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Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 2, 2016

$74.08

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Archer Daniels Midland Company Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode to prevent background noise. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Mark Schweitzer, Vice President-Investor Relations for Archer Daniels Midland Company. Mr. Schweitzer, you may begin.

Mark Schweitzer - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you kindly, Stephanie. Good morning and welcome to ADM's fourth quarter earnings webcast. Starting tomorrow, a replay of today's webcast will be available at adm.com. For those following the presentation, please turn to slide two. The company's safe harbor statement, which says that some of our comments constitute forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views and estimates of future economic circumstances, industry conditions, company performance and financial results. These statements are based on many assumptions and factors that are subject to risk and uncertainties. ADM has provided additional information in its reports on file with the SEC, concerning the assumptions and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in this presentation. And you should carefully review the assumptions and factors in our SEC reports. To the extent permitted under applicable law, ADM assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events. On today's webcast, our Chief Executive Officer, Juan Luciano, will provide an overview of the quarter. Our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young, will review financial highlights and corporate results. Then, Juan will review the drivers of our performance in the quarter, provide an update on our scorecard, and discuss our forward look. Finally, they will take your questions. Please turn to slide three. I will now turn the call over to Juan. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. This morning we reported fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.61. Our adjusted segment operating profit was $599 million. For the calendar year, our adjusted earnings per share was $2.60. Global dynamics reduced margins across the U.S. agricultural export sector, the U.S. ethanol industry, and in the soybean crushing industry…

Operator

Operator

Certainly. Your first question comes from the line of Farha Aslam with Stephens. Your line is open.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Morning, Farha. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Farha.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open

Three questions from me, starting with Ag Services. One, last quarter you had highlighted slow farmer selling and noted that there's much of the 2015 crop that still needs to be sold. Could you highlight kind of when you expect that to come to market and how ADM could and when it could benefit from that? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. Let me talk a little bit, the North America, Farha, grain movement continues to be slow, behind the pace of last year. Slow prices are not incenting farmers to commercialize their crops yet. So, movements of soybeans was obviously a little bit more brisk maybe in late Q4 and continue into Q1, mainly maybe due to farmer cash flows. We have seen in the past that U.S. stocks will be commercialized through the year, either through a strong demand for U.S. products and cash flow needs for the farmers, or spikes in bulk prices. That's how we're seeing it right out. Right now, we're seeing farmers selling in broad rallies (31:02). If you go to Brazil or Argentina, we're seeing a strong dependency on what's happening with the currencies. We've seen in Brazil we have a day in which the dollar is BRL 4.18, and we see a lot of farmers selling. If it moves back to BRL 4.11 or BRL 3.97, then we see farmers selling slowing down. We see a little bit of that in Argentina. We saw a little bit more farmer selling of corn and wheat, a little bit less soybeans as the farmer maybe was not that happy with the reduction in export retention that they have over there. So, still, I would say, with these low prices subdued and customers – farmers will sell through rallies when they have cash flow needs.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open

Okay. Subdued selling. And then, when you work at crushing and origination, you had highlighted that 2016 looks tough. We've seen crush margins continue to deteriorate here in the first quarter. Should we count on any hedges for ADM as we model forward or just think about whatever we see in the crush margin as kind of what we should expect in earnings throughout the year? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Maybe let me give you some perspective here. So, in the U.S., we have seen a big deterioration during Q4 and some deterioration also into January. And now, we've seen the industry adjusting operating rates and things starting to ease off from the lows, if you will, that we hit in January. Obviously, this is the low season in the U.S. anyways. So, there is a shift to crush margins into South America. South America still have an expanded crush margin because they haven't been – haven't had their benefit of the harvest, but will get that soon in Brazil. Europe, we see it, okay; kind of stable until maybe March, April, and then we have the dynamics that we'll probably see more exports from South America. But also, we have the rapeseed harvest in Europe and we have the ability to switch our assets a little bit between soybean and rapeseeds over there. So, that's how we see the evolution of crush margins at this point in time.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open

That's helpful. And finally on ethanol, today you marked a change in your commentary regarding your dry mills. Historically, you thought that they were an integral part of ADM's operations. Can they be run independently given that they're so integrated in ADM? Could you just share with us a time horizon of how you're going to evaluate those assets? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure, Farha. Yeah. What we're seeing here is that we continue to be implementing our cost reductions in the dry mills that we have seen. But margin continues to be stubbornly low. And even with our improvements in cost, we are concerned about the long-term fundamentals of the dry mill ethanol part of the industry, if you will. So we have asked the team to undertake the strategic review of that. They have an adviser helping them on that. And we're going to run through the different scenarios all the way from one extreme to the other, when we will explore all the scenarios. So, we have no rush for this. We – the whole operation is having positive cash flows, positive contributions. So, there's no need to panic. We just want to be prepared to look at the industry long term and see can this industry present the returns that we expect and what are the options to maximize that return for ADM. So there is not a clear timeline or a clear direction. And what we really want to see, we want to see the analysis of the options that the team will bring. In the meantime, the improvements in cost continue. And we have seen in 2015 improvements in enzymes, improvement in yields, improvement in corn oil recovery. So we are very pleased with what the teams are doing in that. It's just we have an industry problem, and we want to see how we can participate in addressing that through strategic options.

Farha Aslam - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open

That's helpful. Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Adam L. Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Yes. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Adam. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Adam. Adam L. Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: So, maybe first of all on the comments on the capital intensity of the portfolio. I want to dig a little bit deeper there in terms of the targets and opportunity set and understand is that separate from the discussion about the dry mills, first? And second, parts of the portfolio that you were looking after, is this maybe taking a more rent and lease versus own on your transportation and logistics assets or taking a fresh look at different processing assets for what you want to have full ownership of in the company? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Listen, Adam, if you look at our evolution and our focus on returns, we're very pleased with the pipeline we have in operational excellence. We think we have a very good cost position in the company. We have addressed the portfolio with the divestitures of cocoa, fertilizer and chocolate. We have set up a lot of growth engines through M&A or CapEx projects. The next evolution in this is that we look at the way we operate and we see we are very productive from a people perspective. We made north of $600 million of earning this quarter with 33,000 people, so we feel we're very productive from a people intensity perspective. When we look at the asset intensity, we don't feel that great about that. We think that there…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

Thank you and good morning. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, David.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

Juan, I wanted to go to one of the – I think it was the last statement you made in your prepared script. I think you said that over the medium term you expected to see $1.00 to $1.50 in EPS improvements. Should I take that off of this year's base of $2.60, thus you're giving kind of a long-term EPS algorithm of $3.60 to $4.10? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. You heard the second part of my commentary was that really the base had reduced. And the base probably had reduced a little bit more than the $2.60 you described. The $2.60 has already probably between $0.20 and $0.30 of that $1.00 to $1.50 of the new strategy that's bringing. So maybe the base is more like $2.30, $2.40, something in that range. We feel good, as I described before in my comments and I think Ray just mentioned, about the progression towards this $1.00, $1.50. We have a little bit less visibility on when the bases will recover because it's more impacted by macro factors that we really don't control. We control many more of the factors in the strategy.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay. Understood on that. I have two specific questions: one on ethanol, one on crush margins. So just ethanol, Farha asked it a little bit here, but I am taking it back a little that you'd put these assets up for review right now with oil at $30. What's your view here on this one? What's your view on what kind of oil price do we need for these ethanol assets to make sense? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Remember, when we were talking, I think you asked me this question before when we were at about $50 and we said, at $50 this was going all right. And at $40 we were still doing relatively good. I don't think that – part is the oil prices, but part is, to be honest, the behavior of the industry. The demand continues to be solid, David. Domestic demand has increased because of low oil prices and high gasoline consumption. And export demand has been very good, and we expect it to be even better to 2016. It's just a matter that the production in the industry has kept this industry margins very, very low, and we are really surprised by that. We've been running our plants for yield. As I said before, we've seen improvements in our operations based on that. But these margins continues to be stubbornly low, so we want to analyze what happen at lower oil prices, what happen if these things recover. So we have an internal review to see the different scenarios and what do we do under those different scenarios. So it's just a matter that you look at how much can you improve your cost position. We have a good view now into how much we can improve our cost position. And we want to test that against lower oil prices or higher industry rates if they don't go down, so.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay. Last question for me is just back to soy crush. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

When you look at what's really changed, because margins, I think as a previous caller mentioned, they've really plummeted. But what seems to have changed is the South American currencies. But then maybe if we really zone-in on here, it's Argentina, would you agree that that's been kind of the major change in terms of what's disrupted these markets so much so that we've seen crush margins go from $1.10, $1.20 down to $0.40? Is it Argentina? And then the process here is that as this capacity gets absorbed into the markets, that would be the recovery process in global crush margins? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, David. If you compare last year with this year, last year North America came into the export season with a big book of export on non-traditional destinations, which we didn't have this year. So I think that when I look at Argentina, the farmers selling in soybeans have been disappointing for what everybody was expecting. So crush has improved but not that much, but I think has created the expectation in a lot of the buyers that maybe Argentina will increase crush and will become a bigger player in mill worldwide. And maybe it was wise to wait a little bit and wait for all that to come to market. Again, it hasn't come yet. If you look at what crushing rate in Argentina is about 3 million tons per month, capacity is maybe 4.5 tons per month or something like that, we're still thinking about 40 million tons of crushing for next year. So we haven't seen the explosion, but I think it has been the psychological impact in all the buyers of non-traditional destination for the U.S. So we continue to supply the traditional destinations to the U.S. We have lost that ability to sell aggressively to non-traditional destination, partly the U.S. dollar, partly the expectations that Argentina will come into that. So longwinded answer to your question. It's probably yes, although not yet because of increased production, more for psychological impact of their ability to produce more.

David Cristopher Driscoll - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · David Driscoll with Citigroup. Your line is open

Very helpful. Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, okay.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Thank you. I guess two questions. The first one is about the strength of the U.S. dollar and how damaging it's been to your business this year. I've covered the company for a long time and there's been periods where the dollar has been strong before. And it appears that it's having more of an adverse effect this time around than in the past hurting your merchandising programs out of the U.S. Can you explain to me why it's so much worse this time around? And then I had a follow-up about the Argentina situation. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. Hey, Rob. A couple observations. There's different currencies that impact us. If you look at just pure translation impact, Rob, over the calendar year, this is a classical accounting translation. Translation impact on our operating profit was about roughly $130 million negative impact for us, okay? So just pure currency translation. So, therefore, it was a impact but I'd say that's not a dramatic impact. The bigger issue is really the competitive issue and the competitiveness issue is really driven by not just the strength of the U.S. dollar but also the fact that two other factors: we've got large crops around the world, all right. So the fact that you've got well-supplied inventories of crops around the world had an impact; and then secondly, for the major crop-growing areas, their currencies actually devalued far more than what the basket of currencies that the U.S. dollar is weighed against. So when you saw what happened this year, you saw the reais because of the political situation…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open.

Kenneth Bryan Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

Hey, good morning, everyone. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Ken. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Ken.

Kenneth Bryan Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

So a couple questions. One is, is there any interest for you guys to buy or bid on the ports in Brazil that are being privatized? Is that something that interests you in terms of trying to diversify and be able to capitalize on the South American markets? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Ken, ports are important in Brazil, as you will know. One of the reasons we are expanding our terminal in Santos and we created this port in the northern part of Brazil. We have to be careful, though, that there is a lot of port capacity being created. And as we see it in North America, in order for you to get good elevation in margins, there needs to be some tightening of that capacity; it continues to be a supply-demand game. So, yes, we're evaluating – our teams are evaluating. But we need to make sure that we look at the potential for overbuilding in certain areas. So we continue to be with our focus on returns and looking at that. We're building a port in Argentina in San Lorenzo because we think it makes sense. We built a port in the northern part of Brazil. We thought it made a lot of sense. The other ports we continue to analyze. There is a lot of activity. In some places, maybe even too much activity.

Kenneth Bryan Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

Okay. The second question is what do you think is the path for ethanol margins to recover? Like, what are we looking for? Do we need just oil prices to be better or would it be better if the industry just entered into such extreme losses that there'd have to be production cuts? And just following up on that, what is the outlook for ethanol exports, call it, Mexico, India and China? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So, the first part is, I think there are two ways at this point in time to improve ethanol margins. One is expand export markets. I think we know what the domestic market will be, so is expanding export market, thankfully. And the second is probably cut in rates domestically. And I think that as people, we are seeing it ourselves. When we ran these things for yield, our cost position becomes better. So when you have thin margins, you want to be able to have your lowest-cost position, your best cost position. And it's not necessarily through volume that you get that. And we have proven that that in our own facilities. But anyway – so, those are the two main factors. In terms of growing exports, we do see places like India and China that are dealing with environmental issues due to smog that – how they are increasing the use of ethanol to fight their environmental – their air issue – air pollution issue. So, we see that demand growing. We see how demands have grown in China, and we expect for next year to be even bigger. So we expect 2016 net exports from the U.S. to be probably between 50 million gallons to 100 million gallons higher than what they were in 2015 driven by all these two main markets.

Kenneth Bryan Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

So, if that's the case, then why wouldn't ethanol margins in a year from now or two years from now be at a 10% return on invested capital business? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, again, Ken, if you have asked me last year with the volumes of this year, I would have guessed that margins will be better. And yet, we continue to still only run at high rates, and maybe people bringing – creeping their plants and producing as much as they can. So, this is a commodity industry and you really need very, very tight capacity utilization. So maybe, low-90%s doesn't make it. You need to be like 96%, 97% on that. And if every time that we get to that level somebody brings a little bit more capacity, we continue to hover in this level that doesn't benefit anybody. So to me – I mean, we continue to be optimistic as we were before. We continue to improve our operations. It's just that at one point reality needs to match our optimism. And so far, it hasn't done it.

Kenneth Bryan Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sandy Klugman with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Sandy H. Klugman - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Sandy Klugman with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open

Good morning. Just a follow-up on your comment that ethanol exports will likely increase this year. I was wondering what type of crude oil price is embedded into your assumption, because despite ethanol's discount to other octane enhancers, it seems that exports could be challenged to rise if crude prices remain at current levels. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. At this point, we are forecasting this type of level if you will. $30, if you will, in the absence of any more information than that in a very volatile environment. We still believe that, as I said, there from an alkaloids perspective, and as you said from some oxygenates, we're still cheaper and we still see continued demand from our destinations. We see, as I was answering to Ken, gladly that there are new markets like, again, India and China that are increasingly taking based on air pollution issues and the benefit of ethanol to do that. So, at this point, we are estimating on a flat crude oil environment if you will.

Sandy H. Klugman - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Sandy Klugman with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open

Okay, great. Thank you. And then on WFSI, could you discuss the pipeline? And has the current economic environment done anything to push back your longer term targets for the segment? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I would say 2015 was kind of a noisy year or a dirty year for WFSI. We integrated the acquisition. We put several businesses together. We have a couple of bolt-ons and then we have emerging market issues that move our demand. And even our seasonal high periods, they move a little bit. So, it was a very unusual year. With also a lot of customers focusing much more sometimes in cost reductions than in revenue enhancement opportunities. We are very pleased though with the way the customers have reacted to our value proposition and we see that in the engagement that we have in our customers. So, our expectations for the pipeline and the deliverance of synergy have not changed. Maybe it has changed a little bit the composition of that in the short term. I think, if we're going to be talking in the year three of this, we'd probably be reporting a little bit higher cost synergies than we originally expected, and we will still be targeting the same amount or more of revenue synergies, maybe a little bit longer in the timeline, just because we continue to incorporate products to our product line and our value proposition, and that continues to open doors with customers. But the customer projects are normally a little bit slower or less in our control from a timing perspective than the cost synergies. But the response to customers to our value proposition has been very, very good. We've – when we originally target this, Sandy, we had $94 million originally target on revenue synergies; we have built a pipeline of already $67 million to $70 million, and we have more than 700 projects in the pipeline. So, we feel very, very good about having created this pipeline that we're turning into execution and into wins, and you will see that accelerating in 2016.

Sandy H. Klugman - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Sandy Klugman with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open

It's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Ann. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Ann.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open

Most of my questions have been answered, but I'd like to just take a step back to the currency discussion. If currencies remain about where they are today, could we see additional downside pressure around the world just from places like South America, Eastern Europe, all the various countries that are concerned about deflation of their own currencies just planting more crops just because they need to get their hands on dollars versus the world needing more crops? So, I guess my question is, could things get worse before they get better if currencies remain as is? Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I mean, as you know, Ann, I mean, it's difficult to forecast currencies, right. I mean, it's – there's a lot of factors that enter it. There's the political factors also impacting presumably the Brazilian currency at this point in time. I mean, you also have to remember that in some respects, a lot of these countries are getting a windfall right now in terms of the competitiveness of the crop because they've got the devaluation that occurred this year, yet your input cost was prior to the currencies devaluing. So, they were able to still get competitive input costs in terms of whether it'd be seed or chemicals, I mean, that's going to change as you go into 2016 because what will happen is they'll have to buy that at a higher cost, because lot of this is actually denominated more in U.S. dollar terms. And so, a lot of these countries are going to have to grapple with higher input costs in terms of their grains going forward, whether it be seeds, chemicals, et cetera, et cetera, so what to see? I mean, is the worst behind us? It's difficult to predict. What we do know is currencies go through cycles. And so, from our perspective, we're going through a cyclical downturn with some of these currencies. Political influences have some impact, our job is just to manage this, and we'll continue to focus on expanding our footprint in South America as for example. I mean, we've made investments down there and we're going to continue to manage our costs. The other factor Ann is, is really balancing the global supply-demand of grains and oftentimes, that low prices solve a lot of issues. And so, with the current low prices, expectation is that you should see a lot more consumption around the world and that could probably help us in terms of the global supply-demand balance, which will also be important in terms of getting the situation back to normal.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open

Okay. I appreciate the color. And then just one follow-up on ethanol. Could you comment on the Chinese government's latest round of antidumping charges against U.S. DDGs? Is that impacting your business already on the dry-mill side or is that yet to come? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: This is – obviously, this is the second time that we're going through this with the Chinese government. And, yeah, there's been more – there's been less activity, obviously, going of DDGs into China. So, they are staying domestically. And they are adjusting prices to find their way into Russia. So, a little bit hurting soybean mill in that sense. And – but I will say, yeah, obviously, not a positive for ethanol, but we're seeing the impact already.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Piken with Cleveland Research. Your line is open.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Michael Piken with Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to get an update on HFCS pricing to the extent you can talk about that as the negotiations are nearing a conclusion? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. As we said, the negotiations have concluded. We are very satisfied, you know the industry is very tight. So, I think, we concluded with pricing across the portfolio of products in the high-single digits, I would say, for 2016. So, we believe that 2016 represent an opportunity for us to expand margins and see an even-increasing volumes for us. So, we are very bullish about that segment for 2016.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Michael Piken with Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Great. And then you've talked in the past about trying to optimize your grind on the wet milling operations. Would it be fair to assume that, maybe, you're shifting some of that grind away from ethanol towards other products at this point in time? Or how should we sort of think about the amount of swing capacity you have to move away from ethanol given the current market conditions? Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. If we – if you look at, for example, how much ethanol we produced in 2015, we produced less than in 2014. And if you look at high-fructose corn syrup or all our sweeteners and starches, actually we grew our volumes. So, there is a shift that we normally place. The guys optimize the assets and fight for the grind is not only between those two things, but we also continue to introduce new products, sometimes too small to mention, but we continue to see that fight for the grind, yeah.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Michael Piken with Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Great. And then my last question is, if you could kind of classify within that $275 million bucket of cost savings, roughly how much is going into Corn versus some of the other segments, that'd be helpful. Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I don't know the $275 million top of my head. But traditionally, Corn takes about 50% of all our operational improvements. And that might change, you know, over time as we run out of some opportunities here or there. But I would say a rule of thumb, you take 50%, apply it to ethanol – to Corn, I'm sorry.

Michael Leith Piken - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Michael Piken with Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Thank you. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Eric Larson with Buckingham Research. Your line is open.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Eric.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Again, most of my questions have been answered, but I want to actually talk a little bit more about the kind of global supply situation. We're seeing in the U.S. estimates coming out that corn and soybeans will be 174 million acres which is not demonstrably different from what it was last year. So, I think the U.S. banks will probably have more to determine what – how much farmers get to plant, and that may have an impact on planting numbers. But it doesn't seem like these low prices have at least started to discourage production in the U.S. And then you've still got about 200 million metric tons sitting in China. They don't know what to do with it, I guess time with China would be that – with China, they have such poor storage that maybe it all just goes bad, which would be a good scenario. But can you kind of wrap up your thought – can you wrap up your thoughts on global supply as we put all these factors together, South America, what the U.S. planting season might look like on acreage, what China might do with their corn, we're putting a lot of variables in there, but this is really kind of a key to what I think is going to be a turnaround for your industry fundamentals. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, Eric. So, let me take that by pieces. In the U.S., we expect probably acreage of corn and soybeans to go up a little bit and maybe at the expense of wheat acres. You said it well, the globe have increased their stocks this year in the tune of maybe 20 million tons, 25 million tons. So, the world is well supplied. And yet China is sitting on inventories, although we never know the quality of those inventories. So, at this point in time, given that South America is probably not having any major threatening weather events and the U.S. seems to be forecasting a wet spring and we have good soil moisture. So, we probably expect that there'll continue to be ample supply going into next year. There has been some dislocations. We shouldn't forget, El Niño created some problems and that's why we're exporting so much soybean oil to India, for example, or we are exporting now more corn to South Africa because of the drought there. But probably, these dislocations were regional in nature and didn't get to global levels. So, at this point in time, the scenario is for still plentiful supplies as we see forward.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Okay. Thank you. And then just your comment that you're looking kind of at 2016, we should sort of begin our thought process that it might be similar to second half 2015. Obviously those were two pretty difficult quarters and I see exactly where you're coming from on that. What would change it so that you'd look more like the first half of 2015? Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, Eric, let me take that. I mean, when you take a look at what we've done in the back half of 2015, we've been running $0.60 a quarter, right, in terms of a run rate.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Okay. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And so, I mean you can't necessarily multiply by four, but what we're saying is that the conditions are not going to be – at least what we see in terms of just visibility at this point in time, not materially different.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Okay. Ray G. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: As we kind of move through the year, I mean, clearly, you're going to have certain benefits there. As you would expect, we are going to start off low in the first quarter. I mean, this is based upon the conditions that we end up at the end of December where ethanol margins have ended up. And I mentioned to you, the high water impacts that we had in the Mississippi River that will impact us in January – in the first quarter. We'll start off slower in the front half of the year. We'll start off slower in first quarter and then we expect some gradual recovery as it kind of move through the year. We will get accretion from the investments that we've made. We will get accretion from the cost reductions that we're doing. Well, again, as Juan indicated, we expect the margin environment for ethanol should improve as we kind of move through the year but again, that's going to be a variable that we're going to analyze very, very carefully. And so, as you kind of look at how we think the year will play out, again, as Juan indicated, we do expect Ag Services to be a little better. We expect Corn to be a little bit better. Again, a lot of it a function of where the ethanol margins for the industry end up in the back half of the year. We see Oilseeds is based upon the global crush margins right now to be worse off and then WFSI should have a good year. So, with all those puts and takes, I think we've to make a judgment in terms of how we end up overall. But at least, based upon what we see in terms of visibility, the front – first quarter front half will be tougher than what we think the second half would look like.

Eric Larson - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Buckingham Research. Your line is open

Okay. Yeah. I think that's a very thorough perspective. Thank you very much for that. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Eric.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to Juan Luciano for closing remarks. Juan Ricardo Luciano - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you for joining us today. Slide 15 notes some of the upcoming investor events where we will be participating. As always, feel free to follow up with Mark if you have any other questions. Have a good day and thanks for your time and interest in ADM.