Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Dave Anderson: Sure. Yeah. So €“ good morning, by the way. And if you think about the high end of the guidance versus the midpoint of the guidance clearly more corn acres in the US would be a positive favorable cost realization of price would be a positive. And then we’re also looking at some upside potential in terms of Brazil. To your point on the bottom end, it really still is very much a focus on our part on currency impacts and also just the dynamics in terms of the rate of inflation, which continues to be somewhat dynamic. We’re seeing positive early indications on that, but that continues to be something, we’re very, very focused on. So you can think of that and then of course in this business there’s always Dave as you know, weather impacts that we would consider.

Chuck mentioned, Symborg and Stoller. Our expectation is run rate for 2022 on those businesses in terms of EBITDA collectively is in the range of $120 million. So depending upon the time of the close and Chuck you may want to comment a little bit about that you could think of something like two-thirds of that coming through and actually benefiting us. And that reflects the fact as you know Stoller with being Latin America focused that would be towards the end of the year. Symborg really Europe some of that performance in earnings we won’t really capture in 2023. But in 2024 in terms of run rate, we’re going to see some very attractive contribution from both of those businesses, which will be very additive both obviously revenue added EBITDA and EBITDA margin additive for the company.

Chuck, do you want to talk a little bit about timing?

Chuck Magro: Yes. David, so if you recall in the prepared remarks, we mentioned closing the deal in the first half. We’ve got a bit more of an update, we’ve seen some of the regulatory filings come in. So, what we can say right now is that, we’ve received all the pre-closing regulatory approvals that are required for Symborg. So that’s very good news and we expect that to be in a similar position with the Stoller transaction very soon. So, now we’re thinking that we’ll be able to close both of these acquisitions in Q1. So, a little earlier than we thought. And of course good news as Dave indicated, these are going to be good earnings contributions and will be accretive to EBITDA and certainly even accretive to margins. And as we look at it, we’re pretty excited that this is a biologicals platform now that we’ll be able to continue to grow.

So we’ve got high aspirations for this part of our portfolio and it looks like we’ll be able to close both of these transactions in Q1.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question will come from Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners.

Cory Murphy: Good morning. This is Cory on for Kevin. And coming up with the 2023 free cash flow range of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion, what are your assumptions for working capital in 2023?

Dave Anderson: Yes. Essentially what we’ve assumed particularly very importantly, a good question around inventory is our inventory levels in terms of inventory to revenue or inventory to sales be basically constant. So in other words that would end up than being — inventory would be a contribution. The change on the change would be a contribution to cash in 2023. Two of the key items beyond working capital they’re very important and somewhat embedded in my prepared remarks earlier. One was the expectation for higher interest expense. Obviously, both amount of debt, but also the rate on that debt in 2023. That will flow through as a cash use for incrementally ’23 compared to ’22. And then the other one is higher cash taxes.

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