Archer Daniels sees ‘material weakness’ in internal control

In a regulatory filing, Archer Daniels said, “Archer-Daniels-Midland Company is unable to file its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 within the prescribed time period without unreasonable effort and expense. The company currently expects to file the Annual Report by March 15, 2024, within the extension period of fifteen calendar days permitted under Rule 12b-25 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. As previously disclosed, in response to the company’s receipt of a voluntary document request by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company is conducting an investigation of certain accounting practices and procedures with respect to the company’s Nutrition reporting segment, including as related to certain intersegment sales. Due to the investigation, the preparation of the company’s financial statements to be included in the Annual Report as well as finalization of the assessment of internal control over financial reporting, require additional time to complete. The company is working diligently to complete such processes. In connection with the investigation, at the time of this filing, the company anticipates correcting certain intersegment sales reported in the segment and geographic information footnote to the company’s consolidated financial statements that were not recorded at amounts approximating market. Because each such sale occurred between the company’s reporting segments, the company does not anticipate an impact to the company’s consolidated balance sheets, statements of earnings, comprehensive income (loss), or cash flows. In addition, the company anticipates reporting a material weakness in the company’s internal control over financial reporting related to its accounting practices and procedures for intersegment sales. The company is developing a plan to remediate this anticipated material weakness, to be described further in the Annual Report.”