Hello, welcome to the K+S conference call regarding the publication of the annual report 2018, hosted by Dr. Burkhard Lohr, CEO. For the duration of the call, you will be on listen only. At the end of the call, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. If at any time you need assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad and you will be connected to an operator. Please note on page two of the presentation, you will find the disclaimer. I am now handing the call over to Dr. Burkhard Lohr to begin. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our full year 2018 conference call. Let me start with some general thoughts on last year's performance. 2018 was a demanding year for us. We had to face extraordinary factors like the extreme drought in Germany. As a result, we were forced to temporarily stop production at our Werra potash plant in September and again at the end of the year. Just a few years ago, these interruptions would have caused earnings to slump dramatically. Today, however, K+S is stable enough that despite all headwinds, a slightly improved EBITDA can be reported. We made progress with our German production and met our Bethune-related profitability targets. We added additional buffer capacities at our Werra sites, and without our improved water management, we would have had to report shutdowns in June already instead of September.
We are working hard in becoming even more robust against weather-related disruptions and to deliver on our Shaping 2030 related promises. We are making progress and are on a very good track to achieving our targets. Now please open slide number one. We have increased our group revenues by 11% and our EBITDA by 5%. A positive pricing environment, mainly in potash, but also increased volumes across all segments, were quite supportive. In salt, we shipped more than 3 million additional tonnes as a result of the harsh winter at the start of 2018. Furthermore, we increased our Canadian potash production and achieved 1.4 million tonnes, which is almost half of the total capacity. Due to the drought, we had to stop production at our 3 Werra sites, which resulted in 64 outage days.
Moreover, we were forced to use additional shipments of saline wastewater for off-site disposal. On top of this, the unusual low water levels had a negative impact on freight rates, which increased substantially. Keeping in mind that already back in 2017, the potash division had to carry a weather-related EBITDA impact of about EUR 40 million, the burden year-on-year was therefore additional EUR 70 million. In absolute terms, the effect amounted to EUR 110 million in 2018. Due to the significantly lower CapEx, our adjusted free cash flow improved by almost 50%. Adjusted for our outage days, net debt to EBITDA would have resulted in a multiple of 6.2. Our dividend proposal of EUR 0.25 per share implies a payout ratio of 56%, which is slightly ahead of our guided range, but also reflects our optimism for 2019.
Let us have a closer look at the market conditions in our potash business on slide four. Overall, last year's potash market was quite supportive. Global demand increased to a good 71 million tonnes from under 70 million tonnes in 2017. At year's end, most producers were sold out into Q1 2019, which also led to robust MOP pricing, especially in our overseas business. Please keep in mind that more than half of our revenues were generated in Europe, and with specialty products having a more resilient price development and have recently also started to pick up. Our average selling price for our potash and magnesium product portfolio of EUR 264 per ton is therefore still lagging behind the described market environment. Let's move to slide five to give you an update on our potash production. In 2018, we worked very hard to tackle our production challenges.
Adjusted for outage days in December, we missed our target by almost 100,000 tons in Q4. In total, we achieved an annual production of 7.5 million tonnes. At our Werra mines, we had addressed all issues which caused last year's headwinds, and overall, product availability has already improved. Unfortunately, at our Neuhof plant, the low roof stability reoccurred despite countermeasures installed in Q3. For safety reasons, we stopped mining in that sector, which is one of the three fields we are active. We are working on solutions to continue in that area. In the meantime, our production is moved to the other mining sectors, which takes time and effort. As a result, last year's production fell short of our initial planning by the above-mentioned 100,000 tonnes and will also be burdened by additional 100,000 tonnes in 2019, year-on-year. Looking at Bethune, production is continuously increasing.
To further increase product quality, we are going to install a grinder pump in the first half of 2019 and some cooling equipment in the second half of the year as discussed. On slide six, we would like to talk about the weather impact. I've already mentioned our outage days with a negative EBITDA effect of EUR 110 million. To improve the situation, we expanded our basin capacities by more than 10% to about 600,000 m³ last year already, and also expanded our logistics for offsite disposal. In early summer 2019, we intend to further expand our capacities to store saline wastewater underground on site by up to 400,000 m³ . This will make us even more robust this year. The good message is there is a high probability to have no weather-related standstill in 2019.
Let me give you an update on our potash production target for 2019 on slide seven. This slide is already quite familiar to you. You can see we will get back the volumes lost by the weather-related outage days and from our production issues at the Werra site, which are now resolved. However, the performance of our Neuhof site also has an impact on this year's production. We will regain about 500,000 tonnes of production in total. At Bethune, we are making good progress to meet our 2019 guidance of 1.7 million-1.9 million tons as described, an increase of 300,000-500,000 tonnes. The closure of Sigmundshall will reduce our production in Germany by 600,000 tonnes, which will have a small positive impact on our profits. All in all, we expect 7.7 million-7.9 million tonnes of production in 2019.
Cost of production should come down tangibly as we replaced high-cost production by more profitable volumes from Bethune. Cash unit cost will stay above EUR 200 due to overall cost inflation as already indicated last year. Let's move to the salt trading update on slide eight. In salt, we saw a mixed picture. In the fourth quarter, the strong pre-stocking in North America continued in October. The de-icing business in November was at normal level, but December was below average. Demand for de-icing salt in Europe was a bit low in the fourth quarter. In total, we saw a slight increase in de-icing salt volumes year-on-year. Prices in the current season for de-icing salt were up in Canada and the U.S. Midwest as well as in Europe. We continue to see a highly competitive environment at the U.S. East Coast.
While in Europe, the wintry weather conditions at the beginning of 2019 caused a slightly above average demand for de-icing salt, the business in North America was still a bit below our expectations, but catched up in the last weeks. However, in total, we are on schedule so far this year. Demand for our non-de-icing products is solid with increasing sales volumes. Let's come to our outlook for 2019 based on our new external reporting structure on slide nine. Based on what we have discussed when introducing our group Shaping 2030 strategy, we are working hard to break down silos and build one company. The implementation of our Shaping 2030 strategy is advancing with visible results. In 2018, we started to make our administrative functions more efficient and focus on delivering customer value.
The initial synergy effects have already been achieved in procurement, production, as well as sales and marketing. The reorganization is progressing well. From Q1 onwards, this improvement will also be reflected in our external reporting. With our four customer segments, agriculture, consumer, industries, and communities, we will provide further, more customer-oriented information. The two new operating units, Europe+ and Americas, are our reporting segment under IFRS. Let's discuss our outlook for 2019 on the following slide. We want to give you a better guidance already at this stage of the year. We provide you with a range for our EBITDA today and not only in August like we did in the past. EBITDA is expected to improve significantly to between EUR 700 million and EUR 850 million. This forecast is based on an average Euro/U.S. dollar spot rate of 1.20. We see a good market environment for fertilizers.
After the robust demand we experienced in 2018, we expect global potash demand to remain at least stable. The positive environment of 2018 should therefore also favorably reach into 2019. We see a further increase of our Canadian production, and there is a high probability to have no weather-related standstills in 2019. Rising cost inflation is likely to soften some positive effects from potash pricing. The adjusted free cash flow will improve significantly and turn positive in this year. This is the most important target for all of us in the quarters to come. I'm fully convinced that we have every reason to be optimistic about our future. The management is keen to show our shareholders the huge potential we have here at K+S. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention.
We are now happy to answer your questions, like always, please, one at a time.
Okay, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to withdraw your question, please press star two. As a reminder, if you would like to ask more than one question, please only submit one question at a time. Once answered, we will move to your next question, you will be advised when to ask your question. Okay, our first question comes in from the line of Michael Schaefer calling from Commerzbank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my two questions. I'll start with the first one. Coming back to your outlook statement for 2019, a rather broad range. Maybe you can walk us through the sensitivity on the US dollar side. I mean, 1.20, if you would put this into mark to market. Related to this one, maybe also some hints what you have baked in in the lower end and the upper end of your guidance range, would be my first question.
Yeah, Michael, good morning. We have, against this expectation, the FX at when you take the FX rate at 1.15, this could mean a positive variance of about EUR 40 million . We have baked in the midpoint, the expectation of what we call a normalized winter. If we see in the pre-demand and also in pricing here, stronger or weaker numbers, which we cannot forecast yet for the fourth quarter, this would be one variance. Yeah. We don't know yet the start of the fertilizer season, neither in Europe nor in Brazil. It hasn't started yet, really. What we also have baked in, and this is what you see in one of the charts Burkhard presented, a range for production we are expecting.
Here we said, especially for Bethune, we could see 1.7 million- 1.9 million, and the one determines or is part of the determination of the lower end of the range and the other one of the upper, obviously.
My second question would be on your free cash flow. You're targeting positive free cash flow, a turnaround there. I still see something like EUR 600 million CapEx in the outlook for 2019 compared to something like in the north of EUR 500 million. I recall also last year, you started with EUR 600 million into 2018, basically, with this kind of guidance. Maybe the changing, moving bits and pieces here for the free cash flow turnaround, and how conservative is your CapEx outlook?
I would first of all call our expectation of a CapEx of EUR 600 million realistic, because this is what we expect from our bottom-up planning. We have this year tailings piles expansions in Hattorf going on, also in Zielitz starting, in Wintershall as well. This is where the improvement comes from. Then, what we have shown last year, where we also expected EUR 600 million of CapEx, we have shown that if necessary, we can reduce the CapEx. This is, of course, nothing you would do from the beginning on, because you want to invest in order to maintain either your sites or expand them, but there is certainly some flexibility. What we should keep in mind is we always look at the CapEx on the balance sheet.
When you look into the cash CapEx, the cash CapEx was above EUR 500 million, I think EUR 513 million or so. The difference is not that big when you just look into the cash flow statement.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Schaefer.
The next question comes in from the line of Christian Faitz calling from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions. First question surrounding your ongoing production issues. Can you put a bit meat to the bone on what's going on in Neuhof and also the lower K2O content in Unterbreizbach? Related to that, potash-wise, why do you still have caking issues in Bethune?
Okay. Let's start with the German site, that we are running through an area with a lower K2O content, as previously expected, that we have reported in Unterbreizbach. We have reported last year, and we have already indicated that we will see effects of that in 2019 as well. We should be through that area, and we know that we get a higher K2O content after we are done. In 2020, we are hopeful to see a positive turnaround of the situation. The last remaining bigger issue is at the Neuhof plant, where we have still not fixed the situation with our roof stability. We thought we could fix it with another anchor situation, stronger, longer, but that didn't work.
We have really an extraordinary geologic here in this area. Now we believe the solution will be to narrow the space between the pillars, and that requires a lot of pre-work and adjustments. That's why we believe we will be able to do so and go back into that area, which, by the way, has a higher K2O content. That's why we want desperately find a solution for it. That will be most probably not done before the end of this year. That's why we have decided to take out the additional 200,000 tonnes. If you take 2018 and 2019, we lose 200,000 tonnes compared to our original plans for Neuhof. It is all baked into our guidance.
On that, if I may, just quickly. On that one. More narrow mining also means higher costs, right? Going forward.
Once we have prepared that, the cost is not significantly higher. We will take out less out of this area. That is a higher consequence. That means we cannot mine all the volumes that we would have liked to mine in this area, but that has no immediate effect, and the higher cost is not meaningful. Coming back to Bethune, that was your last part of the first question. There's no surprise. We indicated to have the perfect quality we need to install this grinder pump. That will happen pretty soon. At the end of the day, we need to have these cooling facilities, and that will be installed by the end of the year.
We see now in the cold period, it works better, there will be a summer, of course, to come without this cold cooling facility, that's why we have modeled this effect that we most probably will see into the volume expectation for 2019.
Okay. Thank you. The second question. Thorsten mentioned it's too early to judge fertilizer demand in Europe. Walking the dock, I saw with my own eyes fertilizer being nicely applied in Europe already, in the region here. What are the early indications of demand in Europe? Do you have any feedback from your salespeople?
The same that you have seen, obviously. Europe is picking up nicely, earlier than last year. You might remember we had a very long winter last year, and we made our de-icing volumes in March last year. No reason to be concerned. Of course, Thorsten is right. We need to see the development of the whole year, and of course, in all areas. It is only March, and that is why we have a range of EUR 150 million. You know we have so many moving parts, but we are quite confident to stay in this range for the remainder of the year.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
The next question comes in from the line of Neil Tyler, calling from Redburn. Please go ahead. Hi, Neil, is your line muted?
I beg your pardon. Sorry. Couple from me, please. I would like to touch again on the potash production in Germany. The 200,000 tonnes that you have effectively removed from the 2019 guidance, is it sensible to assume that that volume recovery should materialize in full in 2020 or phased out to 2021? I would really like your thoughts on the longer-term volume outlook for Germany. Is 6 million tonnes the right number to think about long term, or do you see that on either an increasing or declining trajectory?
First of all, yes, if everything works out fine, we should see additional 200,000 tonnes in 2020 already. I have to remark a caveat, maybe it's only 150,000, 120,000 or whatever, because it is still a plan to tackle the problems in Neuhof, and it remains to be seen whether we are able to do it, but we are quite hopeful. There's another project running, which will have a positive impact. That is our operational excellence project. That's one of our synergy projects. You know that we indicated we want to improve our EBITDA by at least EUR 150 million by the end of 2020. The biggest portion comes from operational excellence. We have around 1,000 measures to improve our work on sites, and some of them are cost-cutting measures, and some meaningful measures to increase the throughput. We might see that.
It's too early to raise numbers, but we might see a positive impact on the German production out of operational excellence. We will report more on that in the course of this year.
Okay. Thank you. Second question on CapEx again. The two investments that you mentioned in Bethune, can you perhaps offer some scope for magnitude of those? Am I just interpreting the message from Thorsten there on CapEx that the low end of the EBITDA guidance range, you'd probably crank back the CapEx in order to be able to hit the free cash flow target. Is that the way to sort of think about the various moving parts?
No. First of all, we have the measures that we take in Bethune fully baked in into the EUR 600 million. We are not talking about meaningful volumes, a mid-size double-digit Canadian dollar amount for both together. Some of that is compensated by the budget Bethune has anyway for their CapEx requirements. Second part of your question, we have shown some flexibility without having negative impact, that is important, on our running business to steer our CapEx. If needed, we would also do that in 2019. Our guidance, we will have a slight positive free cash flow even at the lower end, is assuming EUR 600 million CapEx.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you
You're welcome.
The next question comes in from the line of Patrick Rafaisz, calling from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one would be on Bethune and the secondary mining that should start at one point, during 2019. You said in the past that you'd expect something between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes to be added in 2019. Is that still a valid guidance? Can you already say when exactly the startup will be?
Yeah. Thanks for that question. We have started last year already. No big volumes, but we have started the process, and we have seen it works, and that's why we are very sure to be able to deliver the 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes secondary mining. As you know, that is very low-cost production, and we are very happy to see that ramping up now.
Following up on this, your cash unit cost guidance for over EUR 200, due to cost inflation, could that change if the secondary mining comes in at the upper end, so at 200,000 tonnes? Is that independent of this?
First of all, I would like to use the opportunity to indicate that Bethune, with only 50% of her capacity, has a cost per ton number, which is below our German number. It has already a positive impact. It indicates what is ahead of us in the future. If we talk about the upper end, the 100,000 tonnes secondary mining at the upper end is not big enough to really turn the needle.
Okay. Thanks. Another question on the Salt business, I realize it's very early days and March is still in full swing, do you have already any view on how channel inventories might evolve into the next contract season later this year?
Yeah. Here we always have to differentiate between the different areas, we talk about Canada, Midwest, East Coast, and Europe. In total, we can say already that we will be very close to our expectations for the first quarter. In total, Canadian business is always stable, that was stable this year as well. We go out of the season with normal to low inventory. We are quite positive for the next bidding season. East Coast was above our expectations. Here we will see competition in the next bidding season, Midwest changed significantly.
We have sold our entire stocks, we are out of inventories, we believe that will be the same for the rest of our competitors and for our customers. That should show a nice development in the bidding season. Europe was on average. In total, we are happy with the first quarter, we are positive for the bidding season to come.
Okay, thanks. Very clear. One last question on your new reporting structure. With Europe+. Will you still be showing potash numbers separately within that segment, or will it all be mixed up with the Europe Salt business?
We will show agriculture potash numbers. It is even more transparent for you because we show what is the development of potash, which goes into our customer segment or is sold in our customer segment, agriculture, and the rest is industries. In the past, we have always blended these numbers, although we have completely different customers and partially the dynamics are different. That is good news for you.
Okay. Good. Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Thomas Wrigglesworth, calling from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much. My first question is, you've said that ASPs will be moderately up for 2019 in your guidance. Could you help me understand how you're thinking about the specialty component within those ASPs, versus the kind of commodity component outlook that you see for 2019?
Yeah. Usually, the specialties are following with the time lag, and that is the case this time as well. When we have seen strong increased MOP prices in Brazil, for example, the SOP prices still were flat. At the end of last year, we have seen some recovery, and we believe this is a sustainable development.
When I may add something here. We hear a lot about reduced or reduced to zero China export tax. I think we should think in this context, this is not going in our core markets. Our core markets are Europe, a little bit of Middle East and America. In some of these markets, we certainly meet Chinese potash, in Middle East, for example, Our salespeople don't believe that there are major disruptions on the pricing to expect because the volumes overall are not really big at this time.
Thank you, Thorsten. That actually anticipates my second question. That's okay. Just as a follow-up, just as a kind of housekeeping one, exceptional costs that we should be expecting for 2019, or can you give any guidance on those?
You mean overall cost per tonne or?
You've got the cost saving, the 2030 plan cost savings. You've got maybe other costs that might become exceptional through the course of the year. Outside, I'm not looking, obviously, weather-related, not about the Werra River, I'm just talking about other exceptional costs that we should be factoring in.
Okay. Yeah, of course, together with our Shaping 2030 initiative, I mentioned one positive effect, but there are, of course, extraordinary effects. We indicated last year already that we will cut our workforce in the administrative areas by 10%. It will not work without any measures like that in the production area, we will have some redundancy costs. In total, we expect higher savings out of these measures in this year already than costs. It's not a big delta, but it's a slight positive impact. Besides that, we have no extraordinary burdens.
Okay. Is that going to be low double digits in a number then for these costs?
The costs, no, we would rather like to talk about the net effect, and that is a low double-digit number, yes.
Okay. Okay, brilliant. Thank you both very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Thomas Swoboda, calling from Société Générale . Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. I think I still have three, if I may. Firstly, on free cash flow. You have provided us a quite detailed guidance on EBITDA. Would you mind providing us a range on free cash flow, if you can? Should we expect a normalized cash flow, or do you see any funnies either to the positive or to the negative side in 2019?
Yeah, Thomas, we don't want to give more guidance or more ranges out than that for the EBITDA, we gave you already the hint that even with EBITDA at around EUR 700 million, we still see a slight positive free cash flow. We're not going to be more precise on this. With regard to any funnies in this year's numbers, I wouldn't expect those. We had last year slightly higher cash taxes. We had tax audits where we paid taxes afterwards, we expect cash taxes to go down. We see a normal tax rate. We certainly see slightly higher financial results, this is all the impact we see. It's net positive, also the cash flow improves with the EBITDA.
If I may add, maybe one more hint, slightly positive means not much more than breakeven.
That's fine. Thank you. My second question is on Bethune. I think in the past you were saying that Bethune should turn EBIT positive in 2019. I haven't seen a confirmation of that in your written statements today. Am I mistaken, or is there any change to the profitability at Bethune 2019 versus previous expectations?
You get the confirmation now. We expect EBIT positive for this year. It's a change in the setup because we are behind our original ramp-up curve for the reasons we have discussed. Lower volumes, but higher prices, and that ends in the same EBIT number, so we are positive.
Right. Perfect. My last question is on the IFRS 16 effect. Could you give us a hint, what is it on EBITDA and on free cash flow for 2019, please?
We see a positive impact on both metrics of a low double-digit number.
Low double-digit. Perfect. Thank you.
Thomas, if I may add that, we're now talking about it, but we started our investigation study to talk about this certainly half a year ago. I would assume that most people have anticipated this.
No worries. Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Markus Mayer, Baader Helvea . Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Several questions on the bottom of them and to kind of basically move yourself as the pitch for 2019. Firstly, on the currency sensitivity-
Markus, you're very hard to understand.
Is it not better?
If you say something, we can judge. We try.
Okay. I'll try to speak up. Sorry for the bad line. Certainly on the currency sensitivity. I'm a little baffled on this only EUR 40 million impact at a [audio distortion] change, because normally this was higher. Could you update us on the hedges you have and what would be the sensitivity if the exchange rate would go to 1.25 or down to 1.10? That would be my first question.
Yeah, Markus, the sensitivity didn't change much, I would say. It was higher because in the past, we were always talking about the difference of [ EUR 0.10]. I think this is maybe what you have in mind. Secondly, what we also need to see is we had a time where the dollar was above 1.20, close to 1.25 or even above that. We have a rolling hedging policy, which means we have also bought at times with a higher U.S. dollar, our hedges. We have this in the backup of our compendium. You see that the best case for 2019 is 1.16. This limits a little bit compared to the unhedged components. Yeah, we have hedged up to 85% of the 2019 exposure. This explains it, I guess.
Okay. Second question is on the production stops due to the low water level. You had EUR 110 million effect last year. Should we for this year expect basically no effect? Previously, I think you said we should expect a return of roughly EUR 70 million. What is now a good number to take into account?
Yeah, there will definitely be transfers of waters. We said we have costs up to EUR 30 per m³ . That is a tricky situation every year, even with empty basins. Do we start shipping volumes to make very sure that we get along without standstills over the summer, or don't we start? The solution will maybe be in the middle, to start with low volumes. To make a long story short, we will have transportation costs, which could end in the number of last year's number. That would be the high end, EUR 40 million. You would then have a net effect of EUR 70.
Okay. Good. Makes sense. Second question on this is the logistic cost. Should we assume then also for the 2018-2019 bridge additional logistic costs? We continue the same magnitude, are you EUR 18 million higher logistic cost in 2019?
When we talked about freight costs, we always differentiated between the special situation in Germany due to the drought that was not only affecting us, but other companies with higher freight costs for freight over the rivers due to the low river levels. That is something which most probably will not occur one more time. The freight costs in Americas, and here we are shipping the big volumes, that is a new normal. We cannot even rule out that we will see higher costs than last year in 2019.
Okay. Understood. and these one off effects with the Werra, can you give a magnitude for this effect you had in 2018?
In terms of freight?
Yeah, in terms of freight. Is it included in this EUR 110 million effect?
That is included in the EUR 110 million . EUR 110 million is lower production, is transportation, and higher freight costs.
Okay. I see. You had EUR 10 million roughly closure costs for Sigmundshall in [ 2018]. I think there will be not anymore any costs relating to Sigmundshall in 2019. I assume that this is with a big bridge, something I can add basically to 2019. Is this correct?
Yeah. We have, of course, a bit provisions for everything we have to do now. Maybe we will find out we have a cost overrun of EUR 1 million or whatever, but nothing meaningful.
Okay. Regarding the net cost savings. You had last time a range of charges in there with the costs ahead of the efficiency measures. What is the low single-digit number you should bake in from the net cost savings in 2019, or is it already a double-digit number here?
A low double-digit number is the difference between the savings and the costs. Have a low double-digit number as a net effect out of these measures.
Okay. The last question, thank you for this many questions. What is a fair assumption in terms of higher personnel costs? Should we take them for the Group 3% or more in the 5% range?
More in the 3% range.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much.
But this shifts to our social partners.
Okay. See you at the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of [audio distortion] calling from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Coming back to the FX issue. Just in order to make clear that I understand it correctly, you already hedged 85% of your U.S . Dollar exposure at 1.20. Is that correct?
Our policy is always to have hedged in autumn of the previous year, so in this case, in autumn of 2018, to be hedged up to 80% of our net U.S. dollar exposure we're expecting for the following year. This means for the year 2019, yes. We're talking about potash only here, right? We do not hedge our Salt business because it's translation only. From the potash net exposure to the U.S. dollar, we're hedging 85%. We do this in a collar structure, which limits our best case based on this 85% to 1.16.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of David Simmons calling from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, it's Chetan Udeshi actually on the call. The first question was on clarification. Did you say IFRS 16 will also help the free cash flow? Because I thought you would have taken into account the move from cash flow from operations into financing. When you say slight positive, that includes the IFRS benefit as well? That's the first question. The second question is.
Can I answer this question right away? We said the low double-digit million positive effect has also an effect on the cash flow.
Okay. Fine. That's just because some of the cost or cash out is now probably moved into cash flow from financing line, that's how the cash flow.
Yeah, more or less.
Okay. The second question was maybe just looking into mid to long-term, can you give us some color on how you think the CapEx requirement for the business looks like? The crux of the question, again, to put it simply is, the leverage is still pretty high at this point, even if you take your 2019 guidance, which assumes no outages. The potash prices have already improved quite material the last couple of years. The question is, where do you see yourself comfortable in terms of the leverage of the business going forward? How should we think about the trajectory from, say, here on assuming no unexpected outages?
Okay, let's start with the first part of your question. The normal run rate for the business CapEx number would be EUR 500 million. We have now for a couple of years, additional EUR 100 million for environmental. Thorsten mentioned already with one of his answers that we have the heap extensions that we started last year with Hattorf. Now we're running into Zielitz, into Wintershall. That's a bit luck that we have three heap extensions in a row, and they are very expensive, but then we are done for many years in terms of heap extensions. The second part of your question, we have indicated leverage we want to be. We want to halve it by 2020, coming from 8.1x in the middle of 2017 when we gave that guidance. We want to be back to being an investment-grade rated company by 2023.
That is one of our most important indicators the management is taking into account with all his decisions.
Thank you.
Welcome.
The next question comes in from the line of Chris Ryan calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yes, thank you for taking my question. Just on the first one, apologies, my phone dropped out for a minute, so if I missed it. What was driving the increase in the non de-icing volumes in Q4? It seems like a fairly steady business, and this quarter was an uptick. Could you give more color on what geography or end market that was going into?
What we have seen was a strong demand in North American markets for, I would almost call it Specialty. It's in the consumer business. Think about Pink Himalayan. Think about kosher salt. That's what our specialties are for us. It's not the commodity like the round can. We talk about small volumes, but that's driving it and with good margins. We've also seen, for example, in the copper leaching business, and as we always told the markets, an increase in demand. We are selling salt into copper leaching processes, and this is a business which is growing nicely, actually.
Got it. Thank you. Just on the caking issues at Bethune. Does this pose a downside risk to volumes? That, I mean, if all goes to plan, putting the grinder pump and the cooling equipment in 2019, does that mean that there would be upside to the Bethune volumes? What is the guidance assuming for the caking issues?
The guidance is that we will see, including our issues, which will be more intense in summer this year, we expect 1.7 million-1.9 million tonnes to produce. Everything is modeled in, and once we are done, and that should be the case by the end of this year, that will have, of course, a positive impact on the ramp-up in 2020. We should not expect anything extraordinary which could lead to a higher production than 1.9 million, and we are not expecting to fall short to the 1.7 million.
Okay. Got it. Just a question on the promissory notes for 2019. There's some that are maturing. What's the expectation there? Will those be refinanced, or is a debt repayment going to be a priority?
Yeah, first of all, we're going to pay them back. Secondly, yeah, we going to refinance those somehow because the free cash flow would not be enough in order to refinance them. We have also room to maneuver in our credit line. We haven't yet made up our mind how to refinance them, so with which instrument, but that's what will happen.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's all my questions.
The next question comes in from the line of [audio distortion] , calling from Pictet. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Could you walk us toward your potential production in 2020? I understand that 2019 will still be a year of ramp-up. I'd like to get a feeling about where you're heading. If I understand well, Germany should be back to 6.1 million. How should we envision Bethune and especially the ramp-up of the secondary mining in 2020? The second question is on-
Sorry. We said one by one.
This is the 2018 full year call. We give a guidance for 2019. It's too early to give you more precise guidance on production for 2020. All we can tell you is we will see a higher volume in the German potash production, and the ramp-up will continue in Bethune with higher volumes there. No numbers, sorry for that.
Okay. Could you maybe remind us what's your expectation of total capacity for Bethune and what's the timeframe maybe to reach that?
The total capacity and the time when we want to reach it is unchanged. It's 2.86 million tonnes, and we should achieve that by the end of 2023.
Should we imagine that it could be a linear ramp up until then? Is it a good assumption?
At least it's not wrong.
I'm a bit confused on the hedging. You said you're 85% hedged at 1.16. If I assume the spot price for the remaining 15%, you're probably closer to 1.15 for the full year, which means that the EUR 40 million you mentioned as an impact for potential dollar at 1.15 versus 1.20, you have in your guidance should actually be in the back. Am I wrong?
Frankly, I don't know what you mean with being in back, the hedging policy I elaborated on, this is why I made it clear when I answered Markus' question, is valid for our potash business. It's about half of our business, right? The EUR 40 million also includes our Salt business, which has a translation effect, which we do not hedge.
I think I got what you mean with in the back. You mean it's a high probability that we can gain the EUR 40 million. I would agree for the first quarter because it's almost done. We have seen so many tremendous changes. Let something be solved with the Brexit or between China and the U.S. that can have significant impacts in both ways. That's why we say when we put the plan together, it was October last year, that we had a more different environment, and we took a number for three years because our midterm planning is 2019, 2020, 2021. I think it's a good advice for us to stick with the 1.20 for the time being.
No, I understand that. Okay. We can do our own calculation .
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Markus Schmitt calling from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've just one. Could you maybe just comment on new volumes coming from competitors in the medium term? I think you referred already to Chinese competitors, but I think EuroChem was topic in the last calls, and BHP commented recently on the Jansen plan and the long-term plans there. Just to mention some names here. My question is actually how you assess possible negative price impacts in the next few years from new volumes coming to market.
It's always difficult to comment on the expansion plans of competitors, but I would like to give you an indication. I'm pretty relaxed about this topic. Yes, there are two projects being ramped up from EuroChem. We have seen the first volumes after many delays. Last year, it was about 400,000 tonnes. We don't expect that there is very much to come from the one mine, and I always mix up the names, so I only talk about the one and the other mine. The other mine will not deliver into the world markets at least this year. Jansen is, if ever, so far away, we are talking about completely different world demand. What is important to take into account, we have seen a huge increase in demand over the last years. Everybody was arguing, once you come on stream with Bethune, that will nail the prices.
Exactly the opposite was true. We started producing, and the prices started rocketing. The market can easily cover additional volumes if they are not too big, and I'm not seeing any high volumes and the new volumes entering the market. Also, you also have to take into account, if you see a list of projects, a lot of them are substitutes for lost capacities. By the way, that is the case in our case as well. Yes, we have higher volumes with Bethune, but we have closed Sigmundshall, and the net there is only additional, when we have fully ramped it up, additional two-point-something million from Bethune, and that was over a time period of 10 years. All in all, I'm quite relaxed.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I hear that this was the last question now, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank you very much for your interesting questions. We are looking very forward to seeing you again, and Thorsten and I will be on the road next couple of days, Frankfurt and London, maybe we see one or the other of you. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.
Thank you. That will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. Have a pleasant day, and you may now disconnect your handset.