Juan R. Luciano
Chairman of the Board of Directors, President, and Chief Executive Officer at Archer-Daniels-Midland
Thank you, Megan. And thanks to all those joining us for the call today. This morning, ADM reported strong first quarter adjusted earnings per share of $2.09 with an adjusted segment operating profit of $1.7 billion and a trailing four quarter average adjusted ROIC of 14%. Our performance demonstrates once again the advantage of ADM's uniquely integrated value chain and broad portfolio, along with the team's ability to respond nimbly to opportunities aligned to the three enduring trends of food security, health and well-being, and sustainability. All of this was achieved in a fluid economic environment where ripple effects are being felt from both inflationary and recessionary pressures, shifts in global demand and trade activity, and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Our team continues to find ways to rise about these challenges and meet our customers' needs for consistency, quality, and innovation at every turn across our business units. We have ramped up Q1 with a strong balance sheet, healthy cash flows, and we are on track for our 2023 our long-term strategic growth plans, and we continue to pursue growth opportunities and increase shareholder returns in alignment with our disciplined capital allocation framework.
This quarter, we also announced several exciting milestones in our continued growth and innovation strategy, including the opening of the world's first probiotic and postbiotic production facility in Valencia, Spain, which increases our global production capacity by a factor of 5. Agreements with ADM ventures partner's bright faith and deliver needs to advance innovations in gut microbiome and cell-based meat respectively. And our definitive agreement with Tallgrass to pave the way for carbon capture from ADM's Columbus, Nebraska complex furthering our decarbonization agenda.
Beyond the financial highlights of the quarter, we are proud to be named one of FORTUNE's Most Admired Companies for the 15th year running. And to receive our 4th consecutive Ethisphere award as one of the World's Most Ethical Companies. It's an honor to be recognized externally. And it continues to demonstrate that ADM's culture and people are the engine behind our operational and financial success. As we look back on the quarter, I'd like to review it in the context of the 2023 framing we discussed in Q4's call. And provided brief -- a few brief updates.
Slide 4, please. In January, we reviewed several factors that underpinned our confident outlook for 2023. And these same factors will continue to shape our performance throughout the year. The supply-and-demand situation remains fundamentally solid. With some normalization of supply alongside shift in both the product's driving demand and the origin's provide and supply. Supply and transportation constraints in the Black Sea region, severe drought in Argentina, the record Brazilian crop. And the resurgence of demand in China post-lockdown, have allowed our team to take full advantage of our global footprint.
Growth-based food demand remains resilient across key geographies. And we did, we are seeing solid volumes and strong operating margins across vegetable oils, flavors, sweeteners, starches, and wheat milling. Demand for biodiesel and renewable green diesel is robust, driving continued strong growth -- crush margins.
The strong biofuels demand and continued expectation for growth, supports our investment in new crush capacity. Like the additional 150,000 bushels per day from our Spiritwood, North Dakota facility, scheduled to come online in time for the 2023 harvest. But recent Nutritions growth trajectory for the year remains on course with a double-digit increase in our Human Nutrition pipeline compared to this point in 2022. As noted, we expect this growth to be significantly weighted to the back half of the year as we manage through some destocking impact in beverage, lower margins in amino acids, and the broader demand fulfillment challenges, we discussed in the last quarter.
It's important to recognize that our team delivered strong Q1 results, despite constantly evolving macroeconomic conditions. ADM's ability to remain agile and apply the principles of productivity and innovation continues to position us well in a dynamic external environment. Let me take a moment to dig deeper into examples of how we're applying our productivity playbook across the organization and how decarbonization is helping us find path for both innovation and growth.
Slide 5, please. From a productivity perspective, we have continued to focus attention on automation within many of our key operations facilities. Automation not only accelerates the modernization of our manufacturing footprint, this helping us deliver significant savings at the enterprise level. Whether we are reducing chemicals usage, delivering yield improvements, or supporting operational reliability. Our automation program, now has a plan to scale cost improvements across our most critical operational assets over the next several years.
Eight of our plants are currently underway and we expect that most of these will complete their automation implementation by year end. And we are seeing operational and financial impacts immediately following implementation. Our most recent implementation, Cedar Rapids is already generating millions of dollars in efficiencies in just the first few months, confirming the double-digit returns we expect to see from this project.
As a whole, the impact on operating profit is significant. With a target run rate of approximately $200 million per year when implementations are complete, as more than 70 facilities over the next seven years. This is only one example of productivity measures we undertaking to ensure ADM maintains agility, given the levels of uncertainty in the external environment. Each of our businesses and functions is identifying opportunities to drive efficiency at the scale, while maintaining a focus on growth.
Our decarbonization journey continues to move at a rapid pace and it's allowing us to showcase innovation in action. Our advantaged position in alternative fuels production has prepared us for the demand cycle that continues to rise across biodiesel and renewable diesel. We continue to explore strategic options to convert ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel. The multi-billion dollar addressable opportunity represented by SAF alone highlights the criticality of access to low-carbon feedstocks at a scale exponentially higher than what it is available today. This is why we are prioritizing the decarbonization of our Decatur complex as the first critical step in unlocking significant value. Last year we announced one of the world's first ultra-low emissions power plant will be built adjacent to our Decatur processing complex. Supplying ADM with low emissions steam and electricity. This levered our world-class facility that has been successfully sequestering CO2 for more than a decade. ADM is a pioneer in carbon capture and sequestration and we are extending that expertise with a plan to triple the number of CCS wells in the Decatur area and sequester up to 7 million metric tons of CO2 per year. This positions ADM as a clear leader in the ability to supply customers with low-carbon feedstocks and accelerate the decarbonization of their own value chain. And we think this is just the beginning. I'll speak more about how we are defining that in next phase as we wrap up.
Now, I would like to turn the call over to Vikram to talk about our business performance. Vikram?
