CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So just wondering if you see the situation changing pretty much you would expect, again, a very tight export market from China at this stage. Thank you.

Bert Frost: Good morning. Regarding the farmer income comment, what my comment was it’s the fourth best in about 10 years. So when you look at — as compared to last year, the year before, you’re referencing John Deere, some of the chemical or seed suppliers, if not it’s lower, but it’s still at $4.60, $4.70 corn for December corn pricing today, and what was hedgeable not just a few months ago at 5.10, 5.20, very attractive, again, based on just trend yield of 180 bushels an acre, which is what we’re targeting for 2024. But most high-state farmers are in the 200 to 250 bushels. So very profitable even with the drop in fertilizer prices, the drop in diesel prices. And so you have to look at the total cost structure for a farmer, whether that’s owned land or rented land, variable costs against fixed costs and putting that whole structure together, it’s still a good time to be a farmer.

That was the point. Regarding the exports from China, we’ve seen a different China about every other year. And our prepared remarks and communication about what we expect out of China is that the government restrictions are in place for urea and some phosphate products. They will continue through or into Q2 and our expectations for China or they will export, they will return to the export market. And being that in the past five years, it’s been between 2 million and 5 million tons we would say 3 million to 4 million tons of exports, sort of logical volume for 2024.

Tony Will: And then relative to blue ammonia premium, blue ammonia for us makes great economic sense even if there were no premium in the marketplace because of the 45Q tax credit, I think we’ve kind of gone through that math a little bit in the past, but we expect a net benefit from the Donaldsonville blue ammonia project in order of magnitude of roughly about $100 million net benefit to us per year. So just on the face of it, that’s a great investment for us. Now that said, we have had I would say, ever-increasing interest levels in blue ammonia from a variety of different constituents, including a number of our existing customers, but also some other folks that have reached out. And so based on a relatively small volume of decarbonized or blue ammonia that’s going to be available principally just from us beginning in 2025.

And the appetite in the marketplace, we absolutely believe that it’s going to be a commodity and scarce supply relative to the appetite for it. And so it will carry with it a premium in the marketplace just on in S&D, there’s more demand than there is supply on. We have not formalized exactly how we’re thinking about selling that in because we want to begin actually producing it, and that’s going to be dependent to some extent on the timing of our per ExxonMobil in this deal. But we feel very good about the likelihood of a reasonable premium that adds on to what’s a very attractive regulatory framework for Blue.

Bert Frost: Plus, I’ll add one more positive comment for the team, for the company and for what we are about as a company with the Do It Right culture, we have the highest onstream factor. We have the best safety statistics in the world. and we’re going to lead the world in this move to low-carbon ammonia because it’s the right thing to do and the government is incentivizing us and our shareholders want us to do this. And so there’s a lot of positive energy going forward with that and what we will bring to the market.

Aron Ceccarelli: Thank you very much.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions today. I would like to turn the call back over to Martin Jarosick for any closing remarks.

Martin Jarosick: Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you at upcoming conferences.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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