Juan R. Luciano
Chairman of the Board of Directors President and Chief Executive Officer at Archer-Daniels-Midland
Thank you, Michael. This morning, we reported first quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.90. Adjusted segment operating profit was $1.6 billion. Our trailing fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was about $5.3 billion, and our trailing fourth quarter average adjusted ROIC was 10.6%. What we saw in the first quarter was an extension and amplification of the factors that supported our growth in 2021. First was our team's great execution. Exceptional growth in Nutrition and effective risk management exemplified how we continued to serve our customers and provide nutrition around the globe amid volatile market conditions and an inflationary environment. Second was an environment of tight supply and demand. We operated in the first quarter in a constrained supply environment for crops, mostly driven by the smaller South American crop, and for other products driven by some continued supply chain and labor availability issues. And we continued to see solid global demand across most of our products and in most regions. While the pandemic is not over, and we're particularly monitoring the impact of rising cases and lockdowns in China. Much of the world continued to emerge. Pent-up demand remained solid, even in the face of higher prices. The great work our team did was in service to our customers, our company and our purpose. Our company has come together once again in the wake of the unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine. ADM has about 650 colleagues in Ukraine, and of course, our highest priority continues to be supporting and protecting them and their families as well as helping Ukrainian farmers to get as much of their crop production as possible into world markets. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the people of Ukraine. slide four, please. Food security is foundational to ADM's purpose and beliefs, and recent events have only magnified its importance.
From a global pandemic to the short crop in South America to the conflict in Ukraine, it has become clear that we cannot take an abundant and efficient supply of food for granted. Even beyond the current dislocations, this issue will remain one of critical importance over the next many years. As the global population grows, the need for Nutrition will continue to grow with it. At our Global Investor Day last December, we talked about how we expect demand to push global trade flows of corn, wheat, soybeans and soybean meal up 21% or 130 million tons in the next 10 years. Meeting that demand will not happen automatically. It will take dedication, expertise and agility as well as global scale and capabilities. An example of that is ADM's destination marketing network, which gives us a presence in more regions where demand is strong and growing as well as more direct connections to customers and the ability to offer the full end-to-end capabilities of our integrated value chain. We are seeing how important that is today as customers are coming to us knowing that they can rely on ADM to meet their specific needs in a supply-constrained environment. We are not immune to the impacts of global disruptions, including those in the Black Sea region, but our broad portfolio of nutrition products and our ability to efficiently move them around the world will allow us to manage through these dynamic market conditions and continue to help support the food needs of billions of people. Please turn to slide five. Sustainability is another one of the global trends so important to our company's and our planet's future. We remain focused on our strategy, which is aligned with fast-growing demand for an array of products that are environmentally friendly, including alternative projects. That industry continues to show impressive growth. Global sales for alternative meats and dairy products are expected to increase 14% annually, reaching a targeting $125 billion by 2030. When you look at the full range of products that alternative proteins could go into, from meat alternatives and meat extensions to emerging categories like ready meals and specialized nutrition, the opportunities are even greater. Our own growth in this area is faster than the industry's. The quality of our product, our integrated end-to-end value chain, our innovative product development and application capabilities and our global scale make us the partner of choice for our customers. In fact, we never had a stronger demand for our alternative protein products that we are seeing now, and we are confident in continued growth. That is why earlier this month, we announced a significant investment to nearly double extrusion capacity at our Decatur, Illinois specialty protein complex. We also announced the industry's first end-to-end alternative protein innovation center.
This, of course, follows up our last year's addition of leading European alternative protein provider, soy protein. Alternative proteins are just one of the many areas in which we are expanding our capabilities to meet growing customer demand for more environmentally responsible products. Our biosolutions team, for example, continued to expand its pipeline and advance the evolution of our Carbohydrate Solutions business with an impressive $55 million in revenue growth in the quarter. Please turn to slide six. We are advancing sustainability commitments in other parts of our business as well. Last year, we unveiled new goals to reduce Scope three emissions and eliminate deforestation from our supply chain. This is critical work. We do not make these kinds of commitments without an achievable plan to meet them, and once we move forward, we constantly challenge ourselves to do it faster. That is why last week, we announced that we've accelerated our deadline for a completely deforestation-free supply chain by five years from 2030 to 2025. We also recently committed to work with the science-based targets initiative, with the goal of obtaining their approval of ADM's climate target and our alignment with ambitious global goals to limit rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Across ADM, we are continuing to align our portfolio with the world's growing needs and with our own purpose, positioning us to serve our customers, our communities and our planet and power in our future. I'll discuss our business outlook at the end of our call. But in the meantime, I'd like to turn to Vikram to talk about our business. Vikram?
