Joel Jackson: Okay. I guess my question. Thank you.
Matt Preston: Thanks, Joel.
Operator: The next question comes from the line of Jason Ursaner of Bumbershoot Holdings. Your line is open.
Jason Ursaner: Hi, Matt. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice to see the solid start to the year. I’m just grateful to you for deciding to stay, although wish it was obviously under better circumstances and hoping for Bob to have a full recovery and be back soon. On the potash side, just — I guess, with the CapEx and IP30B sounding as if it’s kind of reaching a conclusion. You kind of mentioned seeing the progress we hope to see. It feels like kind of passed through the gauntlet with everything just qualitatively, I guess at this point, what would be kind of the biggest hurdles to getting there? Or is it just at this point, kind of slowly letting confidence build up and timing that things are all on the right track right now with the potash side.
Matt Preston: Yeah. I mean, you’re right, Jason. We’re certainly getting the IP30B well drilled. We’re just completing kind of surface commissioning today. So kind of through the bulk of that capital spend and obviously where we ran into issues with IP30A, so great to have that behind us. It’s obviously there’s variability in a lot of our evaporation seasons. We’ve seen that over the years. And we need to continue to control our costs and execute on the projects in front of us. We’ll see how the HB IP30B continues, as well as Moab Cavern 4, as well as the additional work we’ve done in Cavern 3, but I don’t want to give the impression that we can sit back and sort of rest on our laurels now. We continue to stay focused on the project execution and kind of this two year plan we’ve been on to get our production rates back to historical levels.
And so, yeah, good progress so far, but still lots of work to be done. Really get through this evaporation season, and hopefully we can give some better guidance towards the back half of the year and into the Spring of 2025.
Jason Ursaner: Okay. And then, I got a couple of questions on the, I guess, volume side of the production, just maybe on the cost side of production, if you could just remind us what you — assuming that it continues to make the progress, what you guys have been saying. And just, I guess at this point, with a lot of the heavier lifting behind you, is there increasing confidence that the cost side of things is kind of lining up with where you guys were hoping?
Matt Preston: Yeah, certainly as we see those production volumes materialize, we’ll see an improvement in our unit cost. Certainly had a great first quarter for potash, around $350 per ton. But that was probably a benefit a little bit for more sales out of our Utah facilities, which are at a lower per ton cost. So not sure we’ll be quite there in the Q2. But as we continue to see more production tons in the ponds, we still expect to see a pretty equivalent improvement in our per ton cost. So if we’re 10% to 15% improvement in production, 2024 versus 2023, we’ll see an equivalent improvement in our per ton cost as well.
Jason Ursaner: Okay. And then just, I guess, sitting here today, obviously hope Bob is back. But just, I guess from your perspective, maybe you could try to frame, I guess, where the company over the next year or so might be headed. Obviously, you have the cash on the balance sheet. You already spent a pretty good portion of this year’s CapEx. Sand and Lithium, both sound like they’re kind of coming together. And so I guess, where — in your mind, what’s the most important kind of things besides the execution to focus on of where the company should be heading?
Matt Preston: I mean, I think it’s just that — it’s the continued execution of the strategy. I mean, we’ve been talking about this for really the last two years now, getting our potash production back to the historic levels where it needs to be. That path has been set for a while, and it’s very clear what everyone needs to work on, from the capital projects we finished to the ones we’re continuing to wrap up here in Q2. The direction has been clear and it’s really unchanged going forward.
Jason Ursaner: Okay. Great. Appreciate the commentary. Thanks.
Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Matt Preston for any closing remarks.
Matt Preston: Thanks, everyone, for your interest and look forward to talking everyone again soon. Have a nice day.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.
