FMC Corporation
Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 3 May 2017

[Operator:]

Good morning, and welcome to the First Quarter 2017 Earnings Release Conference Call for FMC Corporation. Phone lines will be placed on listen-only mode throughout the conference. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer period. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Wherley, Director, Investor Relations for FMC Corporation. Mr. Wherley, you may begin.

[Michael Wherley:]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to FMC Corporation's first quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Pierre Brondeau, President and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Paul Graves, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Pierre will begin the call with a review of FMC's first quarter performance, and then discuss the outlook for the remainder of 2017. Paul will provide an overview of select financial results. The slide presentation that accompanies our results, along with our earnings release and the 2017 outlook statement, are available on our website, and the prepared remarks from today's discussion will be made available at the conclusion of the call. Mark Douglas, President, FMC Agricultural Solutions; and Tom Schneberger, Vice President and Global Business Director, FMC Lithium, will then join to address the questions. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning specific factors, including, but not limited to those factors identified in our release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Information presented represents our best judgment based on today's information. Actual results may vary based upon these risks and uncertainties. Today's discussion will focus on adjusted earnings for all income statement and EPS references. A reconciliation and definition of these terms as well as other non-GAAP financial terms to which we may refer during today's conference call are provided on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pierre.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. FMC has had a strong start of 2017. A previously announced transaction with DuPont, which we will transform FMC into the fifth largest agchem company globally, and significantly enhance our R&D capabilities, remain on track for a Q4 close. And we are pleased to announce solid performances of both our ag solutions and lithium businesses in the first quarter, reflecting FMC's competitive position. I will focus on the performance of these two segments today and will also provide a few more thoughts on the acquisition, in particular, what we expect from the business immediately after the transaction closes. Turning to slide 3, FMC reported revenue of approximately $600 million, which excludes $177 million of revenue attributable to Health and Nutrition. Adjusted EPS was $0.43, which excludes approximately $0.21 attributable to the reporting of Health and Nutrition in discontinued operation. On a like basis, with our initial guidance of $0.50 to $0.60 per share, adjusted EPS would have been $0.64, which is $0.09 or $0.16 – $0.16 above the midpoint of our guidance range. Later on this call, Paul will walk through how the move to have Health and Nutrition to discontinued operation impacted adjusted EPS in Q1 and how it impacts our full year guidance assumptions. For the full year, we have amended our adjusted EPS guidance to reflect the removal of Health and Nutrition and now expect to report adjusted EPS of $2.20 per share to $2.60 per share. To be clear, this guidance excludes any earnings from the acquisition of the DuPont business that we may benefit from in the last few months of the year. Before I get into specifics regarding our Ag Solutions results, let me start with a market update. As you may recall, when we gave guidance in February, we talked about how we saw the market performing by regions. We saw North America down from the prior year, in Europe flat to slightly up. For Asia, we expected an improving market with mid single digit growth and in Latin America, we expected to see improved market performance, primarily benefiting the second half of the year. We expected the bulk of the revenue and earnings from the two Northern Hemisphere regions to be delivered in the first half of the calendar year and noted that the timing of sales between Q1 and Q2 was difficult to predict. North America remains a difficult market and our review of the market hasn't changed. Europe has gotten off to a slow start, especially in the large Northern markets where the weather has been poor. We now expect the European market to be flat to slightly down in 2017. In Asia, we have seen even more favorable conditions than expected in Australia so far, which we expect to continue, and I'm now slightly more bullish on the region as a whole than we were three months ago. In Latin America, we are pleased with what we have seen in the region with a large selling (6

[Paul W. Graves:]

Thank you, Pierre. Clearly, our results this quarter are impacted by the move of the Health and Nutrition segment to discontinued operations. The Health and Nutrition segment itself delivered operating earnings in line with our prior guidance range. The move of these results to discontinued operations impacts our results in three primary ways

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Thank you, Paul. As I mentioned at the start of the call, that I would give some more thoughts on how we view the performance of the business we are acquiring from DuPont. A couple of weeks ago, Paul shared with you some modeling assumptions and we thought it would make sense to update you on where we are on those assumptions today. As you can see on slide 9, we continue refine each line item in our model, reflecting work our financial, commercial and integration teams are performing. We remain confident in the numbers we presented to you in late-March and our underlying assumptions as to what will drive the increased earnings have not changed. We are starting to look at weather range estimates to some of these numbers, particularly in areas such as the potential for earnings growth in 2018 over 2017. We also are starting to refine our estimate of the accounting treatment of certain items, particularly taxes. Clearly, the item that we are most focused on refining is the year-over-year earnings performance of the acquired business. Given today's market conditions, we have been quite cautious in our assumptions as to earnings growth. We have assumed a lower rate of revenue growth than was presented to us by the seller. We believe this is the right approach to take until we own the business and can therefore develop our own views as to the near-term growth potential. The same is true as to our assumptions on cost synergies as we have not yet quantified the short-term cost synergies impact versus the acquisition-spending model. The end results remains clear, however. We expect an increase in earnings per share over the $1 per share in 2018 as a result of this transaction. In summary, we feel very good about where FMC is today. Our current Ag Solutions business delivered a good Q1 on the back of a strong performance in Asia and North America. We are reaffirming our full year earnings guidance at $430 million at the midpoint, with the growth driven by a strong second half in Latin America and a strong year in Asia. Lithium also had a good first quarter, and is on track to deliver higher earnings in the second half of the year, as the hydroxide units commence full commercial operations. We are therefore increasing our guidance for earnings for the full year by 10% to $110 million at the midpoint. And we have received very positive feedback from our customers, shareholders and employees on the announced transaction with DuPont, which will fundamentally transform our position in the global crop protection industry and bring greater clarity to the FMC investment story. I want to thank you for your attention and I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our first question will go to Don Carson with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

[Ben Richardson:]

This is Ben Richardson sitting in for Don. Thanks for the question. So, just on the issue of sales timing and sales being pulled forward from the second quarter into the first. Is it the case that, given the wet conditions in North America and Europe, you might see sales pushed now to the third quarter?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

So, I think we're facing a situation which is not surprising. You've seen that with many of our competitors. We've said that also in the previous earnings call. We have a difficult time today under the current market condition to exactly understand the timing at which customers are buying. And it seems like in this market and you've seen that with many of our competitors, lot of our customers decided to make purchase of pre-emergent products in the first quarter rather than the second quarter. I think, we are trying to think more in term of first half and second half. So, the first half is going to be very much in line with what we're expecting in total, but with a shift in North America from Q2 into Q1. Europe is also pretty much in line, except that there was a slow start with cold weather in the Northern part of Europe. H2 is still the same, we don't see any move to Q3, Q4 from the first half of the year and H2, second half is very much for us based on the strength of our Latin America and Brazil market. Actually, on the (33

[Mark A. Douglas:]

No, I think what Pierre said is exactly what we saw, the customers are – obviously, they've come off a bumper crop, so they have cash. As Paul commented, we saw better cash collection that's indicative of the way they feel about their business today. We feel very good going into the second half of the year, both in Brazil, but also in Argentina and Mexico, we performed well in those two countries, which are growing for us. But overall, I think we are very solid on Brazil. Obviously, it'll be interesting to see how the North American market develops in terms of yield as we go through this year, but I can tell you, Brazil for us is in much better shape than it was. And we talked about this a lot over the last few calls, so if you looked at our growth rates over the last 18 months, we've been lower and we've been unwinding our inventories deliberately in the field so that we could get to this position where we had a good forward view, and that's exactly where we are.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

So, as a summary, only surprise so far this year, if I can call that a surprise, we're potentially expecting it is movement in North America from Q2 to Q1. And the other positive is we feel stronger than we felt in a long time around Asia, Latin America and Brazil.

[Ben Richardson:]

All right. And are you seeing a tail from any Cheminova synergies? Are those done or do we still have any to come here in 2017?

[Mark A. Douglas:]

I think all the hard synergies are done at this point. We talked a lot about that over the last few calls. I think where we're starting to see and continue to see is opportunities with some of the active ingredients and formulations that we acquired, we're seeing progress in North America on fungicides and also in Europe with fungicides and insecticides. Latin America, distribution is helping us, continues to help. So, yeah, I think we're very much where we said we would be, and more to come in terms of growth from the active ingredients.

[Ben Richardson:]

Excellent. Thank you much.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to Mike Harrison with Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

[Michael J. Harrison:]

Hi, good morning.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Good morning.

[Michael J. Harrison:]

Pierre, I was wondering if you could go back and give us a little bit more color on operations in Argentina. First of all, it looked like costs were a little bit of a drag in the quarter, can you comment on that? And then I just wanted to make sure I understood that in Argentina you're pursuing a debottlenecking effort that's going to cost you $30 million and would bring on 4,000 metric tons of new material, but then you're also considering a bigger expansion down the road?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

That is correct, Mike. So, cost in Argentina is nothing to be worried about. You see that every year, it is very seasonal, depending upon summer, winter, and rainy period in the towns. We do have quarterly changes in manufacturing cost very often, hitting us in a quarter, which is not the quarter where the challenge were or the conditions were because of the way you are accounting for manufacturing cost, but it's just the seasonality of the manufacturing cost in Argentina. You are correct, you got it right, we are right now working on debottlenecking and we have a strong certainty that the spending of $30 million will drive to an increase of capacity by 4,000 tons by the end of this year regarding – at the end of 2018. We are also considering the possibility to double the capacity of Argentina with a full-blown expansion we would do in the same location where we are currently producing lithium carbonate. We are doing the pre-engineering work now. We believe we'll come to conclusion sometime end of the third quarter or fourth quarter in terms of the spending the timing, the exact capacity and we're currently in discussion with the authorities in Argentina. That would be roughly an additional 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate. So, if you think about it, today we're in the 18,000 tons range, we're adding 4,000 tons, we'll take it to 22,000 tons and then we're considering doubling the capacity.

[Michael J. Harrison:]

All right. Thank you for that. And then question on the Ag Business. Just going back to this North America issue where you're seeing pre-emergent demand being pulled forward, but still sounds like channel inventories are still elevated in some areas. Can you help us understand kind of where you're seeing the inventory channels still at higher levels and how you expect that to play out over the next several months?

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Yeah. Mike, certainly on insecticides, we see inventory levels are high in insecticides. We've – I think as most people know, there's been low pest pressure in North America the last few years. So that's an area that we've been focused on. For us, pre-emergents get used very early in the season. So, yeah inventories are high now, but they should be because product needs to be moved to the field. So that's normal where we would expect it. We're not a big player in fungicides, so I can't really comment on that. It's an area that's growing for us. Assuming, we have pest pressures this year, I would expect to see insecticides come down, but it may take more than one season to get us back to normal levels.

[Michael J. Harrison:]

Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to Chris Parkinson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Thank you. It's clear that Asia remains a solid opportunity for you guys, but can you just breakdown any other key trends pertaining to the recent product launches in China as well as any similar initiatives in Central or Southeast Asia or even Australia. Just trying to get a sense of how you should perform versus the market in the next two years to three years. And then also any comments on how we should think about Rynaxypyr, adding Rynaxypyr to your Asian portfolio. Thank you.

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Yeah. Chris, China has – the market has been difficult in China. I think a number of people have commented on that over the last month or so. We saw a great success with a new product that we've launched for rice herbicides, weed resistance in rice continues to be a problem. We've had good success there. I see that continuing as we go through this season and into the next season, the team is very focused on that. I would also say an area that we've highlighted before is plant health. These are micronutrient products, biostimulants. We have invested a lot in China and other parts of Southeast Asia and we're starting to see the benefits of those investments pay off. Other parts of the region that we should look for Indonesia, we have very good rice exposure there, markets doing well, the weather was good. So, we saw an extended season. In Australia, really it's a herbicide play for us with some insecticides, weather conditions have been good. I suspect over the next few years, you will see us grow faster than the market in Asia. With regards to Rynaxypyr applications, obviously we're still learning that business, but given the scale of Rynaxypyr in Asia and our markets to, and our channels to market are very strong. I would expect to see growth with Rynaxypyr in Asia over the coming years. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Great. And just another long-term question, over the last two major crop protection acquisitions, you've diversified yourself from a regional sense and also balanced both your insecticide and herbicide portfolios. But on the fungicide front, just how are you thinking about your owned portfolio, you have a few in the pipeline, I guess, you have four or so in discovery from DuPont. So just from a strategic sense, how should we think about this in your kind of intermediate to long-term total solution offering to growers? Thanks.

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Yeah. It is a focus, we've talked about it a lot. Our pipeline, we have two fungicides coming from the pipeline that launched – our own pipeline, that launch in 2020. Obviously with the acquisition we are making and the discovery capabilities that we will have, fungicides will be an area of focus for us. We will also look as usual to partner with other people who have fungicide active ingredients from a technology standpoint. So, I mean, all areas are of a focus, but more so than most will be the fungicides piece. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Awesome. Thank you.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to Frank Mitsch with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

[Frank J. Mitsch:]

Good morning, gentlemen.

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Good morning, Frank.

[Frank J. Mitsch:]

Hey, Pierre, couple of questions on the DuPont transaction. One is, do you guys have some visibility on how the portion that you are going to acquire performed in Q1 and the expectation for that here in Q2 relative to what your expectations were? As you mentioned, I think you said that you were expecting – you are forecasting a lowered growth rate. Is there anything that was indicative of what's happened so far this year that leads you to that conclusion.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Frank, we don't have visibility at the level of the product line growth. As you know, we manage the business very independently. The comment we are making is through the process of buying the product lines from DuPont, we got their historical numbers and their forecast for the years to come based on historical numbers in the market. And DuPont tends to look at product lines like Rynaxypyr and Cyazypyr as long as those products are under patent protection to be mid-single digit to high-single digit growth rate, pretty much regardless of the market. So we have not, in any of our projection and in the model we have here, come close to this right now. The only thing we have factored is a low single-digit growth rate more as a placeholder. But our numbers we have in the model are more conservative than numbers they have been able to demonstrate in the past or they have in their future forecast.

[Frank J. Mitsch:]

I'm stunned that DuPont's investment bankers would try and project a very rosy outlook for their products, that's absolutely stunning. But on slide 9, just staying with the DuPont transaction and adjusting the incremental EPS for 2018, what – can you update us on your thoughts on the synergy side between – for that transaction?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Yes, Frank. Once again, this number we have here is pretty much of a placeholder. The synergies – it's a very different type of synergy process than what you usually experience when you do an acquisition. Pretty much, we're going to get a couple 1,000 people coming – from 2,000 people coming from DuPont. Think about that as 1,000 people in manufacturing, 500 people in technology position and 500 people in commercial. Very few back office people finance, IT, supply chain or communication et cetera. The question is we have a model, which we presented, which had a 16% to 18% SG&A spend. The question is how many people will we have to add in addition to the TSA, which will result in our 2018 spending and that's what will create the synergies. We don't believe at all that we will need to add as much cost as the one we had factored in the acquisition model, which was based on a standalone business. But we have not yet defined the delta between the cost we have in the model and the number of people we will need to operate the business by November 1, when we close on the acquisition. That's what will create the synergies, those are easier synergies to create than when you do a Cheminova where you have to let go people and it takes time. Those synergies hit you right away, but we just don't know the number yet.

[Frank J. Mitsch:]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to Mike Sison with KeyBanc. Please go ahead

[Michael J. Sison:]

Hey guys. Nice start of the year there.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Thank you, Mike.

[Michael J. Sison:]

Pierre, I think you guys talked or Paul might have mentioned that, you're building inventory – just in case demand is a little bit better in Asia and South America. Are there any particular crops or areas that you think could come in better that the inventory is being built on or is it fairly across the board?.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

I'll make a couple of comments and then have Mark adding on. I think, we worked a lot to lower the inventory of our product in the channel and it's starting to show significant result. Plus I have to say that the financial conditions of the growers in Brazil with the soybean situation have improved and our trip last week was very telling in term of the potential demand. If you look at the orders we have in hand, at this point of the year for what we need to accomplish in the back end of the year are much higher than what we had in previous year. All of those indications are leading to a potential strong Brazil and Latin America season. This is why we are looking at building inventory to face a demand, which could be at least what we're expecting potentially better.

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Yeah. Mike, herbicides is a key focus for us given when we get into the later part of the year, obviously, we're looking at inventory builds for the future North American season. Obviously, Brazil is well on the way by then, and then looking at Asia, and especially Europe. So, herbicide is a big focus, also fungicides from the Cheminova portfolio, also a focus for us. And then selective insecticides in certain parts of the world, Brazil being one and Asia being the second. So, it's across the board, but with more emphasis on herbicides.

[Michael J. Sison:]

Great. And a quick follow-up, on slide 9, you gave us $1.09 to $1.41 incremental EPS for 2018. Just to make sure that excludes potential synergy and a low growth rate for DuPont's business that you're buying. What does it assume for just kind of ag crop protection, recovery, growth for the industry?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

What we decided to do, if you look the line before last, which has 2018 incremental pre-tax earnings. We have set as a place order again, and we feel it's a conservative number, we agree we – anybody could challenge us on this number. We've put a $50 million to $80 million of earnings growth. If you think about it, it would be a $30 million, $40 million of synergies, a $30 million, $40 million of top line growth, which would mean minimum synergies and low-single digit growth rate in a fairly flattish market or a low-single digit growth market. So those are very conservative assumptions. We intend to refine that as soon as we have our hands on the business. So what you could expect from this $50 million to $80 million. The part which is cost synergies, we believe we'll have that sometime in the third quarter. We will know better this number. The part which is business growth, it will be more once we have our hands on the business toward the end of the year.

[Michael J. Sison:]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And at this time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. And we'll go to Dmitry Silversteyn with Longbow Research. Please go ahead.

[Dmitry Silversteyn:]

Good morning. Just wanted to sort of get back on the Ag business a little bit, but obviously when the first quarter guidance was provided, there was a talk of pull forward into the fourth quarter from the first quarter. But it sounds like you've also experienced a pull forward from the second into the first here. So, I guess, the explanation or the interpretation is that the second quarter is going to be a little bit weaker. Is all of this timing sort of transitory or is the market evolving as we go through this or. I'm just trying to understand kind of all of these pull forwards from quarter-to-quarter and whether or not they are just related to this season and this weather or whether this is something that we look forward to next year, we should be cognizant of?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

I think, those movements are very much North American movements in a market where there is a difficult situation from an inventory standpoint. And I think growers are making the decision to buy the product they absolutely need to buy. They tend to buy those earlier to secure the product, and buy then at the last minute the product which are not needed early. So, I would say, what we've seen depending upon the market situation, inventory and we tend to reason to think more in term of adds of years or in crop season, then we really tend to think in term of calendar quarters. And that's something we've seen more and more over the years. When the markets are very strong, then we tend to buy early. When the market become a bit more challenged, people buy when they have to buy and you see those kind of movements.

[Dmitry Silversteyn:]

Okay. So, I guess, does that mean that the pre-buy indicates that there is a little bit of a stronger expectation for the market?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

No. I think it's for pre-emergents, it's just timing of the crops and they want to make sure for the product, which are required early in the season, they have those on the shelf. But it doesn't mean it creates a lot of expectations that the business will be stronger in North America.

[Dmitry Silversteyn:]

Got it. And as a follow-up just on the lithium really quick, I mean obviously you're scrambling as quickly as you can to build out the lithium hydroxide capacity and covert as much of carbonates to it as possible. What happens to this market, as everybody is sort of trying to follow that playbook? What happens to the supply and pricing, and sort of the service in the butyllithium and some of these other derivatives that are not going into the sexy EV part of the business, but are still critical to the market segments where they do go? Is there a danger that those markets will get shorted or is that a good thing?

[Thomas Schneberger:]

Hi, Dmitry, it's Tom. Yeah, the market has been recovering from being short for probably going on 24 months now, starting to see a little bit more balance in the products that everybody can supply. The way that we're approaching this is to very specifically target applications that we want to serve and most of that is on long-term contracts. So, we're identifying the demand, locking up the demand and building the capacity to do that. And as we do that, as we ramp up our hydroxide production, these debottlenecks that are taking place in Argentina, it's not one big project, it's a lot of small projects. So, the 4,000 tons that Pierre spoke about earlier, we'll get more than half of that or at least half of that to more than half of that by the end of this year.

[Dmitry Silversteyn:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator:]

We'll go to Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Joel Jackson:]

Hi. Good morning. I just want to understand some of your commentary on lithium, as it seems like you do have a lot of opportunities on the go, whether expanding some carbonate, expanding hydroxide in different places, spinouts, versus a month or so ago when you talked about some of the options of spinning out the Lithium business, has your thought been that this could take a bit longer? Because you think you have more on the table, looking at the supply/demand for carbonate and hydroxide, looking at what you can do that maybe there is more things that you can do in this business before looking to spin it out. So, has your timing delayed a little bit out of some positivity in the business or maybe give a little color on that? Thanks.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

I think there is no fundamental change to the timing. We do not want to be in a situation, where we make a decision to spin this business, without most of the key projects being on their way with a very clear strategy. We are not going to wait, for example, to have the doubling of the carbonate expansion in Argentina finished to spin the business. But we want to make sure that we have total clarity when we – when we're going to be on a road show for this business to become a standalone company, we'll have a full story around capacity. So, what we believe at this stage is we should be able to make a decision, as we said before, toward the end of 2018 or early 2019, but there is no change to what we said before.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to the line of Brett Wong with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

[Brett W. S. Wong:]

Hey, guys. Thanks for fitting me in here at the end. On a regional basis, are you seeing any pressure on CP pricing given the ongoing lighter volumes and elevated inventories, again, in certain regions? And I get that that's going to be product specific. And then also, are you seeing any pressure on pricing in the channel? Thanks.

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Yeah. Brett, it's Mark. Let's quickly run around the world. In Europe, not a lot of pricing pressure. We're seeing improved margins in Europe mainly through our mix. We've gone through a lot of portfolio rationalization. So, things are looking reasonably good in Europe. In Asia, overall, pretty good, less channel inventory pressure with the exception of, I would say, India right now. Everywhere else is looking good. In Latin America, currency has been pretty stable. So, pricing movements have been limited. Hopefully, the currency stays stable as we go through the rest of the year. So, not so much there. Obviously, price – a significant price increases in Mexico given where the peso has been moving. And then, I would say, North America, yeah, there is pricing pressure in North America. We talked about how the market has inventory in the channel and growers are under pressure. So, I would say, around the world, it's pretty balanced with the exception of North America.

[Operator:]

Now, we will go to the line of Robert Koort with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Robert Andrew Koort:]

Thanks very much. Maybe question for Tom, just trying to understand better the competitive dynamic in the hydroxide battery markets. I guess, specifically, is there something different or unique about your own hydroxide versus the growing production in China from the Australian spodumene base production, is there a threat to your business there? Is there an opportunity for you? And as you change to an external lithium carbonate supply, does that complicate matters for you? Thanks.

[Thomas Schneberger:]

Yeah, Bob. Thanks for the question. Our product does perform differently than the competitive products. If you look at the applications we are targeting there is really two producers who have been capable over a number of years of serving that application and we are able to use multiple inputs of carbonate in order to produce the products we make. So they see a benefit on the production of the cathode material and we expect that to continue.

[Robert Andrew Koort:]

And Pierre, if I might, since those before me snuck in a second one. In Argentina, you're mentioning spinning the business. Is there a limitation and can you explain a limitation to a sale of the business there?

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

So, the only reason for which we want to spin the business versus a sale is purely tax. It is the fact that we have a very low tax base for our Lithium business, I think it's about a $100 million. So if you look at potentially the value of this business, looking at where the EBITDA could be in next couple of years, it would be a very significant tax bill. So, we believe the best way for us to return the value of this business to the shareholders is a spin. Now, shareholders after that could decide whether they want to keep or sell the stock, but we believe it's more responsible to spin and not to pay such a big tax bill.

[Robert Andrew Koort:]

Perfect. Thank you.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

We'll go to Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Rizzo:]

Hi. This is Dan Rizzo on for Laurence. You mentioned a couple times about pre-buying or just some sales shifting from the second to the first in North America. I was wondering, if a similar scenario could unfold in South America and Brazil in particular?

[Mark A. Douglas:]

No. I don't think so, I think the market in Brazil for us, especially as we said is a lot stronger. I think what you have to realize when we talk about this subject, in North America the difference between buying in March and buying in April is very dependent on conditions and of course that's Q1 to Q2. The same thing occurs in Brazil, September is a very large month, but so is October. So, you can have flow between the two months, which is a very short timeframe in the ag space, yet it falls in different quarters. So, I think you've got to be careful of how you look at this, but I fundamentally don't see any reason why we would see a shift from Q4 into Q3 in Brazil in particular.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

It is something and we'll have the same comment when we'll come to Q3, Q4 guidance, most likely for Latin America, we're going to give numbers, but we're going to make the same comment. There could be shift from Q4 to Q3. I think today, our level of confidence for Latin America and Brazil is the highest in a long time, but as Mark said, a Q4 to Q3 or Q3 to Q4 movement is still possible. What we believe is H2, H2 to H2, it will be a high teens growth, that's what we have in the forecast. How it will then flow between Q3 and Q4 is still to be defined.

[Daniel Rizzo:]

Okay. And then you – we've talked extensively about your big push into fungicides and just expanding the product portfolio. In the future, would that include maybe moving into biologicals or is that kind of too far outside the core business or just too different to consider via M&A or just organically growing into that field or putting R&D towards that?

[Mark A. Douglas:]

Laurence (sic) [Dan] (1

[Daniel Rizzo:]

Thanks very much.

[Operator:]

And our last question will come from Daniel Jester from Citi. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Jester:]

Hey, thanks for taking my question. So, just two quick ones on the DuPont transaction. The manufacturing assets you're acquiring with that. Do you have any updated thoughts about how you can optimize your supply chain. Is there a possibility to shift some of your total active ingredient production into these sites and save on cost that way? And secondly you definitely have been spending some or trying boost your working capital efficiency. So I am wondering how that program fits in as you acquire these DuPont assets? Thanks.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

It's a highly regulated industry, so over the long-term owning large assets like the one we have plus our network of processors would allow us to do, to think strategically about a subtraction in where we make product, but there is not much options you have in the very short-term because of product registration. And you know, re-registering a product could take anywhere from two years to five years, and depending upon, and the manufacturing location matters in the registration process. So in the long run, yes, in the very short term, if you talk about the next two years, there will not be a lot of changes in places where we manufacture a product.

[Daniel Jester:]

Thank you.

[Pierre R. Brondeau:]

The working capital, I think we're going to be – we're going to be pretty much on the same track as we are today, it's a very high focus. We don't believe that the acquisition we did from DuPont is going to fundamentally change the work we do. One good thing about working capital is the situation where we can rebuild. As you know we discussed DuPont retaining the receivable. So we're rebuilding that, so we're starting with a blank sheet of paper allowing us to do that in a very organized way, and maybe not falling in the traps we fell in a few years ago. So no fundamental change, maybe more flexibility for a very structured approach to it.

[Operator:]

And speakers, I'll turn it back to you for closing comments.

[Michael Wherley:]

Thank you. That's all we have for today. As always, I'm available following the call to address any questions you may have. Thank you and have a good day.

[Operator:]

That's all the time we have for today. This concludes the FMC Corporation's first quarter 2017 earnings release conference call. Thank you.