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Earnings Calls: 
EI DuPont de Nemours Earnings Call, Second Quarter 2008
Author: Rozalina Destanova
123jump.com
Last Update: 5:30 AM ET July 26 2008

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Sales reached $8.84 billion, up 12% from the prior year''s $7.86 billion. The global sales distribution shows that 60% of sales were generated outside the U.S. Raw material, energy and transportation costs increased about $550 million or about 15%, which compares to 9% in the first quarter versus about 5% increase in all of 2007. Base tax rate was 22.7% versus 24.6% prior year quarter, generating 3 cents earnings per share benefit.


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James C. Borel: This is a real opportunity, because first of all, there are weed shifts and other things, Mother Nature at work and Optimum GAT gives us the ability to put a range of sulfonylurea herbicide products in combination with other things that may be useful for the farmers. We can make sure weare getting the right products on the right acre. It just opens up an important opportunity for us to make sure we are giving the farmer what they need when they need it.

Michael Judd (Greenwich Consultants): On the mark-to-market loss you said that you are much hedged for the rest of the year. Could you provide more detail on that?

Jeffrey L. Keefer: We have used in our seed business for many years hedging tools. They are primarily used to help us manage the price risk on the commodities we purchase. Normally the gains and losses on those are small but with the run up in the soybeans we had the negative $50 million that you saw. Going forward, to minimize that volatility we have put into place instruments that will minimize that negative earnings volatility.

Michael Judd (Greenwich Consultants): It appears that corn and soybean seed have come down sharply in the last couple of weeks or so. Could there be a potential benefits or just too early to tell?

Jeffrey L. Keefer: It is too early to tell. I can not speculate on that.

P. J. Juvekar (Citigroup): The cash conversion of earnings lagged, cash flow from operations was negative in the first half. Can you talk about that and did you finance any purchases for the farmers?

Jeffrey L. Keefer: Cash flow from operations was negative, that is primarily due to the increase in working capital which was primarily accounts receivable. You have seen the large increase in our sales and the success we had on pricing. The currency is a positive there too. I can assure you that our day sales outstanding and our inventory days supply are under control in line with where we would expect them to be. As we make those collections, we are seeing no high in terms of account receivable, because we do not collect the ag collections until the end of the year. We expect to be on target for our cash for the year.

P. J. Juvekar (Citigroup): What is your latest timeline on EPS impact from your bioplatform, your biofuels and biomaterials?

Carl J. Lukach: The first one P.J. that we mentioned today was late next year, the Omega-3 program. We expect to bring revenues to the income statement late next year. All of the other timelines that we outlined for you at the November bioday here remain the same on track. Significant income statement impact out about after 2010, out about 2012. That is for the fuels program and the materials program. Materials program, though are commercial today, with Sorona and it is in the capacity increase phase

Charles O. Holliday, Jr.: This partner with Danisco around the cellulosic ethanol is the speed about to get to market. I have no question we have the best team. We have got the right pieces of technology. We are moving rapidly towards the top power plant to work. We see nothing in the environment except great demand for the cellulosic technology flow-through from government and for consumer way. Our work with BP on biobutanol, I just could not be more pleased with the progress we are making. We are not in a position to update the numbers we gave you in March. We are seeing everything has fallen into place like we hoped in the market demand.

Steve Schuman (New Vernon Associates): You have mentioned that you are more of on a divestiture mode. When do you think the right time is to divest some of your ethylene cracker assets and related businesses?

Charles O. Holliday, Jr.: If we said we are in a divesture mode that was a misstatement. That is not where we are. We are on an acquisition mode. We have no currently planned divestitures. Unlike this portfolio we had a chance when we divested our fibers business, if there is anything that we did not see was good long term. We are happy with the portfolio. We will always be making small ups and downs. If we are not doing that every year, we will be not doing right thing to shareholders but if we like, dismiss the businesses.

Mark Gulley - Soleil (Gulley & Associates): With respect to biobutanol in Europe, recently there has been some pushback in Europe for perspective of the economics of that period. Do you see that affecting your joint venture with BP?

Charles O. Holliday, Jr.: I have been in Europe in the last three weeks and met with a series of government officials for multiple countries. We have a good fix on that situation. There is a lot of politics around this, a lot of stuff in press, but the government officials I have met with see the values and particularly like the biobutanol piece. My guess is there will be a lot of press back and forth until we have commercial products but we still remain encoured.

John Roberts (Buckingham Research): The majority of the cellulosic ethanol income was going to come mainly through royalties and small minority interest in projects. Do you think we need to have profitability improved materially in the existing biofuels industry for those companies who want either life insured technology or take even a small partner?

Charles O. Holliday, Jr.: There has been a lot of press particularly in the last 90 days, anti-ethanol via corn grain. We think that has been over done. Ethanol is the commodity. What we are shooting for is a lower cost position, absolute they can be achieved by the grain that is what we only described for you previously. Did we avoid that food versus fuel debate and we focus on a lower cost position, that is our goal. We have not seen anything to think that we can not get to that goal today. We have described before a logical step where we would take any of the grain ethanol of plants that are out there today and convert with cellulosic feedstock. We think it is a win-win-win position and we are getting a lot of encouragement from multiple governments including the United States.

John Roberts (Buckingham Research): Where do you think the capital for that investment will come from?

Charles O. Holliday, Jr.: If we have been successful as we could be and I am not predicting that today. We will go into these steps of rapid phase up. It just would not smart for anyone caught me to do it on capital and just our capacity to handle that. We must be operators of some plants because we got to keep reflecting the technology and bringing out. I think our step would be to license the technology as we described before exact details of how to do that. We are premature to get into it but we are not looking for the gigantic cash hole here from DuPont. We have got different rate multiple years to get cash back.
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