Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Richardson: Appreciate the color. Thanks. If I could just put in one follow-up, I appreciate the comments off the top in terms of the CapEx outlook. One of the questions that we fielded on this is it’s clear that your €“ this CapEx outlook is a function of looking at the current environment or I think you used year-end 2022 environment for pricing going forward. So important to realize that you’re not obligated to spend this $4.4 billion in 2017. I guess, the one point of clarification is, is that a peak for CapEx based on the Project Q that you’re looking at, like this CapEx come down in 2028, 2029 based on that cadence of project spend? Thank you.

Kent Masters: Yeah. So yeah, I would say €“ I mean, you’re right. We’re not committed to it. So we will look, as things evolve and go, that’s our best view. We put a five-year plan out there. That’s our best view €“ the best view of what we’d be doing over five years. So €“ but any capital that we’ll be investing in 2027 will be for 2031, 2032 market. And it’s a pretty long way to be able to predict that from here. So it’s €“ we don’t want to go past that five-year forecast that we put out there. It could level off. I mean, it just depends on what the market looks like, and we’ll know a lot more in five years’ time than we do today. But any capital we’re spending in 2027 is that’s for 2032 or 2031, whatever the time frame is around that.

And then it’s important to note that, our CapEx program becomes more resource oriented. I mean, it will be €“ it’s been conversion in the near-term, because we’ve had the resource. It will be more balanced between conversion and resource as we get out into that time frame.

Stephen Richardson: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you, Stephen. We have our next question comes from Christopher Parkinson from Mizuho. Christopher, your line is now open.

Christopher Parkinson: Great. Thank you so much. Can you just give a little bit more incremental information on how we should be thinking about the ramps at both Kemerton and Qinzhou, and whether or not there’s any just very brief updated thought process on your additional capacity optionalities, especially in the United States through the balance of the decade? Thank you.

Kent Masters: Okay. So €“ and I guess, I mean, Qinzhou is operating, and it will ramp up. So there are make rights we have to do €“ we have to do there. So even we’re operating today, we’ll have to take it down to do those make rights to get additional volume, and there’s a potential to expand at Qinzhou as well, but that’s not a project that we’re executing at the moment. So that’s €“ we want to get up the speed and operating, but it’s operating today, and we’ll probably €“ it will ramp up over the next year, I think, to kind of the full capacity, acquisition capacity, which is around €“ we target at 25,000 tons. Kemerton is making product today, but we’re not selling in the product because we need to get qualification from our customers.