CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Richard Garchitorena: Okay. And then just as a follow-up, your CapEx guide this year, $450 million to $500 million, is there anything in there for prep work for Waggaman. And how should we think about 2024 CapEx levels given that as well as the progress on the Donaldsonville to CF? Thank you.

Tony Will: Yes. So all of that is baked in there. The finishing up of the green ammonia plant this year as part of this year’s CapEx continuing progress and basically getting, if not to mechanical completion darn close to it on our dehydration compression project next year at Donaldsonville plus what we’re expecting to do at Waggaman in the way of turnaround and process improvement is all embedded in there, as well as some of the ongoing improvement things we’ve got on our end from an IT and a systems perspective. So including the integration of Waggaman into our systems and our network. So all of that is rolled into the number that Chris gave you. We are very consistently year in and year out in the range of $400 million — $450 million to $500 million and I think this is one area that, Ashraf, has brought great discipline to from an operations standpoint of being able to get world-class onstream factor and asset utilization without having to gold plate stuff, but we keep all the processes incredibly safe and high running and our people safe as well.

So I would say this is an area where we really excel.

Chris Bohn: Yes. Richard, if I could — this is Chris, if I could just add on to that. So Q3 is generally our historically been our higher maintenance and turnaround period and after that period, we actually reduced what the range was from $500 million to $550 million, down to $450 to $500 million. And we did that because once we get through this heavier turnaround period, have better line of sight on what the spending was for those particular turnarounds, but also what we can accomplish project-wise until the end of the year. I think as Tony was speaking about the Waggaman site. Because we don’t necessarily have that site yet, and we will may have it for 12 months, it’s pretty much looking at what will be built in into the 2024 CapEx number as we go forward.

Richard Garchitorena: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question will come from Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Joshua Spector: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. First, I wanted to ask near-term, Bert, we’ve seen some decline in urea prices over the last month despite kind of entering kind of the stronger North America season. I guess, one, what do you attribute that to? And two, what’s your view when you look over the coming months here?

Bert Frost: Yes. So urea has been on an interesting ride, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we entered Q3 at $2.85, $2.95 and then accelerated through the quarter based on some global issues being India’s demand and China’s restrictions to over $400. And then as since settled out and probably dropped back down into the — for NOLA 3.55 to 3.70 range today. And when you look across where the demand will come from, we still see significant demand out of India and from Brazil, South America, and then we’ll transition to the Northern Hemisphere in the New Year and a lot of demand to be fulfilled in North America and Europe. So demand is solid. We’ve seen on the supply side, more restrictions. The gas issues that we mentioned in Trinidad, in Europe affect urea and as well as the upgraded — other upgraded products and the continued restrictions out of China.

So the market we believe is tight and that supply-demand balance probably has moved more towards demand. We’re in an okay range. We expect pricing to improve as we go into Q1 and Q2 as well as demand to accelerate. We’re looking at planted acres for the 2024 crop below 2023, but not significantly so, more in the 90 million, 91 million acres and then solid wheat, but good performance out of South America for second crop. So demand is good globally. And pricing is like urea is, it’s volatile. Well, there’s the volatility with gas, but I think we’re in a good spot.