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Text: Our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young, will review the drivers of our performance as well as corporate results and financial highlights.
We reported first quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.39, more than double the year ago period.
Adjusted segment operating profit was $1.2 billion, 86% higher than the first quarter of 2020 and our sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year adjusted OP growth.
Our trailing fourth quarter average adjusted ROIC was 9%, 375 basis points higher than our 2021 annual WACC and significantly higher than the 7.6% in the year ago period.
And our trailing fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was about $4.2 billion, 19% higher than the prior year period.
I'm proud of our team, and they continue to deliver sustained strong growth, powered by their continued advancement of the strategic transformation of our business, outstanding execution and excellent risk management and commitment to serving the evolving needs of our customers in new and innovative ways.
I'd like to take a moment now to highlight some of the trends, developments and accomplishments from the first quarter.
First, we are encouraged by many of the demand indicators we are seeing.
From a geographic perspective, China was one of the first countries to emerge from COVID-related restrictions, and we are continuing to see significant export demand driven by its economic recovery.
In the U.S. meat production is strong as exports and retail sales remain robust and restaurant dining expands.
Vaccine rollout has been slower in EMEA but is accelerating now.
And so we're optimistic that demand will recover there as the year progresses.
Of course, some countries like Brazil and India are still in the midst of the pandemic and demand there may be slower to come back.
From a product perspective, expectation of a progressive recovery in global foodservice will support demand for sweeteners, flower and other ingredients in 2021.
And we are seeing a strong demand for beverages, alternative proteins and nutritional supplements, including expected sales growth of 12% for plant protein ingredients this year.
In summary, recovery from COVID and demand improvements are occurring at varying paces depending on geography and products.
Complete recovery will extend over multiple years, but we are seeing clear trends that are favorable for our broad portfolio.
Another area in which we are seeing positive demand indications is ethanol in the U.S. About a year ago, we made the difficult decision to idle ethanol production at our dry mills in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Columbus, Nebraska.
We committed that we will not restart those facilities until we saw economic and market factors that would point to a sustainable recovery.
As we move through the winter and into spring, we saw industry inventories falling almost 10% during the quarter, ending almost 20% lower year-over-year on March 31.
Mobility and driving miles increasing as COVID-related restrictions eased with recent gasoline consumption getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Support from the EPA for the renewable fuel standard.
And China resuming purchases of U.S. ethanol in the first half of 2021.
With all of these factors supporting demand growth and improving industry margins, we decided to restart production.
At the same time, we are continuing to work with interested parties to complete the monetization of our dry mill ethanol assets.
From a portfolio management perspective, we're still committed to reducing our exposure to vehicle fuel ethanol.
And as demand continues to grow for the wide range of innovative alternative products that can come from natural sources like corn, we expect to see additional interest from other parties in both in biomaterials and sustainable aviation fuel.
One of the ways we are meeting growing and evolving demand is by introducing new technologies and innovations across our value chain.
In Q1, Our Covantis joint venture celebrated the commercial launch of its revolutionary blockchain platform to modernize the global agriculture ocean shipping industry.
Similarly, in the U.S. we've led an effort with industry partners to launch the barge digital transformation project, which uses new technologies to replace outdated, inefficient processes on our in-line water ways.
We're also innovating to meet the demand for sustainable solutions.
Over the last year, as growth of e-commerce drove demand for packaging, our biosolutions team worked proactively with customers to apply our corn-based native and modified starches to help increase the number of times cardboard boxes can be recycled.
In Europe, our animal nutrition teams are using life cycle analysis of the complete supply chain from crops and ingredients to final animal products like milk, eggs and meat to help develop new feed supplements that improve animal health and reduce environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions.
We're also continuing to innovate to improve the customer experience.
Last year, as travel was restricted, we launched new technologies designed to take our customers on collaborative virtual journeys that allowed us to share consumer insights, emerging trends and product solution opportunities, including real-time tasting.
Now as parts of the world reopen, we are continuing to expand our innovating customer capabilities.
In March, we opened our completely renovated customer innovation center in Beijing, expanding our ability to support technical innovation and creation.
And earlier this month, we were proud to celebrate the opening of the new cutting-edge, plant-based customer innovation lab at our research hub in Singapore.
These new facilities will propel our abilities to work with customers to create tailor-made solutions to meet evolving and growing consumer needs in the region.
Finally, I want to speak about the very important issue of sustainability.
Our commitment to sustainability expands our value chain.
It includes our work with growers to implement responsible farming practices, including the 13 million acres we've enrolled in sustainable farming programs globally in recent years.
It encompasses our Strive 35 goals to reduce the environmental impact of our processing operations, exemplified by the recent announcement of our partnership to help advance the proposed revolutionary zero emission power facility, utilizing our carbon capture and storage facility adjacent to our operations in Decatur, Illinois.
Sustainability is a key driver of our expanding portfolio of environmentally responsible plan-derived products and our efforts to reduce hunger and support the communities in which we live and work.
One critical pillar of our sustainability work for us and our customers is increasing the traceability of our supply chain.
We joined the Brazilian soy moratorium in 2006.
And in 2015, we introduced our first comprehensive no deforestation policy.
Since then, we made impressive progress, including achieving 99% traceability to mill in our farms around supply chain and full traceability to farm for direct suppliers in 25 key municipalities in the Brazilian Cerrado.
Now we are taking our efforts to a new level.
Last month, we announced our new policy to protect forests, biodiversity and communities.
As part of this ambitious plan, we aim to achieve full traceability throughout our direct and indirect South American soy supply chains by 2022 and have deforestation-free supply chains around the world by 2030.
I'm proud of the work our team is doing to deliver on our sustainability commitments and capabilities.
We know they are a key driver of consumer decisions and business success.
But more importantly, they are one of the ways in which we are living up to our purpose and enriching the quality of life around the world.
I'll come back later to talk about the next steps in our journey and our strategy.
The Ag Services and Oilseeds team delivered an outstanding quarter with operating profit of $777 million, representing a record for a first quarter.
Ag Services results were substantially higher year-over-year.
Results were driven by a record Q1 for our North American origination team, which executed extremely well to capitalize on strong Chinese demand.
As expected, results in South America were significantly lower versus the prior year period.
Farmer selling was lower versus the extremely aggressive pace in the year ago quarter.
Lower margins, including the impacts from the slightly delayed harvest and higher freight costs also affected South American results.
Results for the quarter were affected by about $75 million in negative timing related to ocean freight positions.
Those impacts will reverse as contracts execute in the coming quarters.
Crushing delivered its best quarter ever as the business leverage its global footprint and diversified capabilities to capture strong execution margins in both soybean and softseed crushing, driven by robust vegetable oil demand and tight soybean stocks.
Net timing impacts for the quarter in crush were minimal.
Refined products and other results were higher year-over-year.
While overall volumes were down due to pandemic impacts, margins were stronger in both North America and EMEA, refined oils.
Global biodiesel results were lower year-over-year.
Equity earnings from Wilmar were lower versus the prior year period.
Looking ahead, we now expect full year calendar year results for Ag Services and Oilseeds to be higher than the record 2020, with a particularly strong fourth quarter, driven by potentially record global demand for North American agricultural products.
For the second quarter, we expect results to be slightly stronger than the second quarter of 2020, but significantly lower than the record first quarter of 2021 with stronger Crushing and RPO expectations compared to the second quarter of 2020, offsetting seasonably lower Ag Service results.
The Carbohydrate Solutions team again delivered significant year-over-year profit growth.
Our Starches and Sweeteners subsegment, which includes the wet mill ethanol production, achieved significantly higher results versus the first quarter of 2020.
The business managed risks exceptionally well, capitalizing on rising prices in the ethanol complex and favorable coal product values in an industry environment of improving margins and falling inventories.
Corn oil results were significantly higher than the previous year, which have been impacted by substantial mark-to-market effects.
In general, though demand for sweeteners and flour by the foodservice sector remained below the prior year, there were signs of acceleration in the month of March.
Starch sales volumes remained solid on demand from industrial applications like packaging materials.
Vantage Corn Processor results were substantially higher, driven by improved margins on the distribution of fuel ethanol and strong performance in USP-grade industrial alcohol.
Looking ahead, second quarter results for Carbohydrate Solutions are expected to be in line with this first quarter of 2021, which would represent a significant year-over-year profit growth driven by the improved ethanol market environment, including the restart of our two VCP dry mills and the recovery of the foodservice segment.
The Nutrition team delivered 5% revenue growth on a constant currency basis and solid year-over-year operating profit growth.
Human Nutrition results were significantly higher than the prior year quarter.
Flavors had an exceptional quarter, driven by strong sales across various market segments, especially beverages.
Favorable product mix in North America, improved margins in EMEA and accelerated income from a customer agreement also contributed results, partially offset by certain specific expenses.
Specialty Ingredients results were lower, primarily driven by demand factors, including the effect of pantry loading in the previous year quarter and shifts in demand for texturants.
Health and Wellness had a strong start to the year, with robust demand for nutritional products, driving higher results in probiotics and fibers.
Animal Nutrition results were lower versus the first quarter of 2020, driven primarily by lower demand and higher input costs as a result of pandemic effects, primarily in South America.
This was partially offset by favorable results in amino acids, driven by improved product mix.
Looking ahead, we expect continued strong demand for flavors and proteins and improving demand for our animal nutrition products as restrictions ease to drive second quarter results that will be significantly higher than the prior year quarter, supporting the 15% per annum trend growth rate for the calendar year.
Let me finish up with a few observations from the Other segment as well as some of the corporate line items.
Other business results were lower than the prior year quarter, driven by lower captive insurance underwriting results, partially offset by more favorable ADM investor services earnings.
For the quarter, there were about $0.17 per share of adjusted items for earnings per share purposes, which are referenced in slide 24 in the appendix.
These adjustment items included: One, the settlement of the class action lawsuit against Golden Peanut to avoid the rising cost of a prolonged litigation, in a case in which we did not believe we violate any laws; two, impairments and restructuring costs related to the exit of certain noncore product lines and inefficient assets in nutrition; and three, mark-to-market on the embedded option in the Wilmar exchangeable bond.
In the corporate lines, unallocated corporate costs of about $200 million were slightly higher year-over-year, due primarily to our continued investments in IT and business transformation and transfers of costs from the business segments into the centralized centers of expertise in supply chain and operations.
We are still on track for calendar year corporate unallocated costs to be overall similar to 2020.
As expected, net interest expense for the quarter decreased from the year-over-year period on lower interest rates and the favorable liability management actions taken in the prior year.
The effective tax rate for the first quarter of 2020 was -- first quarter of 2021 was approximately 16% compared to the benefit of 4% in the prior year.
We still anticipate our calendar year effective tax rate to be in the range of 14% to 16%.
Our balance sheet remains solid despite the higher commodity price environment with a net debt-to-total capital ratio of about 33% and available liquidity of $7.7 billion.
As part of our active management for pension liabilities, we did close on another U.S. pension liability transfer transaction on April one with about $0.7 billion of liabilities transferred to the U.S. insurance market.
This effectively reduces our U.S. pension liabilities by close to 40% and will result in the U.S. pension plans more or less fully funded from a projected benefit obligation perspective.
I'm proud of the team for our great start to 2021.
And I'm even more proud of the strategic work we have done to transform our company and enable our growing success.
We began in 2011 by committing to specific strategic goals and financial metrics focused on what we call the three Cs: capital discipline, cost reduction and cash generation.
We launched new initiatives like our $1 billion challenge with prioritized operational excellence, and we focused on returns as our primary financial metric.
We call that getting fit for the journey.
Once we were fit, we launch the next part of our strategy, focusing on three core pillars to enhance returns, deliver more predictable growth and strengthen our ability to control our results.
During this time, our team has done a great job optimizing business performance, realigning our portfolio and building a global leader in nutrition, driving efficiencies through our operational excellence initiatives and expanding through organic growth investments, M&A and the broadening of our customer base and product offerings.
Now we're moving into the next phase of our strategic transformation by sharpening our focus on two strategic pillars: productivity and innovation.
Our productivity efforts will take many actions that were part of our optimized and drive focuses and boost them to the next level.
The productivity pillar will include: advancing the roles of our centers of excellence or COEs in procurement, supply chain and operations to deliver additional efficiencies across the enterprise; the continued rollout of our One ADM business transformation program and implementation of improved standardized business processes; and increasing our use of technology, analytics and automation at our production facilities in our offices and with our customers.
Our innovation activities will help us accelerate growth and profitability, not just for the near term, but importantly, for the long term.
We'll expand and invest in improving the customer experience, including leveraging our producer relationships and enhancing our use of state-of-the-art digital technology to help our customers grow; sustainability-driven innovation, which encompasses the full range of our products, solutions, capabilities and commitments to serve our customers' needs; and growth initiatives, including organic growth to support additional capacity and meet growing demand, opportunistic M&A and increased leveraging of our very successful venture capital portfolio.
We'll support both pillars with investments in technology, which include expanding our digital capabilities and investing further in product research and development.
And of course, all of our efforts will continue to be strengthened by our ongoing commitment to revenues.
As I look at our long-term plans and this evolution of our strategy, I'm very excited about the value creation opportunities ahead of us.
Our teams are continuing to perform at the high level and doing a great job serving our customers.
The demand outlook for our products is strong, driven by the pre and during global trends of food security, health and well-being and sustainability.
And we are delivering on our potential and our promise.
That is why we are even more optimistic in our 2021 outlook today than we were three months ago, with expectations for significantly higher full year operating profit and earnings per share versus our record 2020.
And as we look beyond 2021, we expect that our sharpened focus on productivity and innovation, combined with continuing demand expansion driven by the fundamental needs and evolving demands of our global customers and the multiyear COVID recovery, will deliver sustained growth in earnings in the years to come.

user
compname reports first quarter earnings of $1.22 per share, $1.39 per share on an adjusted basis.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $1.39.
calendar year outlook for 2021 substantially improved; expect significant earnings per share growth and another record year.
qtrly ag services and oilseeds adjusted operating profit of $777 million versus $422 million.
seeing clear, favorable demand trends for many of co's products.
expect demand pattern to continue as vaccine rollouts accelerate and restrictions ease.
expect significant year-over-year growth in earnings across all three businesses in 2021.

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