Hello everyone, and welcome to the OCI N.V. third quarter 2022 results call. My name is Seb, and I'll be the operator for your call today. There will be the opportunity to ask a question on the call. You can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad or press star two to remove your question. You can also submit a written question on the webcast. We'll now hand over to Hans Zayed, Director of Investor Relations, to begin the call. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon and good morning to our audience in the US. Thank you for joining the OCI N.V. third quarter 2022 conference call. With me today are Ahmed El-Hoshy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Hassan Badrawi, our Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will review OCI's key operational events and financial highlights for the quarter, followed by a discussion of OCI's outlook. As usual, at the end of the call, we will host a question and answer session. Quarterly reports and the presentation are available on our IR website, and I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements made on this call involve risks, and the actual results could differ materially from those statements. With that, let me hand over to Ahmed.
Thank you, Hans. Thank you all for joining us today. Today, Hassan and I will provide some more perspective on the results we published this morning. We are pleased that our EBITDA and ability to generate cash remain consistent even during the third quarter, which is normally a quieter period for our business due to cyclical seasonality. Our adjusted EBITDA on the LTM period of around $4.3 billion and our free cash flow of more than $2.7 billion have allowed us to make substantial distributions to shareholders this year and reduce our consolidated net debt to almost zero while maintaining and growing our business. I'd like to thank all our employees for this achievement as well as their strong commitment to safety, which is always our top priority.
Our 12-month rolling reportable incident rate at the end of September was 0.36 incidents for 200,000 man-hours at a slightly lower level as at the end of Q2. Despite being below industry averages, we continue to stress our relentless focus on operational and process safety as part of our operational excellence program. Before I hand it over to Hassan, I'd like to make one quick remark. In the previous two quarters, we have highlighted the performance of our European nitrogen operations, which has been excellent despite the difficult circumstances. I can't thank the team enough for their hard work, creativity and versatility, safely operating downstream units and providing essential fertilizers and chemical products in Europe despite extremely volatile conditions.
This quarter, the continued performance of our Iowa facility and our drive into DEF highlights our U.S. nitrogen operations starting to reach their potential and becoming an important source of free cash flow. Similarly here, the dedication of our operations team and the ingenuity of our commercial team have been the perfect addition to extract strong results out of our advantaged Midwest location state-of-the-art asset with its impressive logistical capabilities. Hassan?
Thank you, Ahmed. We recorded another good quarter with consolidated revenue up 52% to $2.3 billion, an adjusted EBITDA up 92% compared to the same quarter last year to just below $1 billion. You can see all the details in the press release and the presentations. I will not dwell too much on these, but I would like to highlight two features of our third quarter results, and the year-to-date numbers. First is the free cash flow generation and our capital allocation, and the second, as Ahmed mentioned, is the performance of our nitrogen operations in the U.S. On cash flow during the third quarter, we generated $392 million of free cash flow before growth CapEx and reduced net debt by a further $377 million.
This is after deducting $303 million of dividends paid to non-controlling interests, mostly to Sonatrach, our partner in Algeria, as part of the annual dividend distribution for profits made that are attributable to the fiscal year 2021. In addition to other minorities in Fertiglobe subsidiary EBIC, our ammonia facility in Egypt, and another $15 million related to our methanol group minority distributions. We also spent $50 million on growth CapEx, the biggest part of which was spent on our blue ammonia project in Texas, which we announced in September, and I believe Ahmed will elaborate further on the progress being made on that front. Our cash flows, combined with extremely low leverage, allow for robust variable dividends.
After the close of the quarter on the 31st of October, we returned approximately $740 million of cash to our shareholders related to our first half 2022 performance, with bringing total distributions to $1.1 billion this calendar year or about EUR 5 per share. In our press release this morning, we announced a proposal to distribute cash to shareholders of another EUR 3.5 per share or approximately $730 million based on current, FX rates with respect to the second half 2022 to be paid in April 2023.
Separately, Fertiglobe, which is 50% owned by OCI and fully consolidated, also announced today guidance for a cash distribution of a minimum of $700 million for the second half of 2022, and the final number would be confirmed in February. OCI share of the dividends will be therefore a minimum of $350 million, the other half to be paid as usual to minority shareholders, which includes our strategic partner, ADNOC, and other minority investors on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. We continue to operate within investment grade parameters, balancing our growth with returning capital to shareholders. Secondly, zooming in on IFCo's results. IFCo's on a trajectory to demonstrate its potential with an LTM adjusted EBITDA of $700 million at the end of the third quarter.
If you exclude the trading results of the N-7 joint venture, one-off EBITDA margins were 60% in Q3 and around 70% year-to-date, which is one of the highest margins in our system and in the market. To add to that, cash conversion of our young IFCo plants is amongst the highest in the group and industry having successfully refinanced debt earlier this year, also removing all historical upstreaming restrictions. In addition to our Midwest advantage, our U.S. DEF business is growing to become an important contributor to this performance. We have the second largest market share in the U.S. DEF market, which has significantly risen in 2022 with healthy pricing and premiums compared to urea.
The higher net backs of DEF compared to other nitrogen products has driven an increased focus of DEF in our flexible product mix and enabled us to continue to enhance returns for our U.S. nitrogen operations going forward. We have also started decoupling DEF contract pricing from fertilizer-linked NOLA urea pricing, which further provides diversified stability for our U.S. business that is appreciated by our customers in terms of predictability going forward. With that, I will hand over to Ahmed to provide further commentary on our outlook and strategic initiatives. Ahmed, back to you.
Thanks, Hassan. Our short-term and long-term outlook have not changed directionally or meaningfully since we last spoke in August, despite short-term volatility in markets. Nitrogen fundamentals remain supportive based on four key paradigm shifts outlined in our press release and presentations, providing support for pricing to remain well above historical averages in the coming years. Number one is tight supply and demand fundamentals in our urea and oil markets over the next three to four years, just because of the barriers to entry to build new plants and no surprises on the supply side. Number two, crop fundamentals and higher farmer profitability remain positive for nitrogen demand, with critical grain stocks at decade lows. Number three, structurally higher gas price environment in Europe for a prolonged period, increasing marginal cost of production for the essential nitrogen products.
Number four, the push towards focus on climate change, the environmental focus, limiting outright gray capacity and debt additions and providing significant demand for upside, demand for potential clean ammonia in the future as a fuel source. Shorter-term, nitrogen market fundamentals in 2023 are expected to remain tight, given the forward curves for grain, which is essentially supporting nitrogen application and the forward curve for European gas, combined with slowing supply additions. We have a solid order book in the U.S. for fall ammonia, with farmers taking over 90% coverage at the higher pricing levels that we witnessed this year, indicative of healthy farm economics. We're also ahead of last season on fall ammonia applications, with around 10% of crop demand left to cover in the Midwest, depending on how the weather pans out.
Weather has been favorable so far, and we anticipate that the rapid pace of harvest will support strong fall ammonia demand and normal application rates of nitrogen. UAN and urea coverage for the spring is lagging behind last year, with significant end-user demand expected in the coming months, particularly with the larger corn acres expected to be planted in this coming season versus the one we just finished. In Europe, we have a good order book on nitrates. Farmers in Germany and France are on par with last year, but other regions are largely lagging behind due to limited supply and lost production due to curtailments that we've seen so far this season.
Farmers in Europe typically buy more once they have sold their harvest, and farmers have hedged around 60%-70% of their new crop, and sowing of winter crops is on track, which is positive for demand. The good harvest in summer also means that the nitrogen content of soil is low, and there is real need to replenish, and we expect high application rates in Europe in this upcoming season. We're seeing strong urea demand in India, with another tender issued just today on the back of a strong rabi season, sales season so far. Nutrient-based subsidies published this week are in favor of urea over P&K . We expect India to buy over 1 million tons, taking total imports in 2022 to almost 9 million tons, which compares to 7 million tons imported in 2021.
At least one more Indian tender is expected to be issued in Q1 2023, and we expect robust Indian imports of in 2023 of over 7 million tons. Mind you, the increase this year of 9 million tons is a factor of very low inventories at the start of this year versus 2021, which had some inventories at the beginning of that year going into 2021. We have seen volatile urea pricing in the last few weeks, trading largely on sentiment amidst bearish headlines relative to weaker European gas prices and lower NOLA urea barge values due to issues in the river system. This bodes well for our Midwest positioning at Iowa Fertilizer in terms of the pricing outlook.
However, the fundamental outlook remains supportive, and we have started to see pricing recovering in most of the month in North Africa having been sold this week, which combined with the latest Indian tender, is supportive of pricing recovering further in the coming months, especially as seasonal buying kicks off. European urea production is operating at around 40%. Chinese exports remain curtailed, and they're significantly lower than last year. We're still seeing gas and other related curtailments in Nigeria and Trinidad. Urea pricing and demand is further supported by government-backed demand that we've seen in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, combined with higher seasonal imports in the United States, Europe, Brazil, and Australia ahead of the application season in the first half of 2023, providing a solid backdrop for Fertiglobe and OCI more broadly.
For methanol, the volatility in the macro environment has had some effect on prices in Q3. Last week, the U.S. contract price for November 2022 settled at $584 a ton, at the same level as both September and October, and prices have been relatively range-bound. We're currently seeing stable methanol markets going into 2023 and continued downstream demand from a diversified customer base for the product. Medium to long term, we see meaningful additional upside from hydrogen fuel demand, notably from power and road and marine fuel applications, and we continue to make good progress with our pipeline of projects to capture these accretive opportunities. Number one, we see that in 2024, starting in 2024, we'll see meaningful uptick in methanol as it gains traction as a shipping fuel or demand on that side.
For example, France's CMA CGM ordered six 15,000 TEU ships, and COSCO SHIPPING also ordered twelve methanol dual-fueled 24,000 TEU container ships just last week. COSCO vessels alone would amount to up to 1 million tons of methanol demand, and based on current orders anticipated from the container vessel segment alone, we see more than potentially 2 million tons of demand in methanol, which is quite significant on a 110 million ton a year market. Engineering firm MAN Energy Solutions also expects methanol propulsion to take as much as 30% of dual-fueled engine orders within a few years. Recently, the Pacific Basin announced the following. A feasibility study conducted together with Nihon Shipyard Co and Mitsui that methanol propulsion will be the best choice for its first generation of zero-emission vessels.
Further, Atlantic Bulk Carriers and trading firm Cargill separately announced intentions to operate methanol-fueled bulkers within the next few years. All of this boding well for our methanol business, and particularly as a leader in the growing biomethanol and low carbon methanol business globally as we speak. Point number two is 2025 should see the introduction of ammonia as a clean fuel in the power sector. Regulations in Europe as well as in Asia, for example, the CBAM, or the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in Europe in 2026, is expected to accelerate the transition and raise the marginal cost floor for nitrogen, creating significant opportunities for us in our global businesses.
Specifically, we expect to also benefit from the start-up of our recently announced Texas Blue project in 2025, well before any other announced projects will come online, particularly with many of them still pre-FID. Our Blue Ammonia project in Texas of 1.1 million tons is well underway, with the EP contract already awarded in March of this year. All long lead equipment order items ordered, and preliminary site preparation work expected to be completed by the end of this year, with a groundbreaking next month in December.
We will be the first world-scale low-carbon ammonia project to commission, and we'll be utilizing existing infrastructure at our Beaumont site to export ammonia to the Midwest, to the U.S. Midwest fertilizer market, as well as the U.S. Gulf Coast market, serving growing clean ammonia demand worldwide as well, with strategic advantage supply to Europe using our Rotterdam terminal, which, as we all know, is tripling its capacity to 1.2 million tons per annum by late next year, early 2024. In the future, we can serve the full value chain by delivering the blue ammonia using new ammonia-fueled vessels, ensuring a minimal carbon footprint. To conclude, we are proud of what OCI and the Fertiglobe teams have achieved so far and are excited about the prospects for the company.
Fundamentals provide solid support for our 2023 and 2024 and 2025 outlooks for our end markets, and we're excited to see significant upside potential from both operational improvements through manufacturing excellence programs and our low carbon growth initiatives, where we believe we are one of the best placed in the industry with our global footprint and diversified product offering. With that, we'll open the line to questions.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad or press star two to withdraw your question. You can also submit a written question via the webcast. The first question today comes from Christian Faitz from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Ahmed, Hassan, and Hans, and everybody else. Ahmed, in your speech, you already answered quite a few of my questions. Certainly the current fall application season in ammonia took off. Can you tell us a bit more about CapEx and scheduling for your blue ammonia project in Beaumont, Texas? Can you also, in that respect, benefit from any special tax breaks pertaining to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act? Can you actually perhaps quantify those? Thank you.
Sure. I'm happy that with the prepared remarks, we were able to answer some of your questions preemptively. With regards to the Texas Blue project, you know, the in terms of spending and in terms of the profile, we'd say that it's a sub-$1 billion total CapEx number. We'll provide more details over the coming few months and quarters. I'd say that at this point, with regards to the tax rates under the IRA or the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, one of the areas where we intend to leverage is the 45Q program, which provides $85 a ton of tax credits for 12 years, once you bring into service the plant.
When you have carbon sequestration, we're sequestering over 90% of the CO2 from this project. You're talking about for a 1.1 million-ton ammonia plant, something in the order of 1.7 million tons of CO2 sequestered. If you take the $85 as gross from the government, let's say you spend $15-$20 to kind of get it in the ground. Roughly, if you use just rough math, $70 a ton net times 1.7 million tons, that's $119 million a year, that's coming as an additional tax credit that we can utilize to offset taxes or sell to third parties, as well.
That's kind of one of the tax attributes that's supportive of the economics of the project, in addition to obviously having U.S. Gulf Coast gas as a feedstock into the overall complex, which has access to many different pipelines and the location to be able to export to global markets, replacing what we expect to see some shutdowns in Europe over the coming two years for ammonia production, as well as accessing the domestic markets in the U.S. Gulf Coast, and as I said, Midwestern markets.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Faisal Al Azmeh from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, and congratulations on the strong set of numbers. Maybe just a quick question on Chinese exports. I guess from some recent discussions with some consultants, they do tend to feel that maybe some of those exports are making or could make their way to the market at some point, or some of the volumes out of China can make its way to the market at some point. Is that a risk that you think that could materialize anytime soon, or sooner than the middle of next year? Another question is, are you seeing any supply response at all from some of the other markets? We've heard that Nigeria could potentially be thinking about adding some capacity.
Is that something that also you would think about or you've heard about, and you can think that it can pose some upside risk to the supply figures over the next couple of years? Thank you.
Sure. I mean, Faisal, you know, obviously, we've discussed the extension of some of the restrictions for Chinese exports, but there are tons leaving China now. I mean, usually you see them happening post the middle of the year and post their season in early July. We think that there have been 1.6 million tons year to date exported from China, and by the end of this year, we'll probably be at around 2 million tons exported from China. I think that's necessary to kind of supply the global markets. Recently, a Chinese trader was awarded, I think 500,000 tons, to go to Ethiopia in the most recent tender through Q2 of next year.
If they do less than, you know, if they do 100, 150 a month, they can achieve that. It still has yet to be seen because we've seen, you know, awards happen, and whether they're fulfilled or not is the question. That would take a decent portion of the tons going out. We've also continued to see the environmental controls and operating rates being lower in China, and obviously see China is importing a lot of the energy to support production there to get that going. They are focused on not, you know, having prices go up too much domestically. I think they're gonna continue to focus on not having that get out of control in their mind. We don't see the export restrictions subsiding before what they preannounced, which is July one of next year. Can you remind me what your next question was?
Just on Nigerian supply growth.
Yeah.
If you're seeing any activity in the market.
Well, yeah, I mean, Faisal, it's the same situation. I mean, we don't see any surprises, right, in terms of what comes to the market. Generally, you know, if there's new announcements, and I think there could be new feeds and everything like that, you know, to try to FID a project, that's still you're talking three, four years down the line, best case. There has been production that came online from Dangote and Indorama recently, and I think there's some that's projected. I think most recently, there have been some issues with the flooding there and some of the infrastructure on gas. They're already, you know, having tons making their way to the market in the year-to-date, S&Ds. Any new kind of announced project, as you know, will take, you know, three, four years to, best case, make it to the market.
Maybe if I could squeeze just one additional question. Just on the methanol assets, I mean, you've monetized a small portion at the beginning of the year. Any potential to monetize an additional stake at some point? Is that something that you and your partners are actually in discussions about, or do you think that's the maximum that it can go down to? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, that was, obviously, contributed to our accelerated deleveraging of the 15%, the monetization of the 15% stake, which obviously has some strategic considerations built into it for the future. Given, I would say we're not pressed or to consider any further M&A at this moment, but as you know, we always evaluate opportunities as they come our way. It's in our DNA. If something does make sense strategically, we will definitely look at it. Right now, we're just focused on delivering on our growth and plans and our decarbonization objectives. In the meantime, we're also focused on managing an optimal balance sheet.
I'll just add to that. Faisal, if you think about how we see methanol being valued by our investor base within our company, you know, we think that the best is still yet ahead for methanol. In terms of what I just walked through with regards to marine fuels demand really kicking off in 2024 in a strong way, and not much new supply coming over the next three to four years, then I think that, you know, we do think there are brighter days ahead there. We wanna make sure that we opportunistically, as Hassan said, look at what makes the most sense for us. The incremental movement in that market, given its size, based on what could come from shipping fuel alone, can be transformational for this market in the next three to four years. We'll see how that plays out.
I guess maybe a reverse question there then. I mean, would you think about adding more capacity given the opportunity and the strong balance sheet that you have today or expanding some of your existing facilities?
Anything we've been looking at on a growth CapEx basis, as you've seen when it comes to kind of organic growth, has been trying to leverage our existing facilities. You know, in OCI Beaumont, we added a 10% debottlenecking, which made a lot of sense. We rank all our growth investment opportunities, whether it's in the methanol group, in our nitrogen assets in Europe or the U.S., or in Fertiglobe, look at what makes the most sense in terms of capital allocation. I'd say that the ability to decarbonize and get more biomethanol or low carbon methanol is gonna be one of the key areas of focus. Not necessarily having more tons, but having some lower carbon tons. If we can get some more tons out of it, in the process, you know, so be it.
Thank you very much.
Thanks .
Our next question comes from Mubasher Chaudhry from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one's on European capacity restart. I think you've mentioned that the urea capacity still remains about 40% offline. Can you make a couple of comments around the ammonia side of things, please, and where you see that at the moment across Europe in terms of utilization? Second question is kind of related to that, but on a more medium-term footing. Do you need to take some sort of impairments to your current asset footprint in Europe, given the lack of profitability and therefore need to impair the assets? I assume on your ranking of investments on organic projects, organic growth projects, Europe comes quite low down at the moment, but more around kind of the existing asset footprint. Do you need to take any impairments around that? Thank you.
I mean, Mubasher, with regards to where we see things running right now, you know, we do think that there on the back of, you know, some lower European gas prices over the last, call it six to eight weeks, where day ahead really came down. We do think there has been some restarts that have taken us, probably brought online 4 million tons out of the 11.5 million that were shut down at peak. Call it 7.5 million tons remaining still offline in Europe. You know, that could change. Obviously, you've seen day ahead shot up today, and, you know, the month ahead numbers are at, you know, values I think $1,200-$1,300 a ton, including CO2. They're pretty marginal and people are afraid. Sorry, excluding CO2.
Closer to $1,500 including CO2. You know, people are afraid, you know, to start, stop. It's a difficult decision. It's one that we have to think about in Geleen as well, in our Dutch facility. We do think some have come online, but in short, I think that it's challenging to see a lot coming more online until you see higher prices versus same period, so they can kind of hedge some gas and make a margin. With regards to the impairment, you know, I'll turn it over to Hassan who can walk through that.
Yeah. In regards to the Dutch operations, we don't have any real impairment risk because these assets are fully depreciated. Obviously, there's some CapEx over the years that has to do with replenishing equipment. There might be some minor numbers there, but nothing substantive. This complex is one of the older complexes in our ecosystem. Yeah, no downside there.
Yeah.
No material downside there.
Yeah. I'd say, I mean, remember we bought these assets in 2009 for-
2010.
Sorry, 2010 for-
EUR 310 million.
EUR 310 million. Also, I'll say that in our complex in Geleen, we've made pretty strong margins the last three months, three quarters. It's probably you're referring to, Mubasher, the question around just the ammonia plants, 'cause we've run, you know, only one of two plants for the last year generally. But all the downstream I think have done, you know, quite well, and there's no reason to review impairment.
We continue to operate.
Yes.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Does that answer your question?
Yes. Yes, very helpful. Thank you.
Our next question is from Adrien Tamagno from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi, good afternoon. I have a couple of questions on DEF. In the U.S., you have ramped up a lot of the capacity there in Iowa. I was curious to see if your distribution agreement there are flexible in terms of volumes, and if you can switch back to UAN and urea, let's say in spring next year, if you have tight inventory situation in the U.S. On the pricing there, you said it has been decoupled from urea. Can you maybe help us how to think about it? If it's going to be like fixed for the next couple of years or, yeah, more color here would be helpful. Lastly, still for DEF, but in the Netherlands, you talked about incremental capacity. Just to see if this would replace some Urea production in the Netherlands. Thank you very much.
Sure. Really, you know, good questions. Your first question, do we have the flexibility in our logistics and everything to switch back to UAN? The answer is absolutely. We could go to zero DEF in Iowa if we wanted to. We don't expect to, with the you know, the tightness of the DEF market and the advantages we have relative to imports for DEF and the growth in DEF demand. We have the ability to do zero DEF, and we can go over 1 million tons at that site at IFCo as well, just to evaluate what's in the market.
To your second question with regards to the pricing, yes, you know, our ability to get more predictability for the customer as well as ourselves around pricing, you know, was something that, you know, I think is well received, particularly because, you know, at the end market, you know, DEF is not priced at the truck stop on an NOLA urea basis. I think that's been helpful for the customer base and for us in this tighter market. I think the team's done a good job of, you know, securing volumes outside of that linkage to NOLA. That also helps us because what is our feedstock is based on Henry Hub gas, and we've actually hedged a decent portion of that through 2027, 2028.
Trying to create some more predictability around portions of one of our highest free cash flow generating assets has been the goal here. It can help kind of solidify a portion of the results there on an EBITDA free cash flow basis. Your third question was around, I think, DEF in Europe, which we just announced that we've undertaken an FID project to do that. What that means is that we will have the ability to produce diesel exhaust fluid, instead of, for example, UAN, and/or potentially use more of our urea lines. We don't always use our urea lines to the full. It's usually we use it for melamine, and then we kind of flex up and down for UAN based on nitric acid availability between UAN and CAN.
This will allow us, if we decide to produce more CAN and less UAN and, for example, import UAN from the United States, which our trading team has done a great job of doing to meet needs in Europe, then we can produce and sell DEF in the local Benelux market with strong logistics, and we anticipate having that online in early 2024. As you saw, we're already starting to make sales, you know, via product from Fertiglobe.
Got it. Thank you.
As a reminder, for any further audio questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no other audio questions at this time, so I'll hand the floor to Hans for any webcast questions.
Yes, thank you. There's a few questions on the webcast. The first one is from [Rutger Backenhouse]. It's, "Thanks for taking my question. We are now halfway Q4, and gas prices in Europe have dropped quite some amount. Do you expect a further decline in ammonia and urea pricing this quarter and start of next spring season?"
Gas prices have decreased quite a bit, but we've seen that to be more in the day-ahead current spot market rather than in kind of the forward markets. Actually, not even for 2023. Let's start with December. Based on December gas pricing, ammonia is at $1,500 a ton cash cost, and urea is at $900 a ton cash cost, both well above where the markets are priced right now. For 2023, that number is $1,545 for 2023 ammonia cash cost in European marginal and $925 for urea cash cost marginal.
You know, like we said earlier, there's been some volatility in the markets, and, you know, the way the market works is that often buyers will wait to find a floor or bottom before stepping in. That kind of creates a self-fulfilling prophecy when prices are going down, as we saw over the last couple of months. We have seen a sharp rebound in the last day or two, exacerbated by the recently announced India tender.
Thank you. The next question is, are you considering, besides dividends, a share buyback program? It's becoming common in the sector nowadays because of the large free cash flows that the sector generates at the moment.
Yeah, OCI has some unique circumstances that we try to address. Two parts to my answer. The first part is that we have an efficient way of returning capital to our investors with almost no taxes for all shareholders due to the sort of a reserve that we have associated when we domicile the company in the Netherlands that allows us to do capital reductions and distribute cash without any leakage. We have an efficient mechanism that we've been using, and that's why we've been convening an EGM every six months through the capital reduction process and the creditor opposition period. Quite a bit of logistics that we go through to make this an efficient distribution.
Secondly, given the nature or the construct of an ownership, we're acutely conscious of our liquidity. You've noticed that over the last year, OCI's liquidity has improved dramatically, not just because of the notional value of the share, but also overall, various initiatives were undertaken to improve. We would like to maintain this liquidity standard going forward, which I think is extremely attractive. It makes us more attractive for the investment community overall.
Thanks, Hassan. The next question is from Sam Thompson. Could you guide us on the magnitude of distributions to minorities for 2023, Sonatrach, Egypt, family, et cetera, given they are backward-looking?
Well, it's a good question. I think if you assume that Sorfert in Q4, for the sake of getting to a number, achieves a similar EBITDA to the previous quarters. As you know, Sorfert has a one annual distribution, usually in Q3, related to the prior year. Combined with some of the withholding tax that we have, that gets us to a number of around $880 million. You then have some other leakage associated with our MetCo minorities of 15%, and also, sorry, back to Fertiglobe, also our EBIC minorities of 15% there as well. I would say 35%. That's correct.
I mean, I would say that the total minority leakage would probably be in the order of around $950 million. At the OCI level, then you would have to add to that whatever is the 50% leakage associated with the distribution of dividends from Fertiglobe to OCI. If for every $500 million increments of dividends, that's $250 million of leakage.
Thanks, Hassan. Next question is from Michael Hughes. Could you please talk about U.S. inventory levels in the channel and at the farm level?
Yeah. With regards to the U.S. inventory levels, we did see some extra inventory because of the lower planting in this last season, and a poor spring application for ammonia. What has happened since the middle of the year, since planting in Q2, is we've seen exports of ammonia at record paces from the U.S. Gulf Coast. We've seen exports of UAN at also record paces, and we've seen exports of urea also at record paces. A lot of that inventory has worked its way out of the U.S. system. I think we're at a relatively healthy level right now in terms of market. We did see quite a lot of appetite, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, of 90% prepay on the ammonia for fall application.
So far, with the harvest completing and the weather being favorable, we've seen very good movement from our Iowa Fertilizer Company site just in the last few days. You know, from what it looks to be, we should see a very strong fall application, and then we'll see, you know, people looking at spring prepay for ammonia in December, as well as urea and UAN demand kind of really picking up to make sure they can secure enough volumes before they make their way. I mean, the U.S. farmer is gonna have to compete against exports to Europe basically, who are also gonna be looking for volumes at the same time, if not a little bit earlier. I see that, there's quite a bit of tightness, particularly on urea in the United States as well, given all those historic exports.
Sir, Ahmed, the next question, I think we've already discussed a bit, but at current spot, nat gas prices in the E.U. plants would produce roughly a break even. Do you see any E.U. methanol capacity back to reopen?
Yeah. I mean, I think that with regards to the decision to restart, the way we think about it and look at it is, can you sell the product forward, and can you hedge the gas at a reasonable level and make a margin? From what we can see for the restarts, yes, it would have made sense this month with the benefit of hindsight, but you know, December Q1, Q2 of next year have all been you know relatively elevated at over EUR 130 a MWh , you know, and at levels of cash costs that I just walked through, around $1,500 for ammonia, $900 for urea that we haven't seen in some while.
That's just variable cash costs, not even fixed costs. When you think about it, that decision is a tough one to do to be able to bring it online. I think that we've seen some brought online for batch level production, but you know, you don't sell the fertilizer out long enough so that you can hedge the gas, and the gas wasn't conducive for a proper margin as well. The only other way to kind of beat that is to buy ammonia in and produce off of bought ammonia, but you can't buy ammonia in more than a few months out. I think there's quite a bit of a challenge. That's something that.
Like I said, that's why the first thing I said here was we need to really thank the team in Europe for trying to produce as much downstream product as possible in this volatile environment. Yeah. That's where we stand right now. I think I also gave some statistics earlier on 2022 and 2023 break even ammonia and urea. But for 2024 and 2025, the gas is still at $27/MMBtu in the forward curve. If you include CO2 costs, the forward curve for CO2, that's $1,120 ammonia and $680 urea implied by the forward curve for marginal costs in Europe through the end of 2025.
I think we've got all the questions answered that were here, unless there's anything coming up on the other side. Otherwise, I'll give him back to Ahmed.
All right. Thanks everyone for joining the call, and speak to you next quarter.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your line.