Good morning. Thank you, everyone for joining us today. My name is Jeff Holzman, Vice President of Investor Relations in Nutrien, and I will be the moderator for today's event. For those here in New York, it's great to be with you here in person, and for those tuning in on the webcast, we appreciate you taking the time to join us online. I remind everyone in the room, please turn your phones off onto silent mode. In terms of the agenda for today, over the next 80 minutes, you will hear an update from our executive team on our strategic priorities, performance targets, and capital allocation plans. We will then take a short break, which will be followed by a Q&A session.
We plan to wrap up the event at around 12:30 Eastern Time, and for those attending in person, there'll be an opportunity to meet with the management team over lunch. Copies of today's presentation, along with the supplemental market outlook presentation, are posted to the Investor Relations section of the website. Now to introduce our speakers. Our first speaker will be Ken Seitz, our President and CEO, followed by Mark Thompson, our Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Mark will be followed by Jeff Tarsi, our Executive Vice President and President of Global Retail, and Pedro Farah, our Executive Vice President and CFO, will wrap up the formal presentations. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's meeting may include forward-looking statements. These statements are given as of today's date and involve risks and uncertainties.
A number of factors and assumptions were applied in the formulation of such statements, and actual results could differ materially. Certain financial measures referred to today are non-GAAP measures and ratios, which may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. For additional information with respect to forward-looking statements, factors and assumptions, and financial measures, we direct you to our Investor Day presentation materials and public filings. I will now turn it over to Ken.
Great. Well, thank you, Jeff, and good morning to everyone. As Jeff said, it's great to be here with you in New York, and for those participating online, we certainly appreciate you joining us today. I'm accompanied by members of our leadership team, and we look forward to providing you with an update on our strategic priorities and the outlook for our business. Our presentation today will provide an in-depth review of the actions we are taking to simplify and focus our portfolio, to maintain the low-cost position and reliability of our assets, to position the company to deliver long-term growth, and to return meaningful cash to our shareholders through the cycle.
You have heard us consistently speak to these priorities over the past 12 months, and today's event is about providing an update on the evolution of our strategy, along with establishing a set of 2026 key performance targets that we believe provide a clear pathway to deliver long-term value for our shareholders. For those less familiar with Nutrien, let's start with what we do and where we operate. Nutrien is the world's leading provider of crop inputs and services, helping to safely and sustainably feed a growing world through the collective expertise of our 26,000 employees across the globe. Our world-class fertilizer manufacturing assets are primarily located in North America, with access to high-quality resources, low-cost inputs, and an extensive distribution network to efficiently supply our customers in over 50 countries around the world.
We have the leading global ag retail business, with over 2,000 selling locations, serving growers in key agricultural markets in North America, South America, and Australia. Nutrien's global footprint and assets are unmatched in our industry. We operate across the ag value chain with the most extensive crop inputs and services ecosystem on the planet. Our upstream fertilizer business produced over 26 million tons of crop nutrients in 2023, with significant opportunity to grow in the coming years. We have an innovative portfolio of over 2,000 proprietary products that generate strong margins for Nutrien and enhance environmental and financial performance for our growers. We move vast quantities of product through our distribution network across North America and around the world, with a dedicated commercial team that is focused on ensuring we efficiently and reliably service the needs of our customers.
We channel products direct to the farm through our network of more than 2,000 retail selling locations. We are more grower-facing than anyone else and are proud of the work our 4,000 agronomists and crop consultants do every day, walking the field with our grower customers to develop the best agronomic solutions for them and improve yields and on-farm productivity. We have distinct competitive advantages and believe that we will be more successful than those that occupy a single part of the value chain, because we can more efficiently and effectively produce and distribute products and services needed in agricultural markets around the world. The grower is at the heart of our business, and there is no other company that can do more for the grower than what we can do.
In doing so, we believe that we can generate strong financial results and returns for our shareholders. If we look back at our results since Nutrien was formed in 2018, we delivered strong earnings and cash flow. Our low-cost, high-quality upstream fertilizer production assets have generated significant cash flow through the cycle, while our retail business has grown significantly through organic growth initiatives and acquisitions, in part funded by the strong cash flow from our upstream business. As the retail business grows, we expect it to further enhance the relative stability of our earnings base. Over this period, we have invested to sustain and grow our asset base and return meaningful capital to our shareholders. Since the beginning of 2018, we have increased our dividend per share six times for a total increase of 35%, providing one of the leading dividend yields in our industry.
We have repurchased 23% of our outstanding shares. As I said earlier, our strategic priorities have remained consistent, but we continue to evolve and refine our focus areas as we move forward. Today, we are going to share more details about the actions we're taking in support of our strategy within the framework of portfolio, performance, and positioning. These actions are designed to improve our quality of earnings and enhance free cash flow, supporting long-term value creation for our shareholders. Let's start with our portfolio actions. We see opportunity to simplify and focus our efforts on core assets and markets that drive the most value. We have identified portions of our portfolio that are not performing to our satisfaction regarding net cash generation or return on investment. Take our decision to pursue a divestiture of our retail assets in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.
Despite good local relationships and operational performance, the margins in this region are below our other core retail markets, and we do not see a clear pathway to consistently convert earnings into incremental cash for our shareholders. Within our nitrogen business, we have made the decision to focus our efforts on growth initiatives to better serve our core agriculture markets. As it relates to our Geismar clean ammonia project, we paused work last year in response to higher capital cost estimates and uncertainty over the pace of emerging demand for clean ammonia. Today, with a clear view to prioritizing our capital, we have made the decision to no longer pursue this project. In addition, we are reviewing strategic options for our 50% ownership stake in Profertil, located in Argentina. Profertil is a high-quality, world-class nitrogen facility.
However, we believe there are potential pathways that could deliver greater long-term value for our shareholders. We are taking this lens to a smaller, non-core asset set as well, and with this prioritization, we will be laser-focused on areas we see Nutrien having the greatest competitive advantages, scale, and strategic fit. This includes enhancing our low-cost upstream fertilizer production assets in North America, growing our proprietary product capabilities, strengthening our global distribution network, and investing in our downstream core retail geographies. All aspects of our business, we believe, will drive the most value for our shareholders. Turning to performance. We will be relentless in our focus on maintaining our low cost position in our producing assets and enhance the reliability of our assets through the deployment of automation and other operational and excellence initiatives in potash, and through implementing reliability and energy efficiency projects in nitrogen.
In potash, we are targeting 40%-50% of ore tons cut using automation by 2026, doubling our capability compared to 2023, providing efficiency and flexibility, and most importantly, safety benefits at our sites. We are implementing computer vision systems and generative AI solutions that are as core functions for our underground mining and safety systems, supporting our mine automation program and predictive maintenance capabilities. For nitrogen, we are focused on initiatives that drive increased reliability and reduce the emissions intensity at our operations. We are targeting a material increase in operating rates at our North American plants compared to 2023, primarily driven by reliability projects at our Borger and Geismar facilities, and we are taking actions to improve the reliability of our Trinidad plants as we adjust our operating strategy to better utilize available natural gas supply.
In total, reliability initiatives are expected to increase nitrogen sales volumes by over 500,000 tons compared to 2023 levels. In phosphate, our primary focus is on reliability and cost stewardship to drive cash flow generation from our assets, and we are targeting an operating increase of approximately five percentage points compared to 2023 levels. In retail, we are focused on optimizing our network to enhance margins and our ability to serve growers. In North America, we are consolidating and modernizing our facilities. Over the past five years, we have undertaken projects to consolidate 90 locations down to 36, including the construction of new, high-throughput facilities. These projects improve asset efficiency and operational capabilities that our customer base expects from a centrally located, efficient, and safe operational site.
We are also investing in our expertise and enterprise data systems and digital capabilities that will enable better decision-making and drive efficiency through the network. We are developing data-driven agronomic insights that support sustainable and productive agricultural practices, including the early stages of deploying generative AI models to augment those agronomic insights. Turning to Brazil, which is an important region for Nutrien, as one of the fastest-growing agricultural markets in the world, while the long-term prospects remain attractive, the near-term market challenges have required us to adapt our strategy. We are working our way through a margin improvement plan designed to provide better earnings consistency and cash generation. We recently closed 21 locations and suspended operations at 3 blenders in Brazil to reduce our fixed costs and improve asset efficiency.
We will continue to review our footprint to capture efficiencies and drive down operating costs across our Brazilian business, and we are focused on increasing the penetration of our proprietary products in this market to enhance margins going forward. Finally, we are utilizing our competitive advantages to position the company for future growth. Our low-cost, world-class upstream assets are well-positioned on the cost curve, and our downstream retail network provides a unique channel to the grower. In potash, demand has historically grown at an annual rate of 2%-2.5%, and we expect that to continue into the future. We are maintaining operational flexibility at our low-cost six-mine network to respond to variable market conditions and grow with the market, optimizing long-term value.
We are targeting potash sales of 14 million-15 million tons by 2026, assuming trend line demand growth and our historical 19%-20% share of global shipments. We currently have installed capacity to achieve this volume growth. Longer term, we maintain a low-cost option to expand our production capability beyond this level as the market grows. In nitrogen, we are investing in high-return brownfield projects that provide greater flexibility and margin potential, primarily adding urea, UAN, and DEF production capacity. These low-cost brownfield projects, combined with higher operating rates, are expected to drive nitrogen manufactured sales volumes to 11.5 million-12 million tons in 2026. Mark Thompson will provide more details on these growth levers alongside our expansive distribution and logistics network later today.
In retail, we have multiple avenues to deliver earnings growth, one of the most significant being the potential to expand our high-value proprietary products portfolio. These products are a major differentiator for our business compared to other ag retailers. In particular, our plant nutritional and biostimulant product lines, which have delivered a 15% annualized gross margin growth rate over the last five years. Jeff Tarsi will talk in more detail about the opportunities in our proprietary business and our other key retail growth drivers later this morning. But to give a high-level summary based on the growth and efficiency initiatives we have in flight, we are targeting retail-adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion in 2026.
This represents a 7% annualized growth rate in Adjusted EBITDA over the next two years, and that's compared to our 2024 guidance range, and is consistent with our historical growth rate. Over the medium to longer term, we would expect to deliver annualized growth above 5%. To summarize, we are taking decisive actions to deliver value for our shareholders within the framework of portfolio, performance, and positioning. We've set the following performance targets to measure our progress. We intend to reduce controllable costs across our operations and corporate functions by approximately $200 million, offsetting the impacts of broader inflation in the market. We are confident these reductions can be structural and not simply via suppression of short-term discretionary initiatives.
We will achieve this through simplifying the business, focusing on our highest value priorities, and leveraging investments in our enterprise systems to drive greater efficiency. We expect to deliver 2 million-3 million tons of incremental potash and nitrogen sales volumes by 2026 compared to 2023 actuals, providing approximately $500 million in annual adjusted EBITDA contribution based on our mid-cycle pricing assumptions. We are advancing highly targeted growth opportunities across our retail network and expect to deliver $400 million-$600 million in retail EBITDA growth by 2026 compared to 2023. Our planned annual CapEx was reduced by approximately $400 million in 2024 to a range of $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion. We expect to maintain this range between 2024 and 2026, and we'll be highly focused and disciplined in our approach to capital projects.
This total includes sustaining and investing capital required to maintain our industry-leading asset quality and meet our growth objectives. With no major long-term capital project commitments, providing flexibility to pursue high-conviction capital deployment opportunities, including returns to shareholders through the cycle. We will pursue each of these targets with a laser focus on how we can best utilize our unique advantages across the ag value chain, enhancing our offering of products, services, and capabilities, all in service of the grower, and partnering with them on their journey to produce the food, fiber, and fuel that the world needs. In doing so, we expect to deliver strong returns for our shareholders. Nutrien has an extraordinary business, and we have endless potential. We are feeding the future, and we will stay dedicated to our purpose. I'll now pass it to Mark Thompson, our Chief Commercial Officer.
Thanks, Ken, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll be speaking about our commercial organization and how we're supporting the priorities that Ken has laid out this morning. We brought the commercial structure together near the end of 2022, with the goal of maximizing performance across Nutrien's supply chain, optimizing our go-to-market strategy, and generating incremental value for the company. The organization sits in the midstream component of our business and integrates global NPK sales, our product management functions, transportation, distribution, and logistics, market research and intelligence, and leverages the unique advantages we have all across the company's footprint. This has allowed us to simplify, to create alignment, and to focus on how we serve our customers most efficiently and profitably. Over the past 18 months, we've used this structure to pursue new opportunities and are positioned to execute on our strategy going forward.
I'll be highlighting our priorities related to three key areas of our strategy. First, continuing to generate efficiencies and optimize value from the upstream through downstream components of our business. Second, building on our low-cost, six-mine potash network and our extensive sales and distribution capabilities to grow our sales volumes in step with the growth we expect in global demand. And third, optimizing our end markets and product mix in nitrogen as we increase our sales volumes through improved reliability and brownfield capacity, focusing on high-margin upgrade products that exploit our end-market advantages and our extensive logistics capabilities. Execution against these three priorities is a critical part of our 2026 targets. I'll begin by touching on the initiatives we're pursuing to create intercompany value across Nutrien. Since 2018, we've increased the amount of internally manufactured NPK supply purchased by Nutrien Ag Solutions by approximately 15%.
In absolute tons, this represents an increase of 400,000 tons. A meaningful portion of this gain has come just in the last 18 months, as we've reinvigorated these efforts under the new commercial structure to optimize logical points of intercompany supply, especially given the growth in the Nutrien Ag Solutions footprint in recent years. In potash alone, we've captured approximately $40 million of incremental margin during this period through increased granular production utilization and netback efficiencies. In phosphate, our downstream footprint has enabled accelerated growth of our higher-margin MAP+ MST product, which we grew by 125% last year at over 200,000 tons of sales volumes. Beyond these benefits, we're always looking at new ways to refine and generate insights and intelligence.
With an NPK distribution network that's unmatched in North America, combined with deep customer relationships, we're evolving the way we take market information from the farm level to position product across our supply chain, maximizing margin benefits and the way we serve customers across the company. The intelligence, infrastructure, and decades of investment across Nutrien are incredibly difficult to replicate. As we look to the future at how we create more opportunity from our assets, you'll hear Jeff Tarsi talk today about the potential to continue growing sales of our higher-margin Loveland Products line globally outside of our retail channel. Our reach with key international customers provides Nutrien an opportunity to create value globally with these products by leveraging our existing fertilizer sales footprint in a higher-growth and lower-cost way than anyone else in our industry...
Beyond these initiatives, we've identified over $50 million of incremental run rate value from a number of efficiency and optimization initiatives that we believe we can achieve by 2026. These include procurement, product mix, and margin optimization initiatives, repatriation strategies to bring product back closer to our mines and facilities, shared supply chain efficiencies with our customers, and this will also be supported by targeted investments in new logistics and storage infrastructure in key markets to drive enhanced value across our NPK network. Now, turning to the potash market. Global demand has grown at approximately 2%-2.5% historically, and we expect that to continue, with growth coming from key offshore markets. At the historical growth rate, by 2030, we forecast that the global potash market will need 12 million-17 million tons of new supply.
History's proven there will likely be unexpected changes to the supply-demand balance. New projects may be delayed, slower to ramp up, or come online with less volume than anticipated, something that we've seen time and time again in the global potash market. Every 10 years, the market loses about 7 million tons of supply on average, due to mine flooding and unplanned closures. But through all types of market conditions, Nutrien's generally maintained a global market share of approximately 19%-20%, and we expect to continue targeting these levels going forward. We plan to do this by growing our sales volumes in line with the underlying growth in global potash demand, while stepping into opportunities that may arise from production interruptions and sudden changes in demand.
Nutrien is best positioned to serve global demand growth with the roughly 1.5 million tons of paid-for latent capacity that exists in our network today. This supports our ability to reach our target of 14 million-15 million tons of sales volumes in 2026. As we've outlined previously, we also have a pathway to serve continued market growth over the longer term, requiring low relative capital investment and limited time to ramp up. As we look at the supply side of the equation, one of the recent structural outcomes of geopolitical conflict, logistics interruptions, inflation, and the resulting shift in trade flows, has been a material shift higher in the cost to build, produce, and move potash around the world.
In Brazil, the short-run marginal producers delivered costs has risen by approximately $50 per ton over the last 5 years, and as global demand continues to recover and grow, we expect these costs to continue rising, as we've illustrated on this slide. Long-run marginal costs have also increased due to the factors I've mentioned, with the investment in clearing price required to economically bring new supply to market, having increased materially as well. Consultant estimates, as well as our own internal analysis, indicates that break-even price is above our mid-cycle potash price assumptions are sustainably required to support any new investment in greenfield capacity. So what does this mean going forward? We tend to see short-run marginal costs provide relatively efficient support for pricing during times of oversupply, with prices quickly stabilizing and firming in the few instances we've seen the cost curve tested over the last 10 years.
We also see a tendency for prices to approach or exceed long-run marginal cost in periods that are driven by demand when the market needs to attract new supply. Over time, in most market environments, we tend to see pricing oscillate between these two economically driven levels. As we've shown here, we expect to see both short-run and long-run marginal cost moving higher over time. Of course, Nutrien's not shielded from the pressures driving inflation, but we do believe our inherent advantages and focused efficiency initiatives in our potash operations will leave us competitively positioned going forward. These efforts and initiatives and advantages don't stop at production. As this slide demonstrates, we've spent decades building world-class midstream assets and logistics capabilities, complemented by a significant mine and in-market terminal storage footprint, including approximately 300 owned, leased, and shared distribution points with our customers in North America.
And offshore, our investment in Canpotex affords us deep relationships, critical offshore logistics infrastructure, including utilization of Nutrien's wholly owned export terminals in Saint John and Morehead City, and our interest in the Neptune terminal in Vancouver. We also have access to additional export capability in Portland and Thunder Bay, and well-established sales and supply channels with anchor customers in approximately 40 countries around the world. Just a few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit with potash customers in Southeast Asia, who have built their business and agricultural productivity over decades through a foundational, long-term growth in supplies of Canadian potash from Canpotex, the majority of which today comes from Nutrien's mines in Saskatchewan.
In Europe, over the last 12 months, we've repositioned the strategy of Nutrien's local distribution and sales team that's existed since the early 2010s to focus on growth in this important potash market. Since 2018, this has supported a doubling in European sales volumes on the ground, and we see further opportunity to build our presence in this important and sizable market, especially given the sanctions on Eastern European potash. These relationships and offshore channels are just a few examples of the long-standing presence that differentiates our business and is difficult to replicate. We firmly believe our 6 mines, access to numerous ocean terminals to efficiently serve every key global market, and our extensive logistics and distribution infrastructure are all part of why Nutrien is best positioned to grow over time with the global market.
If you haven't visited one of our terminals in the potash distribution network, I'll highlight two of our key assets in North America to illustrate their unique advantages. First, our terminal in Hammond, Indiana, described as a potash mine in the Midwest. This asset's the only one of its kind, standing separate from a mine site with 100,000 tons of nameplate storage capacity and a 1,000-car rail capacity, allowing us to position tons in this important market on an efficient basis and also serving as a hub to access other U.S. potash markets. It increases our mine utilization by reducing containment risk, charging up our network ahead of high-demand periods, and increasing flexibility. This has consistently enabled us to capture netback efficiencies and meet end-market needs, often on very short notice.
In 2023, we illustrated the benefits of our domestic infrastructure by achieving best-ever throughput levels at several of our U.S. terminals in the Midwest, and successfully surged shipping rates to record levels across rail, truck, and barge at numerous points throughout the year in North America. Based on these benefits, we continue to evaluate new opportunities for value-enhancing investments in our potash distribution network. The most recent of these is Randolph, Minnesota, another key region of the U.S. Corn Belt, which was just commissioned last month. The site will add 20,000 tons of storage and allow us to increase our presence and flexibility in this high netback region of the U.S. As we look ahead to 2030, we see broad-based growth potential across key international markets.
In Latin America, aside from a short period of weakness during 2022, strong growth has been relatively consistent, and we expect this to continue, supported by increased planted acreage from pasture land conversion and increased application rates. In Southeast Asia and other Asian markets, we also see potential for demand to revert to trend levels, providing promising growth in the short term, along with solid, medium, and longer-term demand growth, underpinned by attractive crop economics and improvements in application rates. In India, we see significant potential for growth by addressing policy inefficiencies, which have reduced application rates and negatively impacted crop yields in recent years. Turning to China, we believe we've seen a structural step change in demand higher, given the importance of domestic agriculture and declining domestic potash production.
While this market will remain a large contributor to global demand, the Chinese contract has diminished as a proportion of our offshore sales mix, which you can see on this slide. It's also our view that it's diminished in its importance to the global market. So what does this mean for Nutrien? Since 2020, there's been a significant change in trade flows and market access that's resulted in a material shift in mix for our potash offshore sales, and we expect that many of the drivers of this will persist over time. Geopolitical and logistics-related interruptions and a focus on markets where cost to serve and distribution advantages exist, have all supported this shift in mix towards Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and other smaller markets like Africa and Bangladesh.
Our expectation is that several of these markets of focus will lead global potash demand growth out to 2030, and that these shifts, combined with the competitive advantages I've highlighted, all position Nutrien very well for the years ahead. Moving to the nitrogen business, Nutrien also benefits from inherent competitive advantages that are difficult to replicate. These include the globally competitive gas position of our North American operations, the proximity of our North American footprint to key markets in Western Canada and the U.S., and our ability to access key global markets from our Geismar and Trinidad assets. We also have strong flexibility in our product mix, enabling us to optimize and upgrade our nitrogen products and enhance net backs in response to market fundamentals and short-term dislocations in the market.
With close to 200 distribution points in North America and 5 chartered vessels that support our export business to roughly 30 countries around the world, we have the flexibility to sell and purchase ammonia to capture economic opportunities, providing cost-to-serve advantages and as a backstop for supply interruptions across our footprint. In the dynamic environment we've seen over the past 2 years, our asset base has positioned us to quickly respond and capture the in-market premiums in our core markets, driven by tighter U.S. trade balances. We've also been able to flex shipments between our domestic and our offshore markets to benefit from structural European supply shortages and shifts in global trade flows caused by gas curtailments, export policy changes, and global supply outages. As we zoom in on where we're focused in nitrogen, it's really about prioritizing a few core outcomes.
First, our nitrogen team continues to focus on reliability improvements and incrementally bringing on our low-cost brownfield expansions. Our reliability efforts have been focused on improving plant uptime and utilization rates through targeted maintenance and investments in our assets, particularly in Trinidad and in the U.S. This includes enabling operations of at least 3 of our Trinidad plants at any given moment in time, allowing us to maximize our use of available gas. Our in-flight brownfield projects are focused on bringing on additional higher-margin urea and upgrade product capacity, and enhancing the flexibility of our North American network. Together, we expect these initiatives will drive us to approximately 11.5 million tons of sales volumes in 2026, which is at the lower end of our target.
The higher end of our 2026 range, at 12 million tons, represents the additional product we would expect to have available as Trinidad returns to full supplies of gas from current rates. On the commercial side, the advantages I highlighted on the last slide will enable us to maximize profitability and efficiently in how we bring these new volumes to market. We believe that a more focused strategy on agriculture and high-value upgraded products will allow us to fully exploit our distribution capability, our retail presence, and maximize the return on our assets. As we highlighted in our market presentation, we expect a recovery towards trend levels in industrial ammonia, continued trend demand in urea, as well as relatively low new supplies of urea or upgrade capacity globally through the next several years, setting us up for a tighter global supply-demand balance.
Similar to potash, we've seen both short-run and long-run marginal costs escalate materially, driven by inflation, increases in global energy values, and logistics cost increases. We see this continuing into the future and supporting higher global price levels and structural margin advantages for North American nitrogen producers. So there's an attractive opportunity for Nutrien in focusing future efforts and investments on these products, combined with the value we believe we can create across our entire supply chain. In closing, we've delivered on generating incremental value from our asset base over the past 18 months. We've identified a number of initiatives across Nutrien's supply chain and asset footprint that we expect to enhance our performance and generate incremental value over time, including a target of over $50 million in run rate value in 2026.
We'll continue supporting our potash position through low cost and efficient production, in-market distribution, and logistics capabilities, as well as continued investments in our supply chain. We're well positioned to benefit from paid-for operational capability in potash as we grow our volumes in step with global demand growth over time. In nitrogen, we're focused on the continued growth of sales volumes through reliability initiatives and attractive incremental brownfield additions, enabling low-cost, high-margin upgrade products in our core markets. Combined, we expect that these initiatives and efforts will support our progress towards achieving our 2026 sales volume targets of an additional 2 million-3 million tons of potash and nitrogen sales volumes. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff Tarsi.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here today, and I'm always excited when I have the opportunity to discuss our retail business and the opportunity it gives us to deliver high-quality growth into the future. As Ken stated earlier this morning in his opening comments, we are the largest ag retailer globally. We have over 2,000 selling centers with locations in key market regions. We offer products and services that deliver strong value for our growers. Most importantly, we have over 600,000 customers globally. This is all enabled by the trusted relationship our 4,000 + crop consultants have with these 600,000 customers. I sometimes like to refer to it as a very sticky relationship.
Our strategic priorities will be focused on being the leading customer-first ag solutions provider, and today I'll provide a brief overview of these key growth drivers within retail. And look, most of our focus today will be on proprietary products. However, I've said this many times before, we operate from a broad platform of goods and services that create multiple levers for growth, and I think that this broad platform sets us apart as a retailer. Starting in our upstream proprietary products business, that we refer to as Loveland Products, we have unique positioning with our high-growth crop nutrition and biostimulant products. We see opportunities to accelerate sales both downstream and through our retail network and internationally through third-party distribution.
As it relates to expansion in our core markets, we have increased our focus on network optimization, and this allows us to optimize our retail network to drive efficiencies and, at the same time, support growth. By constructing new assets with size, scale, and enhanced capabilities, such as storage and blending, this allows us to drive growth and consolidate aged or subscale assets within the network. In many cases, we're taking, as an example, 4 legacy locations and converting those into one that I might call a super center. The opportunity always and continues to exist to expand in core retail markets through opportunistic acquisitions. We refer to those as tuck-ins, and we've got a 20+-year history of doing this very successfully. When we talk about our Nutrien Financial platform, it serves as an integral part of our customer offering.
Focused on competitive input financing, this helps us to drive increased sales and growth of grower wallet. Our digital capabilities are customer-facing and focused on improving the ease of doing business with us. It also enhances our agronomic capabilities and insights. This allows us to better serve our customers and support our organic growth. Lastly, improving bottom line results through business optimization. We're focused on driving cost efficiencies across our business that unlock the value of our size and scale. This includes our efforts to stabilize our retail business in Brazil, allowing improved earnings and quality through competitive product margins, and achieving a lower cost to serve in one of the fastest growing ag markets globally, as Ken spoke to earlier. So let's take a look at our proprietary products business. We have consistently delivered value and growth for retail and our grower customers.
We've generated over $1 billion in annual gross margin over the last 3 years, with margins that are approximately 2 times greater than that of our third-party branded portfolio, and they represent today 23% of our total product line margins for retail. There are multiple shifts to this platform, starting with our proprietary crop protection products, and these are products with a post-patent life cycle. This is a strong portfolio, and it includes leading offerings of adjuvants, surfactants, drift control, and water conditioning agents that improve application efficiency for our customers. Also included is our proprietary seed shelf. You would know these brands as Dyna-Gro and Proven. We offer a wide range of seed varieties that are customized to local growing conditions. We also are leveraging our own breeding capabilities.
We have access to leading seed germplasm and trait technologies in crops such as wheat, canola, rice, cotton, and soybeans. However, our fastest growing shelf is our crop nutrition and biostimulant portfolio. It represents a stable and growing share of our total proprietary business. Gross margin contributions have doubled over the last five years. Today, it represents almost 40% of our total proprietary products margin. Now, included in this portfolio are crop nutritionals, such as dry fertilizer enhancers, starter fertilizers and micronutrients, biostimulants that are derived from naturally occurring elements that provide proven plant and soil health benefits. All of this has led to an exciting potential growth opportunities. We've invested approximately $500 million over the last five years in our crop nutrition and biostimulant product portfolio through targeted acquisitions, product innovation, expansion of our manufacturing capacity to establish a leading global platform.
These investments have underpinned the growth we've realized to date, and they position us well as product demand continues to accelerate. So what's driving this significant growth that we expect in the global biostimulant and bionutritional markets? First, they're proven to increase yield and improve crop quality. Put quite simply, they work. They improve plant and soil health, making the crop more resistant to stresses such as drought, heat, and disease. They also support sustainability by increasing crop intensity on existing acreage and reducing environmental impact. And they're also highly complementary to traditional NPK fertilizers by enhancing nutrient uptake and efficiency. This helps the grower get the most of their fertility investment. So how big can this market get? The global market outlook for biostimulants and bionutritionals is expected to grow to approximately $11 billion by 2030 or a 10% annual growth rate.
If you think about this, then the way I kind of think about this today, is the crop protection market in the U.S. alone, in total, is roughly this same number. So this is an enormous opportunity going forward. Nutrien Ag Solutions is uniquely positioned with our leading portfolio of technologies and capabilities to bring these to market. Now, we have a video we'd like to share with you at this time. It gives you a bit of a look into this exciting shelf of our business.
As the ag industry looks for new, innovative, and sustainable solutions to feed a growing planet, Loveland Products is at the forefront of this opportunity.
For over 50 years, we've partnered with our Nutrien Ag Solutions retail network to provide innovative, premium, and proven ag solutions for our customers that provide greater yields and higher quality. With our investments in the biostimulant and biofertility markets, we're well-positioned for growth in our retail network. There's also a tremendous opportunity for us to expand our footprint outside of our traditional channels. At Loveland Products, we're not just improving crop yields, we're revolutionizing agriculture. The future will be powered by innovation, and Loveland Products will be leading the way towards a more sustainable and prosperous future.
With a team of global, dedicated researchers, it gives Loveland a competitive advantage, allowing us to evaluate new ideas from all over the globe. This includes Australia and Brazil, and that creates new partnerships and new acquisition opportunities, clearly distinguishing us from our competitors.
At Loveland Products, the future is in the power of innovation. From the formulation labs to the global manufacturing capabilities, offering an extensive portfolio of innovative products, focusing on proprietary plant nutritionals and biostimulants. Products like Radiate, TerraMar, and our newest, BlackM ax WSG.
We've been farming for 30, 35 years. I've tried over the last 15, 20 years, I've used 3 or 4 different humic products, and I've found that the Black Max 22 is the premier humic product that I have ever used, so we're really happy with that.
With Loveland Products, we're not just improving crop yields, we're building partnerships, fostering innovation, and working together to create more profitable and sustainable outcomes for our customers.
I hope y'all enjoyed that video. We're very proud of our platform, and the opportunity really excites us. Looking forward, we expect strong double-digit growth of our crop nutrition and biostimulant margins. We expect to reach between $500 million-$600 million gross margins by 2026. We have invested in our product pipeline to bring innovative, value-added products to our customers. We've made investments in our manufacturing capabilities to build an efficient, low-cost production platform with the capacity to support this growth. We'll continue to engage with customers and partners to demonstrate the performance of these products to create new demand. Other strategies include targeted acquisitions to fill product portfolio gaps, enhance our supply chain, and support distribution in our core retail markets and third-party international channels.
These investments have given us the opportunity to increase proprietary margin crop, proprietary margin contributions of crop nutrient product line margins. Retail markets in North America, Australia, and Brazil have a significant runway for growth of our proprietary crop nutrition and biostimulant products. We will accomplish this by product innovations tailored to meet local market needs, by providing prescriptive agronomic insights through traditional soil testing, plant tissue analysis, and microbiome testing. In North America, we do a lot of this testing through our own proprietary Waypoint Analytical labs. We'll leverage Nutrien Financial for competitive financing and incentives through sustainability programs to drive increased adoption. In North America, margin contributions have increased with continued growth potential. Our international retail markets have slower penetration of proprietary products today, providing significant growth opportunities going forward, in particular, Brazil.
In our targets, approximately one-third of our crop nutrient product line margins will come from proprietary products by 2026. So what's new with this opportunity? We're expanding proprietary product sales in core markets and through third-party international distribution, and we're also leveraging existing relationships through Mark's commercial team. This creates a real synergy, in my opinion. Our existing proprietary manufacturing facilities are well-positioned globally to service customers in core markets and provide an opportunity to grow into third-party distribution channels where we don't have a retail presence. Today, we're selling these products in 35 countries. This allows us to deepen our market penetration in these markets, as well as expand into new ones. We have the capacity and the flexibility to produce products for domestic and international distribution without the need for significant investment. Our global fertilizer sales reach gives us access to all key crop-growing regions.
We will leverage this to accelerate international sales by positioning alongside our NPK products with Nutrien's largest customers. We expect to complete our first joint sales sometime in 2025. So, by utilizing our unique competitive advantages, we expect to deliver on high-value retail growth opportunities. Ken highlighted earlier this morning, we're targeting retail adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion in 2026, approximately a 7% annualized growth rate compared to our 2024 guidance range. Our proprietary products' gross margins are expected to reach approximately $1.4 billion, with an approximate 10% annual growth rate and a key contributor to our 2026 EBITDA target. We expect other growth and efficiency measures as well. We expect to increase adjusted EBITDA margins to approximately 10% of sales, and lowering our cash conversion ratio to approximately 60%.
2026 EBITDA assumes the completion of the divestment of retail assets in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Historically, these have accounted for around 2% of retail earnings, and despite a small impact on earnings, the decision supports improved margin percentages and enhances our free cash flow from the business. As stated earlier, we'll continue to be opportunistic on tuck-in acquisitions, with any significant acquisitions representing upside potential to our 2026 retail EBITDA targets. To wrap up, hopefully, I've demonstrated a targeted approach to deliver high-quality retail growth. I hope that each of you today leave here with the same excitement and confidence in growth opportunities in retail as we have. We're committed to expanding our proprietary products business, especially in the crop nutritional and biostimulant segment.
We remain focused on meeting the needs of our customers with innovative, value-added products that offer strong return on investment and attractive margins. Thank you for your time this morning, and I'll now turn it over to Pedro.
Thank you, Jeff, and good morning to everyone. I'm gonna bring together all of the priorities and actions we talked about in today with a view of the future from a financial perspective in our focused approach to capital allocation. When we think about financial performance, we think about that through the cycle, so I think it's prudent to review what we have delivered since the inception of Nutrien. Over the past six years, we have seen all elements of the ag and the fertilizer commodity cycle, including two black swan events, a global pandemic that extended the period of below mid-cycle prices in the commodity markets, followed by the war in Ukraine that created a peak commodity price.
There were extreme peaks and valleys during this period, but on average, it highlights our earnings and cash flow potential in Nutrien, given our advantage position across the ag value chain. Despite this unprecedented volatility, between 2018 and 2023, on average, we delivered annual Adjusted EBITDA of $6.2 billion, cash from operations of $4.4 billion, and an average return on invested capital of approximately 12%, well above our cost of capital. The results demonstrate our resilience and flexibility in responding to the changing market conditions and changing customer needs. Our capital allocation priorities have remained consistent over the past six years, and which sustaining our assets to support safe and reliable operations is our number one priority.
And this includes investments that we are making in our potash mine automation, reliability investments in nitrogen and phos, as well as retail network optimization initiatives. Second is to ensure that we have sufficient and flexible access to liquidity, optimizing our cost of capital by focusing on maintaining our BBB flat investment-grade rating, and by keeping our leverage ratio of net debt to EBITDA below 3 times through the cycle. Next is to return meaningful cash to our shareholders, and our dividend is a foundational piece of our returns, and we target a stable and growing dividend per share. And we have demonstrated our ability to deliver on this priority, even through the lowest parts of our ag cycle.
Since 2018, we increased our dividend per share 6 times, for a total increase of 35%, and we have historically provided investors with one of the highest yields in our sector. We supplemented our dividend with share repurchases, funded primarily by excess cash flow through the cycle. And since the inception of Nutrien, we have repurchased 23% of our outstanding shares, and that reduction was also factored in our decision criteria for increasing dividends per share. Finally, we focus on high value and high conviction growth projects that we are balanced between upstream and downstream projects. The key of our capital allocation framework is the consistency through the cycle. So this slide puts our allocation framework into perspective on a historical basis.
You can see that we have taken a balanced approach between investing in our business and returning cash to shareholders, as depicted on the left. On the right, the total capital reinvested in our business has been focused on areas where we see Nutrien having the greatest competitive advantages, scale, and strategic fit. In retail, this includes prioritizing investments in proprietary products, just mentioned by Jeff, digital and tech acquisitions. That supported the annualized Adjusted EBITDA growth rate of approximately 7% since 2018. In potash, we have invested to enhance our potash network flexibility, positioning Nutrien to increase sales volumes to 14 million-15 million tons from the existing capacity. In nitrogen, we have focused our low-cost nitrogen brownfield expansions that increase flexibility to produce high-margin upgrade products.
Our brownfield projects can be delivered at a capital cost per ton that is approximately one-third of greenfield capacity costs, and we'll maintain this focus approach on a go-forward basis. Earlier, you heard from Ken speak about our framework of portfolio performance and positioning, and the actions we are taking under each of those, pillars. To give some color, I view these actions, enhancing quality of earnings and cash flow. The key criteria from a financial perspective are whether the actions enhance stability of earnings and convertibility of free cash flow, increase the efficiency of our assets, and provide the ability for scalable growth. The two metrics for measuring performance are cash flow conversion and return on invested capital, ROIC.
With a relentless focus on increasing the convertibility of our earnings to cash, we intend to generate a cash conversion ratio between 70% and 75%, up from our historical average of 71%. Along with the initiatives to drive greater asset efficiency and deliver scalable growth, we expect to deliver a return on invested capital greater than 10%, well above our cost of capital. Now, to provide specific examples of strategic actions we are taking and how it relates to improving earnings quality and free cash flow, and per Ken's words on portfolio, take our decision to pursue the divestiture of our retail assets in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. These assets have historically generated positive earnings, but suboptimal margins compared to other geographies, and with much greater variability.
And most importantly, the ability to convert earnings into cash flow has been constrained due to restrictions on foreign exchange conversion. The divestiture of these assets, combined with other retail optimizations and growth initiatives, is expected to enhance retail EBITDA margin percentages by approximately 100 basis points compared to current levels. Improving the performance of our world-class upstream business is focused on asset efficiency and the key measure, being ROIC through the cycle. In potash, we expect to double the potash ore cut using automation in the period of 2023-2026, and in nitrogen, we are targeting a 4-5 percentage point increase in operating rates through the reliability initiatives. And finally, on positioning, the focus is on areas where we have the ability to deliver scalable growth.
Our network of six potash mines and strategically located nitrogen production facilities provides the opportunity to deliver significant upstream volume growth from existing capacity, with very low investment capital compared to greenfield projects. And our ability to scale production of our upstream proprietary products is expected to result in annual gross margin growth for these products of more than 10%.... So we have talked about today about Nutrien's strategic priorities and the actions under our control, but it's also important to look at the fundamentals of our business as we think about the earnings potential for the company going forward. And this slide summarizes the key points from our market outlook presentation that was prepared by our Chief Economist, Jason Newton, that was posted on our website.
The main takeaway here is that we see an opportunity, a positive outlook for agricultural fundamentals and strong fertilizer demand growth and rising marginal costs that are supportive for future mid-cycle prices. From an ag fundamental standpoint, as you see on the left, column, global crop stocks-to-use ratio is at a historical low level, driven by stable demand growth and below-trend yields in recent years. And the chart at the bottom, left, uses corn prices as the proxy, for a range of ag commodities, where future prices are trading well above historical average levels, providing stable margins for growers. Mark spoke about the outlook for potash demand in his presentation, so to reiterate, we expect global potash demand to reach 80 million-85 million tons by 2030, based on a return to historical trend growth rate.
Global urea demand is expected to reach around 200 million tons by the end of the decade. So this projected growth would require the industry to both sustain existing capacity, but also bring on new capacity over the long term. And as you can see, based on CRU data, both the short-term and the long-term marginal cost of potash and nitrogen supply is projected to increase significantly due to inflation and operating logistics and capital costs. And we view this as constructive, given our low cost production assets and the potential for high prices through this cycle. So putting this all together from an earnings scenario standpoint, we believe the combination of our strategic actions and supportive market fundamentals provides an opportunity for strong growth and improved quality of earnings.
In this slide, we show two scenarios for 2026 earnings potential, and both of these scenarios include our retail-adjusted EBITDA target of $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion, and NPK sales volumes of approximately 29 million tons at the midpoint of the ranges. So the first scenario is based on a 10-year historical average benchmark fertilizer prices, which we view as conservative, given the structural costs, changes that have taken place, elevating the marginal costs of production. In this scenario, Nutrien would generate around $6 billion in Adjusted EBITDA. Now, in a scenario where we see higher fertilizer prices that reflect structural shifts in line with the increase in marginal supply costs, we believe Nutrien can generate Adjusted EBITDA of $7 billion-$7.5 billion, consistent with our previous estimates for mid-cycle earnings potential.
The prior slide refers to the opportunity of higher earnings quantity, but let me speak about the potential of earnings quality improvement. Utilizing the midpoint of the earnings scenario ranges from the prior slide, we expect to generate significant cash from operations, projected above $4.2 billion-$4.5 billion in the ten-year average price scenario, and $5.1 billion-$5.4 billion in the mid-cycle price scenario. So the bottom end of these ranges reflect a cash conversion ratio of 70%, and the top end assumes a 75% conversion ratio. As we have discussed today, our focus is on efforts to improve the quality of earnings, which includes enhancing cash conversion. Therefore, our efforts to increase cash conversion through the cycle towards 75% will sustainably increase annual cash flow from operations by approximately $300 million.
These deals with the cash generation, and now, turning to capital allocation. We are targeting, as Ken mentioned at the start, $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion in annual capital expenditures, plus approximately $450 million in leases, which we view as appropriate to sustain our assets and deliver on highly target investment opportunities. Our dividend is approximately $1 billion, and we expect that the absolute value to remain relatively stable, while continue to grow on a per-share basis, in line with repurchases through the cycle. So this equates to around $3.7 billion of committed capital, and excess cash flow through the cycle beyond these key areas will be prioritized between additional target growth initiatives, such as the tuck-ins and other acquisitions in retail, as well as share repurchases.
So to summarize, there are a few key things that I want you to take away. First, is our strong track record of delivering solid financial results through the cycle. Second is our focus on delivering growth while improving the quality of our earnings and free cash flow, and by delivering operational efficiencies and cost saving initiatives, and investing in highly targeted and high return growth projects. And finally, is our disciplined approach and focused approach to capital allocation to high conviction opportunities. And we believe that by delivering on these priorities, we can create superior long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you for your time, and with that, before passing to Jeff Holzman, I'll pass the word to Ken for some closing remarks.
Thank you, Pedro. That concludes our formal presentations. We'll take about a 10-minute break. I'll ask everyone to be back in the room at around 10:25 Eastern. During the Q&A session, we'll be taking questions from the room as well as from the webcast. If you're online, you can now submit your questions through the portal, and we'll be addressing some of those in the Q&A session. We'll see you back here in about 10 minutes. Thanks.
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Oh, that's why some nights we try to kill each other. But you know it's always love. Oh, you know it's only love. Oh, you know it's always gonna fade out. Deep conversations at the Waffle House. Headstrong father and a determined mother. Oh, that's why some nights we try to kill each other. You know it's only love. Oh, you know it's only love. You know it's only love. Where there's a will, there's a way, kind of beautiful. And every night has its day, so magical. And if there's love in this life, there's no obstacle that can't be defeated. For every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable. In every lost soul, the bones of a miracle. For every dreamer, a dream we're unstoppable, with something to believe in. Monday left me broken. Tuesday, I was through with hoping. Wednesday, my empty arms were open.
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Okay, we'll have everyone grab their seats, please, and we'll start in about two minutes. Okay. You guys can come on up. Trevor, you'll be far end. Thank you, sir. All right, welcome back. So we're ready for the Q&A portion of the session, and joining our presenters from this morning are Chris Reynolds, Executive Vice President and President of Potash, as well as Trevor Williams, our Executive Vice President and President of Nitrogen and Phosphate. So for those in the room that have a question, just please put up your hand. Tim McMillan and Riley Dueck Duchek will be at the back with handheld mics, and they will come around, and we'll go over our questions that are in the room, and then I will be alternating with some questions that are coming in on the website.
Maybe with the first question, we'll, we'll start right in front here. Maybe please state your name before you provide your question.
Hi, good morning. It's Andrew Wong from RBC Capital Markets. Thanks for the presentation. So just a question on, you know, along the lines of simplifying the portfolio. Your, your Trinidad nitrogen assets, they've been a little bit fickle, I'd say, over the past couple of years. You know, and, and just broadly, your nitrogen asset base is a little bit more spread out. So can you just talk about how you view those assets? Are they core to the business? And, and how do they fit in your longer-term kind of strategic plan, and what do they provide for Nutrien? Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Andrew. Yeah, welcome, and welcome to everyone. I am obviously thrilled to have everyone in the room and having made the trek to join us here to talk about Nutrien. So as it relates to Trinidad, you know, Trinidad, you're right, has obviously had operational challenges. And, you know, we've made some changes in how we operate at Trinidad. With our four plants, we keep three running, and we keep the other, the fourth one, ready to go. So it's ongoing maintenance programs in order to do that, and we're realizing the benefits of that today, so that when gas is available, we get to run those plants, and it's just this three running, one down.
Now, over time, over the next 2 or 3 years, we do expect to see additional gas. I mean, the way it works today, obviously, is that when there's gas shortages, the national gas company in Trinidad obviously keeps their domestic load supplied and then curtails pro rata all of the industrial customers on the coast there. With additional gas coming, and there is new field development in the region, we're expecting, like I say, over the next 2 to 3 years, that that we'll be able to run those plants, that chemical plants on the coast there will be able to run. As a matter of fact, they're obviously looking at getting LNG exports off the ground as well. So-...
So, put it all together, and we would say that our Trinidad assets, I mean, they're, it's a, it's a good set of assets, and we are doing a lot of work today to upgrade and maintain those assets. It's just a matter of getting our full gas supply, which we expect to happen over the next few years. So yeah, Trinidad is an important component, as it provides us with good export capability as well. So there's good optionality there, and it's just a matter of getting gas, which we have some confidence in.
Okay, next question. We'll go to the back of the room here.
Hi, this is Ben from Scotiabank. Two questions. First one is on the ammonia. You talked about improving to an operating rate from about 88% to 92%-93%. I was just flipping back to your 2019 investor day deck, and back then, the preceding five years was 88%, and you had targeted a 2023 goal of about 96%. Is that delta, is that all due to Trinidad, or are there other issues going on? My second question, if I may, is on the Brazil margin improvement that you're looking to target. Can you give some context in terms of where are the margins today, where are we going to, and how does that compare to Canada, Australia, and the US? Thank you.
Good. Thank you, Ben, and great to see you. Yeah, so with respect to nitrogen and reliability rates, there are other things going on there. In terms of maintenance, we have some end-of-life investments that we've had to make, changing out some major equipment at some of our sites, and there's Trinidad there as well. But I'll hand it over to you, Trevor, to maybe walk through that.
Sure. Thanks for the question, Ben. And yeah, if you look back to 2019, really, when we came out of the merger in 2018, we took a step back and really looked at what does the future look like, and what do we need to do from an overall prioritization and investment in our assets? And so over that period of time, what we really did was look at where do we, because obviously, you can't do it all in any short period of time, because a lot of the changes and the improvements come around turnaround cycles. That turnaround cycle typically is 4 years for most of our assets. So we looked at 2018 and moving forward. We really focused initially on, obviously, our highest priority and our highest margin assets.
If you look in terms of the performance of those assets over the course of the last three or four years, we've gotten those up to that 92%-93% on a consistent basis. We've really looked at that prioritized portfolio. At the same time, we did have some challenges and issues at a couple of our facilities that really did knock that number down over the last couple of years, and that's primarily at Trinidad and at Borger. What we did last year is we really took a strategic, you know, view in terms of what do we need to do to really get these assets performing to the level they should?
And that's where we talked in our Q3 earnings call last year, where we took a bit of a pause and a step change in terms of bringing forward a turnaround at Borger. That turnaround has paid massive dividends for us in terms of how that asset is performing this year. And then as well, we completely changed, as Ken talked about, our operating strategy in Trinidad, where instead of really trying to keep four plants running at a below level of capacity, we're really focused on having three assets run well, with having that backstop of the fourth.
And so what we've seen so far this year, and you would have saw as example through Q1, as a result, we've seen a bit of a step change, and we're starting to see that progress up towards that 92-93%. We still have a few turnarounds we have to execute on a few more of our core components, and as Ken talked about, really to address some end-of-life stuff. But we see good line of sight where we're gonna be best in class in terms of where our facilities are operating. So thanks for the question.
And maybe just, thank you. Just, Ben's second question then on, on Brazil. Yeah, you know, I think everyone knows the history of Brazil over the last couple of years, with the sort of extraordinary volatility that we've seen just through every ag commodity, and particularly on the crop chemistry side. And the challenges with interest rates and financing working capital and all those things, so that, you know, we've had to make some changes in Brazil. And those changes are along the lines of obviously getting our cost structure and our operating model right, which has meant, headcount reduction, significant headcount reduction.
Which has meant closing 21 of our locations, which has meant suspension of operations at three of our blenders, and has meant actually particularly a focus on proprietary products, where there actually and Jeff Tarsi can tell you, there is an extraordinary opportunity in Brazil for proprietary products, and this, particularly this biostimulants and plant nutritionals. And we've talked about the, you know, getting through 2024 and into 2025, really to clear some of these high-cost crop chemistry products that continue to be in the channel. But, you know, you know, this is in the industry channel. This is not a Nutrien story.
This is obviously an industrial story in Brazil and Brazilian agriculture, where everyone in our line of businesses had some real challenges, and you see that reflected in sort of domestic valuations. But, you know, as we get through that, and maybe, Jeff, you want to talk about how we get from here to there and what normalization of margins looks like.
Sure. I think you asked a question of how do margins in Brazil compare with North America and Australia? I'll start out by saying, historically, the margins in Brazil are lower than North America and Australia, particularly from a crop protection standpoint. Look, the North America is our strongest, as our strongest market from a margin standpoint on crop protection and the fertility space as well there. But when you look at, you know, what's happened there in Brazil, and as we sit there today, there's still high inventories of crop protection in that country.
Now, we're very pleased with where we are on our own inventory around crop protection, but we need that country as a whole to get to a good, a better position from a crop protection standpoint so that we can see margins uptick some. And as Ken mentioned on the NPK side of things there, it appears today there's been an overbuild on blenders in that market. There's more of a demand today to go direct from the port to the farm than we've seen there in quite some time from that standpoint. And so you got a lot of blenders out there, and in today's market, it's very difficult to make a margin in it.
So we've taken some steps there, and we're gonna sit and wait for this market to respond back from a profitability standpoint on that side of it. But as Ken also said, man, we see a really rich environment to sell our proprietary products in that Brazilian market. And you're gonna see a lot of focus, like as I discussed earlier in my presentation, you're gonna see a lot of focus there of us trying to get our nutritionals, biologicals, adjuvant, surfactants, and those type products into that market going forward. And that market is actually, in my opinion, from a bio-nutritional, biostimulant standpoint, it's probably from a maturity standpoint, ahead of the North America market from an acceptance standpoint. So we see a good runway there.
Yeah. No, it absolutely continues to be the case that, that Brazil is a growing agricultural market and has been. I mean, Ken will talk about what's happened over the last 20 years, and, and what we expect to happen over the next 20 years. And so it's a market that we, we continue to focus on, obviously from a fertilizer point of view, and the amount of, potash that we send to that part of the world. And Canpotex today would be 35, 33, 30... It's a third of the market. And, you know, that's only going to grow. So we, we continue to look at the Brazilian market favorably in terms of our exposure as it relates to crop nutrition, as it relates to our, you know, our ability to grow our proprietary products, plant nutritionals, biostimulants.
In the meantime, in the here and now, getting our operating model right.
We'll do question right there.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. You were talking a little bit about how you've shifted some volume of potash into the European market in recent years, and obviously, we are all aware of the geopolitical events. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about what the bottleneck is in terms of getting that percentage up. It seems Europe tends to have a premium price. Is it just an issue of how much you can get through New Brunswick, and do you need to make more investments there? Or what could allow you to get the tons there, and are these tons going through Canpotex, or are these Nutrien-only tons?
Right. So thank you for the question, Vincent. And, you know, every offshore ton, offshore being described as outside of North America, goes through Canpotex. So we're not sending any volumes, offshore today that doesn't go through Canpotex. So yeah, but what are the bottlenecks? I would say very few. The way we have built our distribution networks out, and that's rail, and that's ports, and our ability to get off the East and West Coast, and certainly to a place like Europe. You know, but it has been shifting given sanctions and even, you know, some European companies, while they might be able to buy Russian potash, just absolutely refusing to do so for all the obvious reasons. But Mark, maybe you want to-
Mm-hmm.
Talk a little bit about how we're viewing the European market, going forward.
Sure. Hey, good morning, Vincent. So yeah, I think as Ken said, it's not really a logistical or a physical constraint. You know, I think it's really just the historical shift in mix and, you know, both Nutrien and Canpotex prioritizing what that overall granular standard optimization is gonna look like. So you look at the network historically, Europe's been a market that Canpotex has participated in, you know, perhaps less so before the sanctions were in place. And it's still relatively recent. I mean, this has been an evolving situation, so we're only 18-24 months in.
And so with those trade flows changing, a big part of the advantage that, you know, we think Nutrien's brought to the equation is we have that legacy sales team that's on the ground in the country, which actually dated back to the Agrium days before the merger, which was moving NPK around the country. So the shift of that team has really changed to say, let's prioritize this from a market development standpoint in potash. So it's really been on the customer development side to develop those new channels, bring product into the market, establish the sales relationships, which has gone quite well. So as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, on the ground, we've doubled sales into Europe, and I think as we think about those structural shifts, as Ken was referring to, being semi-permanent or perhaps permanent, we do see runway in Europe.
you know, I think as we look at the market over time, if we're talking about going from, you know, several hundred thousand tons to larger than that, as we talked about in the presentations today, we would look at, you know, what storage infrastructure do we need in the market to really capitalize. But as you said in your question, granular market, high netback market, cost to serve advantages for us, so it will be a priority.
Good question right in the front here.
Thank you. Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Maybe a question for Pedro and maybe Jeff, on acquisitions and M&A, and didn't come up as much as part of the growth agenda, which historically, Nutrien and Agrium preceding, was quite acquisitive on the retail space.
Can you talk about how we should think about acquisitions really filtering, layering into the capital deployment going forward? I don't mean to exclude Mark and Ken here, because--there's wholesale acquisitions, so please comment. But, but I would presume it's more retail-
Yeah
focused, and how we should think about the return thresholds on that, especially where you're now retrenching somewhat from investments in South America, how we should think about acquisitions being part of the growth agenda going forward.
Yeah, no, and happy to have Pedro and Jeff take that one. I'll just start by saying nothing's changed there. And matter of fact, Jeff, you can talk about how many acquisitions did we do last year? It's now those acquisitions today are focused on North America. That is true, and that's because we've, you know, we've talked about how we're stabilizing the business in Brazil and in the meantime and getting that operating model right and integrating the nine acquisitions that we have done prior to going out and doing more. But, you know, as it stands today, we are always looking at those tuck-in opportunities in our North American network. We have a strong opportunity pipeline today, and I have no doubt that you'll see us do more of that, but Pedro, Jeff?
Maybe I'll just comment on the criteria that you mentioned here, pass to Jeff about specific areas that we are looking at. But as you mentioned, you know, we typically have our cost of capital is much below 8, 7, but our hurdle rate for acquisitions are typically in developed markets, about 12%. And when we talk about Brazil, it's a much higher, Brazil, Argentina, or other markets with greater risk, we have a much higher hurdle rate. So that's kind of the lens that we look from there. We have monthly meetings in which we analyze all these opportunities. There are numerous opportunities that come up from every region that we consider, there.
We typically have excess cash that we'll be kind of deciding on deployment. But even if we don't have cash, we do have a very strong balance sheet that we could utilize from time to time on those acquisitions. So, they're always looked at on its merits, on the strategic fit, and right now, looking at the quality of earnings as well, in terms of how stable and scalable growth they will provide for the company as well. But there are numerous all around the world, but specifically in the US, I think there's quite a wealth of opportunities. Jeff, maybe you can comment.
Yeah, as I, as I said earlier this morning, we, we have a high degree of confidence in that part of the strategy. We've got 20+ years of experience of doing these tuck-ins. And, and I think, you know, for me, we're I think we're getting to a period of time, too, where we'll see some some valuations normalize themselves a little bit, and I, I think we'll see a pickup in some opportunities coming forward. And we got specific areas that, that we would like to focus in. We're trying to grow our seed shelf, and we'd like to grow more in the Corn Belt. And so those are areas that are particularly attractive for us in the, as far as the U.S. standpoint, and then Australia is the same way.
We've demonstrated our ability to do those in a very attractive manner, and again, these would be tuck-in opportunities in that country and most part for North America as well, versus bolt-ons. But they're very attractive to us. They allow us immediate access to move our proprietary products across that base of business, and we're starting to see it intensify a little bit as we speak now.
We'll do right here in the front.
Hi, Edlain Rodriguez on Mizuho. Quick question on potash. I mean, of course, you know, you guys talked about, like, the demand recovery we're seeing in potash, as well as, you know, the potential going forward. But at the end of the day, you, you do want that to translate into higher prices. Like, when do you think that happens? Like, when does the market get sufficiently tight, you know, like it is in phosphate now, for the global potash market to see higher prices?
Yeah, I can hand that over to Mark. I, you know, this is just a question of the fundamentals as we've come through all this volatility over the last few years, and things have stabilized. We're sort of, as Mark talked about in his remarks, in an environment where we're talking about supply and demand fundamentals, because affordability for growers is reasonable, given the way crop input prices have come off. So affordability is intact. We do see demand recovering today from a supply point of view. We would say we're in a balanced market, but Mark, maybe you want to talk about how we see the, you know, sort of the next few years unfolding.
Sure, can do that. Hey, Edlain, good to see you. So I think there's a couple of factors here, and, you know, I think we've talked a few times already this morning in the prepared remarks and on the Q&A panel about the period we've come through, so we probably don't need to rehash that. But, you know, I think we've come through this period of really significant volatility and seen demand recover differently in different markets. So as we kind of think about the factors that lead to the current price environment and maybe what changed, to your question, what's gonna change in the years ahead? You know, I think first, through the second half of last year in 2023, we saw that former Soviet Union capacity really recover on an accelerated basis and come into the market.
You know, and so we're sort of getting back to the point where the majority of those tons from the FSU, relative to, say, 2021 before the crisis, are now back in the market. So that's a factor that's led to more supply coming back on an accelerated basis, say, over the past 12 months. From a demand standpoint, although we saw a nice recovery in demand to end last year, you know, 67.5 million-68 million tons, another good anticipated growth rate this year, we're reverting towards trend levels, but we're not yet back at trend levels. So that recovery is coming along nicely. But as we revert towards trend levels at an accelerated basis, that would be larger than that historical growth rate of 2%-2.5%.
We think that also plays a factor in supporting prices and tightening things up. And then I would say, just in the here and now, if we look at granular markets like North America, like Brazil, which would be the two most important granular markets in the world, those markets have been recovered for some time. And so granular demand has been moving at a far more accelerated and normal and healthy pace than the standard markets. So we would expect that as you see, likely an India contract gets signed first, that that begins to pick up as a catalyst for standard product demand in the second half of the year, which we would assume really ignites some, some demand in Southeast Asia, even more than we've seen, a Chinese contract at some point, and brings the whole world along.
So I think that's in kind of the here and now. If we look out at the S&D balance, particularly as you move through 25 and 26, there's not a lot of incremental capacity to come back, given that the majority of that FSU capacity is back. So we do see a window here in the medium term where we see the potential for more tightening in the market. And of course, one of the things I went through, which I'll just close on today, is just that marginal cost dynamic. The delivered cost for the industry has clearly risen due to all the factors that we talked about. So as we move into the tightening environment, away from the cost-driven supply floor, we really see the demand fundamentals probably taking hold here and firming up the market.
And I'll actually tack on to that. There's a question that came in from the webcast. So, I mean, can you go over again, like, how do you see the difference between the long-run and short-run marginal cost, really, in terms of driving the outlook for your business?
Sure. So again, I think, as I mentioned in my comments, just to reiterate, that short-run marginal cost, we really think about that as that is the marginal delivered cost. We're looking at it on a Brazil basis. We look at it on a Brazil basis because Brazil is arguably, you know, one of the most liquid and most important markets in the world that producers from multiple geographies can access. So that short-run marginal cost, as we said, really does provide support from a pricing standpoint during times of oversupply. We don't see it very much over the past 10 years. We've probably seen it tested a couple of times, and when it does get tested, prices are supported, and they move off of that cost curve quite quickly, as there is typically a supply response. And buyers are sophisticated in this industry.
They also recognize that at those levels, there's gonna be extremely good value, and we tend to see demand pick up there as well. So that short-run marginal cost is really looked at as more of a short-run measure, as, you know, what happens, you know, in any given market environment when you're in an oversupplied situation. As I just mentioned in response to Edlain's question, we don't see that being the case over the next few years, that we'll be in an oversupplied market. We see it being balanced to tightening.
And when we move more to the long-run, marginal cost, again, we've used our own analysis to support that, but we also have consultant forecasts in there, and those consultant forecasts are based on looking at actual, delivered and prospective capital costs in Canada and the FSU, which are the two logical places that you would see a theoretical greenfield mine. And so when we look at those, those long-run costs, I mean, today we would see, the estimates for a greenfield mine in one of those geographies being at least $2,000 per ton, then taking 7-10 years to construct and bring to market. And that long-run marginal cost is really the benchmark for what does this industry need from a pricing standpoint to attract new supply.
Beyond the major projects that we see in the S&D that have been announced, we just don't see the economic logic for that in the market today. But when we step back from a rising short-run marginal cost, a rising long-run marginal cost, what it tells us is that over time, higher prices are needed to support both of those economic indicators, and so they both play a significant role. As we mentioned, over time, you tend to see prices mostly oscillate between those levels, and we see those moving higher in the years ahead.
Good. Well, actually, we'll do one over there first.
Morning, Chris Parkinson, Wolfe. You know, blue ammonia has been kind of debated across the industry, and some of your competitors, as well as some new entrants, are kind of taking a slightly different viewpoint than you guys are. And you're one of the largest, most reliable producers of, you know, ammonia in the world. You have the cash flow over time. You seem like a very logical, you know, partner of choice for a lot of people kind of looking for the product towards the end of the decade. Can you just give me your further insights in terms of how you're approaching the market? Is it a timing issue? Is it a kind of prioritization issue?
I'd really love to hear your updated remarks on that, specifically given some of your you know, comments over the last few quarters.
Yeah.
Thank you.
No, it's great, Chris. Thanks. Yeah, so maybe just a little discussion about the colors of ammonia. You know, we are the largest blue ammonia producer in North America, actually, today, with what we're doing in Alberta and Louisiana, capturing and sequestering. When we talk about a clean, and so we would be capturing about 70% of our, you know, our processed carbon at those plants, and again, the trunk lines and then sequestering. When we talk about clean ammonia, we're talking about capturing over 90% and then again, sequestering. So yes, largest blue ammonia producer today, and we're proud of that. But as we look at-
C lean ammonia, which is as close as you can get to green ammonia, that's another color. Green ammonia, as you can, which, you know, you have to use renewables for, which today we find to be highly uneconomic. We were looking at process changes on the front end of our plant in order to capture 90+% and get as close to green ammonia as you can. As we talked about it, as we looked at cost, capital cost estimates, and as we looked at the pace of the evolution of demand for clean ammonia and those new end markets like energy, like marine fuel, and maybe ultimately the hydrogen economy, we just didn't see that demand, you know, materializing in the form of offtakes and, you know, someone actually willing to step up and sign something.
You know, so, so inflating capital costs as we upgraded our cost estimates, didn't see the evolution of these new end markets, and wanting to spend most of our time, in fact, talking to farmers as opposed to marine fuel companies. And, and so, you know, with, with sort of a recognition that, that what we do is, is agriculture, and at the heart of what we do is agriculture. And looking through that ag value chain as an agriculture company, we decided that there's better uses for our dollars. There's better uses of our dollars on the nitrogen side. As we looked at, you know, an ammonia market that, that is evolving, that we can then take ammonia and upgrade to things like, and we talked about that, urea, UAN, DEF. Like, this, this is what we do. These are what our core capabilities are.
And so when we put that all together, we said, "Now's not the time." And actually, just this morning, we said, "we don't think ever is gonna be the time, actually." Because we, we wanna, we wanna focus on the farmer. The insights that we get from our retail business that can inform how it is that that whole value chain should produce, you know, that's at, that's at the heart of what we do. And, and, you know, Mr. Tarsi can tell you about the pull that he sees on nitrogen products from our retail business, that's gonna inform how Trevor thinks about, about his footprint and his network. And it was when, you know, we had that discussion that we came to the conclusion that we did this morning. I don't know, Trevor, Jeff, if you wanna add anything to that.
Yeah. I think the third part I'll add to Ken. He talked about, you know, the market really hasn't evolved. The capital cost really has evolved beyond what we would've thought. But the premium's not there as well, and I'm not sure the premium is gonna evolve maybe the way that others may think it would. So when you factor all that in, and we think about what we can do with our capital, and obviously the return that we think our investors are looking for, there's a better opportunity for us being able to take and maximize the capacity and the footprint that we have today.
Obviously, using that leveraged value chain all the way through commercial and from manufacturing to commercial, and all the way through to Jeff and our other customers, there's way better returns in terms of looking at that value vector versus focusing on clean ammonia . I think Ken and team did an awesome job. And for us, that's really where the value is, and I think what you're hearing today is farmers are our core. That's where we think we can be very, very successful, and that's where we think the biggest opportunity is.
Yeah, I think I would just add, Chris, you know, you sort of asked in your question about what others are thinking. I mean, we're not in those discussions, and we can't speak for them. But I think just to reiterate, when we look at the market outlook and we look at the amount of upgrade capacity that's being added from an S&D standpoint globally, it's very tight, and there's very few projects to speak of. And when you exclude China from that equation, there's even less projects to speak of, particularly over the next two to three years. So I think even from a market fundamental standpoint, you think about where are you going to get tightness from an S&D balance? Talk about all the things that Ken and Trevor just said about what is Nutrien good at, and where do we add value for customers?
How do we, you know, flex our upgrade capacity and add more value from a margin standpoint in these markets? That's definitely the place. You know, and I think from a clean ammonia standpoint, generally, one of the things we've been asked a lot is, "Are you concerned about merchant ammonia capacity being there?" And we're not, for a few reasons today. One, there hasn't been a project yet to FID in the last 12 months, you know, in this space. That's not to say that one won't. I'm sure one will at some point. But, you know, when we were looking at our own investment, as Ken talked about on the offtake side of things, it would be our strong assumption that for one of these projects to reach FID, there's gonna have to be a material offtake involved.
And if those offtakes are involved, that merchant ammonia will find its way to the energy market or the marine fuel market, or a different market than agriculture and our core market, markets. And if the offtakes aren't there, we would assume the projects likely don't proceed. And so, you know, from a opportunity standpoint and a market standpoint, just to reinforce everything you've heard, I mean, I think on the commercial side, we feel, you know, very strongly this is the way we can create the most value in the network as well.
Yeah, maybe just one other last quick point would just be, if you think about capital efficiency and you think about a greenfield expansion, that's $2,500 a ton range. If you look at what we can do from a brownfield perspective, we're in that $700, you know, per ton range in terms of building out capacity, so there's a fairly significant capital efficiency there as well.
I might add, you know, just from, just from a grower perspective, and who we're dealing with each and every day is, you know, the incentive is not there for them today on the output of what their production is to use these products. So it'd be almost impossible to extract a premium on the product if they're not getting incentivized for their output.
Yeah, and for us, Jeff, it's now looking at our specialty projects like ESN.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, which there is a pull for.
Yep, exactly.
Yeah.
Steve Byrne, Bank of America. Your wallet share at your 2,000 retail facilities, whatever that is, all the customers, probably measured in the hundreds of thousands, is significant on the fertilizer side and the crop protection side, and you're clearly trying to move both of those down towards proprietary products. What about your wallet share on the seed side? Do you see an opportunity to expand that? Is it just those growers are really loyal to the brands of the duopoly? Or is this really a yield potential issue? You know, you highlighted you're getting more access to germplasm. There's new entrants out there. Just wondering whether this is a longer term growth opportunity for you.
Yeah. Thank you, Steve. And yes, so we are continuing to focus on seed. Yeah, we can grow in seed. I mean, you made the point that, okay, corn and soybeans may be less so, but we have some niche seed products that we're proud of and that we can grow. But Jeff, you-
Yeah.
Wanna talk about that?
Well, Steve, you're, you're exactly right. You know, we, we've got a uneven share if you look at, you know, crop protection and the fertility shelf, and then drop down into our seed shelf. And that's been a large focus for us for a number of years now, to try to balance that, balance that shelf out. And, and most... You know, if I look at it by geography, and we'll talk North America here, for the most part, we, we, we do a, we do a real good job of seed in, in Canada. We do an excellent job with seed in the southern half of the United States, okay? We're, we're very balanced in those areas. Our gap or our opportunity is in, is in the Corn Belt, both Eastern and Western Corn Belt.
And there's a lot of reasons for that. Obviously, co-op has a very strong influence in that area. And as you mentioned, Steve, the brands with the multinationals is very strong. But what we're trying to do is we're not trying to pick one avenue to grow that seed business. We wanna grow that seed shelf regardless, whether it's through some of our proprietary seed offerings or whether it's with Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, BASF, we're not choosy there from that standpoint, and we're doing a lot of things there to try to facilitate that. We're doing business with these growers from a fertility and a crop protection standpoint, so it's a matter of just expanding our share of wallet there.
We do play in some of our own germplasm. As Ken said, we've taken the more niche markets. We've got an excellent varieties in rice today. We've got excellent varieties in cotton. We just added peanuts this year. And so we're not picking those really big crops because that... We won't ever be a major player in that from a germplasm, and obviously, we're sourcing all of our traits today. But that's a tremendous growth opportunity for us going forward, and we see it, identified it, and we're looking at a lot of different mechanisms for how we can expand in that market.
I'll maybe just add a question that came in from the web. Can you provide further detail on what steps remain to be taken in order for Nutrien to begin to realize third-party international sales of proprietary crop nutrition and biostimulant products?
Yeah, I would say that maybe a bit early stages, but that's something that we're absolutely focused on. And, you know, again, part of the strategic advantage that we have is that we currently sell fertilizers, crop nutrients to over 40 countries around the world. And, you know, I used to head up the organization that does that, Canpotex. I've been to all those countries. I know all of those customers, and in many cases, they're close friends of mine. Just in Southeast Asia, a few weeks ago, those customers, those relationships, are the largest agricultural companies in the region. And you know, we've been very thoughtful about how we go about that internationally, and we've we've aligned ourselves with those customers, sometimes for 40 or 50 years, those customers have been with us, and that's true for the customers that we just-
Mm-hmm.
visited in Southeast Asia. So that affords us an opportunity to have a conversation, yes, about fertilizer and potash, but also allows us to have a conversation now about proprietary products. But Jeff, maybe you wanna talk about how we're thinking about that in terms of looking sort of beyond our own shelves with-
Yeah
W ith that, what is an extraordinary set and offering of products to the farmer.
Yeah, and as I said earlier, man, we really see that as a unique opportunity. I think is, you know, if the question was asked, what are the steps that we have to take? I think that we've completed one of the most difficult steps. First and foremost, you gotta have products, and you gotta have products that work. And I mentioned earlier, you know, we've invested approximately $500 million in this space. And, you know, some of these businesses we've been in for... You know, if I look at our relationship with Agricen, which we have ownership in, we've had a relationship with that company for over 20 years, and so we know these products. We know they work.
For the first time, we're really looking at going outside of our own network because the uniqueness of these products. When I look at the biological marketplace, I think we're positioned as well as anyone in that market, in that space, and so we've got something that we think will be attractive. Now, what are some of the hurdles that we have to cross as we get there? Each country is a little bit different from a regulatory standpoint, and so we're doing a lot of regulatory work today from that standpoint. We're looking a lot in our logistics. You know, how do we get the product there? You know, in what form do we bring the product there? Those types of things. We've got our manufacturing capabilities set up real nicely.
Today, there might be a few tweaks that we have to do from that side of it. And the main thing, you know, for me right now, and this is what I've challenged our group to, is let's start with the core focus. Let's pick four or five distinct areas that we wanna go into, that we can utilize those assets that Mark's commercial team and what Ken spoke to. And we don't try to solve everything on day one there. Let's find our opportunity. Let's find those places, geographies, that give us the best opportunity to get this business started and on an upward trajectory. And I think that we're, again, we know the products work, and so I think we're gonna have a lot of success there. Again, we're gonna ride N, P and K and those relationships.
You know, we talked about. Mark talked about the trip we took several weeks ago. I accompanied the group as well, and I see a lot of opportunity there, especially anything that's in a high-value cropping area for these types of products.
Right at the front here.
Thanks. Josh Spector with UBS. I wanted to ask a question on free cash flow. So if I go through your, call it, your 10-year scenario, walk through CapEx, the lease payments, the cash conversion to EBITDA, a little bit less than 30%. That's okay. I don't think I'd say that's best-in-class. If you look at maybe your mid-cycle scenario, my assessment is maybe your capital structure is kind of more aligned with that, which would be more 40% conversion. So but my question is, if that 10-year scenario plays out, $6 billion in EBITDA, that's closer to where consensus numbers are. Can you do anything else on the capital side, working capital side, to get that free cash flow conversion maybe closer to that 35%-40% range, which I would say is maybe more normal?
Yeah, great question, Josh. Thanks for that. Yeah, there are things that we're looking at, but Pedro, maybe you wanna-
Yeah. Well, I presume you're talking about the conversion to Free Cash Flow as opposed to Operating Cash Flow that I was alluding to before. And yes, we're the critical part here you mentioned, and it's the major demand for cash. It's not only our CapEx that we have reduced, but our working capital, and especially coupled with the growth that we are expecting from retail. And retail is sort of the lowest conversion that we have as we grow because they build more working capital. So one of the things we have worked on all kind of parts of working capital. You know, Jeff, we have reduced a tremendous amount of inventory here, and we actually are able now to finance most of our inventory with our payables.
So from that standpoint, they are kind of paid for, financed by the payables cycle here. What has increased as of recent is the success that we had in Nutrien Financial. So Nutrien Financial became one more shelf for retail, in which we are providing financing services for that. We're intending to continue with that because we view that as being extremely sticky from a customer standpoint. So customers tend to stay with us. They tend to have a broader range of products that they buy. And the way we look at Nutrien Financial, and I think the way we'll probably need to explain better Nutrien Financial in the future is, it's a financing company.
We measure Nutrien Financial, which is all of our receivables in retail, as a financing company, we measure them on a return on equity as opposed to a return on investment. And our credit agencies will consider that in our debt profile as well. So as of up until recently, they were considering it like a 7-to-1 financing. Right now, I think we're as of very recently, as recent as yesterday, I think we got approval to go to 9-to-1. So that means that if I was to adjust my debt to Nutrien Financial ability to leverage more, I basically reduce half a turn of my leverage there.
So instead of, for example, 2.5 through the cycle between 2 and 3 net debt to EBITDA, I would reduce that to 2. So that gives me a lot more ability to leverage my balance sheet. So that is one of the ways to do it. So the underlying work on payables and inventories continue to be there. I think some of the work that we're doing in portfolio, specifically, divesting out of regions that have a poor conversion is there, and I think we are trying to use Nutrien Financial as a way to leverage and basically penetrate more in our customers. Jeff, I don't know if you.
Yeah, I mean, look, working capital is from the time I get up in the morning, and I go to bed at night, we're working capital. Pedro makes sure it stays stamped on my forehead. And I think as well as we get to more normalized buying patterns with our customers-
G rowers, then we're seeing our working capital come down. If you think about it, we went through a period of time of a lot of instability from an inventory standpoint, and we saw the buying habits change as well from that standpoint. We're seeing that return to a much more normalized basis today. I'm actually. I'm never satisfied, but I'm quite pleased with the work we've done on the inventory side of our business, and we're continually to work with our suppliers on the payable side of this business as well. And when we're doing really good on an inventory perspective, then we're probably causing some pain somewhere else in the supply chain from the suppliers and such.
But, it's an intense focus of ours, and it's one you've got to stay focused on a daily basis when you talk about a retail organization as big as ours. And so I think we'll continue with the finance group, working alongside them to find improvements in that metric as well.
So, maybe just add on from the web here a question then. So how do you think about prioritization and free cash flow, really, through the cycle then, based on all that we've discussed today?
Yeah, you know, we've talked to, and Pedro showed how we're obviously sustaining our assets, and we talked about some of the end-of-life challenges that we've had in nitrogen and obviously in our potash business, maintaining sort of the world-class footprint that we have there. And then, of course, in retail as well, through network optimization. And obviously, you saw some pictures of, you know, I actually was looking at them through the video, and the quality of our assets, I would say, would be industry-leading. And so we've been sustaining our assets. Obviously, we've grown our dividend. We talked about that. You know, the stability of our retail earnings through the cycle allows us, gives us the confidence to grow that dividend.
And, you know, that we use the word stable and growing with confidence for that reason. We've talked about our investing portfolio and what we're doing with that investment portfolio, and it really is focused. You know, it's about half of it's in retail, about half of it's in our upstream business. But downstream, it's the things that we've talked about around proprietary, around network optimization, our digital capabilities, and then obviously upstream focusing, keeping our automation work in potash going. Chris can talk about that. You know, where we're moving to ore tons cut 40%-50% here by 2026 and, you know, doubling from where we are today. And that's productivity benefits as our mines continue to... Our footprint continues to get bigger.
I always remind people that the underground footprint at Rocanville is bigger than the city of Calgary. So this automation piece, to have machines running during shift change, even, for example, where you have to drive an hour and a half out to the face, the productivity benefits are real. So automation, predictive maintenance, and then we talked about what we're doing with brownfield investments, energy efficiency projects, and greenhouse gas projects in nitrogen. That all adds up to about $500 million, down from $400 million from last year, but just more targeted, I would say, and the decision that we've made on clean ammonia, so that we don't have big capital projects in front of us.
It's really this focus, this distinct focus, I would say, on the things that I just mentioned. Pedro just talked about the balance sheet, so we think the balance sheet is in a reasonable place. And so today, when you put that all together and you'd say that, you know, our capital adds up to about $3.7 billion, you can look at where we're at in the cycle. And you know, as we go from today into a mid-cycle environment, and Mark talked about some of the signposts that we were seeing, and you know, moving in that direction, that of course will have some unallocated dollars.
We will maintain the discipline on the balance sheet, on the dividend, on sustaining our assets, and on that very, very targeted capital program, maintain that discipline, which is the sort of $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion we talked about on the CapEx side over the next few years. That will allow, of course, some unallocated dollars, and we will certainly look at returning to shareholders with unallocated dollars, the way that we have in the past for you know, since the company was formed, buying back 23% of the stock and raising the dividend. So, you know, we will always look at that, and that's sort of how we think about it in terms of prioritization.
We'll have quantity of capital, for sure, as we go to the cycle, and we have quantity of capital that we can spend. Just leveraging our strong balance sheet, I think, is going back to the quality of earnings. We'd like to spend money. Well, number one, we want to not continue to invest money on things that have suboptimal returns. That's the portfolio work that Ken talked about before. So that will free capital for us to do other things. Then we would like to invest in projects, and I think we mentioned, you know, brownfield projects. Trevor mentioned that we can spend $750 per ton, as opposed to $2,000 per ton. That's a great way to increase our efficiency in our assets going forward.
And then we can leverage, put the capital to work in places that we are naturally advantaged. And I think going to LPI, in which we can put little capital, we have the product, we have the distribution, we have great margins, and that's a very scalable growth that we have to do. So I think we're-
T rying to not only to look at the quantity of capital and where are we gonna put that capital, but see if we can elevate the quality of that investment as we're going forward.
Yeah, thanks for that, Pedro. And all the while maintaining flexibility, the question, I think, was Adam asked about acquisitions, all the while maintaining flexibility to continue to pursue this, that sort of history we have on successful tuck-in acquisitions. On the front here.
Yeah, Ben Theurer from Barclays. I wanted to follow up on the potash mine automation progress, and how you're going to double basically from the roughly 22% to 40%-50%. Is that gonna be a linear progression? And how much of CapEx have you, within that $2.2 billion-ish, how much is dedicated towards that? So that's the first part of the question. The second part of it is, where was that, if it's now at 22%, maybe some 3, 4 years ago, and what does that do to your cash cost per ton? So how much of, like, a savings do we get from that automation process?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it, it goes from 0, you know, 3 or 4 years ago, to 23%, 22% today, and then, as I said, 40%-50% by 2026. And, you know, the cost benefits for us are really the next ton that we take is a, is a better ton, is a more efficient ton, and it really is about maintaining our position on the cost curve, which is sort of top quartile, as, as these inflationary pressures that Mark talked about, continue to affect the entire industry. I mean, we're not shielded to that- from that, but neither are our competitors. So it really is about maintaining our position on the cost curve. But I'll, I'll hand it to Chris to talk about progress we're making there.
Yep. So we're still fairly early, I would say. As you said, we've got 22% of our ore that we've mined in 2023 was from automated machines, and then, you know, looking to double that over the next couple of years. As we think about the capital cost of that, probably over the next decade, we're estimating about $15 million-$20 million per year that we'll be devoting to the automation of our machines. The timeline, as you described, is really governed by when those machines go in for turnaround, and on average, that's about every 6 years. So it's a big deal to tram those machines back from the mining face to a workshop for those major turnarounds, and we take that opportunity to install that automation technology.
And so it's not that we're reluctant to do that, we just wanna put it on that, on that timeline of converting those machines. And as Ken said, in terms of... We really look at this as a cost mitigation exercise, particularly as you look at that sprawl. This technology was developed, you know, almost a decade ago, firstly through a lens of safety, as we look to remove people from some of the most dangerous areas of our mine site. But now we're seeing some benefits from mining through shift change, but also mining through anomalous ground. And so in a traditional underground mining operation, we've got an operator on that machine, you hit some ground that's unstable, you'd have to back that machine out, have a bolting crew come in, stabilize the roof, and then go back in.
Now, with this automation, there's no risk to anyone. We can mine straight through that ground. So as we get the percentage of ore higher and higher, I think the benefit from a cost mitigation point of view is just gonna continue to increase.
Chris Willis from Exothermic. A couple of questions. On your capital spending, you ratcheted it back a bit, and you're running, you know, $2 billion-$3 billion. How much of that is maintenance versus what you might consider growth CapEx? And then secondly, you bought back a lot of stock over the years. Do you know offhand what the average prices you've paid over the years, and might a variable dividend or a special dividend in stronger years be a better alternative than buying back stock? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Chris. Yeah, so of the $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion, about $1.7 billion-$1.75 billion would be on the sustaining side. But that, that includes all the mine development work that we do in potash and all the pre-stripping work that we do in Phosphate. But suffice it to say, sort of 1.7, 1.75. So then you add to that the $500 million-ish that we just talked about across our investing program, that's where you get to the $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion. But maybe I'll hand it to you, Pedro, to talk about buybacks and special dividends.
Yeah. So I think what we are seeing to buy back our cost over time has been about in the mid-70s since the inception of the company. And what we are looking in the future is to be in a more ratable basis for the capital as a return of capital as well. Because we will have, you know, as happened in the past, we will have excess cash from time to time, depending on the, you know, where we are in the industry. Whenever that happens, we have a dialogue with a number of our investors and, you know, the two, three obvious kind of a uses of capital will be, well, let's invest or acquire.
There is a lot of reluctance to do that at a certain point in time in the cycle. We talked about dividends. Well, of course, our dividend policy has been to be, have stable and increasing dividends and not have a dividend that is a function of our operating cash flow or free cash flow. So increasing that would not be sustainable, you know, over time. And the preference from the majority of our investors, as we talk from time to time, is to do a share buyback. The question is, as we are thinking in the future, we might have that in a more ratable basis in the future.
That will be kind of our thought, but those are early thoughts that we, we are not ready to kind of divulge at this point.
Jeff Zekauskas from JP Morgan. Maybe I, if I can follow up on Chris's question. So I, I think you've bought back about $10.5 billion worth of stock since 2018, and as you say, the price is 75, and today you're at 54. So, you know, I don't know, maybe, you know, $2 billion-$3 billion has disappeared. And so—and I, I get it, that hindsight is 20/20, right? But, you know, is share repurchase rational for Nutrien? If you went back to 2022, when you spent your $4.5 billion, would you do it differently now, in the light of the way the agricultural markets have changed? I, I think Nutrien's share price is flat since you merged with PotashCorp.
So, you know, I realize some of your shareholders want you to repurchase shares, but they may be incorrect about that. And so why is purchasing ratably, you know, a good idea? Or, you know, you talk about how the financial returns have lifted, but, you know, that's really not been reflected in your share price. You know, is there anything to be done, or you have to wait till the market reevaluates you? Sorry, that's a little too complicated.
No, it's. Thank you for that, Jeff. And no, I, I think it's a good question. I mean, we are sitting here at a moment in time, and we do think about these things over, over the longer term, obviously. Your question about, you know, sitting here today with the benefit of hindsight, you know, would, would we do things differently? And matter of fact, you know, we look quite closely at, at, you know, had, had we purchased on a ratable basis with some programmatic approach or the way that we actually went about it, and, and in fact, there's very little difference in that. I think, I think what you're probably pointing to is sort of the countercyclicality and how do you think about your balance sheet at a moment in time versus how you think about buying back your own stock at a moment in time.
Then, you know, what it is that your stakeholders are saying at the time as well for you to do with that. Yeah, we have the benefit of hindsight. I think what we would say today is if we look forward, if we look at everything that we talked about today, if we look at the evolution of the market and where, you know, we sit today versus the opportunity that we see into the future, you know, we are fortifying our balance sheet, because we do want to be countercyclical. We are maintaining flexibility so that when tuck-ins come along, we can take advantage of those things. We are investing in our assets today.
We do when, when we have opportunity on the upstream part of our business, and, and that's cash flow, and we do take that and invest that in our downstream business. We've done that, and you can look at the rate of growth, that sort of 7% that we talked about in our retail business, that dwarfs our competitors. And that is because, you know, we do have our upstream business that's sort of funding that downstream business when, when, the wholesale, the upstream business is in that part of the cycle. So you know, we, we're doing more things than just buying back stock. But I think that your question is, did we learn some things? And, and, you know, we have, and with the benefit of hindsight, we have.
It is about, you know, that balance that you strike between your balance sheet, what you do there, and then how you think about buying back your stock. But, you know, Pedro, I don't know, you want to add more?
I think, you know, I think it's a fair question. I think we did learn, and I think it's very hard to pick up a moment in time where we have two black swan events following one another as a very unique event. I mean, we heard similar comments in different times, because, of course, it depends on the price we are today.
Sure.
We look backwards, and you make an evaluation on the basis of the current price today. In the future, if that price would be different, then it will appear to be wiser versus not.
But, I think what we see is, obviously, especially in 2022, we have a run-up in prices, we have a lot of cash, we have a lot of our investors—We have a very low leverage, I mean, below one, and we have a lot of our investor base saying: "Give me the cash." And of course, when we consult a number of our investors, their preference in terms of how to return that cash is a more tax-efficient way, which is the share buyback, as opposed to do it through a special dividend or anything like this, which would not have been accretive to the company's future anyway, will benefit the shareholders at that point in time.
So it was, you know, I'm not quite sure if you would have done a special dividends would have been a lot better. If you do a share buyback, you have to contend with the reality we have there, and our balance sheet was very unlevered, and a lot of people would like to have cash so they can redeploy in other opportunities, given the fact that we were not gonna deploy in a large acquisition or a large investment. And I think there was not a lot of support from people anyway. So I think the only thing that I can tell you is, I think our thought process in the future is, how can we make this program less procyclical and more ratable? That will be our learning from that.
Okay, I think we have time for one more question. The last question right there.
Thanks for fitting me in. Dan Rizzo from Jefferies. Can you just tell us, in retail, what your leverage is to a change in U.S. plantings? If there's a 1 million acre change in corn plantings or a 1 million change in corn, what that is, and if it's changed over the years?
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, so I mean, that's a relevant question, given where we're at in the planting season here and what weather has been doing in the Corn Belt. But Jeff, do you wanna talk about, you know, as we get to the end of the season here and moving plant acres, what that means for us?
Yeah, so it is a good question. Timing on it's good is we're trying to—you know, we started out this year just gangbusters in March. Looked like it was gonna be a really early start to the year, and what's now turned into a very dragged out planting season. I had a lot of questions earlier today around where we see corn acres at this year. We're for the most part holding in at 90 million acres of corn. I'll tell you that to get to the 90 million acres of corn, we're still gonna need to plant some corn in this week that we're in right now. If I get to a .
You know, probably the best way that I can sum that up for you on your question you asked, is there obviously is an input spending difference between corn and soybeans. Corn, let's just say on average in the U.S., is about $350 an acre in inputs. Soybeans are gonna be somewhere between $175-$200 an acre. So you, you've got a bit of a gap there between the difference. And that primary difference is in the fertility side of things. It's fertility and it's seed. Crop protection's pretty close from that category. I'd, you know, if I had my druthers, I'd rather see a corn acre than a soybean acre.
I can tell you on soybeans, however, that because of our proprietary makeup that we have, we have some pretty unique opportunities there around proprietary seed treatments. When I think about our bio nutritionals and biostimulants, we have some excellent products, like Radiate, that we have very strong coverage in the soybean market. So we've got some things there that play to our advantage. Again, from the NPK side of it, it's gonna be somewhat reduced, going from an acre of, from an acre of corn into soybeans. One of the things that, you know, been asked a lot about, you know, prevent plant, and there's a big difference this year versus year in the past. A grower is really not incentivized to take prevent plant this year.
In some of those areas where we have seen some crop shifts, what I'm very confident of is we'll see a crop planted on that acreage in 2024.
Okay, great. I'm gonna call on Ken just to come up and close out the event.
I left my glasses over there, but I'm gonna try and do this without them. So here it goes. Now, thank you for joining us, obviously. And like, as I said, we're thrilled to have you here in person. For those that have joined us online, thank you for taking the time. And this is about us talking about our Nutrien, our outlook, and what we have planned. But it's also about obviously collecting your feedback and hearing from you, and we do that through your questions. And you know, we're here to be open and transparent about that, and have a discussion about our business interactively with you, because you know, obviously, that's incredibly important. You know, we've talked about our distinct competitive advantages today, and we've talked about that.
Those advantages that we have across the value chain, where we start with our discussion about the farmer, and then we look upstream of the farmer and that reach that we have right through, I keep saying, to underground at Rocanville and everything in between. Including, obviously, all of the infrastructure build, logistics network that allows us to meet our customers' needs right down to the acre. And that we believe, as Nutrien, there's no other company that has that scope and reach, and the ability to talk to 600,000 farmers, 150 million acres that we touch directly, and then it would be many more hundreds of millions of acres beyond that, that would receive our products globally. That's something we think is unique and something that we're proud of.
We've talked about our strategic actions today, and we've talked about those in the context of portfolio, performance, and positioning, and the things that we're doing to improve quality of earnings. Our view of quality of earnings being, you know, that the, the stability of those earnings and the ability to convert to cash, the things that we're doing to improve that. What we're doing on the asset efficiency side, we've got an extraordinary asset base that we just can continue to produce off of, and improve efficiency and productivity. Then we've talked about the scalability in our business, because there's lots of farmers everywhere, and that's who we serve. And with the products and services that we have, there's, there is the ability to scale. Then we've talked about our approach to capital allocation.
We appreciate the discussion about that, because, you know, as we look forward here, collecting your views and collecting views of stakeholders, and of course, our own views on how we sustain our assets, how we want to invest to grow this business, our balance sheet, what we're doing with the dividend, and then ultimately how we redistribute back to shareholders, is in a critical discussion. We just want to give people the confidence that we're gonna do that with discipline, and that we're gonna do that with high conviction. I will just say, again, on behalf of my colleagues and my colleagues in investor relations, who have done an absolute and extraordinary amount of work building up to this, and thank you. Thank you to everyone. Thanks to my colleagues.
We'll go out and enjoy some lunch together. We're happy to engage with you and on any of these topics, and moreover, some lunch, and so we'll see you outside. Thanks again.