Good morning, and welcome to the ADM second quarter 2021 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, Vikram Luthar, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations, Chief Financial Officer, Nutrition for ADM. Mr. Luthar, you may begin. Thank you, Shelby. Good morning. Welcome to ADM's second 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 2, the company's safe harbor statement, which says that some of our comments and materials 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 and materials 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 assumptions and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in this presentation. 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 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Juan Luciano, will provide an overview of the quarter and highlight some of our accomplishments. Our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Young, will review the drivers of our performance, as well as corporate results and financial highlights. Juan will make some final comments, after which they will take your questions. Please turn to Slide 3. I will now turn the call over to Juan. Thank you, Vikram. I'm pleased to share with you results that continue to demonstrate our success in delivering strong and sustained earnings growth. This morning, we reported record second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.33. Adjusted segment operating profits was $1.2 billion, up 44% versus the second quarter of 2020. Our trailing four- quarter Adjusted EBITDA was about $4.5 billion, almost $900 million more than a year ago. I'm proud to report that our trailing four quarter average adjusted ROIC was 9.7%, which is both significantly higher than the 8.1% of the prior year period and also represents the achievement of our 10% objective. I'm proud of the entire ADM team for their great results this quarter. We're living up to our promises and our purpose. The continuing execution of our strategy is delivering impressive ongoing growth for our company, our customers, and our shareholders. I'd like to take a moment to highlight some of our accomplishments from the quarter. Slide 4, please. Over the last decade, we made cultural, technology, and process changes that help us revolutionize how we do our work every day. We started with Operational Excellence, added to that Performance Excellence, and expanded into Readiness, which encompassed a broader array of specific actions within our control to drive value creation, including profitable growth. Now, as we enter the next phase of our strategic transformation, the concept of Readiness will continue to be embedded in everything we do. We will categorize our efforts going forward as either Productivity or Innovation. Productivity is about using new technologies and thinking to automate, digitize, and standardize our processes. It's a lever under our control that allows us to enhance efficiencies and manage costs. One great example of our productivity work is the digitalization of our procurement center of excellence. We're implementing best-in-breed technology that's standardizing processes and reducing costs in our indirect procurement. Most importantly, this advancement is unleashing our colleagues to drive even greater value by transforming their work from tactical to strategic. That's just one example of the kind of initiatives we're pursuing under productivity. Across the enterprise, our productivity efforts collectively are expected to deliver about $200 million in savings in calendar year 2021. Please turn to Slide 5. The other pillar of our strategy is innovation. Innovation is how we are delivering profitable growth, and one of the key ways we will support and propel our innovation work is through an initiative we launched this year called ISV. ISV is a fundamental realignment of our human Nutrition business commercial organization and go-to-market approach. From a product-driven focus to a more customer-centric market segment-driven structure focused on 3 global market segments: global foods, global beverages, global health and wellness. We are now able to move from consumer insight, to concept, to prototype, to final solution more efficiently than before. Already, ISV is enabling us to expand our sales pipelines and register record win rates. This is only the start. ISV is a broad and ambitious effort encompassing talent development, digital analytics and sales enablement tools, and streamlined product development processes, all designed to better match our vast pantry and technical development capabilities to our customers' needs and accelerate our speed to market. Slide 6, please. All of our strategic work is being supported and strengthened by our unique opportunity to use ADM's integrated value chain to advance the decarbonization of our industry. For example, late last year, our Decatur-based carbon capture and storage partnership, the world's first large-scale project to store carbon from a biofuel source, surpassed 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide safely and permanently stored more than a mile under the Earth's surface. That's the equivalent of removing about 650,000 cars from the road for a full year. Our efforts are continuing. We expect to sequester an additional 2.5 million metric tons over the next 5 years. We have the ability to do even more. This project is a game changer, a valuable and unique asset in our efforts to decarbonize our production footprint and reduce the carbon intensity of our products, as demonstrated by our intention to work with 8 Rivers Capital to help build an innovative zero-emission power plant that will utilize this carbon capture capability. Next slide, please. Our decarbonization efforts span the entire ag value chain, including transportation. Plant-based liquid fuels will continue to play a growing role in transportation, both on the ground and in the air, and we're investing to ensure we can meet that expanding demand. In the second quarter, we were proud to announce the construction of North Dakota's first-ever dedicated soybean processing complex. We expect our new Spiritwood facility 600 million pounds of annual oil production to help support fast-expanding production of Renewable Diesel. We've already broken ground on the North Dakota complex, and we plan for it to be operational in 2023, in time to meet growing demand. We expect the demand for U.S. green diesel to continue its current high rate of growth, increasing by about 1 billion gallons per year and reaching up to 5 billion gallons by 2025. Vegetable oils will be a key feedstock to meet that growing demand. When you consider that it takes about 7.5 pounds of soybean oil to produce 1 gallon of renewable green diesel, you can appreciate the large potential opportunity and why we are investing to grow our participation both in North Dakota and with our expanded oil refining capacity in Quincy, Illinois. Slide 8, please. Another area in which our farm-to-fork capabilities are helping us meet demand for more sustainable products is plant-based proteins. We made substantial investments in this space, from our Campo Grande soy protein complex, to our pea protein facility in North Dakota, to our PlantPlus Foods joint venture. As the opportunity for plant-based proteins accelerates by 12% a year, we're investing further to expand our participation. Yesterday, we announced an agreement to purchase Sojaprotein, Southern Europe's largest producer of soy-based protein products. Sojaprotein is a perfect fit for our growth strategy. It represents a strategic addition to our global protein production capacity. It is a successful, growing company with 2020 sales of more than $100 million and an extensive list of customers in 65 countries in the meat alternative, confectionery, protein bar, pharmaceutical, pet food, and animal feed segments. Its locally sourced, exclusively non-GMO products are closely aligned with European consumer preferences. When I look back on these accomplishments, I see our ongoing strategic transformation is delivering at an accelerated pace. Our productivity and innovation focuses are powering performance and growth in large and fast-growing market opportunities, particularly those being propelled by strong consumer sentiment around sustainability. That's painting a bright future for ADM, which I will talk more about at the end of this call. First, I turn it over to Ray to talk about our business performance. Ray? Yeah. Thanks, Juan, and good morning, everyone. Move to slide 9, please. The Ag Services and Oilseeds team followed up on their exceptional 1st quarter with another outstanding quarter. Ag Services results were higher year-over-year. The North American origination business delivered an outstanding 2nd quarter, managing its positions effectively in a dynamic pricing environment, and also achieved significantly higher export volumes, driven by corn sales to China. South American origination was significantly lower than the previous year's quarter, driven by slower farmer selling and high commodity prices, which impacted contract fulfillment. Global trade performance was lower than the strong 2nd quarter of 2020, when customers were building inventories amid COVID-19. Results were also impacted by timing impacts that should reverse. Crushing had substantially higher year-over-year results. The business executed well in an environment of strong vegetable oil demand to deliver higher execution margins in North America Soy and EU softseeds. Results were partially offset by weaker soybean crush margins in South America, driven by lower demand for biodiesel. There were about $70 million in net incremental negative timing effects, which should reverse in the coming quarters. Refined products and other results were significantly higher than the prior year period, driven by continued recovery in food service, as well as positive timing effects in North America, partially offset by the effects of the reduction in the Brazilian biodiesel mandates. Equity earnings from Wilmar were higher year-over-year. Looking ahead, we expect Q3 performance for Ag Services and Oilseeds to be higher than the third quarter of 2020, driven by stronger results in crushing. We continue to anticipate full year results that will be significantly higher than 2020's very strong performance. Slide 10, please. The Carbohydrate Solutions team did a great job delivering results that were almost double those of the prior year period. Starches and sweeteners, including ethanol production from our wet mills, delivered substantially higher year-over-year results in a highly dynamic pricing environment, driven by about $90 million in positioning gains across the ethanol complex, as well as more normalized results from corn oil. Sweetener volumes were higher, reflecting the beginnings of a recovery in demand from the food service channel. Ethanol margins improved versus the prior year period, driven by a resurgence in driving miles in the U.S. Vantage Corn Processors results were much higher than the second quarter of 2020, supported by the resumption of production of our 2 dry mills, improved fuel ethanol margins, and favorable performance in USP-grade industrial alcohol from our Peoria complex. Looking ahead, we expect tightening corn markets and their effects on ethanol margins to result in a third quarter for Carbohydrate Solutions that is lower compared to the third quarter of 2020, which included strong risk management gains. We expect full year Carbohydrate Solutions results to be substantially higher than 2020. Slide 11, please. Nutrition delivered record sales and profits with 15% year-over-year revenue growth on a constant currency basis, an operating profit of more than $200 million. In human nutrition, revenue was 13% higher than the second quarter of last year on a constant currency basis, and operating profits were up 24%. In North America and EMEA, the flavors business delivered strong volumes and improved product mix, particularly in the beverage segment. Specialty ingredients delivered strong sales growth in specialty proteins, though results were lower due to certain one-time costs, mainly in texturants. In health and wellness, stronger sales and margins in probiotics were offset by higher costs in fibers due to planned facility downtime. Animal nutrition revenue growth was 17% higher year-over-year on a constant currency basis, and profits were up 44%, as improved demand and margins in amino acids strengthened feed additives and ingredients, and better performance in EMEA more than offset COVID-19 and labor-related impacts in other regions. Now looking ahead, we expect Nutrition once again to deliver higher year-over-year results in the third quarter. With continued strong demand, product innovation, and great go-to-market execution by the team, we are raising our expectations for full year profit growth to 20%. Slide 12, please. 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 substantially lower than the prior year period, driven primarily by captive insurance underwriting losses, most of which were offset by corresponding recoveries in the other business segments. As expected, net interest expense for the quarter decreased year-over-year on lower interest rates and the stable liability management actions taken in the prior year. In the corporate lines, unallocated corporate costs of $248 million were driven primarily by higher performance-related compensation accruals, higher IT operating and project-related costs, and transfers of costs from the business segments into the centralized centers of excellences in supply chain and operations. In other corporate, results included a valuation gain in our ADM Ventures portfolio. Looking at total corporate costs, including net interest, corporate unallocated, and other corporate, we are still on track for the calendar year to be overall similar to 2020. The effective tax rate for the second quarter of 2020 was approximately 14%. We still anticipate our calendar year effective tax rate to be in a range of 14%-16%. Our balance sheet remains solid despite a higher commodity price environment with a net debt to total capital ratio of about 29% and available liquidity of almost $9.5 billion. With that, I'll turn it back to Juan. Thank you, Ray. Slide 13, please. When I look back on our outstanding first half results following a record 2020, I see a team that is executing at high level and a strategy that is delivering according to our plan. We have been constantly refreshing our portfolio, divesting from non-strategic businesses, and redeploying capital consistent with our strategy. In doing so, we've built industry-leading capabilities to meet customer and consumer needs in high-growth categories, such as meat alternatives, a category we expect to reach more than $100 billion in sales worldwide by 2030, and in which our PlantPlus Foods joint venture now is participating, selling consumer products across Brazil and readying its North American launch. Another example is dietary supplements, a segment on track to have $80 billion in sales globally by 2025. In which we're constantly expanding our product portfolio, including our recently introduced Bio-Kult Brighten, which includes ingredients to reduce tiredness and fatigue. There is pet food, which is forecast to grow to more than $130 billion globally by 2025, and an area in which we launched our new premium cat food in Mexico earlier this year. The list goes on. Renewable Diesel, pharmaceuticals and personal care, beverages, all large, high-growth opportunities powered by macro consumer trends like sustainability and health and wellbeing. In each of those segments and more, our unparalleled global footprint, fully integrated value chain, customer insight, broad portfolio, and speed to market are setting us ahead of the competition and fueling our growth. That's why we are so optimistic about our path forward. Of course, there are always going to be short-term factors for us to navigate, but those are not things that will impact our long-term success. Our confidence is rooted in the transformation we began a decade ago and which continues with our work in productivity and innovation, as well as our expanding participation in large and fast-growing market opportunities. To conclude, we have a great start of the year, and we expect to continue our momentum in the second half to deliver very strong 2021 earnings. As we've discussed, we are moving to a new phase of our strategic growth plan. With what we have accomplished over the years on capital discipline, targeted cost reductions, and cash generation, and moving through our work portfolio transformation and our efforts to optimize business performance, drive efficiencies, and expand strategically, I believe we have successfully increased our base earnings power from $3 a share back in 2015 to a range of $4-$4.50 this year. Now, as we enter the next stage of our growth, leveraging the key macro trends of food security, health and wellbeing, and sustainability with our continued focus on productivity and innovation, and with future targeted investments, we believe our medium-term annual earnings trend growth rate will be in the high single-digit% from this $4-$4.50 per share baseline. With that, operator, please open the line for questions. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. Your first question is from Adam Samuelson of Goldman Sachs. Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Adam. Morning. Just something you just mentioned in the prepared remarks, the $4-$4.50 baseline of EPS this year and the high single-digit growth thereafter. Just to be clear, should we take that as a reasonably formal EPS range for 2021, just given the performance year to date? I just want to clarify just how we're framing that. Yeah, Adam. Listen, when we put together the previous phase of the strategy, we were looking at going, as I said before, from $3 to land in the $4-$4.50 area, and achieve 10% ROIC. As we started to see those goals in sight, we started on the development of the new phase of the strategy. We took that base of $4-$4.50, and we created a five-year plan. When we put together that plan, with all these opportunities that I highlighted and focused on productivity and innovation, that plan shows that from that base of $4-$4.50, we grow over the next five years at the rate of high single-digit growth per year. That's what we said at the outset. Hello? Are we still on the line? I'm sorry. Then just a market macro question, if I may. Sure been some volatility in oilseed crush margins around the world of late. Seems like, especially in China, the soy meal demand has waned a little bit with feed wheat substitution and seems like the global industry is really crushing for veg oil, given all the RD demand around the world. Can you just help us think about how that rolls forward as we think, especially with, for you, more heavily weighted towards soybeans and some pressure in terms of soft seed crop availability on the oil side as we go through the balance of the year and into 2022? Thank you, Adam. Listen, we are very optimistic about the prospects for crush for the rest of the year and into next year. If I go by geography as I always do, from a North American perspective, margin remains exceptionally strong in North America in the $45-$50 range. As you said, with a strong vegetable oil demand, in part driven by RD, we had already a very good oil demand, we see more recovery about food services and more reopening of the economy. That continues to enhance, of course, the oil share of the crush contribution. Also, the tightening supplies and logistical issues in South America are allowing also U.S. soybean meal to be a little bit more competitive in global markets. We see some compression in European soy margins, maybe to $10-$20, as prices basically from South America oil imports are pressuring crush margins. Especially, this is the time of the year in which Argentina and Brazil are the most competitive. They are in the middle of the harvest. Of course, they have reduced their biodiesel mandate. There is more oil exportable, if you will. Although the beauty of our long supply chain is that as crush margins have softened in Europe, we get the benefit in biodiesel and the RPO, given that. Brazil margins continue to remain solid for domestic plants with maybe $25-$35, despite the B10 biodiesel situation. They are expected to remain solid as they move to higher B12 blend rates in the future, starting, I think, in September. China margins are low due to high bean prices and lower soybean meal demand. The herd is going through a rebalance there, and at the moment, there is a lot of wheat feed being fed. We're going to go through the harvest of wheat, and I think that's something that we see with optimism going forward, is that if you look at all the substitutes that we were facing last year, whether it was sorghum or canola or sun or wheat, they have increased their inclusion in the rations. Now all those things are having either weather issues or wheat is going to go through the harvest. We see now the ability of soybean meal and corn inclusions to go up, and that's positive as we go forward. As you mentioned, on our watch list is canola margins. They have weakened. They were very strong during the first half. They have weakened on concern of a short crop driven by the dryness in Canada. Canola margins are probably going to remain volatile until there is more certainty around the Canadian crop size. Two factors that we feel good about it here is how valuable our switch capacity is in this dynamic environment. Margins have shifted. Also how important it is, our integration, our long value chain. If you think North America today is capturing it in crush and maybe less so in biodiesel. In Europe, we don't capture that much in crush, but we capture it in biodiesel. All this ability of our footprint will allow us to follow the margin as it moves through the value chain, has been very, very beneficial in these very volatile times. That's an incredibly helpful color. Thanks so much. I'll pass it on. Adam, maybe on the first question that you mentioned. Again, the $4 -$4.50, as I said before, just to clarify, is our baselining which we run the exercise, because that was the landing spot of our previous strategy, and it's not a forecast or guidance for this year. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. Your next question is from Ben Theurer of Barclays. Morning, Ben. Hi, Ben. Ben, are you on the line? We'll go to the next questioner. Your next question is from Luke Washer of Bank of America. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Luke. Morning, Luke. I wanted to ask you a few quick questions on your carbon capture projects. I think they're really interesting. Are you getting any 45Q tax credits for the implementation of that technology? Now that it appears that it's commercially viable, do you intend to start the permitting process or working with other partners to build out and start capturing carbon at some of your other plants? Yes. The answer is yes to both. We have a big permit for Decatur that we plan to, of course, leverage. Yes, we are exploring our ability to do so for other plants. We've been doing this relatively quietly, Luke, since 2017, and as I said before, we have stored more than 3.5 million tons safely underground. This gives us the ability to start differentiating our products, that we can assign some of the credits to some of these products and have those products be deemed low carbon intensity products. We have, again, big experience. We've been doing this for 4 years in 2 different facilities, and we feel very good about the future. This is going to be a growing part of our operations, for sure. Maybe just a quick follow-up on that. This does lower the carbon score, the CI scores of your plants, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. Got it. Okay. Yep. Okay, great. Maybe just a more short-term question on Carbohydrate Solutions. It looks like you really did well this quarter, particularly relative to expectations earlier this year. Can you talk through the, I guess, the delta in your expectations and how things progressed through the quarter, and maybe talk through the $90 million in positioning gains that you had. You also talked about normalized results for corn oil. Corn oil prices are really high right now. Are you saying that that is a bit of a new normal because of Renewable Diesel? Any other color there would be great. Yeah, let me tell you what went better, if you will, as per your question. I think that this was the quarter that we needed to restart the ethanol dry mills that we had taken down due to lack of demand. We have, from a technical perspective, a perfect startup, and certainly they hit the ground with better margins than maybe we anticipated before bringing them up. Second, as we explained before, we have very good risk management. The team positioned very well on corn and on the ethanol complex. Certainly sweeteners volumes came back versus last year as customers were preparing for the summer. To a certain degree, you might have to take both Q2 and Q3 together from a sweetener perspective, because I think that a lot of customers bought in anticipation of refilling their pipeline given the summer and the openness with COVID that we will experience in the U.S. It was a strong volume month as well. This is on your question on corn oil. We've seen a convergence of corn oil with soybean oil again. Recall last year, we saw a divergence because of the snack foods, people staying at home, high demand for corn oil, which is used for frying. That caused corn oil prices to move up dramatically, and it diverged from soybean oil, and that's what caused a lot of the mark-to-market issues that we had last year. We've worked through all those issues over the course of the period. We're actually seeing right now corn oil and soybean oil really converging, and so we're returning back to, let's say, the normal relationship that we've seen in the past. Great. Thank you both. Your next question is from Ken Zaslow of Bank of Montreal. Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Ken. Hey, Ken. You keep on tempting us with this productivity and innovation. Can you put some color in terms of quantification on how much this is going to create in not just 2021, but beyond that, and how do you frame those two opportunities? Yeah, Ken, I would say if you look at our past, what we have been doing over the last five years, probably, and if you think about translating everything we've done in productivity and innovation, we were probably two-thirds in productivity and one-third in innovation, if you will, of all the savings we were getting. As we look at, as I said before, at our plan going forward. The contribution between productivity and innovation is equal. It's about 50/50. It's mainly driven by all these opportunities that I mentioned, not only Nutrition, but all the other things that we're seeing, whether it's biomaterials or renewable green diesel and all the other things that we've done. When we look at our plan, when we start from this, again, theoretical $4-$4.50 range, we apply all these projects that are included in productivity and innovation, we see our program over the next five years growing in the high single-digit% every year in operating profits. We feel very good about that. We will be having, Ken, in Q4, an investor day where we will be disclosing much more details and much more granularity about all this. You can see some of the things that we're doing already, whether we are invested in Spiritwood or the acquisition of Sojaprotein or the expansions of our plant in Valencia with Biopolis and microbiome. All these areas are receiving organic growth dollars. This will be, as we go forward, Ken, and you look at this plan, this is more an investment plan than maybe the previous period was. You will see a little bit more CapEx and a little bit more investment given the size of the opportunities. When I was mentioning some of the sizes of these addressable markets we have, if you added some of the things I was saying, these are markets north of $300 billion in which we have positioned ourselves very well, and we think that we're going to capture a nice share of those. The opportunity ahead of us is significant. Okay. Let me just follow on. When you're thinking about the high single-digit growth rate- Yep to what extent do you think that is associated with the improvement in, or the structural improvement in RD over the next couple of years, and how much of that is internally created? Let me say, when I look at the three businesses and we move them forward through the 5 years, we see Ag Services and Oilseeds grow moderately, but it grows. We see Carbohydrate Solutions being flat to slightly declining in our forecasting, and then we see a strong growth in Nutrition. That's kind of the, if you will, the algorithm of how the businesses move. The Ag Services and Oilseeds part of that has been our own improvements. Part of that has been the industry. There has been some consolidations, and the industry margins are strong. There has been strong demand, and we trust that there's going to continue to be strong demand. There are 400 million people in the middle class in China that are consuming very much like U.S. type of consumer. That's driving health and wellness, that's driving the improving diets. There is sustainability that is driving a lot of the things that we're doing, not only RGV. Remember that before RGV, we were already having a very tight oil market based on food oil. I think part are the structural issues, and part is our own improvements that we have done over these years. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Your next question is from Michael Piken of Cleveland Research. Yeah, good morning. Maybe we could dive a little bit deeper into Nutrition. It seems like that's a good chunk of where the increase came from. Maybe this 20% growth rate, should we expect for 2022 to expect 15% year-over-year growth from on top of this 20% level? Also what categories are you seeing the most growth in besides plant protein? Thanks. Yes. Michael, listen, when we look forward at Nutrition is going to grow somewhere in that range, between 15%-20%. We said 15% this year, and half into the year, we have moved to 20%. Something in that range. The business is going very strong. We've been able to grow that revenue during this quarter, and we've been able to maintain margins, which it has been a very good job of controlling gross margins and EBITDA margin on sales. Our enthusiasm is not only for the categories in which we are positioned, but also on the win rates and the customer engagements. Our customer engagement as of in 2021 has doubled our customer engagement last year. As the economies reopen and food service become more active, customers are more willing to launch new promotions and new products, something that they were not doing before. We see that acceleration, whether it's in beverages or in health and wellness or alternative proteins. Again, I think you should think conservatively 15% per year, more aggressively 20% per year. In that range, we'll be growing over the next few years. Great. A follow-up question, just shifting gears. Could you talk about the impact of the recent kind of Supreme Court ruling? There's been some talks about possible changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard, maybe your thoughts on the growth potential, or lack thereof for the U.S. ethanol market moving forward in light of some of these policy uncertainties. Thanks. Mike. There's been a lot of news regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling and some of the comments from the EPA. When you kind of cut through all the headlines and try to understand what's fundamentally happening, we still believe the Biden administration and the EPA is committed to fighting climate change and also decarbonizing the economy, and biofuels, frankly, is a very important part of that agenda. The Biden administration has made it very clear that they don't intend to grant SREs, or these Small Refinery Exemptions, like in the prior administrations. As President Biden himself has said, he said that we should be insisting, not exempting. We do expect the Biden EPA to take a very balanced approach towards granting future SREs. When you look at supply-demand balances going forward, you take a look at the RINS balances, and you think about the recovery of driving miles as we move through the pandemic, our expectation is looking at supply-demand for ethanol, for gasoline, and then which translates to ethanol. We believe that it is going to result in a reasonably constructive ethanol environment for the industry over the medium term. At the same time, Mike, it is important to note that in the case of we made a strategic decision to monetize our dry mills, and so we kind of halted that process during the pandemic, frankly, because ethanol demand was very weak. During that period, we did look at alternatives. We took advantage to frankly explore other options. There's frankly, as Juan talked about on the issue of sustainability, there's growing interest in sustainable materials and sustainable solutions, and it appears that there may be some opportunities for us to explore non-vehicle uses of ethanol and leveraging ethanol as a sustainable feedstock for other products. One of the promising areas is the sustainable aviation fuel, SAF. With the airline industry moving towards effectively a low carbon or net zero future, SAF appears to be an important component of how they will get there. Just for perspective, the U.S. airline industry before the pandemic consumed 30 billion gallons of aviation fuel a year. We are looking at the possibility of leveraging our Decatur carbon sequestration site, which Juan talked about, with our corn processing output as a feedstock for SAF to get towards a low carbon SAF product. In addition to looking at potential monetization of dry mills, we are looking at the SAF concept, which frankly may give us another option for finding another use of the dry mills and then taking those ethanol gallons off the vehicle market. Our next question is from Tom Simonitsch of JP Morgan. Morning, Tom. Good morning, everyone. Hi. Following up on the Sojaprotein acquisition yesterday, can you provide some more color around how your strategy for alternative proteins varies by region? Yeah, I think that the strategy in specialty proteins is stay close to our customers and match up with capabilities and supply this market that is growing very fast. The market is growing north of 10% per year. It's moving fast in terms of the products. The products are continuing to be improved every quarter. We have a strong position in North America, our heritage position in soy derivatives. We build our position in South America, which is very strong. I remind you that was a quarter of a billion-dollar investment, so significant. We build pea protein capacity in North Dakota, and now we're expanding that capacity to Europe. We had a small capacity in Europe. Now with this, we have acquired the largest producer in Europe, which again, has a great footprint in the middle of the non-GMO soybean harvest area. Also it has a very nice set of products, and they sell to 65 different countries in many applications. So we continue to build the capabilities. This will not be the last one that you're going to hear in terms of announcements for specialty protein. Again, these are early days, but it's a fast-growing market in which we have a leadership position, and we intend to expand. That's helpful. Thank you. A question on China. The USDA cut its China soybean import forecast this month. What are you assuming for that trade in the near to medium term, and how will it impact your crushing footprint? Yeah. Listen, I think that we are maybe more optimistic about China medium term than maybe what the news are giving right now. China has done an exceptional job of controlling COVID, as such, they have recovered from that very successfully. There is a lot of economic activity and, hence, demand. They have done a terrific job in coming back from the ASF pandemic. They have recovered. They have the consumer, and they have the animals to actually consume. Of course, they are very strategic in their purchases. Right now is not the time to be buying a lot of beans because beans are expensive and there is a crop in the U.S. coming. We think that that's when they're going to come. You also have to remember a couple of things, Tom. Over the last 2 or 3 weeks, we lost 15 million tons of production around the world due to weather issues. Whether it was the drought in Canada that impacted canola and wheat, whether it was Russia, whether the impact was on sun and in wheat, whether it was the corn crop in Brazil because of drought. All these products are competitive products in the ration to soybean meal. Those products will not be available to compete with soybean meal, which will give soybean meal a higher inclusion in the ration. In our estimate, given the small canola crop in Canada, we think that China will have to probably import 2 million tons of extra soybeans to offset that canola gap that they have right now. All in all, we feel that we're still going to have strong export volumes in the Q4 of this year from North America. Thanks very much. I'll pass it on. Your next question is from Robert Moskow of Credit Suisse. Hi. Hey, Rob. What's up? Good morning. I had a question about the new earnings base that you're putting out there. Historically, external factors can change quickly and can have a big impact on your earnings. I want to know, what do we have to believe about the external environment to feel comfort that the earnings base is credible, that the earnings base is achievable under a variety of different external environments? Yeah. Rob, the way we thought about it when we put together the plan is, I think I expressed some of that before, is of course, we look at the things that we can see into the future. You can argue the magnitude, we give our forecast forward, we add inflation to that. We say some of these things may come back to the middle, if you will, or reverse to the means or whatever you want to call it. Let's put the negatives side there. We consider some of that. Then we look at our productivity and innovation, and we said, "Can we build a robust enough agenda in productivity and innovation that actually kind of set some of those headwinds?" Whether they are headwinds on ethanol or whether they are whatever your favorite crush margin into the future or whether it's inflation. We look at that, and the result of that exercise is that productivity and innovation earnings stream coming forward offset all that potential decline that we have estimated and offset it and giving us a result, that high single-digit growth rate in profits over the next five years. That's the way we think about it. This is not a scenario in which everything goes perfect and margins are at peak level for five years. In our scenario, margins normalize, we have inflation, and then we are able to offset a lot of that through growth and through productivity. That is what we are saying in terms of our new base. Right. In terms of things that are going to normalize, Carbohydrate Solutions would be the biggest degree of normalization, because it looks like it's going to earn $1 billion this year. Yeah, I would say, maybe when I was answering Ken, I think, when we look at the 3 businesses, Nutrition provides a lot of the growth in that scenario, of course. You have to remember, when we started reporting Nutrition yearly, they were reporting about $300 and something million. This quarter, they crossed the barrier of $200 million. It's significant, and you will see that in crescendo, of course, over the next few years as we reach $1 billion and beyond. Carbohydrate Solutions, as you said, it basically declines over the period. We have a healthy but not exuberant growth rate for Ag Services and Oilseeds. All in all, when you look at our numbers, it doesn't look a far-fetched scenario. On the contrary, it's a scenario that we're very confident. That's why we are making it public today. Okay. On a lot of things that are our control, to be honest. Last question. You said that there's been consolidation in the soy crush industry, and that is part of the reason for your confidence. You are opening up a new crush plant now. Can you give a little more color about how much consolidation there's been? What do you think crush capacity looks like today compared to a few years ago? Where do you think it's going in the next few years from an industry perspective? Yeah, listen, I think that there has been consolidation in the small regional players, which has been important. We have the example of Algar in Brazil. We also did the soybean joint venture with Cargill in Egypt. There have been others around the industry. I think it's important to notice that we've been working in this expansion, this buildup, for the last two years. We just announced it now. This is capacity that, of course, this one is held by RGV, but when you think about soybean meal in North America, we need about 2%-3% to offset 2%-3% growth in demand every year. We need a full-fledged plant every couple of years just to keep up with demand and to be able to supply the growth. We don't think that any of this build is excessive. On the contrary, we think that it's needed to allow demand to be fulfilled. Okay. Thank you. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to 1 question. Again, please limit yourself to 1 question. Your next question is from Benjamin Theurer of Barclays. All right. Good morning, Juan, Ray. We try it again. Thank you very much and congrats on the results. Morning, Ben. Morning, Ben. Just one question. If you could elaborate a little bit on those $90 million on positioning gains across ethanol and what has been driving that throughout the quarter, and if that is something you think is recurring? Is this a one-off? How should we think about it, because it was obviously sizable within the segment? Thank you. Yeah, Ben. Our teams do an excellent job managing risks. When you talk about managing risks, it's both managing the risks of the inputs and the outputs. The positioning gains that we had in the second quarter, $90 million, it's a combination of what I call the ethanol complex. It's a combination of how they're managing the corn, how they're managing ethanol, how they're managing RINs, all these positions. As you know, it was a very volatile quarter when you looked at the prices of corn and ethanol and RINs, but they managed exceptionally well. $90 million, normally they would generate risk management gains. We highlight it this quarter because this was an exceptional quarter. By the way, it wasn't just an exceptional quarter, it was an exceptional first half of the year. When you take a look at the first half of the year, they probably had positioning gains roughly a similar amount in the first quarter as well. Therefore, the Carbohydrate Solutions team really hit it out of the ballpark in terms of risk management in the first half of this year. For the future, we should expect some of it, but maybe not at the same magnitude. That's a fair assumption? Yeah. Again, I would never ask the Carbohydrate Solutions team to hold back, but again, they will always manage the positions exceedingly well. I would say this was probably an exceptional performance for the first half of the year. Okay, perfect. I'll leave it here. Thank you very much for squeezing me in again. Thank you, Ben. Your next question is from Vincent Andrews of Morgan Stanley. Hi, this is Steve Haynes on for Vincent. Maybe just to squeeze a quick one in on the Biosolutions business/portfolio. Talked about some of the other growth things. You've made some announcements already in terms of some partnerships and agreements. Can you, I guess, maybe just help us think about going forward where your specific kind of target growth areas would be within that business? Listen, that is a business that to a certain degree, started from a customer pool. We discovered one day that a lot of the products that we were selling in Carbohydrate Solutions were finding their way into non-food applications, if you will, or non-beverage applications. Now we have started with a new team on a more proactive approach to that. We have a market-based approach where we're targeting things like construction and pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and other products. We've been very successful. This team has been growing sales about at a 10% clip. These are very profitable opportunities and opportunities that at this point in time require no capital because these are existing products going into new applications. We have hired experts, marketing experts, and technical experts, to be able to sell this into new applications. We're filling an incredible customer pool. Every CEO or company out there that is announcing these decarbonization goals for 2040 or whatever, needs to shift to plant-based materials from oil-based in order to decarbonize. We are the largest company in that space with the ability to provide the broadest footprint of products. You will continue to see growth there, and we are just getting started. That will be my comment. We cannot talk a lot about, as you can understand, about our customer engagement, because these are confidential agreements that we have, and a lot of these, the customers don't want to disclose what they are doing. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Your next question is from Ben Kallo of Baird. Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. The first one is just on South American crush margin. Could you just talk about if there's a structural change or is this a temporary change in, as it relates to biodiesel headwinds? The second question is on M&A. I know you just did a deal, congratulations on that. On larger acquisition front, from your experience, one, are there targets out there? Two, is it easier for the heavy lifting of integration to do a large acquisition than the smaller tuck-in ones like you announced yesterday? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Ben. Let me address South America first. Of course, our bigger participation is Brazil. It has been a tough year for Brazil this first half of the year. In general, we expect second half of the year to have the possibility to be a little better. Biodiesel is B12 now, and that has been confirmed. We'll have to see the first auctions there. Crush margins are better. Domestic margins are $25-$30 per ton. Exports about $10. Bottle oil and volumes and prices are better in the last two months. We started the year tough there. Remember that this is a society that is going through the tougher parts of COVID, so demand is difficult there. We have seen an improvement. Domestic meal, the market is also paying for the higher soybeans, so that's good. Brazil has reduced exports of corn, of course, because of the drought. The domestic market is paying the premium, so Brazil is not going to run out of corn. It's importing a little bit from Brazil. I would say, in general, with domestic oil being supported and the volumes being there, and with biodiesel going back to B12, we expect the second half of the year to be a little bit better than maybe what the first half was. The second question on M&A, just on targets, an appetite for a larger deal, the integration of many smaller deals versus a large one? Yeah. You know that we've been relatively quiet. We continue to be very selective about this because valuations are, in general, for some properties, are a little bit too high. This needs to be a perfect fit into our portfolio. The perfect combination of things, which Sojaprotein is in terms of the footprint, the complementarity of the geographic nature of it, and the quality of management and the assets and the products. In terms of what is easier to integrate, I think that sometimes bolt-ons are a little bit easier. We find they fit better in a business that is already structured. When you bring a large company, you need more adjustments on both sides, if you will. If you think about some of these companies have continued to operate in ADM, almost like with the same agility they were operating before, whether you take Protexin or Biopolis and some of these companies. I think that the smaller companies are probably an easy tuck-in than maybe large companies. Large companies take us a little bit longer. Okay, great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Your next question is from Ben Bienvenu of Stephens. Hey, thanks. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate you squeezing me in. Hi, Ben. One quick one for me. You talked about the operational flexibility to shift and flex between softseed crushing and oilseed crushing. When you think about the backdrop for oilseed crushing margins across all your geographies, but in North America in particular, where things are quite strong, the strong driven by soybean oil this go around, do you think the market is able to digest appropriately switching from a higher oil yield to a higher meal yield, given the kind of relative softness in the meal market? Just how do you think about toggling between those two crush capacities in a market like this? Listen, at this point in time, we are seeing good demand for both products. Of course, as you know, there is a big pull from oil. There has been a big pull for oil, and then R&D is increasing a little bit of that. Our ability to place the meal. Given our footprint and our commercial operations is very strong. That gives us a lot of confidence for North America for the second half. Listen, let me be clear. The oilseeds and ag services business will have a very strong year, much better than last year, and we expect a strong second half as well. That will drive the company to earnings that we never had before, certainly. Certainly will be probably on the higher side or maybe outside the range of $400-$450 that I mentioned before. That was the previous landing spot of our strategy. That's what we're seeing at the moment. The year started strong, and we think that the second half will be very strong. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Juan, and best of luck in the back half. Our final question is from Eric Larson of Seaport Research Partners. Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Hope everybody is doing well. Morning, Eric. Thank you, Eric. I know we're short on time here. I'll make this question pretty quick and pretty direct. It's really going back, I think, a little to maybe Adam's first question, maybe drilling down on some demand functions here in the near term. Obviously, you've addressed the global biodiesel markets, what's going on there, the U.S. ethanol, all the jawboning of RFS and all that stuff. People are talking about some chinks in the armor in some of the Chinese demand, at least in the near term. They've walked away from a little bit of corn imports in July, which has brought a thimble full, and I think it spooked the market. I think the real issue here is ASF in China, have they had a major setback in that? We just don't know what to kind of believe what's coming out of there. Now you've had the floods in China that's impacted about 10% of their growing areas, killed a lot of hogs. Is some of the near-term demand function a piece of the Chinese ASF problems that they're having? I think that, of course, as you described, there are many issues going on, and there is a little bit of a transition here. The reality is that pork prices have come down. That will incentivize demand. You also need to understand that during the ASF, people get to eat more poultry as well, and we have seen that demand growth. We think that when we have a better supply and cheaper supply of soybeans, things will come back a little bit more to normal. When we check with our customers over there, fundamentally nothing have changed. If you look at the, as I said, the middle class in China, and you look at the indicators of that, which is the consumption of the big four proteins, they are all higher than pre-pandemic levels. The consumer is there, the animals are there to be fed, and I think that the rest is just a matter of tactical approaches. Whether we had the big run-up in hog prices in China, then the government intervened to try to control that. Now they are lower. They fed more wheat. I think that's going to shift to include more soybean in the inclusion. We think that at the end of the day, there may be many monthly gyrations, but over time, protein consumption continues to go up, and they will import more soybeans to actually satisfy that demand. We feel very confident about the future of the demand in China. Yeah, okay, thanks. Yeah, we do seriously have wheat issues. We have small grain issues right now with drought areas. Yep they're going to have to supplement it with meal at some point. Yep Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. There are no other questions in queue. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Luthar for any closing remarks. Thank you. Slide 14 notes upcoming investor events in which we will be participating. As Juan has already mentioned in the Q&A, we'd also like to announce that we will be hosting a global investor day in the fourth quarter of this year, during which we'll be talking more about the next phase of our growth. More particulars, including the specific date and format, will be forthcoming. As always, please feel free to follow up with me if you have any other questions. Have a good day, and thanks for your time and interest in ADM. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.