All right, so first of all, thank you very much for joining. Those that made it at 8:00 A.M. in the morning, I'm Ben Theurer, Americas Agribusiness Analyst at Barclays, and in charge of the fertilizer group as well. So maybe to begin with, we have, as usual, some of our ARS questions, so if you want to just pull them up before I start introducing our speakers. And first of all, thanks for coming. CF Industries, a key manufacturer of ammonia worldwide, one of the largest producers here, with obviously products include ammonia, urea, UAN, nitrate, diesel exhaust fluids. The company sells much of its products to the agriculture industry, but also a portion goes into industrial applications. Predominantly a manufacturer in the North American market, with strong export capabilities as well as some exposure to the UK.
We're very pleased to have with us CF's Executive Vice President and CEO, Chris Bohn, as well as Bert Frost, EVP for Sales Market Development and Supply Chain. Chris spent more than 14 years at CF. He had various roles, and he was actually most recently promoted and named COO. And with that, Chris, maybe to start it off with you, you obviously reported results just last week. Maybe just a little bit of a recap from your expectations that you've laid out during the call last week and how you think about the year coming together as it relates to the demand picture for your various products across the regions.
Yeah, I'll have Bert go more into the demand throughout the regions, but I think I'll just give a recap. As you said, Ben, last week we reported our 2023 and Q4 earnings. We had, you know, what we believe was very strong earnings. We had EBITDA of just under $600 million for the quarter and just under $2.8 billion for the entire year. We were able to convert that EBITDA of $2.8 billion into about $1.8 billion of free cash flow, which is something I think is unique to CF, how efficient we are in taking EBITDA and converting that to free cash flow. With that, you know, we had done quite a few share repurchases last year, along with increasing our dividend over the past two years by 67%, so it's now at $0.50 per quarter.
The combination of those two was over almost just under $1 billion of return to the shareholders, and a portion of that was due to us being locked out during parts of the year given our acquisition of the Waggaman transaction and other projects that we look at throughout the year. So we have a pretty large authorization still open on our share repurchase that we expect to close out before the end of next year, and that's, we have $2.6 billion remaining.
Additionally, from a strategic side, you know, I mentioned the Waggaman acquisition, which added, you know, roughly about 900,000 tons of gross ammonia to our production, but we've also continued to move along our Green Ammonia plant, which is in commissioning right now, and then additionally our, Blue Ammonia projects, at our Donaldsonville facility that are in conjunction with ExxonMobil. So we're continuing to move those forward. Additionally, we did, on the call last week, defer our decision, to the second half of this year for whether we will be, building, a new, low-carbon ammonia plant at what's called our Blue Point site in Louisiana. So not only did we have very strong growth just on, our performance and really the execution of the team, but additionally we were able to move a lot of our strategic goals forward during the year as well.
But I think Bert can probably give more color on the demand side globally.
What's taking place today, and as we roll into 2024, obviously the northern hemisphere is entering the spring application season, so Europe, China, and North America. And what we've been following is, at least in North America, a low carry-in, low level of imports of nitrogen products, and then we had the January freeze-offs throughout the Midwest that we communicated 150,000 tons of lost ammonia, and we believe that that same type of level of lost production is the case for other producers. And so when you roll that up, that we have a fairly tight market. But there's been global changes that have been taking place over time, whether that be gas or constraints in European production with production offline or different gas changes.
As we've moved from a coal-based economy in many places to an LNG-based economy, and you're seeing less focus on nitrogen investments and a higher focus on LNG investments for that gas molecule. So a lot of changes, and for countries that used to be heavy exporters like China are now lower level. Countries that used to be big importers like India have built some plants, and that number's down, but Brazil is up. So, the dynamics, and this is a dynamic industry and a lot of changes, that if you don't follow them, I think in just a year or two, it's amazing how this industry has improved, and that's why you're seeing these are the three best years we've ever had in the history of CF Industries, and 2024 looks very bright.
One of the points I'd like to pick up on that, obviously, you've mentioned the impact on the supply side in January because of the cold weather. For sure, other players faced similar conditions. So if we take a look at the pricing environment right now, and how that's going to play out throughout the year, given that your expectation is for a relatively decent amount of demand for all products related, how do you think pricing's going to shake out throughout the year?
So we've been on a positive pricing curve since Q4 where we bottomed out at, let's say, $300 short ton for urea in NOLA, and today we're trading in the $350-$360 range. And when you look across the world and where the big exporting regions and what they're pricing on an FOB basis, the MENA group, the Middle East, North Africa, those numbers are closer to $400 a metric ton. Freight to NOLA and to put it on a barge is $30-$40, so you can do the math. That is, we're the lowest priced market in the world. It, like, converting a short ton to a metric ton takes up to about $380 a metric ton, delivered at $400, let's say $420. That's a price spread. The same dynamic is happening in Brazil.
So we see a positive pricing curve going into and through Q2, and then the readjustments take place where we move to the southern hemisphere focus and the demand base there. And the question, one of the questions that has been is, what is the future of, of European gas? And today we're trading at a gas spread of around $6 an MMBtu, and is that, is that something that the European producer can book and bank and, and produce? And it what has been the case in the past is that has not been easy, and we've had high volatility, and so high volatility of production. Whereas in 2Q. let's say Q3, Q4, you've had 30%-40% of European production offline. Some of that is coming back online as they prepare for spring, but they have become the marginal producer.
This shift in supply, where supply traditionally came from and where it will come from in the future, is moving, and that has helped support a higher price level in the future.
Yeah, as we kind of look into the demand, and you've mentioned a little bit South America as well, but there's also India, obviously, that requires product, and then you always never know what's up with China. But if you look at, like, the demand side for the products globally and where it might come from, how do you feel about your ability to kind of fill those needs in the different markets where you export to?
Well, it's an interesting question because CF Industries traditionally was a very North American-centric company. With the acquisition of Terra in 2010, we obviously expanded and gained the Trinidadian and UK production, but our activities globally are much larger and more pronounced and active than they were in the past. One reason, that's economic. Two, it's a nice, again, southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere opportunity to continue to move our tons and not build inventory and in terms of working capital utilization. So we have become, you know, we're a large exporter to Europe, to Australia, to Argentina, exporting to Brazil, and this is and also on ammonia. And so you're going to see that continue.
The opportunity for us is we don't want to have assets in some of these countries, but we have good partners on the receiving side that we're able to monetize on an FOB basis, cash in hand, and work with some good partners in those countries.
I think that's an important point Bert makes here is our ability to be able to export. So we sit in a first quartile, you know, cost curve, position with the low natural gas, but then our Donaldsonville, Louisiana site can pretty much export as much product as Bert wants. So it's really being able to look where the margin opportunity is. We're, you know, obviously completely economically driven, and those changes are happening on a daily basis. Some of our other North American peers aren't able to do that. They don't have that export, sort of functionality where they can open that valve and look for different margin opportunities elsewhere.
What's going to happen with low-carbon product that's coming on that will be the first with low-carbon ammonia? Low-carbon ammonia can be upgraded into different products that will be low-carbon as well. The demand for those products, especially in Europe, but in Japan and Korea, as we build out the clean energy platform, that's only going to add further leverage to the company.
Okay. You've talked about, obviously, the capabilities. If you think about the European market just quickly here as it relates to importing gas to produce it themselves or importing ammonia, ultimately the material itself as a fertilizer use, what are you seeing as, like, the kind of bets players are putting on? Is it more like, is it more likely that there's going to be some capacity that's just brought up as gas prices might stay at the levels where we are right now, or is it at the current price level of ammonia urea products? Isn't it cheaper to actually produce, import the product itself instead of producing?
Yeah, I'll, I'll start on that one. I think if you look at our Billingham, U.K. site, it's a good proxy, I think, for how certain companies are operating in Europe right now, and that is we shut down two ammonia plants, took over 1 million tons offline over the last 24 months in our U.K. operation, but continue to run the downstream. So we're importing ammonia, and then running the downstream to get to nitric acid and ammonium nitrate that we're able to use in the domestic market there. And what we found is the operation is probably more profitable than it ever has been because it's not at the whim of the volatility that's happening. I think the working capital balances that you hold, you know, there's only a couple periods in the year where you're really selling, but you're building inventory every day.
It allows us to be more, closer with what our inventory management is versus our sales. So we've actually seen that working better. One of the decisions why we made that is we had a very sizable turnaround coming. Ammonia plants have to be, you know, inspected and pretty large work done every four years on them, and this type of operation can be anywhere from $50-$60 million that you're putting out. So you have to, you're making a bet that, you know, not only do you have cash reserves to do that, but that the margin going forward is going to provide enough to return on that rather than importing ammonia and running the downstream. Obviously, for us, the decision economically was to shut down the ammonia plants and import, whether it be from our Donaldsonville facility or buying off the market.
So I think those that can, you'll see more of that type of operation continue throughout, and there may be some that cycle their plants on and off when they do see some gas, you know, kind of spot availability to do that. But one, cycling the plants generally leads to increased maintenance later on. So we think over time there'll be a model that develops that'll be more like the one we have in Billingham, but Bert's probably got some thoughts as well.
Specific to Europe is, it's interesting, all the announcements that have been made for green and low-carbon capacity. A lot of these are new entrants and don't have the experience that we and others that have been in this business a long time, and it's not that easy. One, the green or the through electrolysis is very expensive, and somebody has to pay that bill. The low-carbon, if you're going to build a new plant, one is just building a new plant and operating that plant, and those costs are now very high. And then it's the sweet sequestration sites that, well, I think North America has done a very good job. Our partnership with Exxon is a very good example of that, of one, how quickly they can identify and utilize something that's in place.
I don't think that those same opportunities exist there. So there are several questions to the future of European operations, and Chris hit on it and what we did with idling the capacity and bringing it in. As the marginal producer, generally over time, that's how it works, is there's the extraneous or extra capacity is targeted towards those markets and priced just at the cost of production. And so it's going to be, longer term if we continue in this gas spread market of today, let's call it $5-$7, but it's been as high as $10, $15. That's the question, is how gas will be supplied and, and at what price. And the growth of LNG demand globally is not stopping. So I think that, that molecule gets has to be bid in.
Okay. Got it. Another one of the obviously important international markets is always China. And kind of never nearly know how the Chinese market actually is going to work. But if you would have to kind of put out a bet best guess, what would you expect the Chinese players to do? How should we think about the year as it relates to their own needs for the fertilizer compounds, but also their ability to export or not, depending on what the government lets them do? How should we think about the Chinese players in the context of just global supply as well as demand?
And you're right. The China of today is not the China of yesterday, and we always want to be a student of history and a student of geopolitics and try to understand the puts and the takes. But that being said, they have made many, many major moves. And you have to go back, let's say, 25 years where China was the largest importer of urea in the world and announced they were going to be self-sufficient, and the market didn't believe it. Well, they did. They built these plants. And then typical to China, they overbuilt extra capacity and overwhelmed the market in 2015 and 2016, pushing the world price down to break even for everybody.
That aggressive move, I think, bankrupted and realizing taking energy and converting it, in effect, to a fertilizer energy and exporting at zero or negative value to the country, and including the water use and the pollution use, probably doesn't make a lot of sense. They stopped that. A lot of capacity came permanently offline. China's the biggest consumer of urea in the world at 50-55 million tons, and their production capacity taking a factor of operating rates and then trying, you know, working that math, they should export. Some of these plants were built for export and so some of the gas-consuming plants. So we believe they will and should. But instead of 10 million tons or 13 like they did in 2015, 2016, we've targeted 2-4 million tons.
What that represents in a 55 million ton exportable ton is less than 10%. That's reasonable, I think.
Okay. Got it. Now, one last question just around the markets I have before we talk a little bit more on the financial side. Obviously, corn prices have come down quite meaningful, but they're still elevated to, call it maybe pre-pandemic levels. So as you kind of look into the farmer economics, right, and I mean, fertilizer prices are still higher also as they were pre-pandemic. How favorable or not is the current farmer economic just given how the crop came in? And I think, you know, the expectation for roughly 91 million acres of corn in the U.S., obviously the Brazil piece is always a question mark how the weather comes together, and there was a little bit of a late planting.
But if you think about just the global supply of corn and how that kind of plays out on the pricing of corn and then ultimately farmers' ability to purchase ingredients and clay and fertilizer, how comfortable are you with the demand picture just given that the income for farmers might be a little lower than what it also was over the last two years?
So, on a global basis, income for farmers is because you have Europe that's subsidized on the output. You have China that's a domestic-focused market buying in a lot of corn and soybeans, feed grains, and oil seeds. India, a gigantic consumer of fertilizer, is a subsidized import, input, and output. And so you have different dynamics driving markets in Brazil and Argentina. Obviously, you're the growth engine of the world for, for supply of food and feed grains. But principally to North America, you're right, at $400.50 where corn roughly is today for December, that's an attractive level historically. The last three years have been phenomenal for, a North American farmer if they were able to achieve a yield, and most of them did. And so trendline corn was at the 170. We're targeting 180. Yes, fertilizer is higher as it relates to the historical, but still very affordable.
In terms of what is applied per acre, we believe that you fertilize for yield always. While it may not be as good as 2022 or 2023, it'll still be a very profitable year. The hedging ability that existed, if a farmer would have hedged just a few months ago, he would have had $5 corn. You have a positive dynamic. Brazil is producing and is growing not only their output of those products, but their input demand. Brazil will now become the largest importer of urea in the world. We're in a balanced market on the stocks-to-use ratio. More balanced than when we were probably short the last few years, which drove price.
I believe it will kind of stay in that trendline and stay in a profitable level, at least for the next two years as it don't get too far out there.
Okay. Got it. Chris, back to you, just a general, maybe update as well on some of your hedge policies and where you're seeing just the price of natural gas that you kind of got locked in because obviously it came down massively recently. So is that something you took an opportunity of, or should we think just about the positioning here more in the short term?
Yeah, maybe I'll just start at a higher level about how we, how we look at hedging in general. So Bert and I sit on a natural gas committee that we have internally, and, and we look at, you know, what's happening both, you know, at NYMEX, but primarily, or Henry Hub, but primarily what's happening where our plants are in the, the, you know, the different basins, throughout, the U.S. And the, you know, the one thing that we feel very confident about is the resource base in, in North America that, you know, you're seeing today, gas prices under $2. Even with Europe coming down, we still have a very nice spread there.
So when we look at our hedging policy, our hedging policy is really how do we protect ourselves and do some risk mitigation rather than trying to spec out and pick points where gas seems super low. So most of our hedging really revolves around sort of the winter months, call it, you know, December through February, which we look to hedge, again, primarily in our basis areas where our plants are, given some of the extreme cold conditions that we could have. And we just experienced that, you know, a few weeks ago when we had, you know, -40 degrees Fahrenheit in some of our plants, and had some gas-constrained issues related to that and saw pricing jump up, and we were protected from hedges.
At the same time, you know, we weren't able to participate in some of that drop that you just mentioned there, Ben, related to natural gas. But we try to look at it more as a, more as a risk mitigation for those particular cold months throughout the year where we see some spikes and a lot more volatility than trying to, you know, pick points through the year, where we see, you know, super low gas prices. We are very constructive on where North American gas production is and the resource base. And, you know, a long time ago, I learned very quickly, don't ever bet against engineers and how they can reduce the cost and find different ways to be profitable even at lower costs. And that's what we've seen over time, with, you know, the E&P companies in the natural gas and energy sectors as a whole.
I agree with all that. We have tried to be prudent about the risks during those cold months. You saw that in Winter Storm Uri and even in January, the wisdom of that. But we're wide open for the back half or Q2, Q3, Q4 because we believe in the opportunity ahead of us.
Okay. Got it. Now maybe coming back to some of your opening comments you had, Chris, just around, like, the capital allocation and obviously the ability to spend, right because free cash flow was really strong. You did the Waggaman acquisition just about a few weeks ago, close into that. How is that coming together? I mean, just from an integration perspective, and how do you think the, like, from a logistics perspective, the integration into the business, when you're going to be completed with that, and what's the potential from those assets as it relates to just contributing to results over the quarters?
Yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to start with the value. When you look at that particular asset, it's a Gulf Coast ammonia plant that is on the river, on the NuStar ammonia pipeline, 70 miles from our Donaldsonville facility where we have our, you know, primary core engineering group there. So we, we look at what we purchased that asset for and how it fits into our operation as something that you don't have assets like that that come along that often. And then the value in which we believe at $1.675 billion for roughly over a 900,000-ton-a-year plant of ammonia was, was very, you know, accretive to us. I think as you look at the most recent transaction with Koch and OCI, you can see that first-quartile assets in North America are trading at significant levels, much higher.
So when you put that against what we paid for Waggaman, we feel even better. But I think these transactions show what willing buyers and willing sellers are willing to pay for assets. And, you know, we had a slide in our, our year-end presentation that showed how over time you've seen an increase in what the capital cost per nutrient ton is on, on these assets. And we have existing assets today that economically have grown over time, and you're seeing that both through what our FEED study was on a new build, but also on what actual transactions are happening here.
So we, you know, when we look at how we're valued, whether we're valued fairly, you know, or undervalued, I think transactions, what new costs are to build new plants are, we're significantly undervalued, even though the economic value of what those plants would output can able to, you know, sustain those type of above cost of capital for those transactions. So, I think looking at the Waggaman transaction just purely on economic, home run for us. We believe, you know, it has a team that is really looking forward to being part of the CF network.
If you think about it, it was a bit of a stranded asset for Dyno Nobel because it was just supplying their AN rather than being worked into, you know, 16 other ammonia plants in the operations and how we go about turnarounds, how we look at different maintenance, production levels, training, safety, everything. So, we've had a great response from that. And I'll let Bert talk about how he's going to tuck it into the system.
Well, I think you touched on it very well. The point is it's next door or close to our facility. We have a lot of engineers, a lot of spare parts, a lot of it, it's a Kellogg plant. We have Kellogg plants. It's on the pipeline. We can load barges. We have good relationships with the existing customer base. Trammo is one of the big consumers on the offtake. They're a partner of ours in exporting. So I'm very confident of how one, we're going to produce more and get that extra uplift. And then the value creation we can bring in the market side, as well as tucking in on the gas buying, it's a home run for us.
Okay. And then also coming back to some of the lower carbon projects, and obviously you've highlighted this last week around, well, proof of studies, for the Blue Point Complex and with Mitsui. How do you think this is actually going to shake out? Do you see there is demand for these products, as of today? Who are those customers and how likely do you think it is that these projects actually move forward, be it yours or others? You've mentioned others are looking into that as well. And just the magnitude of it, right, because you had, like, many projects, but maybe it might be only one or two. How should we think about the likelihood in your case, but also competition as it's still a high-priced product?
Yeah, I think I would. I'll just start with the number of announcements. So there is over 100 announcements of blue and green, of which, really from that time when we did the analysis, only one more has moved into actual, you know, construction phase. So it's a little bit back to 2012 again where everyone's going to announce, but really what I think it'll come down to is the participants who are in the industry are the ones who are going to move forward doing this. I think from a demand side, there's really two sides, you know. We talk about internally, clean energy is really about decarbonization, and decarbonization is good for all seasons. You know, we're being with the 45Q, we'll actually have a significant margin uplift to our P&L and our cash flow based on what we'll be receiving by sequestering that.
But on the clean energy front, we are seeing that there is still this demand draw that is happening in Asia. So JERA, the largest utility provider in Japan, is doing their commercial tests starting about a month from now where they'll do a 90-day test co-firing ammonia with coal to a 20% level to reduce GHG by 20% on that. From that point, they're basically METI, which is their Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is going to put in incentives that will be a contract for difference that'll look at picking certain projects that'll make up the difference between what coal costs and ammonia costs in order to incent decarbonization to happen throughout the utility projects in Japan. We believe our partnership with JERA and Mitsui on that will be one of the lead applications on that.
But one of the reasons we deferred the targeted to the second half of the year is there just has to be more clarity coming out of the Japanese regulatory. What is the carbon intensity? What is the contract for difference going to be? Once we have that information, along with some of our other FEED studies that align to the same type of timeframe with flue gas recovery to lower on our existing plants, but also the autothermal reformer, which is a slightly different type of way of producing ammonia that has a little higher recovery of the carbon on that. Once we get better understanding of that, that's when we'll decide to move forward.
Okay.
I would say the world is moving to a decarbonized platform. All of our customers, explosives, synthetic fibers, agriculture, ethanol, in different parts of the world, our customers have their own scope emissions to meet, and our product is a lead opportunity to help meet those, as well as we're going to decarbonize anyway. So the path is positive for us, and we're going to be first.
Okay. Perfect. Well, Bert, Chris, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Time's up. Thanks for joining us.
Yep.