Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) Business Profile

What it does

Archer Daniels Midland Company, or ADM, buys crops, moves them around the world and processes them into products for food, animal feed, fuel and industrial uses. Founded in 1902, it has its headquarters at 77 West Wacker Drive. Juan R. Luciano is its chief executive.

ADM connects farmers and other crop suppliers with customers that need agricultural commodities or ingredients. Its network includes facilities that store, transport and process crops. Some commodities are sold with relatively little processing; others become ingredients such as vegetable oils, soybean meal, sweeteners, starches and flour. ADM also produces ethanol and biodiesel from agricultural feedstocks.

The company has three main businesses. Ag Services and Oilseeds sources and trades crops and processes oilseeds. Carbohydrate Solutions mills corn and wheat into ingredients and fuel. Nutrition makes ingredients and solutions for human food and supplements, livestock and pet food.

Customers include food and beverage producers, animal feed makers, renewable fuel producers and industrial businesses. ADM also sells some consumer-oriented nutrition products, including supplements, and makes contract and private-label pet foods and treats. Its operations extend beyond processing: a subsidiary provides commodity brokerage services, and another provides insurance coverage for ADM and participates in third-party reinsurance.

How it makes money

ADM earns money by sourcing, transporting, storing, trading and processing agricultural products, as well as selling specialty ingredients and related services. Its reported businesses have different relationships between crop prices and product prices.

Ag Services and Oilseeds buys and moves grains and oilseeds and crushes oilseeds such as soybeans and canola. Crushing separates the crop into oil and protein meal. The oil goes to food, energy and industrial customers or is processed further; the meal is primarily an ingredient in livestock and poultry feed. The business also provides transportation and structured trade finance services and holds investments in agribusiness entities.

Carbohydrate Solutions mills corn and wheat into sweeteners, starches, syrups, flour and other ingredients. It also makes ethanol for gasoline and produces animal-feed ingredients from milling by-products. Nutrition sells food and feed ingredients, including flavors, colors, proteins, probiotics and enzymes. It also makes animal feed and private-label pet products.

In Ag Services and Oilseeds and Carbohydrate Solutions, selling prices generally move with agricultural raw-material prices, which tend to affect revenue and product costs in roughly the same direction. In Nutrition, commodity price changes do not necessarily track product costs as closely, so revenue changes may correspond to margin changes. ADM serves ongoing food, feed and fuel needs, although its results vary with prices, processing margins and demand.

For the third quarter of 2026, ADM reported total segment operating profit of $1.4 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $1.77. It attributed the quarter’s results in part to favorable biofuel margins and elevated global energy prices.

Customers and how it sells

ADM serves businesses across food and beverages, animal feed, energy and industrial products. Its Nutrition customers include makers of food, supplements, livestock feed and pet products. In oilseeds, it sells vegetable oil to third parties, including renewable diesel manufacturers, while protein meal is used primarily in commercial livestock and poultry feed.

No material part of ADM’s business depends on a single customer or very few customers. Individual commodities nevertheless account for meaningful portions of sales: soybeans represented 17% of revenues, soybean meal 11%, and corn 13% in the year ended December 31, 2025.

ADM distributes commodities and processed products through a transportation network that includes owned or leased trucks, railcars, barges, towboats and ocean-going vessels. It ships to customers, co-manufacturers and distributors. Its grain sourcing, handling and transportation network also supports import, export and distribution for its own processing operations.

The company has consolidated subsidiaries in 75 countries. It sources raw materials across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Its operations are more heavily concentrated in the northern hemisphere, principally North America and Europe, than in the southern hemisphere.

Suppliers and costs

Agricultural commodities make up a significant majority of ADM’s raw materials. The company also buys fruits, vegetables and nuts for extracts used in flavors and colors. It sources from thousands of growers, grain elevators and wholesale merchants, primarily through short-term agreements or spot purchases, and is not dependent on a particular supplier.

Crop availability and prices can change with weather, planting decisions, government policies, global demand and production. ADM also competes for transportation services, other materials and workers. Its processing facilities generally operate at or near capacity overall, with individual facilities adjusted for margins and local supply and demand.

The company uses cash from operations and credit facilities to finance operations and capital spending. Agricultural commodity prices directly affect working-capital requirements: inventory generally peaks after the northern hemisphere fall harvest and is lower during its summer months. In addition to crop purchases, ADM incurs manufacturing, transportation, research and development, and selling and administrative costs. Research and development expense, net of government grant reimbursements, was $246 million for the year ended December 31, 2025.

Competitive position

ADM faces competition based principally on price, foreign exchange rates, quality, global supply and substitute products. Many of its businesses are commodity-based, and ADM focuses on unit costs and efficiency through technology, productivity improvements and evaluation of its assets.

Nutrition competes with ingredient suppliers, contract manufacturers, consumer goods companies, private-label brands and smaller specialists. ADM describes competitors by type rather than naming individual rivals. Its Nutrition business is vertically integrated, combining activities across the production and distribution of ingredients and solutions for humans and animals.

Our reading: ADM’s sourcing, processing and transportation network is a meaningful competitive resource because it connects crop purchases with customers and its own plants across regions. Its value is constrained by competition on price and by the availability of substitute products.

Our reading: Nutrition’s integrated operations, recipes and other intellectual property offer some differentiation, but their protection is limited by the range of companies selling similar products and services. ADM says Nutrition is not materially dependent on any individual trademark, brand, recipe or other intellectual property.

ADM also invests in research and development across nutrition, food security and sustainable processes. It develops products with customers and uses innovation centers across three continents.

Growth opportunities

ADM’s growth plans include investment in enhanced nutrition, biotics, biosolutions, precision fermentation and decarbonization. It also plans plant modernization, cost optimization and improvements to enterprise systems and processes. Its portfolio simplification work includes addressing capacity and demand challenges and evaluating closures and divestitures.

In natural colors, ADM is expanding its footprint and developing products to replace artificial colors. The company estimates the addressable U.S. market at roughly $1 billion in revenue and targets $80 to $100 million of annual operating profit uplift over time as customers launch products using its natural colors. These are company estimates and targets, not reported results.

ADM is also developing products through precision fermentation. It is moving toward commercial-scale production of an egg-white alternative for products including baked goods and protein bars, investing in animal-free meat-like proteins for pet food, and working with a technology partner on a whey alternative. ADM plans to use existing fermentation assets and its supply of dextrose as it develops the business.

The company has announced plans for a joint venture with CJ combining ADM’s Decatur, Illinois amino acid facility with select CJ assets. ADM has also announced plans to enter the voluntary carbon removal market through its Columbus, Nebraska corn processing complex. It is working through certification and verification for that offering.

Structural risks

• Commodity prices and crops: Weather, crop plantings, global demand, production and government policies can affect raw-material availability, prices and ADM’s results. Commodity price changes can also increase short-term working-capital funding needs.
• Trade and geopolitics: International conflict, trade policy and logistical disruptions can affect the movement of crops. ADM said it had to revalue some inventory in Ukraine because it could not ship it.
• Margins and policy: Industry processing capacity, competition and substitute products affect pricing. ADM said delays to Brazil’s biofuel policy changes had pressured South American crush margins, while liquid sweetener margins and volumes remained under pressure.
• Operations and regulation: Plant disruptions can increase costs and interrupt production. ADM also faces food safety, manufacturing, environmental and workplace regulations, as well as risks from upgrading information and operational technology.
• Financing and execution: ADM’s capital-intensive operations depend on access to external financing. It may also face delays or fail to realize the benefits of strategic priorities, including investments and portfolio changes.

Bottom line

Our reading

ADM combines a global crop sourcing and processing business with specialty nutrition ingredients. Our reading: its network links farmers, plants and customers across markets, but much of its earnings exposure remains tied to commodity processing margins, trade flows and policy. Nutrition and newer fermentation products offer different avenues for growth, while those investments and the company’s capital-intensive operations still require execution and funding.