Mark Thompson: Thanks, Ken. Adam. So look, I think maybe just again to start at the top, as I mentioned earlier in the call, we’d see that first half, second half split being relatively balanced and even this year. And so again, on the first half, see a very strong fill program in Q1 and continuing to see good demand in Q2, but we see that being a relatively normal half picture, assuming that weather cooperates. I think if you step back and you look at kind of the total picture in terms of offshore shipments for us and domestic, I think a 35% domestic, 65% offshore is a good way to think about the business for the full year. And there’s nothing that we’ve seen that would change our expectations around that. If you zoom in on a couple of markets in terms of how we’ve started the year, just to get to your question on geographic mix, we saw very strong granular demand to start the year.
And so Brazil has been a very strong product. And as we just talked about, North America has been strong as well. And so when you’re looking at those end market shipments and the proportion of offshore shipments, certainly granular markets have started off on a stronger foot. I would say in Southeast Asia that shipments are up to start the year over last year, which is very important, because we see that as being the single largest contributor by market to the growth in global demand this year. And I think as we move through the year, our expectation is that as we see even one of the international contracts get settled, and we expect that India would be first. We’ll see further momentum in demand Southeast Asia, which should provide firming and standard grade demand and potentially some firming and price stability in those markets moving into the latter part of the year.
I think just to finish off on North America and your question on inventories, I think you’ve heard Jeff talked earlier in the call about the position that Nutrien Ag Solutions is taking. And I’d say that’s very consistent with the rest of our customers. Demand has been very healthy for potash in North America this spring for the reasons that we talked about. But our expectation is that the channel is going to attempt to end the season very empty or as empty as they can. And so again, we think that’s very healthy and normal. That’s a return to normal behavior in the buying channel. And so we think, again, that would set us up for second half demand in North America that would once again be healthy, given all the factors that we’ve talked about.
So I think you step back from that, in the North American market, we’d actually expect a market size in North America, quite similar to what we saw last year. So all of those factors, again, point us to the fact that the market is playing out largely as we had expected so far, and we’re encouraged by the stability we’ve seen.
Operator: Your next question is from the line of Steve Byrne from Bank of America.
Stephen Byrne: I have a couple for Jeff Tarsi. Last fall, I believe your business had a significant amount of sampling and nutrient testing. And my question for you is, with a strong fourth quarter and first quarter application , would you assess nutrient levels in all of the regions where you have a retail business? Is it back to more normal fertility levels? Or do you think there’s more to go here after a couple of years of below normal applications? And then just secondly, if you would comment on how you would rank the levers that you can pull to drive the EBITDA growth in retail? Is it more U.S. bolt-ons? Or is it more on your proprietary side of crop chems and seed and biologicals?
Jeffrey Tarsi: Thanks, Steve, and good morning. And from your question pertaining to the sampling. And I think I’ve said this before, for many, many years, we always tried to figure what percent was an art and what percent was a science. And today, I’d say that 90% of our applications are a science based off of the soil sample, and we did have extensive sampling last fall, and we had — good early break earlier in the year, we continue to see very healthy sampling coming in, in the first quarter as well. And so I do think that we’re getting back to much more normal buying patterns, and I think you heard that mentioned a little bit before by Mark, I see that from our grower perspective as well. I think that we continue to pull off really high crop yields any time we’re pulling off high crop yields, then we’re going to be replenishing that soil with the NP&K.
And so I think we probably are — we’ll get much closer to normal than we were 2 years prior when higher prices scared some growers off. Again, I said a little bit earlier this morning, I think the prices that we sit at today are attractive to growers. And I would expect with — somewhere in line with what USDA is forecasting for crop yields this year, I would expect again for a very healthy application season as well as it relates to North America and Brazil from that standpoint as well. When you talk about the levers in retail, I think we have several levers in retail. I know — what sits closest to my heart is always organic growth because that’s, to me, that’s one of the easiest things we can achieve. And so trying to increase customer share of wallet we still — we’ve worked hard to grow our seed portfolio, and we’re still in that process of growing that business.
And so I still think we have opportunity there. Obviously, we have ample opportunity across our Loveland products line. We’re very fortunate to have that platform, then our retail organization, we think it creates significant opportunities for us. If I look at how we’ve started the quarter this year around Loveland products. Our margins are up across all ships, about just under 8% globally and over 14% from a U.S. perspective. Our segment continue to grow at a double-digit pace and we’re really excited about what that ship provides for us. And we’re seeing our crop protection margins come in a lot stronger as well. And so I think what you’ll see, and we’ll share more of this at Investor Day as well, is some of our plans to grow that of our proprietary business in international markets where we don’t have a retail presence, and that excites me a lot.
Ken mentioned network rationalization, and we continue to strive to rationalize our network with some of the work we do around our [indiscernible] project where we’re taking batches and building and closing the [indiscernible] . We think that brings a lot of efficiency to our business. And then we have — we’re still going to very opportunistically look at tuck-in acquisitions. Those have worked really well for us, particularly in North America and Australia, and we’ll continue to look at those opportunities. And then the last thing I’m going to mention, and this is always at the top of our [indiscernible], from an expense standpoint. I hope I touched on what you asked there, Steve.
