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

Josh Spector: Yes. I guess just to follow up on some of the raws questions earlier. I mean, you’ve been pretty clear in the past, you have about 6 months of visibility to what you’re buying. So I mean is this something where next quarter you’ll have a stronger view on second half and would adjust your view, kind of aligned with what you’re seeing there? And just curious on some of the near-term dynamics as well. Is China disruption impacting your view of what pricing can be. Does that have an impact there? And if you look at your buy now, is there any way to frame what your raws will be doing year-over-year in the second half then.

Mark Douglas: Yes. Listen, it’s exactly what I talked about. I think as we go through the second quarter, we’re going to have a much better view of, a, what have we bought and what are we buying in the second quarter, which will inform our raw material view in the second half. So I think at the May call, we’ll be giving a lot more detail in that area. China has not impacted us at all through this latest round of COVID. We did have closures of some supply. But over the last 3 to 4 years, we’ve built up a really robust process and network of how to manage disruptions. So we didn’t see any significant disruptions through the Chinese New Year and through the COVID wave that they had to deal with. China opening up is it’s positive for us in the sense that, obviously, we get raw materials from China.

It’s not a huge market for us from a sales perspective. It’s a nice market, but it’s not one of our leading growth markets. So for us, it’s a bit of a neutral event, China opening up. We’ve managed raw material as well out of China. We’ve been distributing our manufacturing network over the last 5 years to other countries. That continues at a pace. So overall, I think we feel pretty good from a supply position standpoint right now.

Josh Spector: Okay. And if I could just poke on your guide range on the high end specifically. I guess if I just take one of those variables and look at price and say you do high single digit versus mid-single digit, it’s $150 million plus of EBITDA upside. Your scenario is $40 million higher and I guess you list a whole bunch of positives that could play out. So what are the negatives that we should be thinking about? Or is that higher upside potentially possible if you get more visibility there?

Mark Douglas: Well, I think on the negative side, I highlighted supply disruptions, which is the obvious one. Weather disruptions would be the next one, I would say. Outside of that, it would be a lack of pricing or something in the world that creates an inflationary environment for raw materials. We don’t see that today. As I said, you look at the script, we mentioned 3 or 4 items that could move us from the midpoint to the upper end of the range. We mentioned basically one that would come the other way. So you can read into that what you will.

Operator: The next question comes from Stephen Byrne with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Stephen Byrne: The EPA recently came out with a draft risk assessment on Cyazypyr and they concluded this — the terminology likely to adversely affect. Is this meaningful in your view? Could there be impacts from this on how Cyazypyr appear is used? And how would you compare this to other insecticides? Is this fairly normal? Or is this a concern?