Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (NYSE:SQM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ricardo Ramos: Hi, Isabella, Ricardo Ramos speaking. Yes, it is right that MOP prices being in a more stable environment, I think in the last quarter. If you consider the prices of last year was very high in the MOP. Now, we see during third quarter, and we do expect during fourth quarter to have similar price environment in the MOP that seems like we are reaching a stable price environment. That’s quite good in order to have something for sure. You never know fertilizer prices always being quite volatile, but the trend seems to be quite stable in the last, I don’t know, four months to five months. If you go to the Specialty Plant Nutrition, the good news is that starting the year, the demand was very, very affected and was very low, maybe because the prices were too high, coming from 2022 and some of the user and farming especially in Europe, was affected about that and the lack of energy in order to produce.

But nowadays, we foresee during the last quarter, and again, in the last two quarters, a positive environment in volumes. We are very positive about fourth quarter. Our first idea about fourth quarter is going to be a record. It means it would be very high in terms of volumes, and we do expect and we are very positive moving forward to the year 2024, in especially the plant nutrition, especially we are talking about potent [ph]. Pricing is always difficult, as I said before, with the MOP to say what is going to be the future price. But today, price is more stable than probably six months ago. We think that keeping pricing at today levels, maybe slightly lower because the volume increase in different areas is a reasonable assumption. But again, fertilizer pricing, it’s volatile.

and the fertilizer market being under a lot of pressures moving up and down in the last 2 years, and thus we need to be very careful, having long-term projections about pricing in the fertilizer. But we think that today, the environment is more positive in terms of volumes and probably more stable in terms of pricing.

Isabella Simonato: That’s clear. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Irina Axenova for any closing remarks.

Irina Axenova: Thank you for joining our call today and we look forward to having you in our next call. Goodbye.

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