2021 Letter to Stockholders Proxy Statement 2020 Form 10-K
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2021 Letter to Stockholders Proxy Statement 2020 Form 10-K Dear Stockholders, When I last reported to you a year ago, we were closely monitoring the spread of COVID-19 and what 2020 had in store for us. Now, as we enter 2021, I can look back and say I have never been prouder of our team than after seeing how they rose to meet the challenges we faced together over the past year. 2020 Performance and Accomplishments Before I report on our many achievements in 2020, it is important to acknowledge how the pandemic has affected our 39,000 colleagues around the globe. We lost team members to COVID-19, and many of us have lost friends and family members as well. There have been very real economic, emotional and psychological impacts of the virus and the lockdowns that have been neces- sary to combat it. Throughout the year, as the virus first appeared and then spread, we worked to keep our workplaces healthy, our communities resilient, and our global food chain strong. We dramatically expanded our IT infrastructure to allow non-production colleagues to work safely from home, while simultaneously supporting our frontline teams, who continued coming to our production facilities every day. We worked with the University of Illinois on new saliva-based COVID-19 testing capabilities. And we offered financial and other support to colleagues and communities in need. Now, we are focused on helping our team members get vaccinated to protect ourselves and those around us, and accelerate a return to normalcy. Amid all of these challenges, our team delivered for our company and our customers. One of the keys to our identity is that ADM takes on the world’s toughest challenges. That became quite literally true in 2020. Together, we adapted and innovated to pro- vide nutrition around the world, and in doing so, we delivered: • Record adjusted EPS of $3.59 • 12% higher adjusted operating profit than 2019 • Four straight quarters of year-over-year adjusted operating profit growth • More than $600 million in earnings improvements from strategic initiatives and actions • Strong balance sheet and cash flows Each one of our business units contributed to our record year: • Full-year operating profit for Ag Services & Oilseeds was $2.1 billion, 9 percent higher than 2019. Around the globe, AS&O achieved multiple volume and profit records, including all-time high global crush volumes. The business delivered more than $300 million in capital reduction initiatives, and advanced initiatives to further enhance growth and returns, from digi- tal technologies like our GrainBridge joint venture, to differentiated products and services that add shared value for grow- ers, customers and ADM. • Our Carbohydrate Solutions team showed in 2020 how we’ve embedded great execution into our operational structure and culture. The team moved quickly to meet customer needs for retail flour, industrial starches for cardboard and USP-grade alcohol for hand sanitizer. They acted decisively by temporarily idling production at our two Vantage Corn Pro- cessors dry mill plants. And the wheat milling business’s modernization and optimization plan — including our new, state-of-the-art mill in Mendota — helped power a significant year-over-year improvement for that business. So, despite the impact of lockdowns on both driving miles and the food service sector, Carbohydrate Solutions delivered full-year operating profit results of $717 million — 11 percent higher than 2019. • The Nutrition segment continued on a strong growth trajectory. The team did a great job harvesting investments and utiliz- ing new technologies to partner with customers to bring innovative new products and solutions to market in 2020. We exceeded our Neovia integration synergy targets and delivered them ahead of schedule, and we continued to grow our leadership position in key consumer trend areas. As a result, the Nutrition business delivered superb full-year operating profit results of $574 million, 37 percent higher than 2019, while growing revenue 5 percent on a constant currency basis and continuing to expand adjusted EBITDA margins. Across the enterprise, our teams did a great job contributing to our ongoing growth in 2020. Even amid the challenging environ- ment, we: • Extended our grain destination marketing capabilities in Asia, Latin America and Europe. • Pivoted to meet e-commerce and packaging needs for industrial starch, leading to record operating profits for starches. • Announced the construction of a new, state-of-the-art production facility in Spain that will dramatically expand our ability to meet growing demand for probiotics and other consumer products to support health and wellness. • Partnered to support innovative nutrition and microbiome startups with investments in Air Protein, Future Meat Tech- nologies, and Seventure’s Health for Life Capital Fund II. • Entered into an agreement with InnovaFeed that will result in the construction of the largest insect protein facility in the world in Decatur, Illinois. • Signed a long-term agreement with Japanese startup Spiber Inc. to produce corn-based polymers that can be used in appa- rel, lightweight auto parts, high-performance foams and more, meeting a critical need in the marketplace for consumer and industrial products that come from sustainable sources. • Continued to expand our leadership position in the fast-growing plant-based protein market with the launch of PlantPlus Foods, a joint venture with Marfrig that will offer a variety of plant-based food products for customers and consumers across North and South America. We also continued to transform how we do our work every day. I’m proud to say we surpassed our stretch goal of $1.3 billion in Readiness run-rate benefits by the end of the year. Readiness continues to encompass and support our entire company. It drives the strategic imperatives that help us fulfill our purpose; it powers growth initiatives; and it has significantly enhanced our resilience and agility, which helped us continue to serve custom- ers and keep our operations running through fast-changing environments in 2020. Our new organizational structures and business processes — like our Centers of Excellence (CoEs) and our 1ADM business trans- formation project — are helping drive better decision-making and operational excellence. In just one example, we used our enhanced processes and tools to pilot changes at a Nutrition facility that are on track to unlock a 20-plus percent increase in production capacity at that location. This has already resulted in enhancements in customer service, and all without needing additional capital investment. We’ll be rolling these kinds of initiatives out to other locations as we continue to advance our Sales & Order Planning CoE. And most importantly, the work we did in 2020 continued to advance our purpose: To unlock the power of nature to enrich the quality of life. In early 2020, there were news articles about the risk of global food flows grinding to a stop. But our 39,000 ADM colleagues never stopped innovating, growing, imagining and solving to ensure we lived up to our purpose, and our work helped to keep the global food supply chain strong and provide nutrition around the globe. Our purpose also encompasses our work to support our planet and its natural resources. Sustainability continues to grow as a key driver of consumer decisions and business success, and ADM is playing a leading role in enhancing the transparency of global sup- ply chains, reducing the environmental impact of agricultural and food production, and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy for our industry. In 2015, we introduced our first comprehensive no-deforestation policy, and after achieving some impressive objectives, this year we announced an updated policy with aggressive new goals: By the end of 2022, ADM expects to achieve full traceability throughout both its direct and indirect soy supply chains in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. And I’m proud to say that by 2030, we aim to have deforestation-free supply chains around the globe. We’re also advancing ambitious goals to reduce the environmental impact of our processing operations: We achieved our 15x20 objectives ahead of schedule and in 2020, we were proud to launch Strive 35, an even more ambitious plan to further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, energy, water and waste by 2035. We’re working with growers in our supply chains to implement practices aimed at reducing environmental impact and improving farm resiliency; in 2020, we surpassed 6.5 million acres that we’ve supported through sustainable farming programs over recent years. We’re meeting customer needs by expanding our industry-leading array of bio-based foods and mate- rials. And our charitable efforts, through ADM Cares, are supporting producers and rural communities, particularly in the face of the challenges of COVID-19. We’re proud to have continued to receive recognition for our proactive citizenship efforts. Earlier this year, we were once again named to Fortune magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” – our 13th consecutive year on this prestigious list. For the second year in a row, we’ve been included in S&P Global’s Sustainability Yearbook, and named by Ethisphere as one of the world’s most ethical companies. 3BL Media named ADM to its annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens ranking, recognizing outstanding environmental, social and governance (ESG) transparency and performance among the 1,000 largest U.S. public companies. And finally, we are continuing to dramatically expand our leadership role in diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). Profiles in Diversity Journal honored us as one of 18 companies to receive the magazine’s first annual Diversity Team Award in 2020, and we were selected as a finalist in the Diversity & Inclusion category of the Reuters Responsible Business Awards. Such honors are important recognitions of the work we’ve done and are continuing to do in this business-critical area.