Okay. We're excited to kick off the afternoon with a discussion with Bungie. Since assuming their current roles in 2019, CEO Greg Heckman and CFO John Neppel have transformed Bungie's earnings potential through materially improved operational execution and expanded footprinting capabilities and accretive capital allocation. And Bungie's poised to demonstrate the power of its expanded network over the coming years, with Viteria integration progressing, an improving operating environment, and in-flight capital projects nearing completion. We're pleased to have CEO Greg Heckman and CFO John Neppel with us today to discuss Bungie's strategy and outlook. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. And so maybe where I wanted to start is looking back. You're right now approaching the one-year anniversary since Bungie's closing of the Viterra acquisition.

Can you remind us of the deal rationale? have there been any big surprises since bringing those two companies together and maybe how far away we are from seeing the true capabilities of the combined company so I'd say no big surprises so we're really thrilled about how things are going but yeah if you back up to the strategic rationale I think everything we've been doing since we arrived at Bungie was really focusing on ensuring that we had the capabilities to be the partner of choice for our customers and that's the farmers and the consumers of food, feed, and fuel. And everything that we were trying to do strategically to improve the capabilities of our global infrastructure to serve our customers lined up really well with Viterra's capabilities. And so when you think about we put those companies together, they were much more upstream on the origination, and it really folded in well with our processing. And so, you know, they also brought us some oil seed processing on soy and sun seed on the soft side that fit very well, but just couldn't be more pleased about how the assets fit together, how the teams have culturally really taken off hitting the ground running the progress that we've made against you know early on on cost synergies but more importantly on the commercial synergies so feel really good it's just kind of accelerated everything we wanted to do strategically not only from the assets but most importantly the people because they make all the difference in this industry so so now that you have this expanded

network can you talk about the capabilities that gives you obviously much bigger in argentina and Crush and some of the other things that you talked about, how does that enable you to flex and tap into pockets of opportunity kind of year-round?

Yeah, if you think about it, we now touch more farmers directly than anyone else on the globe. So we are in all the key producing markets with more capillarity and granularity than anyone else. But most importantly, we can now connect those farmers to the consumers of feed food and fuel because we're also in all of the key consuming markets with more capillarity and granularity than we've ever had. When you look at our crushing footprint, we're now the largest global oil seed crusher. On soy, we added a key asset. You talked about in Argentina, we added Viterra's Renova asset, which is the largest global crushing facility and the lowest cost crushing facility on the globe, and it was being run alone before, and it's now plugged into our global network, and it gave us that geographical balance that we were kind of lacking in in Argentina before and then on the Sunseed side got some great capabilities with their Argentine Sunseed crush which now offsets our European Sunseed crush and so we're there for those customers right through the the year-round cycle so very very excited about that capabilities that it brought us you had spent several quarters talking about you

lack of visibility, the demand environment was a little spotty, more hand-to-mouth, and we've gotten the RVO. How has the demand environment evolved over the last several weeks and months?

Yeah, well, the obvious thing is demand for veg oil has gone up dramatically. And I think a lot of our customers on the downstream side, the energy industry, they were waiting, right, for certainty. I mean, everybody was waiting for certainty. Even to some degree, the food industry was was holding off and and and what we've seen now is engagement on that side in particular related to rvo not only the energy customers engaging uh with us but the but the food industry as well now they kind of see that where things are headed um now a lot of oil stocks were built up as we anticipated the rvo i think everybody kind of knew it was coming but no one had conviction to really go you know price forward and really make commitments so the industry continued to crush and continued to store the oil, and now what we're seeing is demand, you know, likely here in the near term will outpace the production for a period

of time until we pull these stocks down, and then ultimately we'll find the right balance of supply and demand, but it definitely has provided that certainty everyone was waiting The RVO and biofuels policy in the U.S. has got so much focus, but obviously it's not just a US story in terms of growing biofuels demand can you discuss what you're seeing in some of the other parts of the world what opportunities these energy policies kind of bring to you guys in particular Brazil Indonesia how should we think about that sure we're definitely seeing I think a different posture globally as people think about fuel security as well and the demand is

kind of up and to the right so even in Europe we just saw what happened on red three changing some of how you coast treated that's going to drive more demand for rapeseed oil so that'll be good for for soft seed crush there in Europe if you look what's happening in in Brazil currently be 15 they're talking about going to be 16 they're doing some testing with the fuel fleet to see if how quickly they could do that move to that and of course that is all they've set their goal on the fuel the future to get to be 20 so they're they're on that path. And then you look at Malaysia, which hasn't been talked about as much as Indonesia, but they're trying, their goal is they're working to get to a B10 on palm oil blending. And then Indonesia is on their path. They've been the most aggressive about domestic demand, and they're on their path to B50. And then, you know, there are a number of projects. Of course, you know, we're partners in biofuels with not only Repsol, but Chevron. And then we continue to talk to a number of people. So there are projects being looked at all around the globe. And I think people just believe that that policy around biofuels is going to continue to be constructive. And that's great, very supportive for the oil leg and to be able to run our global footprint. So we like the trend up and to the right.

Okay. And maybe in that context, I mean, we've seen board crush margins, particularly in the U.S., have gotten much better. Can you maybe compare and contrast current crush fundamentals globally versus what we saw in 2022, 2023, when things were obviously last very strong?

Yeah, we're definitely seeing, if you look across Bungie's global footprint, average crush margins across soy, you know, better than last year, even though they're heavily inverted. That, of course, the big driver to that has been the U.S. And, you know, here in North America, around RVO policy, soft seeds as well, globally across our footprint, average crush margins better than a year ago. again, heavily inverted, but driven as well by North America and some of that soft seed crush in Argentina with good seed supply there. So, you know, environment's good. There still is a lot of uncertainty in the back half of the year. We've got to see, you know, crops develop, you know, here in the northern hemisphere. We've got to continue to see kind of how the Middle East conflict plays out that's definitely keeping you know some of people for from committing you know the farmer as well forward but especially uh some of the food uh and and feed consumers uh out farther on the curve and i think some of that uncertainty uh is shown there but you know that has the opportunity to kind of improve you know month at a time or quarter at a time as we go forward depending on the fundamentals yeah and i might just add andrew that you know versus 22 23 we're close on the crush margins themselves, but where we see a little bit of differences on the refining premium side isn't quite as robust today, and we didn't expect it to be.

You know, a lot of pre-treatment's been built. The energy companies are, you know, have taken some of that, the goal to take some of that margin in-house, but we also expected the margin, some of that margin potentially to move back into the crush, and I think we're seeing some of that. So we're really happy to crush, the crush margin's obviously where they are today. The refining premiums have actually been fairly resilient. We're not at that 22-23 level, but the demand for refined oil has still been good. The energy or the food companies demand has been good. So, you know, it's setting up pretty well.

You mentioned inverted curves in the back half of the year, some of the other uncertainties that you talked about. Which of those are maybe most material to the outlook, positively or negatively, depending on how they go? And, you know, I guess how do you navigate what seems to be a daily changing, evolving environment?

Yeah, my answer first is kind of how we navigate. I mean, I think one of the things that we've been most pleased about are the way that the teams are working together because the diversification we now have across geographies, across crops, across our capabilities to serve all customers is also allowing us the visibility into the physical price curves, the liquidity to be able to hedge ourselves and manage against the things we can control and then stress test and protect ourselves against possible outcomes on the things that we can't control. And that's really about mining the optionality out of this global network as we serve our customers. So I think that when we talk about commercial synergies and some of the upside going forward, a lot of that's in the execution. Those are things that we control. The things we don't control, of course, how the crops develop here in North America and then in South America, how long the conflict in the Middle East carries on, what that can mean to energy prices, which kind of not only find their way through fertilizer but into our manufacturing costs, into all the transportation costs, And then also, you know, from a nutrients and input cost, if that starts to change, it shifts in acreage. And what that does to the balance sheets, to pay attention to that. And then ultimately, you know, we're in a year that's got a higher percent of El Nino. And if you get a weather event and what that means to be based on, you know, whether the farmers have cut back nutrients and started to mine the soil somewhat with whatever shift in acreage and then whatever effect you could get from weather. So, you know, there's a lot that could happen to shift things either way. Pretty dynamic, but I'm glad to be sitting here with a very global footprint and a great team.

I guess I wanted to get your perspective on the South America farmer. There's a lot of, you know, dialogue about what's going on with fertilizer prices and the applications in the U.S. and acreage and those types of things. our understanding is that there's a lot that was pre-bought so maybe there's a little bit of insulation there but maybe the south american farmer doesn't have as much as of that because of the timing so what do you think maybe the potential implications are the health of the farmer in south america any perspective on what you're thinking around that yeah um we we see north america kind of as you said in the u.s most of of the nutrients and inputs were in place and And so we think ultimately it'll shake out that there was maybe a low single-digit percentage change to oilseeds, but not a big shift.

The key will be spring of 27. If this drags on, we want to really watch what's going to happen in the US and North America spring of 27. In South America, the Brazilian farmers are in pretty good shape. They've had a good run. It's been a good few years. They've continued to expand. If you look, continue to have record production in soybeans. They are, you know, they were buying fertilizer early, but they're not as covered as the U.S. was. As prices have moved up, now it will be important to see, you know, what's that behavior going to be, what's the crop mix going to be, and if they cut back, that will be something to watch on yields. So that will be key if this continues on, on how that shakes out in the fall. So we'll watch in that. It's a big flag. with some of the geopolitical unrest maybe some of the drought risk are you seeing more opportunities to to serve customers is that creating some opportunities there that maybe weren't before yeah you know i would say every sense that that we put this platform together we're just way more complete with our end customers and especially on the feed side where we now have the feed grains and the protein meals to be that complete supplier. So the conversations we're able to have not only with our farmer customers, with our consuming customers on feed, food, and fuel of the problems that we can solve, whether it's logistical, helping them hedge out on the price curve, they're very different conversations and very strategic. And, you know, I think that is one of the huge benefits, And I think that's some of the resilience that you've seen, you know, what we were able to do here in first quarter and how we're thinking about the balance of the year.

When I think about your earnings baseline, one of the areas, there's some areas that have been good guys. One of the areas that's been maybe a bad guy has been on the merchandising side. When I think about demand, China's been, you know, pretty volatile from a demand perspective.

Do you feel like China demand is structurally different than it was before? can that ever come back to kind of the levels that we've seen historically maybe there's just geographic shifts how do you think about China within the demand side look it's it's still you know absolutely one of the most important markets you know across all of the the grains and oil seeds we you know also operate in China and in crushing which is you know our team does a great job connecting that value chain from that from the farmer all the way through so I think we we run at higher capacity utilizations than some because the way we're organized the demands you know slowed some some of the profitability in the animal segment especially in pork has come off some and then of course long term we know they continue to work to be more self-sufficient in developing their own ag production and their own yields as they prioritize food security, but they're always going to have multiple origins. That's why they want the relationship with the U.S. and with South America for food security, to have the flexibility to need those markets at different times of the season.

So continue to be, I think, the most important customer. um if if the conflict in the middle east were to end question is is how does that change your fundamentals but i think ultimately what people are struggling to understand is how much is is fundamental and how much is you know product of some of these geopolitical from from affirming fundamental perspective so how do you think about that how what would maybe be the implications yeah i i think how we think about it these you know when these shocks happen they they generally there's a short term and if you look back to the ukraine conflict if there's a short term

you know shock which can be positive or negative but that but that's really the short term then it's structurally things get more complex and and you know the financial markets react first but then physically you've got to move the goods and you've got to get them where they're going so So for example, in the Middle East, we have not had an interruption of the supply chains, but we've had a disruption of the supply chain. So it's created complexity. It's created additional costs, different ports, moving things over land. But we're able to take care of the customers. What we're debating, should it end, what's kind of a short-term impact, a mid-term impact, and a longer-term impact? Short-term, you'll see people have been pulling their stocks down. So you'll see people replenish those stocks and rebuild pipelines, which have definitely gotten shorter. Then you'd argue you may see additional security stocks built. And that may not only be in the Middle East. Globally, I think people are less comfortable with what's the art of the possible. Their stress testing is a different answer today than it was two years ago or five years ago. So you may see additional security stocks built globally. And that may kind of start to change some of the S&Ds that what looks like, you know, heavier stocks to use, some of those stocks aren't available to the rest of the market. And so you've really got to think about, you know, what is the real balance? That ultimately means more volatility, more dislocation if we have a weather problem or some other government policy change or some other trade disruption. And that's what we're really built to help solve. And then as you're solving those physical things, that's generally when you get paid for managing that risk and kind of untangling that problem.

Okay, that's helpful. I feel like I always ask you about soybean meal and kind of surprisingly resilient demand. I know I do. I know I do. I'm going to ask you again. You know, there was just so much concern in the market about, like, hey, we've got all this crush capacity coming online. What are we going to do with the soybean meal? And here we are. I think soybean meal has been a really nice piece of the story, surprisingly positive piece of the story. Have you been surprised? Did the market just get it wrong? Maybe what's been driving that resilience?

Yeah, you know, I think if somebody goes back and looks, we always said the meal will find a home. The market will work, and people love to feed soybean meal. It is the most effective nutrient. You know, the price of lysine matters. The price of feed grains matters, and feed grains have been very well supplied, and they've been feeding very high rates of soy and corn. We also talked about the fact that Bungie, we were net short of marketing way more soybean meal than we produce before Viterra. We still continue to, and we were making investments in our handling facilities on the river, and the P&W and in the Gulf to have additional capabilities to be able to export soy meal to feed those customers. And part of that was we said that we believe the rest of the world was operating at lower inclusion rates than we were seeing the more developed and more sophisticated markets do. So we thought there was not only going to continue to be volume growth, which continues to tick away, whether it's just purely the number of people on the globe, but also wealth of the middle class, and they're eating more animal protein or animal protein which means more meal demand so I think that's continued to take away and then the higher inclusion rates as well and then we've kind of tipped the the whether GLP ones or or the the food pyramids now been kind of tipped over in the US I mean there's a seems to be a bit of a shift to protein from carbs and then you've got very high beef prices so people are eating more pork and more poultry which of course eat a lot more meal so you've got just it's no one factor but it's it's a number of factors

but it continues to you know continues to deliver if given the strength of of what we see on the curve would you expect a similar type of supply response at some point we see more crush capacity come online or are conditions different now than before where maybe that that's not the case well Well, you know, most of the crush in the U.S. has been built out.

I think maybe there's another 5% to come online or something. Our plant's going to come online later this year in just your hand. You know, I think some of the investors and those that built saw that, you know, if you've got a, you know, the financials are one way. If you've got a network to plug into, if you're standalone, it's a little bit, you know, can be more challenging at times. So I think that matters. is also the cost to build replacement costs now for about a 5,000 ton plant is about a billion dollars. So that's a different, you know, that's, that's a different calculation for the, for the investors. And, you know, you're not hedging these plants when you, when you spend that kind of money for three months, you know, or three years, these, and you can't hedge them for three years. I mean, these plants live for, you know, over three decades.

So, you know, the first thing that happens is the bottlenecking there could be some of the soy capacity be switched over to soft capacity as oil you know drives the leg you could see some of that shift and then you know eventually if the economics are there long enough and the risk is right there could be some capacity added but we don't think that'll be the first thing done okay what we've seen Andrew in particular with our experience is labor is really hard to get particularly you know you know talent the talented belts skill labor to electricians all the stuff we need to get done at the plants uh the construction trade really really tough to get resources are scarce because there's so much other building going on data centers and all that kind of thing um and as greg mentioned the cost i mean we we are feeling much better today that we're the tail end of our four large projects and at the beginning of them because it's it's it's been a been a challenge and that we only see it getting a little bit tougher here in the near term Okay.

We talked about some of the risks on the crop side that kind of, you know, may or may not be there. If you talk about how the platform is positioned to deal with periods of crop disruption in certain regions, I guess, you know, there's a lot of discussion about drought and things like that happening right now.

So I guess when we see those headlines, when we see estimates changing, how should we think about the potential implications for your for your business i i think that if even if you look at at q1 where merchandising was very challenging because you know the balance sheets continue corn and and wheat continue to be well supplied globally but you know a number of the assets in our system are flexible whether it's origination or storage or the ports, and we can then point those to support, you know, it was the oil seed soft and soy crush there in the first quarter to support where the margins are. So we're able to look to where is the need for our customers and where are the best margins, and that's where we put our global system to work. So, you know, if you end up with seeing South America grow less corn and grow more soy because of the fertilizer prices you know their ethanol productions continue to grow down there so they got more domestic demand so you've got less corn exports out of south america we'll move those assets over to soy more you know more soy supply will be good for our crushing and our soy exports but then that opens up the opportunity for more corn exports out of out of the u.s so we'll shift the global system uh to serve the customers and where the margins are to run it and that's the other thing you know you talked about Argentina in the past you know when Argentina would run harder it could be bad for the global crushing and we were underrepresented in Argentina now we're not only the biggest crusher in Argentina we're the lowest cost crusher in Argentina and it balances our global system so we now can benefit as Argentina continues to recover and decide where we run the crush harder whether that's in Argentina or whether that's in Europe so the optionality that exists in our global system not only helps us ensure that we serve our customers, that we ensure that we serve our stockholders.

I wanted to ask about the mid-cycle baseline that you guys recently updated at the Investor Day. At the time, you got a question and acknowledged that there was some remaining uncertainties. We didn't have an RVO. You were guiding into that. So, you know, had to navigate that. Now that we have finalized RVO details, is there anything you would have done differently with respect to the baseline than what you articulated at the Investor Day?

Yeah, not really. I think the purpose of our mid-cycle baseline was not to predict where crush margins were going in the next year or two. It was about looking at our historical results and saying, what do we think kind of in a mid-cycle environment? There's going to be better, there's going to be worse. Where do we think, on average, have we been over the long run? And we looked back at 22 and 23, great years. We looked at 25, not so good. We looked at 19 and 20, not so good. And so we ended up, and we looked globally as well. We looked at the U.S., Canada. We looked at South America. We looked at Europe. Ultimately, it came with some numbers. We said, okay, we'll define it as this, that we think has been kind of a historical mid-cycle. Now, we may do better than that, and that's fine, and we'll explain that, that we're performing above baseline or above mid-cycle, which in the case today, some of our margins are well above mid-cycle. And we'll just explain that. Now, in the long run, are we operating at a different level in the future? We'll see. And then there may be a time where it makes sense for us to update that. But ultimately, it was really about just putting a benchmark out there that we could lean to and point to and say, are we performing above or below that? So you'd look at it today and say $46 soy crush margin and a $76 soft seed margin look conservative. We do look at it globally, though. You know, we're not as good in Brazil and Argentina right now, and Europe's probably in line. So overall, we are performing a little bit above baseline on the crush side. Part of that's the reason why we took our forecast up $1.50 on the year after we closed Q1. But, you know, looking at it over the long run, we've got, we're underperforming in merchandising and, you know, grain merchandising and milling segment, which baseline, you know, we're below baseline there. So there's a lot of moving pieces, but all in all, we feel good about certainly where the crush margins are today versus what we modeled. But we'll point to that. We can explain, yeah, we're above baseline there. But, again, the point of the whole mid-cycle baseline was kind of set a benchmark. You know, not a prediction, not a forecast. It's a benchmark that we use to help explain where we are from a performance standpoint.

And, you know, I may add one thing. The thing we wanted people to really understand out of that conversation was we've got to give, you know, the guidance, you know, with the mid-cycle. But regardless, we believe that the global network that we have put together and the team running it, that, you know, it has more resiliency in the earnings. the flexibility, the capabilities, the optionality that exists, the reach that we have, and the scope and scale, it definitely means when the environment's above mid-cycle, you're going to see higher highs, right? And that's for sure. And, you know, if you look right now in the mix, you know, the merchandising is behind, the oil seed's picking it up. That diversification helps. But the other really key thing is that when things are tougher, you're going to see higher lows. And that's part of the resiliency and the diversification that we built.

Okay, that makes sense. When you have the bridge on the baseline, one of the pieces was the in-flight capital projects. You mentioned kind of nearing the end now. Obviously, the return assumptions within that as you assigned a certain amount of earnings upside from that. Should we assume or is the return profile better in this environment currently than maybe what is assumed in that bridge, just given kind of the strength of the margin environment and what you're seeing currently?

Yeah, I think of it this way. So we build these projects and we think about a long-term return profile, not any given current market environment. But we do feel pretty good about where they sit today versus what our long-term assumptions were. Clearly with Destrehan, which is our, in our joint venture with Chevron, we're going to bring that online probably at the end of Q3. Very good environment today for that, above what we would have assumed, certainly, when we modeled it. And so we'll have a head start on the returns there, and we'll get a quicker payback on that expansion. And certainly we're going to like those returns in the near term, obviously. The other projects we have are a little bit less dependent on current crush margins. or Morristown facilities, a SPC plant. Really more specialty into the food value add going into the food side of things. You know, plant protein-based, very specific applications for customers. It's going to be less price sensitive, less about the current crush margin. Same thing with our Destrehan export terminal. That's really going to be driven by elevation margins and the exports of corn and soybean meal and things like that, how much throughput and demand there's going to be for elevations. And then our big plant in Wesson in the Netherlands, this is a refining plant, is about specialty oils. So it's a little bit less dependent on just crush itself. It's more about the demand on the food side for the specialty oils that we provide. And we're going to be a low-cost producer there. And I think we feel very good, again, about the long-term return profile there. So less dependent on the absolute crush margin.

Can you remind us the timing? I know you mentioned one is the end of Q3. But can you remind us the timing of those projects coming on and kind of how we should think about the ramp? Yeah.

So Destrehan, as I said, kind of end of Q3, very similar time frame with our export terminal, right across, basically right across the levee from the crush plant. Those will be late Q3. Really, you know, you got a little bit of ramp-up time with the new plant because effectively what we've done is built a new plant next to the old plant. So, you know, you figure it's probably going to take three to six months to really get rolling. We're going to probably start with processing soybeans, even though ultimately that's about soft seed. It's going to be about canola and winter canola, mostly through that plant. But we'll be up and running and, I think, operating pretty well inside a year. um the the morristown plant we uh we we started running that plant early this year we had ribbon cutting last week um that's a little bit more of a timeline given you know food qualification with food customers uh the the products that that some of the products we're designing there are unique it takes a little bit more time to get through the system and commission and get the thing up and running so we really expect probably not to see a really strong run rate until you know back half of 27 is when we really think we'll start performing well. And then, of course, with Wesson in Netherlands, starting in Q1 of 27, it'll probably take anywhere from 6 to 12 months, probably closer to 12 months to really get rolling. So I think the big impact you'll see in 28 and beyond of all these together, all of them on various stages of ramp-up during that time.

Love to hear you talk about some of the synergies with Viterra. You obviously gave us an update, kind of laid out some timing at the investor day across the network and commercial synergies. You know, what have you done? What is still left to do? And when you think about upside, I remember there's a big bar with a little plus on it. Where's the upside opportunity? Should that come about?

Yeah, I can start on the cost side, Greg, and you want to talk about commercial. So on the cost side, we originally had targeted about $250 million. We've got $190 million of savings built into our forecast for 26. So we've – and as part of our increase that we put in investor day, another $0.50 a share, that's roughly taken us up another $100 million of cost synergies. So we moved that $250 to $350. And we're pushing really, really hard to bring that a year sooner. So we're going to have a vast majority of it done by the end of 28. We had originally given ourselves four years. We're backing that up as much as we can. And a big chunk of it, I think, we'll see significant progress in 27. And then we'll get the vast majority of the remainder in 28. But we feel – and we're not going to stop there. I mean, now we're looking at how we leverage our global service centers. We've got a couple of key global processing centers where we do a lot of our transactional activity. And we're building more capability there. And we're adding investing in technology as well to get more efficient. And I think so we'll – we look at 350 as really a stopping point. but then it becomes about continuous improvement for the overall company. And we're really, really focused on that. So I would just say we feel extremely good about the progress we've made in a pretty complicated deal, but the teams have done amazing work, and so we're pretty proud of it.

And, you know, when you think about the plus, that really comes in the commercial synergies, right? There's some of the things that you're able to do quickly. You know, we talked about, you know, we've got 400 vessels a day moving somewhere around the globe. you know that's already run by one team on one system one face to the market that you know that had a lot of leverage that's already been executed things we're able to do and negotiating across our our global network whether it's locally on trucks and rail and barge or on vessels you know some of those things you know become you know structural and some of them are just you know opportunities that are passed along through through the value chain between the farmer and the end consumer but then really it's you know the upside becomes on the commercial synergies on the opportunity and that's really flexing the system thinking about okay not only which assets are we going to run where do we you know where do we invest that we have continue to improve our cost footprint which assets do we not need do we have any holes where we need to bolt on acquisitions where do we de-bottleneck, and where do we, you know, get the combined system really fine-tuned and fit for purpose. And that, you just, you know, those are not, you know, those become structural. We get to keep them. You see them fall out kind of every quarter. And then depending on the environment, they can be, you know, smaller or larger. Got it.

Okay. On capital allocation, lever leverage ratio is below your target, but I know debt pay down is still near-term priority. How much debt are you looking to pay down? Kind of what's the timeline to which we should think about that playing out?

Yeah, I think when we started the year, we were elevated a bit on our leverage from what our long-term target is. But as we've gone through the year and our earnings outlook has improved, we actually think now we'll be relatively in line by the end of the year just from a stronger earnings perspective. So our focus on debt pay down may not necessarily need to be there. I think it's going to depend on how we look at 27 and 28, but I think right now we feel like we'll be in a pretty good position by the end of the year.

And so if maybe debt paydown doesn't need to be as much of a focus, what are the alternative uses? And in particular on buybacks, I know in the baseline you've talked about $700 million. When is that kind of applicable because you haven't committed to that for this year? So when does that start, and just broadly, the 50% of discretionary cash flow?

Yep, yep. So our plan for this year, right now, we've got $250 million yet to do related to the Viterra transaction. We plan to and expect to get that done this year, and we should get that done this year. We have still a significant amount of CapEx in our pipeline with the wrap-up of those four large projects and some other de-bottlenecking projects. So that's going to largely consume all of our free cash flow for the year. But as we head into 27, then we're going to start looking at the new capital allocation formula that we laid out, where we're going to look at 50% of our discretionary cash flow to go back to shareholders and dividends and share buybacks. That'll begin in 27. As we determine how much is available, it's going to be driven largely by how much cash we're generating. And I think, you know, the assumption is $700 million a year of available capital for share buybacks is based on our $13 run rate baseline that we're forecasting out in the future. If we get there sooner, we'll have more available. But we expect, beginning in 27, to start following that formula. Whether we get to $700 million a year, you know, if it takes us a couple of years to get there or whatever, it's still out there.

And it's, again, at $13 a share, that should be about $700 million a year. of share buybacks if we make less than that as we ramp up toward that 13 it'll be a little bit lower but we we that's absolutely going to be a key part of our go forward plan um i i appreciate it's still early days with vatera uh but you did mention you know if we need to look at the portfolio there's both on m a opportunities what have you is that an area where we could see um more capital put to work or maybe what would be the opportunities what would be interesting as you evaluate the portfolio today we we're always you know running that analysis on where is the

best return on that on that next dollar of capital john keeps us honest with his buyback formula on on our returns and so you know we want to protect our capabilities and continue to look at how crops are shifting, where customers are growing, and looking at those external factors to make sure that where we have those strong networks, that we protect those, whether that's through bolt-on, de-bottlenecking brownfields or even greenfields. But we'd always rather buy something than build something. It just goes quicker. You heard us talking about that. And then also, any of the gaps that we've got. We want to fill those in to be the partner of choice, to have the capabilities that we need to fulfill in what we expect to continue to be a pretty challenging world, whether it goes back towards globalization, where it actually gets easier because every origin is open to every destination, or we continue to have de-globalization, where it's more complex. We're going to see more dislocation. We're going to see more volatility. And so having those capabilities. And so that's where we're constantly thinking about where the capital is, where we improve our networks. And that's whether it's across soy crushing, soft seed crushing, you know, our merchant business with the strong feed grains, corn, you know, our global wheat franchise or our strong milling, wheat milling franchise in Brazil. So, and of course, you know, tropical oils and John talked about our plant protein business. So we're operating where we feel we have the right to win, where we have the cost structure and the capabilities, and we are very focused in that space.

You know, and while we have a long-term capital allocation strategy, obviously any given year it may not work exactly perfectly because when there's opportunity, sometimes you've got to jump on it, you know. And so there may be cases along the way where some of that opportunity to consolidate the industry by an asset that we've wanted, that may come about, and we may need to jump on that at that point. But over the long run, we're still going to maintain that long-term discipline. And we'll explain in the short run. We did this because of this reason, and we'll make it clear as to why we moved on something at any given time because we always say you've got to shoot them while they're flying.

Right. We only have about a minute left. Any final messages you want to leave the audience with?

You know, I'd just say it's been, you know, it's been great this last year bringing the teams at Vitara and Bungie together. And, you know, we've got a 208-year-old company here, but it feels like a newborn. We're having a lot of fun. There's a lot of energy in the company. We've never had more capabilities, you know, more talent to be able to execute against what is, you know, probably the most complicated global scenario that we've ever seen. And I'm going to quit saying it can't get more complicated because it keeps getting more complicated. But I feel really good about where we're at and how the team's performing. And thanks for having us.

We appreciate you being here. Thank you.