Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Ingredion Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. For the conference, all the participant lines are in a listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for your questions. Instructions will be given at that time. And as a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference now to, Heather Kos. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Ingredion's third quarter 2015 earnings call. Joining me on the call this morning are Ilene Gordon, our Chairman, President and CEO; and Jack Fortnum, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our results were issued this morning in a press release that can be found on our website, ingredion.com. The slides accompanying this presentation can also be found on the website and were posted about an hour ago for your convenience. As a reminder, our comments within this presentation may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those predicted in the forward-looking statements, and Ingredion is under no obligation to update them in the future as or if circumstances change. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed during today's conference call or in this morning's press release can be found in the company's most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Now, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Ilene. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks Heather, and let me add my welcome to everyone joining us today. We appreciate your time and interest. Ingredion posted another solid quarter, boosted by volume growth, improved mix, and good operating efficiency. I'm pleased our business model and strategic plan continue to work with continuous improvements and pass-through pricing, mitigating foreign exchange headwinds. As a result, North America had strong operating income. South America and Asia-Pacific were up from last year. However, EMEA was down slightly due to foreign exchange headwinds in that region. We continued to expand our Ingredion portfolio during the quarter. Our acquisition of Kerr Concentrates was finalized August 3 and…

And first go to Brett Hundley with BB&T Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. This is actually Omar (25:05) filling in for Brett. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Omar (25:08)

Hello. Congratulations on the quarter first of all. I wanted to touch on North America a little bit. Just wanted to get a little more color on how – what are the dynamics there, how is that market performing so well? If you guys could just – giving a little more color there. And also, on the U.S. market in particular, is it possible for that market to perform better in 2016 in terms of margins and just overall performance? Thanks. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It's Ilene. I'll start out and then turn it to Jack. Well, first of all, we're not going to comment on 2016, but I would say in terms of the third quarter, we continue to do fine in all the different segments. Now, the specialty growth continues, and so that's where we're focused very much, on the on-trend recipes for healthy ingredients. And so we're working with both large and medium and regional type customers to develop those recipes. GDP is still 2% to 3% in the U.S. And of course, as part of North America, we do talk about Mexico and the specialty growth has continued to go well there, as well as the growth in the population and the Mexico GDP is also 2.3%. So I think that we feel that it's kind of a steady-eddie type story, and we're well-positioned for both the growth – we talked about the 2% organic growth in North America and with our specialty portfolio, as well as our ability to perform and run well in terms of operating excellence. Jack, anything to add? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, I would just say that, Omar, I think that as usually North America had a very good quarter, it performed very well. And one of the things that's always a little choppy in our business, as you know, is the quarterly layout of our earnings. And so effectively, it had a strong quarter, which was in our forecast, but sometimes it's a little bit more – there's the time of the harvest, a number of different issues associated with it. So we've had a couple good quarters in a row with North America, and we expect the fourth quarter to be kind of – as we anticipated in our annual guidance – and I refer to the annual guidance just to make sure that people think through because we always have a little bit of movement between our quarters and it comes down to our annual guidance that we really focus on in North America.

Well, that makes sense. And going – just following up on your comment on your annual guidance, the new midpoint of the guidance implies a weaker Q4, could you just talk a little bit about that and then what's happening there, if there is anything we should be aware of? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I wouldn't say there was anything you should aware of. I think it's really just the layout in the quarters. I think that the third quarter came in fairly well, I think it allowed us to have confidence in hitting the top – in that mid-part of the new range, which is really lifting the bottom part of our old range up. And so we're seeing more clarity into the fourth quarter. And when you say down, I don't really look at it as being down and maybe at the very bottom end of that range, but if you look at the midpoint, we'll still be up from last year. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think the other thing I would add is, remember, in the fourth quarter, we have been talking about we've been experiencing a higher tax rate this year and of course in the fourth quarter, we won't have any offset from that accelerated share repurchase in terms of the share count. So, that's why you may see a little bit of a difference. But as Jack said, when you look at the midpoint, we don't see it being down.

Got it. That makes sense. And lastly, I just want to touch on South America. Can you guys just talk a little bit more about what work is being done down there on the costs side and how this might be helping to offset the currency- and growth-related challenges there? Just a little more color there that would be great. Thanks again for taking my questions. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So, I'll start out and then Jack will see if he wants to add anything. Certainly, in Brazil, as we announced in – on September 8 for next year, obviously, we've announced the closure of two of the facilities, but in terms of the impact this year we've done a really good job on focusing on cost optimization. And I talked about on previous calls where we've taken our best practices, let's say, as an example energy efficiency, and we've used our people in knowhow and brought in SWAT teams to particular facilities to apply that in Brazil. And so we're obviously benefiting from that particular effort, and at the same time as we said in our remarks, we've also had an effort to pass through foreign exchange headwinds in the form of pricing – price mix in Brazil that has gone well. Argentina, Southern Cone is performing exactly as expected for the year and then Colombia or the Andean region, as I said, the GDP actually in Colombia is 2.5%, forecasted to be even slightly higher in the next few years. And so we have a very good operation there and so we've been able to grow with our specialty and our core products in Colombia. Anything you'd add? Okay. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I don't really think I have anything to add to that. I think Ilene covered it well.

That makes sense. Thanks again guys.

Our next question is from Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Thank you. It's good to see North America performing so well. We – and I'm sure others have written a lot about tighter capacity against stronger pricing power in corn sweeteners. I was made aware of one element of that though that where capacity might not be quite so tight and that was dextrose, and that's a tougher thing for us to get any visibility on. Do you have any thing you can tell us about dextrose capacity from an industry perspective? And whether your pricing power there or ability to take prices is at all compromised because of that? And also I guess because of its tight relationship with sugar. Thanks. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, Rob. We usually don't comment specifically on individual products. The dextrose is – it comes in two forms as you know, one is the liquid dextrose and one is crystalline dextrose. And so I'm not aware of anything that is unusual in the environment that has changed dramatically. Obviously, you have – on the liquid dextrose side, you have some swing capacity that can move into it, and there continues to be a number of new products that are utilizing that liquid dextrose, particularly in the – I'll call it at the biomaterials segment of the customer base. But I'm not aware of anything specific that gives us any great concern. But if anything on the – in some of the – obviously with energy prices being down, some of the petroleum replacement products made that little soft, but I don't really – I'm not aware of anything specific. Ilene, I don't think…

Our next question is from David Driscoll with Citi Research. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks a lot. Good morning, everyone. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning.

I wanted to spend a little bit more time on South America. You guys have kind of addressed this, but forgive me if I – and I think it's so important on South American pricing and just want to make sure that I understand it. In the script, I appreciate the comment, Jack, about the three months to six months, I kind of wanted to come back to that and just mention, or ask you, because the currency devaluations are so intense right now, is there any increase in the speed of Ingredion able to effect these price increases, or is there just something like super structural in kind of how people reorder stuff and customers reorder and so forth that kind of makes it at this kind of six-month mark or can you say with some confidence that it's really more of on the three-month side. Can we start right there? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure, David. And let me kind of go by region, because it's a little bit different in each one of the three regions that we look at in South America. If I start at the north part in the Andean region, there the economy continues to track very well and where we're passing on our prices very effectively even though the Colombian currency is down dramatically from last year. We've managed to get people almost – I wouldn't say thinking, but at least, moving with the – almost dollar-for-dollar with the exchange rate in terms of some of our costs, because there most of the competition is from exports and things like that as well, so everybody is moving to pricing in dollars. When you go into Argentina, it's a much more challenging type of environment, in…

So, Jack, just maybe just kind of ask for a little bit of clarification. And so when you say they're doing a good job on pricing, in the first half of the year, foreign exchange was a negative 19% impact to the business. In the third quarter itself, foreign exchange was a negative 33 point impact, so it worsened by 14 percentage points. Pricing in the first half was up 8 percentage points, pricing in the third quarter was up 9 percentage points; that only gets better by 1 percentage point. So, it doesn't actually look like proportionately pricing got better versus kind of what we saw. Now, maybe this is just the lag issue. And so the question here then just says in the fourth quarter, wouldn't it be just kind of reasonable for us on the outside to be looking for something like 14 points, 15 points of pricing coming out of South America, up from the 9 points that you reported in this quarter? Is that a reasonable landscape? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I think the only dynamic that you're also – you have to also factor in is the corn costs in Brazil are very similar to North America, where we're still seeing corn costs in Brazil, particularly in the local marketplace, being down actually this year. And so you are kind of getting a mix of lower corn costs which would negatively impact or push our price mix down, and then also the adjustment for the devaluation. And so you really have to look at the ratio of those two. And you have to also understand that when we price through the foreign exchange, and we can take this offline a little bit. But when we price through the foreign exchange, we're trying to lock in our margin in dollars. And so it's not a total impact in terms of the exchange that we have to get back in pricing, because obviously the cost structure changes a little bit as well. And so I'm actually pleased with the way they've been addressing it given the environment.

Is all of this – sorry, go ahead, Ilene. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: What I was going to add is, and when Jack talked earlier about the balance of that versus the – what I call the volume equation, consumers, while the economy has slowed down in Brazil, they continue to eat food. As we've said in the third quarter, the beverage or beer side was pretty robust, but that was versus a year ago which was a little bit slow. So on a year-to-date basis, the consumption will be down. So, it's not a very robust volume environment, and so we are trying to balance both the price pass-through as well as optimizing the running of our plants.

Final part on this is just, is this all the reason why the guidance range remains so large? I mean your $0.40 range with six months to play, you're now a $0.30 range with two months to play, I'm just curious is this South American region kind of the principal genesis of the width within the bottom and top end of guidance? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I think we also have a couple of items on the guidance pertaining to – let's face it, the elections just took place the other day in Argentina and there was no resolution there. So you're right, there is a little bit of comfort that we get out of having a wider range, because we're not sure if there will be a major devaluation or not in our forecasts. And if you look at the guidance, it's really $0.15, David. So I'm not too sure when you said $0.30, I'm not clear in terms of where you meant, but we keep a reasonable range on our guidance because of some of the things in South America and I do think that there is also the volume impact pluses and minuses in the second quarter.

Okay. I'll leave it there. Thanks so much. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, you're welcome.

And we'll go to Ken Zaslow with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Patrick (43:42) for Ken. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning.

Hi. I just want to go a little bit further on the Argentina election. I guess what are you guys mulling in terms of time of devaluation and how quickly you guys can react to, let's say a 30% devaluation of the peso and what the cost implications would be? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: 30% isn't too far off of how we are looking at it; we've kind of got it staggered where we've got a little bit coming in this year. Because as time progresses, I guess, it's pushed out the election results for a little bit, so there will be some pressure. I think more importantly, in terms of just picking when the devaluation is going to take place, because I think there will be a devaluation at some point in time is more the concern related to, I'll call it the tying up of whether it be corn and things where people are anticipating a devaluation and they want to hold assets. We've brought in a little bit extra corn ourselves just to make sure that we have corn to run in things. But you're always worried that during these transition periods of a government that there is some slowness in terms of farmers releasing their corn in anticipation of a devaluation where they could be moving on to the export market later on and things. And so, I think that right now we are still expecting our Argentine business to come in basically where we had forecasted at the beginning of the year, and given the volatility in Argentina, I think that's a fairly good number from my vantage point. Next year, when we give guidance, we'll be looking at more, I'd say we'll have more information pertaining to what the government policies will be and we'll roll out more data in terms of how we're seeing that devaluation take hold. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And of course, at this time of the year, down – if there was a major devaluation in December, the impact on this year's P&L would not be huge. So we think we factored that into the guidance, but of course as Jack said it's all about next year.

Great. Just one more question, I guess philosophically, in terms of containing costs and versus long-term capacity, how does Ingredion think about cutting reactive costs versus maintaining capacity for long term, particularly in Brazil given your recent plant closures? Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I would say first of all, when I think globally, we're growing our specialty products, and so we talk a lot about trading up and delivering value to customers. So of course, we try to balance our facilities and be cost-effective, because we're expected by our customers to be cost-effective. At the same time, we're spending capital to add features to grow our specialty products. I think as it relates to Brazil, we said – we still believe in long term, the growth in the – growth of the middle class in Mexico as well as Brazil. So we talk a lot about Mexico. But in Brazil, we think that that will come back. So there's a bit of a hiatus. At the same time, we have to be efficient and that's why we announced the closure of the two smaller facilities and an ability to consolidate, with a great opportunity to do that now along with other cost-optimization projects like energy efficiency. But long term, we believe in Brazil, and as I said, I look at the specialty growth in Mexico, and I think eventually we'll be growing even more with specialty in Brazil, because the consumers want to eat healthy, they want to eat dairy, they want healthier baked goods, and so we're positioned to do that. And now, Jack, do you want to add anything to that? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I think the one thing I just want to make sure people recognize is that when we close those two facilities, it drops the fixed cost of the individual facilities. But we are actually – one of the reasons why it's taking a year to execute upon the project is because we're moving some of our finishing channels into our other two facilities being Mogi Guaçu and Balsa Nova. And so essentially we are getting the same type of production out in the longer term, particularly on the specialty side where we have moved the equipment back into these other facilities. So it is a consolidation of our facilities, reducing our fixed costs, which is driving the process. We still believe in the longer term in Brazil it's going to continue to grow and I think it's for us to continue to be – maybe as efficient as possible as we look at those – at our network.

Great. Thank you. I'll pass it along.

Our next question is from Farha Aslam with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Hi good morning. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hi.

Please go ahead. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning.

So two questions. The first one is related to competition from sugar, given sugar prices have declined well off their bottom. And particularly first Mexico and South America, do you see any impact from lower sugar? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, not – obviously, lower sugar has some impact particularly in Argentina. And as you know, that's the only place in South America we're producing HFCS, which competes directly with sugar. The lower sugar prices have come down, but so has corn as well in terms of our competitiveness with the substitute product, and as you know, Farha, the Mexican sugar prices aren't really world sugar prices and they still seem – they track closer to the U.S. plus freight into the U.S. type of numbers, and so I would say that we can be competitive in Mexico on sugar. The other thing I'd add to is, we talk about it a lot as part of our whole repositioning is to move away from direct competition with sugar and our portfolio continues to move in that direction, so it does not nearly the impact of competitiveness with sugar in the longer term as well. And so, Ilene, I don't know if you have any comments that you would add on that one, but I think that that kind of handles it. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. No, and I think that as Jack said, our, we said before that our sweetener portfolio, high fructose for beverage, is tending towards under 10% of the portfolio. And so the growth in specialty products is much more of a focus not only with our organic, but even our whole M&A efforts. I mean, that was what was behind the whole Kerr acquisition was to really start to enter the simple food arena where you can get sweetness from fruits and other natural ingredients and so it's a way to really grow in healthy ingredients.

And that leads me to my second question. After Kerr and Penford what portion of your portfolio would you categorize as specialty and what portion in core and what do you expect each of those two to grow at kind of in the next two years or three years? Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, what I've said before – and we don't give quarterly numbers per se on this. And now for 2014 our specialty portfolio was about 24% of the total, and our goal over the five years is to get that to the 30%. And what I would say is both Penford and Kerr enhance that and move us in the right direction. So we will be calculating that number again for 2015, but it's a slow move, and every acquisition has a combination of specialty and core and so what we are looking at are those acquisitions. We continue to have a very robust pipeline, and we are looking at those that actually are above the 24% so that we grow that percentage because that means that the ingredients are on trend and that will be used in health and wellness type recipe nutrition, and so both of those were important as part of that criteria. Penford, of course, helped us in participating in the potato side, gluten-free, non-GMO, some nice special applications. So both Penford and Kerr really are enhancing our portfolio.

Thank you very much. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Our next question is from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Adam Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I guess, my first question, going back into the North American business a little bit, is trying segregate some of the base margin improvement a little bit more. I know in the earlier comments you alluded to maybe an early start to the harvest, and maybe you've got a little bit of corn basis help and just the layout of the quarters can sometimes give you some tailwinds. But the base margins, when you strip out the acquisitions, would seem to be up 200 or so basis points year-over-year, and I'm wondering if you can help to segregate some of the drivers there, and if it's cost and productivity, maybe provide a little bit more color on what's actually driving it? Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, to start with things you have to appreciate that last year we did have that incident in the first quarter which was the – I think the polar vortex, which increased our costs and also put... Adam Samuelson - Goldman Sachs & Co.: I was just referring to 3Q, just – and frankly 2Q was the same thing. Jack C. Fortnum - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: All right. And then, as we go through, you've got to remember too, there's a few things that are driving the margin improvements. And if you think about it, some of it is solid operations, as you implied, in terms of getting the margins in place, and some of it is the mix. And if you think about the specialty mix, one of the things that I do want to come back to…

And with no further questions, Ms. Gordon, I'll turn it back to you for any closing comments. Ilene S. Gordon - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Great. Well, thanks all for your attention. Before we sign off, I just will reiterate our confidence in our business model, strategy and long-term outlook. We remain keenly focused on value creation and we're committed, as we have demonstrated, to delivering shareholder value. That brings our third quarter 2015 earnings call to a close. Thanks again for your time today. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.