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Text: Before we get started, I want to let you know that we have slides to accompany our discussion.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure are posted on our website as well.
Turning to Slide three, you'll see the agenda for today's call.
I'll start with some highlights of the first quarter before handing over to John, who will go into more detail on our performance.
Let's start with an overview of the quarter, turning to Slide four.
We brought positive momentum into the quarter, and we continued to capture the opportunities in front of us, delivering our sixth consecutive quarter of increased earnings.
Operationally, our team did a fantastic job maximizing our assets.
We reached a new high watermark for crush capacity utilization, and we continued to reduce unplanned downtime.
We also executed well in the marketplace through outstanding customer service, innovation, agility and partnership.
Our strong results over the past few quarters reflect the value of working as a unified global company and the benefits of our integrated model delivers to our customers on both ends of the value chain, from farmers to customers to consumers.
We're committed to continuous improvement and managing risk effectively because while we're incredibly proud of what we have achieved, we recognize there's always more we can do, especially in an industry that doesn't always offer a straight-line path from quarter-to-quarter.
The dramatic swings in consumer and customer behavior during the COVID pandemic are case in point.
COVID is still very much a factor in most parts of the world, especially in Brazil and India, and our thoughts are with all of those who are still in the center of the battle with this pandemic.
In regions where restrictions are easing, we're seeing increased demand in pricing across the range of products as people begin to get back to regular life patterns.
And regardless of those more encouraging trends, our top priority continues to be the safety of our team, their families and communities.
Turning now to our segment performance.
As you saw last week, we changed our reporting to better align with our new value chain operating structure.
John will go into more detail on that later in the call, but our new segments more closely reflect the way we manage our business.
In the first quarter, we delivered especially strong results in Agribusiness.
Earnings were driven primarily by oilseed processing, particularly in softseeds, and our merchandising value chains.
Refined and Specialty orders -- Oils had a record quarter, benefiting from tightening global supplies, improved demand, particularly in North America, and our continued focus on customers and innovation.
And before handing the call over to John, you'll note that with our strong first quarter results and favorable outlook across a number of our markets, we raised our full year adjusted earnings per share forecast to approximately $7.50.
I'll share some additional thoughts on the remainder of 2021 before opening the call for Q&A.
In -- you may have seen our announcement last week that we have changed our segment reporting to align with our new value chain model and to reflect how we manage the business and review financial information.
Within Agribusiness, we have realigned grains and oilseeds operations in the processing and merchandising.
The Fertilizer segment has been eliminated with those results now included in the processing component of Agribusiness.
Processing, in addition to fertilizer, is principally the oilseed operations plus the soy and softseed crush-related origination activities previously included in grains.
Let's turn to earnings highlights on Slide five.
Our reported first quarter earnings per share was $5.52 compared to a loss of $1.46 in the first quarter 2020.
Our reported results include a net gain of $1.09 related to the previously announced sale of our Rotterdam oil refinery as well as our packaging plant in Mexico.
Reported results also include a mark-to-market timing difference of $1.30 per share.
Adjusted earnings per share was $3.13 in the quarter versus $0.91 in the prior year.
Adjusted core segment earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT, were $737 million in the quarter versus $354 million in the prior year driven by strong performances in our Agribusiness and Refined and Specialty Oils segments.
As Greg noted, Agribusiness results in the quarter reflect outstanding execution by the team, managing our crush capacity and trade flows.
In processing, improved performance in the quarter was driven by higher results in all softseed and soy crush value chains, which included an increased contribution from U.S. soybean origination.
In addition, we achieved record Q1 soy and rapeseed crush volume capacity utilization, reflecting reduced unplanned downtime and excellent coordination between our commercial and industrial teams.
This improved crush output brings immediate financial benefits, especially in periods of strong margins like we have been experiencing.
In Merchandising, improved volumes and margins in our global oils, corn and wheat value chains were primarily driven by increased export demand, strong grain origination in North America and Australia and outstanding execution of logistics and risk management.
Results in our Financial Services business were also higher.
In Refined and Specialty Oils, the strong performance reflected higher results in all regions driven by improved execution as well as favorable market trends.
Margins in North America refining benefited from early stage recovery in foodservice and increased demand from the renewable diesel sector.
Higher margins in South America and Europe more than offset lower volumes.
Asia benefited from strong demand in India prior to the reimposition of restrictions due to the surge in new COVID cases.
In Milling, results were down in both North and South America primarily due to lower margins.
Additionally, volumes in Brazil were negatively impacted by the resurgence in COVID cases.
The increase in corporate expenses during the quarter was primarily related to the performance-based compensation accruals, a portion of which was not allocated out to the segment.
The decrease in Other was related to our captive insurance program.
Results for our Sugar & Bioenergy joint venture benefited from higher sugar and ethanol volume and higher sugar prices in local currency.
Prior year results reflect less favorable environment and were also negatively impacted by approximately $25 million in FX translation losses of the joint venture due to depreciation of Brazilian real.
For the quarter, income tax expense was $192 million as compared to an income tax benefit of $55 million for the prior year.
The increase in income tax expense was due to higher pre-tax income.
Adjusted for notable items, the effective tax rate for the quarter was 21%.
Net interest expense of $64 million was in line with our expectations.
Here, you can see our positive earnings trend adjusted for notable items and timing differences over the past four years, along with the most recent trailing 12-month period.
This improved performance not only reflects a strong operating environment, but also the hard work of our global teams and the benefits of our new operating model that brings organizational alignment across the regions and, importantly, has shifted our culture to one of continuous improvement and capital discipline.
Slide seven compares our first quarter SG&A to the prior year.
We achieved underlying addressable SG&A savings of $16 million, of which approximately 80% was related to indirect costs.
COVID-related restrictions continued to impact areas, such as travel, but we also realized lower employee and professional services costs.
Moving to Slide 8.
The most recent trailing 12-month period, our cash generation, excluding notable items and mark-to-market timing differences, were strong at approximately $2.2 billion of adjusted funds from operations.
This cash flow generation enabled us to comfortably fund our cash obligations over the past year and retained approximately $1.4 billion to strengthen our balance sheet in support of our credit rating objective of BBB/Baa2.
On Slide nine details our capital allocation of adjusted funds from operations for the first quarter.
After allocating $32 million of sustaining capex, which includes maintenance, environmental, health and safety and $8 million to preferred dividends, we had $493 million of discretionary cash flow available.
Of this amount, we paid $71 million in common dividends to shareholders and invested $21 million in growth and productivity capex, leaving approximately $400 million of retained cash flow.
Moving on to Slide 10.
The $400 million of retained cash flow and other cash sources, including proceeds from the sale of assets, more than offset our approximately $700 million of cash outflow this quarter for working capital.
As a result, net debt decreased by approximately $100 million.
We also took action to increase our availability under committed credit lines to $5.8 billion, leaving us with ample liquidity to support potentially higher working capital needs.
As you can see on Slide 11, we further strengthened our balance sheet during the quarter to a point where the entirety of our net debt funded 91% of our readily marketable inventory with the 90% balance of RMI being funded with equity.
The trailing 12 months adjusted ROIC was 18.7% or 12.1 percentage points over our RMI adjusted weighted average cost of capital of 6.6%.
ROIC was 13.4%, 7.4 percentage points over our weighted average cost of capital of 6% and well above our stated target of 9%.
The widening spread between these metrics reflects how we have been effectively using RMI in our operations as a tool to generate incremental profit.
Moving to Slide 13.
Our discretionary cash flow and cash flow yield have continued to increase, reflecting strong cash flow generation that is available for strengthening our balance sheet, investing in growth and returning to shareholders.
For the trailing 12 months, we produced a discretionary cash flow of almost $1.9 billion and a cash flow yield of nearly 29%.
As Greg mentioned in his remarks, taking into account our strong Q1 results, forward curves and market conditions, we've increased our full year adjusted earnings per share outlook from at least $6 per share to approximately $7.50 per share.
This is based on the following expectations.
In Agribusiness, full year results are expected to be up from our previous expectations, but down from 2020.
In Refined and Specialty Oils, we expect full year results to be up from our previous outlook and significantly higher compared to last year due to strong first quarter results and positive demand trends in North America.
Results in Milling and Corporate and Other are expected to be generally in line with last year.
In noncore, full year results in our Sugar & Bioenergy joint venture are expected to be a positive contributor driven by improved sugar and Brazilian ethanol prices.
Additionally, the company expects the following for 2021: an adjusted annual effective tax rate in the range of 20% to 22%, net interest expense in the range of $230 million to $240 million, capital expenditures in the range of two -- $425 million to $475 million and depreciation and amortization of approximately $415 million.
With that, I'll turn things back over to Greg for some closing comments.
Before opening the call to Q&A, I want to provide some perspective on the balance of 2021.
As we noted, with our strong first quarter performance and what we see from the forward curves, we're forecasting full year earnings per share to be around $7.50.
While we don't have full visibility in the back half of the year, the market and demand trends are favorable.
We expect higher volumes because of increased post-COVID foodservice demand in several countries as well as from the U.S. renewable diesel industry in the second half of the year.
Because of the work we've done, we now have the ability to pursue the type of projects that help us meet growing demand and continue to improve our platform.
We have a number of projects in various stages to enhance the efficiency of our core oilseeds business.
We're taking a thoughtful approach as we invest in our specialty fats and oils and our plant-based proteins businesses.
And we're staying disciplined, but also recognize that the demand for sustainable products is providing us more opportunities than ever to grow our business as we continue to connect farmers to consumers.
The leadership team and I are incredibly proud of the entire Bunge team's continued focus on execution, and we're confident in our capabilities and the business model we have here at Bunge.
While there's always more work to be done, we're making progress every day, and the results are evident.

user
q1 gaap earnings per share $5.52.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share about $7.50.
optimistic that favorable demand environment in q1 will continue through 2021.
increasing full-year 2021 earnings per share outlook to reflect strong q1 and positive market trends.
sees 2021 capital expenditures in range of $425 million to $475 million.
qtrly adjusted net income per common share $3.13.
in agribusiness, full-year results are expected to be higher than previous outlook, but still forecasted to be down from last year.
bunge - in refined and specialty oils, full-year results expected to be up from previous outlook and significantly higher compared to last year.

assistant