Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (NYSE:SQM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Gerardo Illanes: So, regarding the investments that we have and the financial of CapEx. The financial institution of the company will not be baited today. As you can see, December of this year last year, our total cash and cash equivalents was higher than the total financial interest-bearing debt. It means that the company is positive in terms of debt. That’s very unusual and we’re more than prepared for future projects. Of course, the most important way of financing the company is being very careful in the dividend policy so far, we don’t need to be very strong. To reduce the dividend policy as you may know, it has been 80% concerning the profits of 2022 and 80% dividend policy means that we will retain significant amount of money internally in the company.

If you can see that we have no debt, not only not that we have excess of cash plus the retention of the net income. We do not foresee any issue in order to finance our CapEx. Yes, and the other point regarding potential M&A, potential new projects, potential geology studies, we’re working very hard on it on daily basis. It’s not easy and the best project sometimes it’s the one that you don’t get into, you need to be very careful not to use — not to be very, to run after projects, we need to be clear that if we get into a new project or if we get into a new M&A, it will be good for the company, it will be good for then the return on assets. That’s why we need to be very careful, but we are working very hard. I cannot promise you that we will be surprised or not.

But I can promise you that we are working very hard in order to look alternatives where we can create money, we’ll create a return on our investment.

Cesar Perez-Novoa: Absolutely. Fair enough, Ricardo. Thank you.

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

Irina Axenova: Thank you everyone for joining our call today and we look forward to having our next call. Have a great afternoon everyone. Bye.

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