For the sake of kicking the conference off, we'll get going. Ken and Mark, you just came off a very strong quarter, reported earnings last week, clearly capitalizing on the favorable Nutrien backdrop. Maybe we want to start off a little bit, if you want to rehash, the year that was 2025 and where the company stays, and then we'll dive in and start there.
Yeah. Thanks, Matt, good morning, everyone. Morning, Steve. It's good to see you. I think like everyone, it's good enjoying seeing Steve. Yeah, 2025 was a good year for us. I would say that that is true, even though we obviously had some headwinds in North American agriculture. We could talk about corn, soybeans, and canola up in Canada. At the same time had, you know, reasonable, I would say, prices in our fertilizer business, and looking at potash, we can talk about the market, certainly what we saw happen with nitrogen. Obviously, the phosphate market was in a place that where we saw prices well above mid-cycle levels.
I think, you know, what I would say is in that environment, the backdrop for us, it just continues to be that we're in a space, the agriculture industry, where the demand for food just continues to grow. We can talk about growing population and a decreasing rate of arable land expansion. Absolutely everywhere that I go in the 50 countries, the 50-odd countries that we send our products, there's just this ongoing realization that farmers, governments can do more with the complement of land that they're farming. That more is obviously seeds and germplasms and the highest quality technologies there. It's killing weeds, and it's killing bugs, and it's balanced fertilization.
With a backdrop of a growing demand for just about everything that we do, we sit on what we believe are the highest quality assets upstream of an acre, and that is starts with our downstream business, our retail business, and that is serving over 600,000 grower accounts in North America and Australia, Brazil. It's our midstream assets that we've built out, supply chain logistics, more built out than, I would say, anyone else in the world. That is backed up by the largest footprint of fertilizer production in the world. Again, asset quality that we believe is top tier. We have been focusing on our business, I would say, with a renewed focus on a few things.
One is portfolio. Mark can talk about the work that he and his team has done to just focus on free cash flow, asset by asset and sort of upgrading the portfolio accordingly. That body of work has led to some projects that we have in flight, on calling some of the portfolio. We can talk about that. Matt, I know you have that on your list of questions. We've been focusing on cost, and, you know, even getting ahead of our $200 million SG&A target, which we achieved last year and heading into 2026, knowing that there'd be more that we can do. There certainly is more we can do in terms of pulling out cost. Then just continuing to grow the business.
We increased fertilizer production again last year by $1.3 million. We increased our downstream earnings by $300 million and again, when we, you know, every year, we've got those retail earnings growing at 5% or 6%. We believe that that's kind of structural in nature, and again, pulling out cost and then focusing on capital. That's been, I would say, the work that's been going on through 2024, 2025, and absolutely will be the focus of 2026, and, you know, that sort of culminates in the sources and uses of cash discussion. In other words, capital discipline, capital allocation. Maybe, Mark, you want to say, talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, Matt, I know we'll get into some of this more, but I think just to build on what Ken said, I think 2025 was a foundational year for Nutrien in terms of really setting a tone from a capital allocation standpoint, in terms of what investors should expect from us. As Ken said, that's capital discipline. We've taken $600 million out of CapEx over the last few years. You saw that in our numbers. From an investing CapEx standpoint, we've really simplified and focused the company in terms of where we're investing, things that we're good at in our core business, where we have core structural advantages, and we can grow the company with accretive investments.
Then from a return of capital standpoint, just that discipline that Ken talked about, including the introduction of ratable share repurchases as part of our framework to grow free cash flow per share across cycles, paired with steady growth in dividends per share. I think all the things that Ken said in terms of operational performance, controlling what we can control, doing what we say we're gonna do, set the tone in terms of a very disciplined capital allocation strategy that was on display in 2025. I think the punchline for capital allocation is that investors should expect more of the same from us in 2026. Matt, maybe hand it to you.
Yeah
...go to your question.
I'll, you know, as opposed to passing that microphone back and forth, I'll just stand up here. I mean, Ken, if we want to start on the retail business, you know, 2025, the guidance and the outlook catches that kind of $1.9 billion EBITDA target towards the high end. It also opens the door for some flattish performance year-over-year. Clearly, farmer profitability is not extraordinary. There are some headwinds. You're also going through a number of company-specific actions to boost profitability. As we look at kind of the high and low end of that range, it feels difficult, at least for us, to kind of get down to that lower side, given what you have going on.
can you just walk me through maybe the puts and takes on the?
Yes. You know, I'll hand it over to Mark to just provide the sort of list of assumptions on the high end and the low end. I think you've sort of alluded to it there, Matt. I, you know, when we originally set the Investor Day target of $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion, there were some, of course, assumptions about, I don't know, call it, historical averages or normal weather and normal agricultural patterns. As I started out saying, it's, you know, last year we saw where corn prices were and that record corn crop that came off in really kind of around the world in 2025.
You know, that it's true that that pulled an extraordinary amount of crop nutrients out of the soil, but certainly the yields were there, and we saw the impact on corn prices. With soybeans, obviously, the trade war with China and buying today really less than half of what they were buying just a few years ago, and that's up from zero, you know, prior to striking a deal. The, you know, soybean farmers have been in U.S., Brazil have been feeling that. And if it's North America we're talking about, obviously, canola with China has been a huge challenge as well. You know, That's a North American story. We can go around the world and there's some pockets where it's better, some pockets where it's worse.
Certainly for our core retail business, you know, that's been part of the story. Australia, you know, has been a story about weather and dry conditions. You know, here we are in its less than ideal agricultural environment. Obviously, funds from U.S. government are helping, but that's certainly part of the story. Maybe Mark, you want to just provide sort of the top-end, low-end assumptions.
Sure, happy to do that. Matt, I think I'd just double back on the comment that Ken made earlier. When you look at where we set the bar at Investor Day, we were about $1.45 billion in 2023 in retail EBITDA. The midpoint of our 2026 guide implies about $400 million of EBITDA growth over that time period. As Ken said, we think it's structural because of the changes we've made. Notwithstanding the tough environment, the growth has been, you know, quite impressive. I think notwithstanding that, based on what Ken said and our outlook for the environment, obviously, it's incumbent upon us to provide the best view that we can to investors based on the world we see around us.
That said, at the midpoint of our guidance, you know, we're gonna be growing the business about 6% on an EBITDA basis year-over-year in that kind of environment. As we said on the call, there's a few core anchoring assumptions on that. At that midpoint, we would expect that you've got kind of mid-single digits fertilizer volume growth year-over-year, and that's informed by the fact that we had an early cutoff to the fall season with snow in the US in December that sort of stopped that field activity.
Importantly, we see high single digits proprietary product growth in 2026, that's obviously part of that engine of ratable growth in retail that Ken talked about, we see a great opportunity both on the CP side, but our nutrition business, which has been growing at a very good clip over the years. That's embedded at the midpoint of our guidance. The other would be that we experienced some tough weather conditions in Australia last year. We assume a normalization of those conditions. Then in terms of what we can control, an assumption that we continue to look at cost takeout opportunity across all of our geographies, which has been a core part of what we've been doing over the last few years in that structural growth.
Lastly, we just say on the CP side, generally, for crop protection and our total shelf, looking at kind of mid-single digits gross profit growth with some of the recovery there, including weather and in our business. Really, you could toggle any of those assumptions to figure out where you are in the high and low case, as is always the case, weather's a factor in our business. We think based on the environment, we see that we've set the bar appropriately for that growth. I think importantly, when you cast out beyond 2026, as Ken said, we think those drivers are structural in nature.
We think that mid-single digits growth for our business, which we've achieved over the last number of years, is something we can cast forward into the future, such that this is a growth story for Nutrien.
As tuck-ins have been kind of a to that profile. Like tuck-in activity from the retail side slowed a little bit. Obviously the portfolio in general is shifting. As you think about Nutrien's retail footprint, right? We've talked or you've talked openly about Brazil and whether that business has earned a position. Obviously, Australia has had its own issues, some more recently weather-related. As you look at what that business ultimately like the footprint over time, what are you expecting? What's your five-year vision for that plan?
Yeah, I would say that, you know, when we, as Mark just explained, when we think about a guidance or, you know, our next set of targets, that might be a few years out, we're not assuming that we do a certain number of tuck-ins that are gonna stack EBITDA and, you know, we'll come out the other end, having achieved the target. For us, it's always, and maybe it's a statement of the obvious, but it's always about the quality of the opportunity and whether that opportunity is going to meet both our strategic objectives... You, you talked about it, Matt, it's sort of like: what's your footprint? Where do you crave to have better access in the name of both the synergies associated with that acquisition, but then our ability to grow organically beyond that? Finally...
you know, looking in the network that every time you complement that network with a tuck-in of some storefronts, how you can optimize the network after you've done that acquisition. There's actually more and more work that we're doing in that regard to understand, well, when you do that tuck-in, actually, is there, is there an optimization exercise that reaches right from that branch all the way through our midstream assets, all the way through up to our production of, you know, crop nutrients, fertilizer, nitrogen, NPK, products. Again, you know, strategic fit, then, of course, the financial metrics and certainly IRR, but, you know, more and more payback as well, in terms of when are you gonna see a $1 of pot as a positive cash flow from these things.
Applying that sort of set, that lens to tuck-in acquisitions over the last year and a half has led to fewer tuck-in acquisitions, exactly as you said, Matt. We'll always look at those, but I would say we're really scrutinizing them in a way, just more and more, in a way that maybe we haven't in the past. It's only not in the context that we haven't been scrutinizing, but some of our criteria is changing. That today, you know, in terms of the retail regions where we serve farmers, the focus really will be on North America, probably the U.S. You know, there are parts of the U.S. where we'd like a greater presence. Corn Belt's a good example. It's really sort of dominated by the co-ops, so it's difficult. We'll...
You know, we did a few last year, and we have a few in the pipeline this year, and we'll look at Australia as well, albeit our market share in Australia is really quite substantial. Brazil, you know, Brazil is a region where we're, as you say, has Brazil earned the right to be in the Nutrien downstream portfolio? You know, I think we're coming to the conclusion, the answer is actually no. The reason for that is that we simply have better uses for our capital. When we look at the performance of that business and when we project out what we think it will do, even if the thing is cash flowing in a positive way, which it hasn't over the last couple of years, it is...
We're coming to the conclusion that there's just, like I said, better uses for our capital than Brazilian retail. you know, we may be going, and we'll have some conclusions on that this year, but we may be going the other direction in Brazil.
It feels like, I mean, you're not alone, right?
Right.
There's retrenchment in Brazil. People are trying to figure out the best way to compete. We've got, you know, Nutrien mines and processing facilities closing or being sold, retail, businesses going bankrupt, closures of retail footprints in general, retrenching of sales strategies across different companies. I mean, maybe take a minute or two and just try to articulate why competition in Brazil is so hard.
Yeah.
For a market that's generally expected to be a growth engine for the next few years, how has your opinion changed on how you're actually going to be able to participate profitably?
Right. Yeah, and I think to your point, Matt, there's been a bit of a reckoning there, and that will continue. Still a very exciting agricultural market that we can serve through our, what we'll, you know, just describe as our really our core business, fertilizer, proprietary products and, you know, retail, obviously, North America, Australia, but not necessarily Brazil. I'll hand it over to Mark, whose team has been hard at work on collections and, certainly focusing on our business down there, you know, and improve our business improvement plan over the last few years. Mark, maybe you wanna talk about Matt's question?
Sure. Thanks, Ken. I think, Matt, you know, on the more fundamental question about the industry, I mean, you look back over the last couple of years, there have been some structural changes in Brazil. I think you go back to what happened during the Russo-Ukrainian War. At the outbreak, there was a stocking up of fertilizers. During COVID, there was a stocking up of chemicals, and there was a fairly painful de-inventoring process for the whole country in the ag supply chain, certainly on the input side, to get through that, and that took the better part of a couple of years to move through that. At the same time, the price volatility, some of the economic conditions in agricultural markets also caused a shift to more just-in-time purchasing behavior at the grower level.
You couple that with interest rates in Brazil going from 2% to 15%, the cost of working capital has gone up exponentially, all of that has created a fundamentally different cost structure for the industry, and a different set of behaviors in the market, which has led to a lot of the things that you talked about in terms of some of the challenges in Brazil. In response to that, you know, we did everything that we thought was appropriate in terms of shuttering locations, closing blenders, taking cost out of our system, actually shrinking our business to get better, leaning more into proprietary products, as Ken said.
When you look at the results of that on a year-over-year basis, we went from just under negative $80 million of EBITDA in our downstream business in Brazil in 2024, to being right on target at about break-even earnings in 2025, and actually some positive cash flow. That said, we have about a half a billion in invested capital there today, and as Ken said, breaking even is not the definition of success in Brazil.
Yeah.
When we step back and we think about Nutrien's exposure, as Ken said, by far our most material exposure to Brazil is potash, through Canpotex and Nutrien's relationships in the country. That's a very profitable business. Credit risk is minimal. We've operated that business successfully for years, and as Ken said, we love that business. We have exposure to the growth in the Brazilian market in a very profitable way that's sustainable and growing.
As Ken also mentioned, proprietary products is an engine we think can be very successful without some of the same challenges that the retail channel is presenting to us, which takes us to retail and my comment on the invested capital, and with that free cash flow and the returns lens that we have, really having to earn its right in the portfolio, which takes us to what Ken said, which is the analysis in 2026 of our options, what the future looks like there, and where the dollar is best deployed for a shareholder, which is the work that we're doing now. We do see all the positives about Brazil. I think it's really an exercise in positioning Nutrien with those core businesses of ours, where we have strong competitive advantages, to get leverage to that growth in the right ways.
Okay, I appreciate that. I want to pivot a little bit, and Ken, you mentioned something that I'm just thinking about in general as it relates to the fate of the U.S. farmer, or I should say, like, the fate of the U.S. soybean farmer, right? You know, Brazil is stepping in in a much more material way as a global source of soybeans. China is more than happy to purchase from Brazil. They're using it as a trade tactic, certainly in negotiations. I mean, near term, would we see or do you expect farmers to maybe shy away from switching to soybeans because there's a concern about having a market for it? If we look five years down the road, if Brazil keeps this path, like, what is ultimately, you think, the path for the soybean out of the U.S.?
If we get supplanted, it creates a little bit of a conundrum for our farmers, both from, like, a normal, healthy crop rotation side of things, but also just, you know, financial flexibility.
Yeah, we actually had the head of the American Farm Bureau Federation come up to Canada last week and talk to our board, and some of it was about exactly this. Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of concern among the U.S. growers about they're never getting that Chinese market back to where it was, at 25 million tons of soybeans, and in that, you know, the Brazilians are happy to supply that volume. Yeah, I think stepping back from the entire, that sort of localized discussion, you look at global grains Stocks-to-Use Ratio, which has been for the last several years, well below the 10-year average. With the crop that came off last year, we're sort of at average levels in terms of Stocks-to-Use Ratio.
I, you know, I think that if you, if you believe that grains and oilseeds are global markets, which they are, ultimately, you know, it becomes a zero-sum game and, when the Brazilians are supplanting the Americans, and, the head of the American Farm Bureau Federation said this last week, you know, the Americans go and look for new markets. They look to for the markets that the Brazilians vacated. That's always bumpy, it's always volatile, and, you know, and we've lived this with our fertilizers. It's also more expensive because you typically go to your backyard or go where, you know, logistically, it makes more, most sense for any of these suppliers. I think there is that transition in some ways underway. In the meantime, are the Americans, U.S. growers, going to plant corn and soybeans?
They are. I mean, we're saying 94 million-96 million acres of corn next year and, you know, sort of high 80s in terms of soybeans. In other words, historical levels as this transition takes place. I'm not gonna count out the U.S. soybean farmer. It's obviously some of the best technologies, best yields, best farm practices in the world that can compete, and it is a global market. I think in the meantime, we're in a bumpy period here for sure. The last thing I'll say is what the U.S. government has done with the $11 billion announcement just prior to the holidays, some of the relief in the Build Back Better Act, even now, Congress, I think, considering some more for the U.S. farmer, that really obviously helps through the...
that, if you can call it a transition.
I appreciate that. I asked this kind of to pivot a little bit. I asked this on the earnings call, Trinidad, right? I understand the gas availability issues, and clearly, the Trinidadian government is putting pressure to, you know, extract more economics in the form of gas prices, and based on the return profile, it's not really a tenable solution, and so the asset is down. As I think about the long-term optionality, right? We talked about the Venezuelan government changeover. How do you think about the decision to decommission? Is decommission on the table, or is it just care and maintenance for the next few years? Because the plant wasn't unprofitable, it was maybe break even, or the returns weren't there on a cash basis, correct me if I'm wrong?
Obviously, that could change if gas prices move up. Where does your mind go as it relates to the longer-term optionality of that plan? Does it really change with what we've seen in Venezuela? Did you wake up that morning saying, "Wow, this is a little bit different?
Yeah.
was it like, "Eh, we'll see"?
No, I think it's a very good point you're making. I mean, I think, first of all, you know, we sort of haircut the probability of Venezuelan gas coming anytime soon. New additional full gas and on the island there in Trinidad, it's always three years out, and it's been three years out since I joined Nutrien, and then next year it's going to, I believe, be three years out. It, there's just extraordinary uncertainty around what's happening with Venezuelan energy, you know, and then building a pipeline on the seabed over to the island there, and then the complications associated with feeding energy on the island, obviously the industrial complex, which we're part of, and then exports with their LNG terminals and the competition among those three.
I, you know, I think the change, the one change that you'd see with full complement of gas would be we've been throttling our plant 75%, 80% operating rates because we don't get gas to run our plant. Your point, Matt, it's a good one, is that if it's uneconomic and 100% uneconomic at 80%, it's kinda uneconomic at any level of gas supply, and that's because of cost. That's because of, you know, what the Trinidad government told us just in the fall of last year, and that is your gas costs are going up, your access to the port and port fees are going up. I get it, the government of Trinidad and the island has their own needs, their own challenges, but it simply renders our plant uneconomic.
We made the decision to shut it down. We're talking to the Trinidad government right now. I would say everything is on the table in terms of our outlook, but maybe I'll let Mark talk about how we're sort of seeing, you know, that assessment through 2026.
Yeah, I don't have a lot to add to what Ken said. I mean, I think he's painted the picture of the backdrop really well. Back to your point, Matt, I think at the end of the day, there's a lot of human resources, management attention, capital, risk, all those things you bear when you run an operation of that size.
Ultimately, when we looked at free cash flow that was already stressed from this facility, I think Ken has said a number of times, or myself on, you know, our public commentary and calls, notwithstanding that it generates EBITDA from a free cash flow standpoint, because of all the reasons that Ken just cited, you know, it's very negligible, less than 1% of total free cash flow at old, more attractive cost structures, which, if everything's going up, I think just puts further pressure on that picture.
When we think about the focus of the company and we step way back, we've been stewarding all of our assets, the portfolio review process, looking at free cash flow, looking at free cash flow volatility, stability, growth, returns on invested capital, management attention, such that our portfolio is a portfolio that cash flows in any market environment. The profile of Trinidad that Ken just described really doesn't fit that picture. As Ken said, like the other items that are under portfolio review for us, phosphate, Brazil, we'd like to make a decision on Trinidad in 2026 based on the factors that we see, but obviously, there'll be a number of factors that play into that.
I think the philosophy of the company is very clear, and this is a situation that doesn't fit the portfolio in its current state.
This is maybe a little bit of a circular reference here, but ammonia has been pretty tight. Clearly, we've had some geopolitics at play, some asset inconsistencies, but there was a little bit of a difference between what you had kind of mentioned on the earnings call and CF, as it relates to, you know, what the expectations are around ammonia. I think you were in the camp that ammonia stays tighter. At BofA, we're a little bit more concerned about the ammonia market, but what is ultimately feeding that? I mean, presumably, if the expectation is tight, does that lean for the Trinidad to stay, or is it, like, almost two entirely separate conversations?
Yeah. I think, you know, the situation we described is highly bespoke to our operations on the island.
Sure.
the government context, the cost structure that Ken talked about. That decision was driven entirely by those factors.
Yeah.
You've got a confluence of things happening in the ammonia market today. I think like you, we would have entered the year expecting ammonia prices to ease based on the fundamental factors, supply and demand globally, that we saw in front of us. There was expectations of new supply in North America, which those startups have been bumpier than expected. You've had plant outages, less production, some of those issues on the Trinidad island, generally across the whole industry. You've had issues elsewhere in the world. You know, notwithstanding all of that, you've had very high gas prices in Europe as well, which tends to be the marginal cost-setting mechanism for the Tampa ammonia contract. You know, we continue to say that the nitrogen market has been supply-driven.
The combination of outages, supply crunches, geopolitical uncertainty, and risk coming into the market, all of that has kept a bottom under ammonia prices, and by definition, those things can't be predicted. Here we are in a tighter than expected ammonia market to start the year.
To, to parlay that, right, like bumpy commissioning, obviously, there's concerns around potash supply kind of next year with Jansen, and I mean, maybe towards the back half of next year, and similar expansion work kind of in the Eastern or former Soviet bloc, right? How do you assess the risk to that market? What's your view ultimately on how this tonnage filters into the market? I mean, you know, I don't want you always to comment on somebody else's business, right? Kind of want you to comment on somebody else's business at the same time.
Yeah. I, you know, we obviously think hard about that, so we're happy to comment on our assumptions around how we see sort of things playing out between now and end of this decade, early next. Yes, of course, as demand continues to grow, and I started out by saying that, you know, food and food security and governments realizing that food security is now national security in light of all this geopolitical uncertainty and risk. Hence the growth that we've seen in fertilizer volumes, and potash has been absolutely part of that story. We talk about 2.5% average annual growth rates, and while that's not, of course, linear, if you step back, and look at it over the last 10 years, it's been exactly that.
Even since, and Mark mentioned this, with the volatility that was created by the conflict in Eastern Europe, and, you know, volumes are way up, shipments are way up in light of supply concerns, only to come off, the following year in light of extremely high prices. So that was a blip in that sort of, if you could call it 2.5% average annual growth rates. In the meantime, we've had four years of potash demand growth in a row. We're saying this year we're gonna grow again, and we're right back on what we would call sort of trend level demand growth, as if the conflict in Eastern Europe never happened.
We expect that obviously to continue to go through the end of the decade, early next and beyond, so that when you get to the end of the decade, we're in an 80-85 million ton market. We're saying 74-77 million tons this year, about a 1 million ton growth from at the midpoint, from what the number of shipments numbers came in last year. It's important to note that when we talk about shipments, we're not seeing inventory build either, and so shipments is equaling consumption. When we say four years in a row, demand growth, that's certainly part of the story, is when you don't see inventories building, you don't have a year where there's destocking. It continues to go to ground.
We could talk about what we're seeing in China, particularly in terms of volume growth, and it's really quite extraordinary. That's the demand side of the equation. To your point, Matt, you sort of look at the supply stack and you go, "Well, how is that demand consumption going to be met?" There's obviously sort of the incumbents and their plans, albeit there's some depletion among the incumbents, and that would be absolutely true for Chinese domestic production, for example. We see that every year coming off, and of course, we all know that that has been on the books, that we've known that that's going to happen. Indeed, it is. You've got the current supply stack with depletion and then some new tons, as you say, Matt.
Yes, we have assumptions about new production coming out of Russia over the period. Yes, we have assumptions about new production coming out of Belarus and, you know, and maybe 1 million tons more out of Laos, albeit certainly with risk, as you've seen the challenges in Laos and their ability to bring on volume given sort of the really difficult geology that they're dealing with. Yes, we have Nutrien and our plans to continue to grow our volumes, which we have been over the last, you know, since, again, since I joined the company, every year, increasing production, and this year will, you know, be about just over 14 and, or about 14.5 million tons, with 15 million tons of capacity. Again, that's growth again from last year.
You know, we talk about our 19%-20% market share. We believe we'll maintain that. It costs us about $200 a ton to in CapEx to bring on that next ton, and we can get to 18 million tons with, at, you know, those CapEx levels. That would be, you know, today, the only benchmark I have is that new mine that's being developed in Saskatchewan, which is probably $3,000. Probably it is. It's announced as $3,000 a ton for that greenfield development. In other words, our next ton is extraordinarily competitive from a CapEx point of view.
From OpEx, we talk about the work we're doing on mine automation and our ability to fight back inflation and say, stay at that $60 cash cost per ton, which would be among the most competitive produced ton in the world. We can talk about the investments we're making in logistics. We've just announced a new terminal off the West Coast of the U.S., Washington State, where, you know, on a delivered basis, again, we're going to continue to be among the most competitive. We're going to be there with our tons. You know, as it relates to Jansen and BHP's project there, let's see. announced new production, start of production next year, 2027, ramping up to their phase one volumes by end of the decade, early next, 4 million tons.
I keep saying, you know, 4 million tons in an 80-85 million ton market, frankly, we think the market's going to call for those tons, gonna need those tons. The last thing I'll say is, everything I described is if all these operating rates and mines work properly. You know, if we're looking at announced plans, they're on the books, this is the way it's going to work. You know, when we look at, back decade after decade, the market usually loses 6-7 million tons per decade, and that's just unforeseen events, and it sort of happens ratably. Whether it's a sinkhole or a mine flooding, you can talk about exactly what's going on in Laos with water, geology, and mine flooding, we lose 6-7 million tons.
When we think about sort of the base case between now, end of the decade, early next, we call it kind of a balanced market as it is today. As it relates to sort of skewness toward, is there upside to that market or downside? We skew to the upside, actually, because we think that everything has to work properly in order for it to be a balanced market. The history would tell us everything doesn't work properly all the time.
Yeah. I don't know, I'm happy to open it up. We've got a few minutes left. If anybody, in the audience has a question, I'm happy to kind of, entertain. Otherwise.
I did wanna just talk a little bit about capital calls, because to your point, you've got a pretty attractive return on CapEx. You're not talking about probably closures of footprint more so than adding. Mark, as you think about the cash profile of Nutrien, like mine automation, maybe that's a good example of something where you're investing in, but none of that is like large dollars. If I look out over the next few years, are there any major capital calls or investments that Nutrien will ultimately make?
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I mean, the short answer is no. I think you go back to Ken's vision for the company and really what's been manifested here over the last couple of years, and it's again, back to simplifying, focusing the business, really focusing on operational performance, operational excellence, and then just being exceptionally disciplined, thoughtful, and intentional about capital allocation. That's really founded into the capital stack. You know, when you go back to some of the decisions we've made over the past couple of years, I mean, I think the cancellation of the Geismar clean ammonia expansion is a good example of that.
The thought of having CapEx risk that is that multi-year in nature with a very uncertain market backdrop, was not something that we felt was in the best interest of a Nutrien shareholder. There were far better alternatives for that capital in our core business with things we're good at, with lower risk, or just giving the capital back to shareholders directly. When you look at our capital allocation priorities for 2026, I think it's a blueprint for what the next several years could look like for us. You look at CapEx, once again, we've guided to $2 billion-$2.1 billion. We've held that level that's well below the Investor Day target.
There is about $1.65 billion of sustaining CapEx, which we've done a tremendous amount of risk-based work to hold that number back in a safe and reliable way for the business. We've got about $400 million of growth CapEx, and as you said, it's not any large, multi-year, chunky projects, it's automation and potash, finishing our nitrogen to bottlenecks and the retail priorities that Ken talked about. Beyond the $2 billion-$2.1 billion in CapEx, we've got about a half a billion in capital leases. The dividend continues to be about $1 billion, and really, the marginal dollar today is going towards that ratable buyback program for shareholders. Yeah, I think there's a couple of important points to zoom in on.
One, with the divestitures that we made last year of Profertil and Synefert, that allowed us to get the balance sheet an even stronger position. We paid down over $600 million in debt. We like where we're at for where we are in the cycle today with a lot of optionality. When we look at what Ken talked about earlier in terms of that steady earnings growth in the company with ratable improvements in fertilizer volumes and reliability, ratable growth in the retail business, continuing to pull cost out of the business, we think the structural earnings base for the company just continues to grow and increase the amount of cash available for allocation.
There's upside to the amount of cash we can return to shareholders over time, and as we buy back the stock, it allows us to grow dividends per share without touching dividend expense. That formula, that blueprint is something that Nutrien shareholders can expect to continue to see from us, and we don't have any projects on the horizon that are multi-year or chunky in nature, and we don't see any today. If we do see something, the lens we will take is: Is that better for a Nutrien shareholder than just giving the capital back? The whole goal of that entire framework is growing free cash flow per share across cycles, which all of the ways that we're deploying capital today do. I think that's a very consistent approach. It's a shared philosophy inside of Nutrien.
It's based on the vision that Ken set out, and shareholders can depend on us to continue to do that.
All right. I appreciate it. Thank you both, Mark and Ken, for leading off the day and for joining us. We'll end it there.
Thank you, Matt. Thanks.