ADM’s total segment operating profit rose by $537 million to $1,382 million in the third quarter, its 3 November earnings release shows. Three business lines whose gains the release ties to biodiesel, biofuels and ethanol margins supplied $499 million of that rise.
By our arithmetic, that is 93% of the increase. The three lines are Crushing, Refined Products and Other, and Vantage Corn Processors. ADM also raised its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to about $5.50 to $5.80, from $5.15 to $5.60.
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The key insight: By our arithmetic, three ADM business lines whose gains the release ties to biofuel and ethanol margins, Crushing, Vantage Corn Processors, and Refined Products and Other, supplied $499 million, or 93%, of the $537 million rise in total segment operating profit.
ADM’s release puts net earnings at $821 million and adjusted net earnings at $858 million. Earnings per share were $1.70, against $0.22 a year earlier; adjusted EPS was $1.77, against $0.92. Revenues were $22,335 million, against $20,372 million.
By segment, Ag Services & Oilseeds earned $778 million of operating profit, against $379 million. Carbohydrate Solutions earned $470 million, against $336 million, and Nutrition $134 million, against $130 million. ADM cut its 2026 capital expenditure range to $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion, from $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion.
Wall St Engine’s post on X cited consensus estimates of $1.60 for adjusted EPS and $22.19 billion for revenue. It put Ag Services & Oilseeds and Nutrition below their cited estimates and Carbohydrate Solutions above. We did not check those estimates.
Juan Luciano, ADM’s chair and chief executive, said in the release: “These results were driven by a constructive biofuels environment combined with our extensive North American footprint, which gives us significant access to premium markets, and good execution by our team.”
ADM operating profit by business line, third quarter 2025 against third quarter 2026, from its earnings release. The 93% share is our arithmetic.Animated: ADM’s Crushing operating profit by quarter, Q3 2025 to Q3 2026, from its earnings releases. Values are as reported; the $298M change is our arithmetic.
Comments: ๐ธ Juan Luciano: โOur year-to-date performance and fourth quarter outlook support another increase to our full-year 2026 adjusted EPS guidance.โ
Wall St Engine posted a card of ADM’s third-quarter highlights at 13:03 UTC on 3 November, with consensus estimates for adjusted EPS, revenue and each segment’s operating profit. This piece takes every reported figure from ADM’s release; the estimates are the post’s.
The Segment Bridge
Crushing, where soybeans and other oilseeds are processed into meal and oil, earned $311 million, against $13 million, a rise of $298 million. The release says the business “performed well in a constructive North American biofuels margin environment.”
Vantage Corn Processors earned $146 million, against $43 million, a rise of $103 million, which the release attributes to “robust North American ethanol margins, including policy incentives”. Refined Products and Other earned $218 million, against $120 million, a rise of $98 million, largely from “favorable North American biodiesel margins”.
By our arithmetic, those three rises add up to $499 million, or 93% of the $537 million. The other lines added $38 million net: Starches and Sweeteners rose $31 million, Wilmar equity earnings $21 million and Animal Nutrition $7 million, while Human Nutrition fell $3 million and Ag Services $18 million.
The release also cites strong ethanol margins, including policy incentives, in the Starches and Sweeteners result. Ag Services operating profit was 9% lower, reflecting lower results in certain markets within ADM’s global agriculture supply chain, the release says.
Policy in the Numbers
The release names a US policy as a driver. It says the crush margin environment “continued to be driven by higher domestic demand resulting from the Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) policy finalized in March of this year, combined with higher global energy prices.”
Policy also cut the other way. The release says: “In South America, crush margins were pressured by the delay in Brazil’s biofuels policy changes.” It adds that Ag Services & Oilseeds included about $35 million of net positive mark-to-market and timing impacts, led by about $45 million in Refined Products and Other.
Crushing has swung widely over five quarters, according to ADM’s releases: $13 million in the third quarter of 2025, $66 million in the fourth, a loss of $79 million in the first quarter of 2026, $363 million in the second and $311 million in the third.
Adjusted EPS for the first nine months was $4.33, the release says. By our arithmetic, the new full-year range of $5.50 to $5.80 implies fourth-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.17 to $1.47. ADM’s release for the fourth quarter of 2025 gave adjusted EPS of $0.87.
The release says the updated outlook “reflects expected year-over-year operating profit improvement for the fourth quarter in all segments”. It also says external factors across the macroeconomic, geopolitical, policy and trade environments continue to be monitored.
Connecting the Coverage
Our related pieces on fuel, energy and agriculture:
As we read the release, ADM’s quarter turned on margins shaped partly by policy: it names the Renewable Volume Obligation finalized in March as a source of the domestic demand behind its crush margins.
As we read the segment tables, the gain was narrow: outside the three biofuel-tied lines, the other five lines added $38 million net, by our arithmetic.
As we read the guidance, the new range implies fourth-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.17 to $1.47 by our arithmetic, against $0.87 a year earlier, and the release ties the outlook to improvement in all segments.
ADM Q3 2026 earnings release
“The constructive margin environment continued to be driven by higher domestic demand resulting from the Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) policy finalized in March of this year, combined with higher global energy prices.”
Three Implications
FOR ADM Crushing earned $311 million in the quarter, against $13 million a year earlier and a $79 million loss in the first quarter of 2026.
FOR INVESTORS The release does not split the margin gains between the RVO policy and higher global energy prices.
FOR THE OUTLOOK ADM now guides 2026 adjusted EPS to about $5.50 to $5.80 and capital expenditure to $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion.
The framework states, of the governance layer: “No longer a passive layer; an active priced variable.”
As we read it, ADM’s release treats a policy in the same way: it names the RVO, finalized in March, as a driver of the margins in the lines that supplied 93% of its profit rise, by our arithmetic. The framework describes governance in the AI stack and does not discuss ADM or biofuels.
What Is Not Established
The release does not split the margin gains between the RVO policy and higher global energy prices, so how much of the $499 million each one drove is not known. Our 93% counts the full rise in each of the three lines, including mark-to-market and timing impacts.
The release we read does not mention artificial intelligence or data centres. The 10-Q for the quarter was not on EDGAR when we checked, and this piece does not draw on the webcast held at 7:30 a.m. Central time. The estimates are those cited by Wall St Engine, not ours.
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ADM’s third-quarter segment operating profit rose $537 million to $1,382 million, and three lines whose gains the release ties to biofuel and ethanol margins supplied 93% of the rise, by our arithmetic. ADM raised its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to about $5.50 to $5.80, which implies $1.17 to $1.47 for the fourth quarter.
A note on sourcing. This piece is based on ADM’s earnings release for the quarter to 30 September 2026 (8-K Exhibit 99.1), its three earlier quarterly releases, and consensus estimates cited in a post on X by Wall St Engine. The segment bridge, shares and implied fourth-quarter range labelled as ours are our arithmetic. We did not contact ADM.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
