detail that, if we look at the cash before R&D because we want to make sure we fully fund R&D for growth, you're going to get to a place where we're going to have to change the way we are returning cash to shareholders. So we'll have very significant non-allocated cash for the next few years, which we intend to return, in most part, to shareholders through dividend and stock buyback. And we'll be discussing with you this unallocated part of cash, which you will see for the size of our company is a pretty significant number, how we are deciding to do that through the regular payment of dividends and what we will do through repetitive stock buyback. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: That's great color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next we will go to the line of Don Carson with Susquehanna Financial. One moment.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Please move to the next question if he is not available.

Operator

Operator

One moment, please.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Operator, please move to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Yes. One moment. My computer is froze. One moment.

Donald David Carson - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Hello. Can you hear me?

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

We can hear you.

Donald David Carson - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Oh, thanks. Sorry about that. Yeah. Question on South America. There was a lot – you kind of round-tripped on the reais. You went from BRL 3.68 to BRL 4.10 back to BRL 3.68. How did that affect your ability to raise local currency pricing? And if you raised them at that BRL 4.10 peak, should you be able to hang on to those increased reais pricing and, hence, expand margins as you get into the fourth quarter?

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Yes, Don. That's a regular situation you always face when you connect your pricing to currency. I think it's an important point you're making. As we said before, on the way up when the – sorry, when the currency goes down and we are increasing price, we have a lag. We're always behind by a few percentage points. When then the currency strengthen, the same thing is happening, then we become ahead of the game because we hold the price as long as we can to the previous currency. So, needless to say that while the currency was going up quite fast all the way to BRL 4 in Brazil, the fact that we're able to take to zero impact the currency on EBITDA in the third quarter made us feeling pretty strong about our ability to move price up. And now the job you have is, as the currency strengthen, is to try to hold on to your older price as long as you can, but you will have to bring it back closer to currency as it goes.

Donald David Carson - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

And can you talk about...

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

But you'll face a lag negative at the beginning on the currency weakening and positive when the currency is strengthening.

Donald David Carson - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

And can you talk about your sales position in Brazil? How collection's been going and where are receivables by historical standards as a percentage of sales?

Mark A. Douglas - FMC Corp.

Analyst

Yeah, Don. It's Mark. Receivables are in very good shape and especially in Brazil. I think you know that we spent a lot of time and effort over the last couple of years really getting the quality of our business back in shape after 2015. So we feel very strong about where we are. Collections have been very good. Past dues are down at the lowest level they've been for the last three to four years. We're obviously in the season now, so we'll see how things go. But for us, we're very confident about where our receivable levels are, and more importantly so, about where our past dues are heading.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question goes to the line of Daniel Jester from Citi. Please go ahead.

Daniel Jester - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah. Hi. Good morning, everyone. So I think in your prepared remarks you said that you might have a couple cents of headwinds from tariffs from China. Can you just comment about, if those tariffs are sustained in 2019, just color on the order of magnitude of what that could be? And is there anything that you could do in your own supply chain to mitigate some of those costs?

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

I think the currency impact, if we project out our sales to 2019, to give you an order of magnitude, if tariffs stay around 10%, we believe it's going to be around a $10 million negative impact on EBITDA. If the tariffs move to a 25% range, it would be in the $30 million to $35 million impact on EBITDA. That would be if we are not successful at getting any exception. As you know, we are fighting for exemption to some of the critical raw materials of product. I cannot anticipate on how successful we will be in doing that, but the two numbers I gave to you would be the max impact.

Daniel Jester - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. And you commented on your higher market growth view for North America. I think previously you thought the North America to be down a little bit this year and now it looks like it's going to be up. Can you just dive into that? Is there something specific that's driving that change? And can you give us any broad sense as to where do you think the market could go into next year with some of the anticipated shifts in acreage that we might see between corn and soybeans? Thank you.

Mark A. Douglas - FMC Corp.

Analyst

Yeah, Dan. It's Mark. North America was stronger than we thought. We continued to do very well with the diamide acquisition, especially in California. I think we noted that on one of the slides. We saw it in other niche crops as well towards the end of the season. Now, of course, as Pierre said in his prepared remarks, it's a bit of a slow time in North America, so you don't need much movement to get significant percentages. I think we also saw good business with our selective herbicides based on two key molecules. We've launched some new products this year, and they've done very well going through the third quarter. So, think of the herbicide and the insecticide portfolio as doing better than we thought. Obviously, we're watching very carefully as we roll into the next season for the U.S., given where corn and soy projections are. Frankly, I think it's too early to tell where growers will go with this. We're watching it very closely. I think you do know that we have much more of an exposure to soy in the U.S. market than we do corn. Obviously, that's offset by a greater exposure in Brazil. And we know that Brazil are right in their planting season now which is going very well. We expect them to have roughly about a 3% increase in acreage for soy. So, for us, it's been a much of watch and see really. We're making sure that our supply chains are well-positioned to take any advantage of movements in the U.S. and, in particular, in Brazil. But right now, as I said, a bit too early to figure that one out.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

And one additional comment around Europe and North America, we like to repeat that. So, third quarter is a low season, so don't forget that dollars change creates significant movement in percentage, when actually it is not that big of a change. So there is a bit of the fact we're occurring at a time that Europe is only 15% of the U.S. sales. So, not as big as the percentage might indicate it. There are no...

Daniel Jester - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Steve Byrne from Bank of America.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Yes. Thank you. I understand there's been reports recently of some corn rootworm resistance developed to the Herculex proteins, and just wanted to know whether or not that created an opportunity for you. Does your insecticide platform include some products that would control below-ground insects as a seed treatment?

Mark A. Douglas - FMC Corp.

Analyst

Yeah, Steve. We're not in the seed treatment side, but we're very much in the in-furrow application of insecticides, especially for corn rootworm. We have also seen instances of increased infestation. We're well-positioned to take advantage of that as we go through the next season, not only with our branded product Capture LFR, which is a liquid fertilizer-ready in-furrow application, but with our new foam-applied technologies that we're introducing into the marketplace, which are much more sustainable in nature. And we'll talk more about that on Investor Day. But, yes, you're right, we are seeing instances and we're well-prepared for that with our portfolio as it stands today.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And the recent EPA-labeled revision on dicamba has a lot of the professional applicators upset about the additional certification requirements that many of them think they're not going to be able to achieve. Is that a net benefit to your selective herbicide platform?

Mark A. Douglas - FMC Corp.

Analyst

Well, yeah. I mean, obviously, we don't participate in the dicamba market directly, but we do have a market-leading position in pre-emergent herbicides for soy with our Authority brand. Obviously, if we can continue to grow that franchise, if there are issues with dicamba, we will certainly take that opportunity. However, I do have to say, a lot of the new technologies of the companies that are promoting those are also promoting the use of pre-emergent herbicides as well, of which as I said we're the market leader. So we will take advantage of that.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Mike Sison, KeyBanc.

Curt A. Siegmeyer - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys. This is Curt Siegmeyer in for Mike. I was just curious in terms of the benefits that you've seen from DuPont largely from cross-selling and some of the distribution benefits that you've talked about, what inning would you characterize us in in terms of those benefits and how should we think of that in terms of contribution to potential pipeline growth in 2019?

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

I think today we are growing – if you think about this year, the overall company will be growing about 9% in the business and that will due to the DuPont portfolio growing in the high-teens and maybe low-20% range, which is very fast. So, what is important for us, and we're spending a lot of time studying that, is to try to understand how much of this is very short-term synergies versus what is more sustainable synergy. We do not believe we're going to be growing the portfolio side despite (43:46-43:54)

Operator

Operator

And one moment. We may have lost the main feed. (43:58-44:13)

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

The line went dead.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

(44:15)

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Can you hear us?

Operator

Operator

Oh, there you are. Yes, we can hear you now.

Curt A. Siegmeyer - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, guys. Can you hear me?

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Yes.

Curt A. Siegmeyer - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thanks for that. I lost a little bit of the last part, but I'll...

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Okay. Let me give you the bottom line, okay? What we'll be discussing (45:05-45:51)

Operator

Operator

And we are unable to hear. Mr. Wherley? Ladies and gentlemen, please wait one moment please. You may begin.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Can you hear us?

Operator

Operator

Yes.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Okay. Thank you. Can we just resume with that last question from KeyBanc? Sorry about that. We have an interruption (47:32- 50:17)

Operator

Operator

And you may begin. (50:19-50:49)

Operator

Operator

And you may...

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Can you hear us, operator?

Operator

Operator

Yes. I can hear you now.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Okay. Let's go back in the Q&A and start with the next question. I believe it's Mark Connelly at Stephens.

Joan Tong - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. How are you? This is actually Joan Tong for Mark Connelly. You guys called out Rynaxypyr and Cyazypyr are one of the key drivers for the strong North America results despite weak seasonality. Can you just tell us what additional growth opportunity these products have, which geographic regions offer the best potential, or maybe perhaps talk about how deeply penetrated are these product there in the market? Hello?

Operator

Operator

One moment, please. (51:44-52:01)

Operator

Operator

I hear you.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Can you hear us?

Operator

Operator

We can hear you now.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Well, if it goes blank again then we're just going to have to end the call. But let's try and answer this question. Mark, go ahead.

Mark A. Douglas - FMC Corp.

Analyst

Sure. Thanks. So, yeah, as I was saying that over 50% of the growth of the diamide products are coming from Asia. So we see growth both in Asia, in Europe, North America, and in selected parts of Brazil and Latin America. When we get to Investor Day on December the 3rd, we'll be digging into more details around why we see these products continuing to grow, what is it that makes them special in terms of their performance versus other competitive chemistries. But we do see Cyazypyr in particular, which was a later launched product, as having very good growth opportunities especially on niche crops. So, rather than going through all the details today, we'll certainly address that at the Investor Day on December the 3rd.

Joan Tong - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then just one follow-up. So, thanks for the color on the impact of the Chinese tariffs earlier. Just maybe one follow-up on China as well. So we are seeing Chinese chemical producers are facing rising environmental compliance cost. Just wondering how much of your business are being sourced in China? And also maybe longer-term, are you thinking about maybe perhaps the evolution of how you change like, how you source your raw material going forward? Would that be a more of a significant shift towards India and other part of the world? Thank you so much.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Regarding China, I mean, from a business and size of the country itself, China is one of the top 10 country in the world, but this not where the issue is for us. One of the challenges I would say we have is the supply of active ingredients and raw material for FMC as well as for most of the other Ag chemical company comes from China. So there is always two issues we are facing. One is, is the cost; and more constraint on supply there is from China, the higher the risk of the cost going up. And the other one is because of environmental reason, shutdowns, which would prevent the supply of active ingredients or raw material. So the second one is always something we're watching because if the issue happen, there is not much we can do. We've been dealing quite well with that. We are well-structured with multiple qualified suppliers for most of our products. So we have to use the flexibility of the supply chain, but is something so far we have been able to manage and expect to be able to manage without shorter paying customers in the foreseeable future. The price is something which we'll have to address. Now I have to say the cost of raw material impact in 2018 is not very significant. Just because of the way accounting work, the increase of cost is pushed into the products which then are going into inventory, and you're impacted on the cost when you sell the product. So we are currently expecting raw material pricing not to be a very significant issue in 2018, but certainly something we're going to have to watch in 2019 and, for which, we're going to have to define a very well-thought through pricing strategy.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Mike Harrison, Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Michael Joseph Harrison - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning.

Michael Wherley - FMC Corp.

Management

Hi, Mike.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

Good morning, Mike.

Michael Joseph Harrison - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst

You didn't realize that separating Livent would lead to some potential technical difficulties on the call. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit in a little more detail about your ability to manage through the FX impact. And in particular around the hedges, I'm just wondering if there was sort of an unusual contribution from the hedges in Q4. And as we go forward through the season, maybe they get shorter-term or they get more expensive, they become less effective somehow.

Pierre R. Brondeau - FMC Corp.

Management

I'm going to ask Andrew to address the hedging process and what we've done. Now, let's put things within context. Most of the work which was done to limit the impact of currencies on our business was done through pricing. That was the biggest driver. That's where most of the work was accomplished. Now, hedging was a very interesting complementary strategy we had to protect us further. Andrew, maybe?

Andrew David Sandifer - FMC Corp.

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Pierre. Mike, I think, thinking about Brazil specifically, I would not say there was an extraordinary benefit from hedging in the quarter. We did supplement our hedging approach with some additional layers of hedging in advance of orders being... (57:25-58:30)

Operator

Operator

That does conclude the FMC Corporation third quarter 2018 earnings release call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.