Nutrien Ltd. (NYSE:NTR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Lucas Beaumont: Good morning. This is Lucas Beaumont for Josh. So just focusing on potash deal. So could you just let us know, how much of your first quarter order book is locked in currently? And what price is it sort of locked in at the moment? And are you expecting any sequential move up in pricing from where it is now kind of baked into your guidance? Thanks.

Ken Seitz: Yes. Good morning. And I’ll just say that just echo what Mark shared about our fill program where in North America, we were 70% subscribed and feel good about our position here in the first quarter. Offshore Canpotex is well committed into the first quarter. We won’t comment on prices. We don’t comment on prices. But we’re guiding this year to 13.8 million to 14.6 million tons for the year. We do believe it’s a supply-constrained market so that we’re saying shipments of 63 million to 67 million tons again this year. And so that €“ depending on how the year unfolds and certainly depending on the timing of India and China contracts, again, we’re preserving capacity, sales capacity of 15 million tons. Again, depending on the timing of some of these settlements.

Operator: Your next question comes from Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Joel Jackson: Hi, good morning, everyone. I was interested in your comments on retail expecting similar margins in €˜23 as you did a couple of years ago, and it’s about $350 million contraction in retail earnings in 2023. So can you talk about €“ when I think about $350 million lower earnings in €˜23, how does that shake out for commodity prices versus volume versus other things when I guess, partially offset by some of the M&A you’ve already done? And then how do you get retail margins that are in line with the last couple of years in a lower commodity price environment where you’re not getting inventory gains?

Ken Seitz: Yes. Good morning, Joel. Thanks for that. Yes, so we have been growing our retail business, both organically and inorganically. And so that’s certainly reflected in our view of 2023. But as you say, we’re also expecting a bit of a reset as it relates to nutritionals as it relates to fertilizer and those fertilizer margins, but also as it relates to crop chemistry. But I’ll hand it over to Jeff Tarsi to provide more color.

Jeff Tarsi: Yes, Joel. So most of our rise up last year in retail was in €“ basically in the North American market. And as Pedro talked about in his commentary, we expect to reset on margins in our North American. So, almost all of our resettled come in our North American market. It will basically fall in two buckets, it will fall in the crop chemistry bucket and the fertilizer bucket. And basically, what we’re doing is we’re going back and anchoring ourselves to €˜21. And if I look at both of those two categories, like on a margin per ton basis for fertilizer, we’re going to be slightly above where we were in €˜21 for our projections for €˜23. And our crop chemistry gross margins are going to be basically in line with where we were in €˜21.

So obviously, as you talked about earlier, we caught some appreciation in both those two categories over €“ really over the last 18 months, and we don’t expect to see that same appreciation in €˜23. As Ken talked about, with things that we do, we’re constantly trying to grow our share by proprietary business. And last year, we had an exceptional proprietary year. Our revenue was up over $400 million. Our gross margins were up just under $175 million. And so €“ and new product launches contributed about $10 million of EBITDA. What I’m excited about when we look into €˜23 and again, the ability to expand our margins past historical is, we will be launching six new plant nutrition products in Australia. We’ll be launching six new crop protection products in the U.S. and seven new products in Brazil.

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