Juan Ricardo Luciano - Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.
Management
Thank you, Victoria. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, all, for joining us today. This morning, we reported third quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.92, up from $0.45 in the prior year quarter. Our adjusted segment operating profit was $861 million, up nearly 60% year-over-year. And our fourth quarter trailing ROIC of 8.3% is more than 200 basis points above our annual WACC. Our team continued to capitalize on robust global demand with good execution and great utilization of our global footprint. And while delivering another strong quarter, the team also did a great job advancing our strategic plan, executed on key growth projects and accelerating our Readiness efforts as we build the foundation to take our performance even higher. Looking back on some of key accomplishments, in optimizing the core, our South American origination team manages risk positions well, including the Brazilian freight situation, and is up substantially year-to-date over 2017. We continued to optimize our North American origination footprint, monetize our investment in Agrible, and as mentioned last quarter, we completed the divestiture of our Bolivian oilseeds business during the quarter. In our efforts to drive efficiencies, our operational excellence initiatives have delivered cost savings of more than $200 million on a run rate basis over the first three quarters of the year, already meeting our full year 2018 target. We will, of course, continue those efforts. In strategic expansion, our Origination business is making important investments in digital and innovation capabilities with our just announced GrainBridge joint venture and our work with other industry players to modernize the global agricultural value chain. In Oilseeds, we announced that we are acquiring certain assets of Algar Agro, particularly two crush, refining and packaging facilities in Brazil, which will further strengthen our processing presence in that important region. Our Carbohydrates Solution business is working to add industrial starch capacity to several facilities to meet market demand, and we celebrated the opening of our modernized flour mill in Enid, Oklahoma, this quarter. And in Nutrition, we completed our acquisitions of Rodelle and Protexin. We'll close on the Neovia acquisition in coming months, and opened the latest in our series of high tech customer innovation centers in Shanghai. We're also moving very quickly in advancing Readiness. Readiness is central to our strategic goals. It underpins and supports each of our pillars of our plan. We're excited about the progress we're making and the opportunities we are creating with Readiness. Around the globe, our colleagues are identifying, analyzing and now have begun executing on initiatives that are building a foundation for increasing earnings growth in the years to come. I'll be talking more about Readiness in our outlook later on this call. Now I'll turn it over to Ray to talk about the quarter.