FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: The next question comes from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs, your line is open. If you’d like to please proceed with your question. Unfortunately, we’re not receiving any audio from Adam’s line, so we’ll move on to our next question, which comes from Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Adam Samuelson: Just wanted to get back to your first quarter guidance, you had margin expansion in just reported fourth quarter ’22 and you’re guiding to some of lower margins and flat EBITDA in the first quarter. In what way are these quarters different? Could you just maybe provide some of the bridge items for Q1.

Mark Douglas: Yes, Aleksey, I’ll just give you a quick high-level view and then Andrew, please give some color commentary here. Very different markets in the sense of where you’re selling into. Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, huge markets in Q4, still important in Q1 but to a lesser degree. And then obviously, in Q1, the European business is starting to kick in, which is very different. So you have a very different geographic mix across the world for how we see. And it’s why we never ever talk about sequential quarters. It’s almost impossible to look at the business on that light. But Andrew, if you want to make some comments on the revenue side and the cost side.

Andrew Sandifer : Yes, certainly. I think, yes, to take Mark’s comment, very, very challenging to look at our business on a sequential basis, given the different regional country mix for each quarter. I think what we’re looking at is solid revenue growth and flat EBITDA, entirely due to cost headwinds in the first quarter, we’re will be close to offsetting them with price increases in the first quarter, but we don’t really get to that positive price cost comparison and for any strong way until we get into the following quarter. So we do see some EBITDA margin dilution from Q1 ’22 to Q1 ’23 which I would suggest is a better comparison period to be looking at and trying to understand the Q1 performance. Again, it’s really driven by getting past this last part of the wave of cost inflation. Now as we move into the second half of the year, as input costs received as we’re anticipating, that’s when you start to really see margin improvement.

Adam Samuelson: And as a follow-up, you mentioned diamide, mid-single-digit to high single-digit growth, sort of — they — did diamides dip to mid-single-digit territory going forward over the next 2, 3 years. Is this the level of growth that you see as fairly normal? Or could it be a little higher or lower?

Mark Douglas: I think we’ve said in the past, sort of that mid- to high single digits is where we think it will pan out over time. I wouldn’t change that view right now. We do continue to launch new diamide formulations around the world and Cyazypyr is growing very nicely as we get the new registration. So I think the mid- to high single digit is a perfectly good range of legacy.

Operator: The next question comes from Josh Spector with UBS.