Hello, and welcome to the Fertiglobe Q3 2023 results conference call. My name is Alex, I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to remove your question, you may press star two. I'll now hand it over to your host, Rita Guindy, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining Fertiglobe's Q3 2023 results conference call. With me today are Ahmed El-Hoshy, our Chief Executive Officer, Haroon Rahmathulla, our Chief Operating Officer, and Andrew Tait, our Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will review Fertiglobe's key operational events and financial highlights for the quarter, followed by a discussion of our outlook. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session at the end of the call. The quarterly results report is available on our investor relations website, and I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements made on this call involves risks, and the actual results could differ materially from those statements. With this, I will now hand over to Ahmed El-Hoshy, CEO of Fertiglobe.
Thank you, Rita, and thank you all for joining Fertiglobe's Q3 2023 results conference call. To start, I'd like to reaffirm our strong commitment to safety, which remains our top priority, and report our 12-month rolling reportable incident rate at 0.13 incidents per 200,000 man-hours as of the end of Q3 or September 2023. Although we are pleased that this is well below the industry average, we're not stopping here and will continue to drive and strive towards a culture of zero injuries with a strong focus on operational as well as process safety. Now moving on to the Q3 2023 financial results. Fertiglobe's revenues and Adjusted EBITDA decreased 60% and 67% year-over-year, respectively, to $525 million for revenues and $199 million for Adjusted EBITDA.
Our year-on-year performance during the quarter was impacted by a mix of, one, lower selling prices for our products compared to elevated prices last year, mainly as a function of natural gas price resets from their record 2022 levels. And two, lower overall sales volumes compared to Q3 of last year, driven by lower third-party traded volumes. I'd like to, however, take this opportunity to note and highlight that Fertiglobe's own produced sales volumes were actually up 8% year-over-year during this quarter, driven by a 10% increase in own-produced urea sales volumes, on higher production and some inventory sales. And I'd like to commend the Fertiglobe team for this performance and ongoing work on the manufacturing improvement journey. That takes us to the recent market dynamics.
We're starting to see signs of recovery in our nitrogen end markets, following the extensive market headwinds that we experienced through most of the first half of this year, which we discussed on prior calls. Healthier pricing, pricing is signaling the return of demand in a tightening supply environment and a shift away from the demand deferrals and new capacity concentration that marked the latter part of 2022 and the early parts of 2023. To put this in context, since reaching trough levels in June of this year and early July, ammonia and urea prices are now up 150% and 35%, respectively. As is expected during the quieter summer months, there is often a lag of several weeks and up to a couple of months between average realized pricing and moves in benchmark indices.
The effect this year was exacerbated on account of a strong order book that we had at the beginning of this quarter, particularly on urea. Consequently, Q3 did not fully benefit from the recent benchmark price increases. However, we expect these gains to become apparent in Q4, underpinned by a strong order book for our products through year-end. We also remain constructive on the nitrogen price outlook in the medium to longer term, supported by limited incremental supply additions over the next several years, coupled with healthy farm economics, incentivizing nitrogen fertilizer applications, as well as elevated marginal production costs in Europe. But we'll go into more detail on that shortly.
In terms of the sustainability-focused initiatives, we're excited to announce that Fertiglobe, alongside ADNOC, has started the pilot deployment of the world's first modular CycloneCC carbon capture unit at our Fertil ammonia and urea plant in the UAE, with the potential for broader deployment in larger scale at Fertil, as well as across our operations, if successful. Looking ahead, we're committed to leveraging our state-of-the-art ammonia facilities and global distribution infrastructure to expand our low-carbon ammonia capacity as part of our commitment to reducing the carbon footprint of our operations and meeting the exponentially increasing demand for low-carbon hydrogen in the form of ammonia.
On another note, I'm pleased to announce the board's approval of the H1 2023 dividend of $275 million, which is above our initial guidance of at least $250 million, implying one of the highest dividend yields in the sector and the market. This was supported by the positive market backdrop and outlook, as well as our solid balance sheet and sound cash flow management, which continues to balance dividend payments and selective growth spending on value-accretive projects and initiatives. The proactive management initiatives rolled out by Fertiglobe's management with the aim to bolster free cash flow generation across cycles, has been progressing well and has continued to bear fruit.
Advancements have been made on key focus areas of cost optimization program, including operating model transformation through launching the setup of a shared service center in Egypt, advancing our logistical capabilities and strategy, as well as CapEx and OpEx optimization. Also, taking advantage of the continually weakening Egyptian currency versus the U.S. dollar. We're also starting to see positive results from our manufacturing improvement plan and are on track to deliver operational and cost efficiencies by 2025. We're pleased to announce that Fertiglobe has also come to an agreement on a new $500 million term loan facility with a group of core relationship banks, which will be used to refinance short-term borrowings, further improving Fertiglobe's maturity profile and liquidity, in line with the company's commitment to an investment-grade capital structure.
Our team has successfully achieved tighter pricing and improved terms, reflecting the strong credit standing of the company despite the macro backdrop, with Fertiglobe's investment-grade credit rating, including the stable outlook, recently reaffirmed. Finally, I'd like to highlight that the unwavering commitment of the Fertiglobe team to uphold the highest safety, performance, and excellence standards continues to be a pivotal driver of our success, and I want to express my profound gratitude for their unwavering dedication and support. I'd like to now briefly discuss the outlook for nitrogen, fertilizer, and ammonia markets. As highlighted earlier, Q3 saw a turning point in nitrogen prices and demand from a multi-year trough in the cycle amidst rapidly tightening markets.
The 2022-2023 fertilizer application season concluded with record low inventory levels in North America and Europe, and trough pricing reflecting the market dynamics in the first half of the year. Encouragingly, as I've said, we've seen a big increase in both urea and ammonia prices since. We believe prices are returning to more normalize, normalized levels, supported by robust supply and demand with dynamics and healthy ag fundamentals over the medium to long term, due to the following factors. Demand for fertilizers recovered across regions and products during the quarter, notwithstanding the usual summer lull, as farmers benefited from low prices and strong farm economics. This is further evidenced by a strong order book sitting where we stand today through year-end, and ongoing low inventory levels in several regions, including North America.
Chinese exports also remain constrained, and we're seeing positive dynamics for some of the main importing regions. We saw record sales in India in Q3 in terms of the overall Indian market and tender activity stepping up during the recent months. India saw 3.4 million tons of imports from January to September, with a further 1.7 million awarded in the most recent tender, which will deliver through December twentieth of this year. We expect further tenders as India's demand profile remains robust, with around 2 million additional tons needed between now and March 2024. Brazilian urea arrivals have been lagging for the greater part of the year, and by as much as, sometimes as much as 1 million tons.
Some of this gap closed during Q3, but there's still a deficit versus last year's level, a shortfall that will need to be made up in peak months of demand, which is November to February. No major large-scale greenfield urea supply additions are expected in the remainder of 2023 and 2024, with limited supply only between 2025 and 2027, generating a global supply-demand gap of 4 million tons. This is a significant reversal from prior periods where there was an overall surplus. Furthermore, the extreme heat this summer resulted in curtailments in various locations as gas usage was prioritized for energy consumption, where cooling needs were exacerbated due to hot weather and led to gas being redirected away from industrial and in particular, ammonia production.
There have been more recent curtailments in Egypt, reflecting the very recent geopolitical events since early October, a situation we continue to monitor closely. That said, since October seventh, we experienced minimal disruption with less than 2,000 tons of ammonia lost in production, which is well below 1% of our production capacity at our two facilities in Egypt, with all plants now running at close to normal rates. A rebound in industrial demand, when it materializes, will also be incremental to the recovery we're seeing in agricultural end markets. While overall, industrial demand remains soft and currently below historical levels, there have been pockets of optimism. For example, a substantial increase of ammonia imports into China, albeit more of a shift to source from overseas supply rather than from domestic producers. Nonetheless, this has been positive for ammonia imports in the East of the Suez side.
In the medium term, there is significant potential incremental ammonia demand for new energy applications, including new uses in power generation and marine fuels. For power, the Japanese and Korean markets alone, where co-firing regulations are coming into effect, could generate incremental ammonia demand of up to 9 million tons by 2030. We also expect to see an increasingly more strong demand for ammonia as a marine fuel materialize towards the second half of this decade, with over 225 vessels on order or operational now that are ammonia-ready, translating into meaningful demand in the next few years of around 6.5 million tons for marine bunkering through the course of this decade, which is a big increase from today of 0.
Storage facilities in Algeria, in Egypt, at the Suez Canal and in Abu Dhabi, we are strategically positioned in excellent locations to leverage this emerging demand as we work to decarbonize our existing footprint. Finally, cost curve economics have started to put more and more pressure on producers once again. European gas forwards until 2025 are implying an ammonia cash cost support level, excluding CO2, of $605 a ton, and when you include CO2's full impact, $770 a ton. This could result in temporary or further permanent closures of European marginal production if pricing remains below cost for a sustained period. As a reminder, Fertiglobe's operations continue to enjoy their first quartile position on the cost curve and distribution economics. Now let me hand it over to Haroon for an operational overview.
Thanks, Ahmed. We're pleased to end the quarter with 8% higher own-produced sales volumes compared to Q3 2023, driven by a 10% increase in own-produced urea sales volumes. This, in turn, was primarily driven by higher urea production volumes during the quarter. Thanks to the team's continued focus on operational efficiencies and improving reliability, we expect to realize more efficiencies and positive progress over the coming quarters. Meanwhile, our third-party traded volumes were down 88% compared to the year before. As a result, our overall sales volumes ended the quarter 11% below Q3 last year. Note that margins on third-party trading have been and are relatively small, and you'll see those numbers disclosed in our press release.
On a nine-month basis, Fertiglobe's total own produced sales volumes were up by 2% to 4.2 million tons, compared to nine months, 2022, driven by a 4% increase in urea own produced sales volumes, which has more than offset a 6% decline in ammonia own produced sales volumes. Traded third-party volumes were down 58% year-over-year to 353,000 tons in the nine-month 2023 period. This led to total own produced and traded third-party volumes of 4.6 million tons, being down 8% in the nine-month 2023 period, compared to the same period in 2022.
As Ahmed mentioned at the beginning of the call, our results this quarter were impacted by a strong order book at the beginning of Q3 2023, resulting in a lag effect on our realized prices vis-à-vis the moves in benchmark indices. We, however, expect the recent trajectory in prices to be maintained over Q4 2023, driven by the seasonal demand pickup ahead of the spring application season in the Northern Hemisphere. With a strong order book for Q4 2023, Fertiglobe remains ideally positioned to service key import markets through its strategically located facilities. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Andrew to discuss the financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Haroon. Let me start with some highlights of our performance in Q3 2023, which was impacted by our lower selling prices for our products, as well as lower third-party trading sales volumes compared to last year. So our revenues were $525 million in Q3 2023. That's 60% below the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, our Adjusted EBITDA decreased 67% to $199 million in Q3 2023, compared to $606 million in Q3 2022, leading to an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 38%, compared to 46% for the same period the previous year. The adjusted net income attributable to shareholders was $41 million in Q3 2023, compared to $292 million in the same quarter last year. Now, turning to the balance sheet and cash flow performance.
We ended Q3 2023 with a net cash position of $28 million. That's compared to $287 million of net cash as at the end of last year, December 31, 2022. Our balance sheet pre-cash conversion capacity, along with the management initiatives we've discussed before, allow us to continue to balance dividend distributions as well as pursue selective value accretive growth opportunities. We're pleased to announce the board of directors approval of the H1 2023 dividend of $275 million, payable in the next few weeks. As a reminder, Fertiglobe has paid a total of $1.45 billion in cash dividends for 2022, and so far returned $1.8 billion to shareholders since our IPO.
The free cash flows before growth CapEx amounted to $126 million in Q3 2023, compared to $189 million in Q3 2022. This is mainly driven by the EBITDA performance during that quarter. Q3 2023 capital expenditures, including growth, were $33 million, compared to $24 million in Q3 2022, of which $29 million was related to maintenance. Now, for 2023, we're on track to meet our full year maintenance CapEx guidance of $100 million-$130 million. But due to rephasing of certain project spending from 2023 to 2024, our total CapEx is expected to be below the previously guided $160 million.
So we're now looking at a similar range of $110 million-$130 million for maintenance CapEx in 2024, with growth CapEx expected at below $50 million in 2024, which will ultimately depend on the FID of our growth projects, which are in various stages. As highlighted at the beginning of the call by Ahmed, we've just signed a new $500 million term facility to refinance our existing short-term borrowings. Therefore, this does not change our leverage profile and still has a positive impact on our debt maturity profile and liquidity.
It's also good to highlight that post-closing of that term loan, we are still looking at net leverage well below 1x at the end of the year, and that's even after taking into account the $275 million FY 2023 dividend payment we announced, and the large minority leakage from Algeria of $813 million, both of which has impacted the Q4 2023 cash flows. So with that, I'll now hand back to Ahmed for our outlook and concluding remarks.
Thanks, Andrew. As discussed at the beginning of the call, our medium- to long-term outlook for nitrogen prices remains positive, underpinned by healthy demand drivers and tightening supply in the medium term. Grain stocks continue to be below industry averages for the last 10 years, driving higher crop futures, leading to favorable farm economics and therefore incentivizing increases in nitrogen demand, supporting prices. New capacity that started and ramped up during 2022 and early 2023 has been absorbed, in our view, with limited new supply additions in the next several years. In summary, we take immense pride in the accomplishments of our team and their unwavering dedication to upholding the highest standards, enabling us to meet our goals while embracing industry-leading best practices.
Moreover, through our long-term, t hrough our low carbon growth projects and initiatives, we reaffirm our commitment to advancing our sustainability agenda and are strategically positioned to make substantial strides towards a more environmentally responsible production footprint, benefiting both our organization and the broader value chain. With that, we'll open the line for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to remove your question, you may press star followed by two. Please ensure you're unmuted locally when asking your question. Our first question for today comes from Faisal Al-Azmeh from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, and thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Three questions from my end. Maybe the first is just on the trading revenue side. It came a bit below average this quarter. Maybe if you can shed some color on what drove the weakness and how we should think about that particular line. My second question is just generally on the pricing lag that you've incurred this quarter. If we look at some of the other GCC players, we actually saw that they've realized a quarter-over-quarter increase in prices. We didn't see the same with Fertiglobe. Maybe if you can shed some color on what could drive that difference.
And then just my third question relates to your growth CapEx, and at what point should we start to envision or to kind of start to model more of that growth CapEx effectively hitting on the cash flow statement? Thank you.
Thanks, Faisal, for the question. So I think your first question was around why trading volumes were lower, or the traded volumes were lower, and that's right. You know, obviously our own produced was up, which is good, reflecting the journey we're doing on the manufacturing improvement side. Trading volumes lower. I mean, over the course of the next few years, you should see relative increases in trading volumes, but quarter to quarter, you might see decreases, and Q3 wasn't a surprise. I mean, Q3 wasn't an exception in that respect. You know, our focus from a trading perspective is look for good risk-adjusted returns. It's not where we make huge amounts of margin, but it's where, you know, we're buying and selling more products into the appropriate markets. Volumes are generally lower in, you know, the Q3 period.
In this case, they happen to be lower year-over-year, so I wouldn't read too much into it. And, you know, our focus is still to increase traded volumes of urea and ammonia, but we will be value focused, not to take on additional risk just for the sake of trading more volumes. To your second question on the price lag effect, I mean, it's obviously something we focus on significantly on the vertical distribution side. And, you know, where you see the quarter-over-quarter decline in our case versus the increase potentially versus our peers, part of that might be driven by the fact that, as you recall, we had some older sales to the Ethiopian markets, to EABC and to Ethiopia in Q2, which were at a much higher netback.
If I recall, it was in the $600-$700 a ton netback in Q2 for some of those volumes. So that might have affected just having a higher base relative to our peers that didn't have those type of higher netback sales in Q2. There was, as I said, a bit of a delay. You know, you usually have... You know, you sell vessels a few weeks in advance. We did have some fixed price urea sales in late Q2, early Q3. That probably dragged on our performance versus the benchmark, but generally, we look to beat the benchmark and, you know, that's how our team's compensated and focused. So we should continue to see that over time and improve.
In this case, you know, with the strong order book we have sitting in Q4 and the recovery in pricing, I think it bodes well for the Q4 outlook with regards to Fertiglobe. Third question with regard to growth CapEx, and I'll let Andrew go a little bit more into detail, but I'll just say kind of qualitatively, high level, our focus has been on, you know, value creation, doing things below replacement costs, and not necessarily doing a huge splash, doing a big greenfield project with regards to our investments. We're prudent with our capital. We want to continue to pay a strong dividend, and we're focused on areas where we can have relatively quick paybacks on those investments.
In addition, we leverage things like minority positions, where we get more of the-- we can kind of control more of the volumes using third parties to take on a bit more of the expense, including debt providers, all of the above, to try to limit our cash out, because we want to be prudent with, you know, the available cash flows when we make investments. Andrew, maybe you want to get into, you know, growth CapEx and growth CapEx guidance for next year or the next few years.
Yeah, sure. Sorry. Faisal, I mean, so looking at that as well, if you look at the, what we've actually spent on the growth CapEx or the type of projects we're in, I think we've always sort of indicated they've been sort of reasonably, sort of low CapEx intensity, through the sort of the nature of the projects as well. So I sort of mentioned a bit earlier, we're basically looking at a Q4 2023. We set a total maintenance CapEx of $110 million-$115 million. And that is basically sort of coming in, lower than sort of the 160 we started with. In 2024, we're saying maintenance CapEx, $110 million-$130 million.
That's the same. And I kind of mentioned we had a growth CapEx of less than $50 million. And that is ultimately, as Ahmed said, about how the FIDs actually happen for those projects. Additionally, as well, we're looking on some of the more mature ones to look at how we sort of finance those or how those might be financed as well. So we're not looking at sort of full equity contribution into those joint ventures for that growth CapEx as well.
Would that include the TA'ZIZ plant, particularly?
Yes, that's inclusive.
Okay. Thank you.
So just as a reminder, Faisal, on the TA'ZIZ plant, it benefits from a few things. One, it's built in the UAE. UAE has a very attractive construction cost perspective. I mean, people talk about, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. A big portion of that is needed to pay for the higher cost of building in the U.S., and particularly Europe, and has that same issue. UAE has very attractive construction costs, that's one.... Two is we intend to use leverage, and we're not consolidating that entity. Three is we have other partners involved, and four, the structure is it's a back-end ammonia plant, so it's not building the front-end ammonia. So when you put all four of those together, we're able to kind of build and pay for this plant without having, you know, triple digit expenditures in any given year.
Maybe, maybe if I can sneak one question. Just if you can provide us with an update on Sorfert's feedstock arrangement and how that's evolving.
Yeah. So discussions with Sonatrach, which is our partner there, have been progressing, but we don't have a further update to report to the market at this time. And obviously, once we reach an agreement, we'll announce those details to the market. You know, as a reminder, the pricing mechanism has recently expired in September, and you know, we continue with the original pricing and there's a retrospective adjustment to pricing, should that change once we come to an agreement on the extension with the Algerians.
Also, as a reminder, you know, we have the existing profit-sharing mechanism, where if we change the current pricing mechanism, which is, I think, at about $1.40, increasing at 5% a year, then they lose their incremental profit sharing on what's called the Super Écrémage, which has given them, you know, a windfall of profits. For example, last year, where they got the lion's share, and we saw a huge minority interest leakage last year just given the outsized share. So I think the Sonatrach team is appreciative of having exposure to the ammonia and urea markets versus Sorfert via Sorfert versus, you know, Brent-linked, for example, gas contracts, but nothing further to update at this time, while negotiations are ongoing.
Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, we currently have no further audio questions, so I'll hand back to the management team for any questions via the webcast.
Thank you, Alex. We have several questions on the webcast, some of which have been already answered, namely relating to the Sorfert gas discussion. Another question is, what drove the contraction in EBITDA margin between 2Q and 3Q 2023? Andrew?
Yep, sure. I'll take it. And so, essentially, I think it's more about the comparison to Q2, where we had some supposed margins with certain transactions, which is sort of making that comparison, as compared to saying that the Q3 is particularly contracted and particularly small.
Thanks, Andrew. Another question relates to the taxes,
Mm-hmm.
Can you give us an idea on how we should think about the tax at the group level, as it has been quite uneven in the past few quarters?
Yeah. So it has been a little lumpy, and that's obviously because of some great pricing from last year. We've always guided to that 10%-11% effective tax rate, cash tax rate, and that's what we're looking at. We're looking at around about 11% at this time, and we're not seeing any particular changes from that sort of guidance. I think the last year was around 13%, so it was a little bit more outside. So continuing with the 10% or 11% is where we certainly see it.
I'll take this opportunity to talk about, obviously, the UAE is introducing corporate tax. We reiterate our position that we see a very minimal impact to us. Essentially, our Fertiglobe remains at 25% under a fiscal tax letter regime, so therefore it's outside of the scope of this, and for our other entities which are in the free trade zone of Abu Dhabi Global Market, we really see zero to minimal effect.
Thanks, Andrew. One last question is on the NCI, and why it appears to be similar to Q2 levels, despite the lower profitability?
So for the NCI, I think the most important point to talk about is we've historically, the last few quarters, you've basically seen the Algeria dividend essentially going out to the NCI component to Sonatrach. That normally happens in Q3. Due to a few sort of small bureaucratic delays, it just came over the edge into October this year, and that's important, I think, to be able to look at from a free cash flow basis. It's gonna be about $813 million NCI has been paid out in Q4. So that's probably the point that's being raised there.
Thank you. No further questions on the webcast. Back to the management team.
Well, thanks everyone for the questions, and we look forward to the next call.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.