Morning. All right. Morning, everyone. Welcome to our, I don't even know what the year is. We're in the third decade, I think, of our Global Farm to Market Conference, and our Chemicals Conference too. Very excited for the two days we're gonna have here together. You know, over 1,000 attendees this year, over 100 companies. It's always bigger and better, and very excited about it. Same goal every year. We really want this to be a forum to explore the key themes across the food value chain. We're gonna have lots of fireside chats, presentations. As you know, this conference really spans the entire farm to the market, fertilizer, chemicals, agribusiness, protein, food, beverage, distribution, food retail sectors, coconut water. We have it all. Just wanna really thank everybody at our conference here.
We have a really great events coordination team here, our sales force, all the corporates that show up, all the investors. Really appreciate everyone that shows up for us. Just talk about a couple keynotes we're gonna have this year. Today we're going to do a panel, myself and Andrew Strelzi k, with our you know, BMO's a very large commercial ag lender, so we're gonna have four senior leaders in our commercial ag lending team, and we're gonna talk about, you know, what's going on across agriculture and farmers in the U.S. really, you know, boots on the ground, and we'll see what's going on there. Tomorrow we're gonna have a keynote presentation from our new Chief Investment Strategist, François Trahan.
He's going to focus on how investors can think about positioning portfolios for a potentially prolonged period of inflation, and what the impacts will be on the consumer. Okay, we're about 30 seconds early, so I might just drag for 30 seconds to catch up to the webcast. We really hope that you guys have a great conference and this really helps you figure out where you want to be invested in food and ag. Okay, let's kick off. We're going to start off today with a fireside presentation with CF Industries, of course, a leading global nitrogen producer with a very large North American nitrogen base. Very happy to have Bert Frost, who's the EVP and Chief Commercial Officer of CF, and Martin Jarosick, who runs Investor Relations and Treasury. I'll slip over here. It's 8:00, perfect. There you go. All right.
Made it right on time. All right, why don't maybe we could start off with a bit of a state of the union. A lot going on in nitrogen markets. Why don't you maybe talk about what's going on in nitrogen this year, and what's different this year versus other years?
Each year is different. It's amazing when we sit down and talk about it, here at your conference or on our conference calls, how we reflect on the oscillations of this industry. You have so many things happening. If you go back, like, to 2008 and talk about the peak and trough of that era, or 2020 and COVID, or Russian-Ukraine invasion, now we have the Iranian situation or the Middle Eastern situation. Feathered underneath that are other, I would say, smaller issues of, in terms of gas issues in certain countries or areas or lack thereof, operational issues. We have a lot of old assets in certain places, and inefficiencies. The demand continues to grow, and it's an amazing story of continued 1%-2% demand growth, not necessarily additional capacity growth.
Where we are today is a very interesting place, I think, for CF and for North America, because all of a sudden the shift has shifted towards who is the safe place? Where is the place to produce this stuff? Who has low-cost gas? Who has the rule of law? Who has an area where I can build on top of some of the best farmland in the world? That's the United States, and that's just a poster for CF Industries. We're very excited about how this is transpiring, not because of wars or conflicts. No, that's not something we're pleased with.
It's the structural advantage that we have built of CF Industries, and where this industry is headed and the needs of the world, and we're well-positioned to satisfy much of those needs.
I mean, it's a weird year, right? Like, you could say it's like 2022, it's not exactly. It's a different conflict, a different situation, although the timing of both conflicts start around February, end of February. This market, we've seen a surge in nitrogen prices, you know, just after kind of, I guess, the key stock-up period in the distribution for nitrogen in North America. You know, how is the market playing out right now?
Well, actually I wanna I think your first point is very interesting in terms of how this is similar to 2022 or not? Again, back to these other I'd say excursions out of the mean from 2008 to 2020 to 2022 to now, most of those were demand-driven. In 2007, 2008, there was an, "Oh, my God. Can I get supply? I need to pull forward." Well, the world pulled forward a lot of demand and we had a collapse. Same with 2022. The reality was the product came out of Russia and was being exported, maybe a little bit of a delay, but the world was afraid of not being able to have supply, so again, demand was pulled forward.
Today, there are supply limitations, it's not just what's happening in the Middle East with millions of tons that are not going to be produced and not going to make it out, but the nationalistic moves that have taken place from other places to say, "Well, wait a second. I'm gonna secure my supply. I'm not gonna allow exports," Russia, China, other places, or needing gas. This is a supply, a unique supply, limited market where will you get supply, and how long does it, and what price will you pay for this product?
When we look at the forward, and you're talking about spring and positioning, when we look at the North American market. Our estimates are 80%-85% of at least nitrogen fertilizer was in place for spring, and priced at the Q3, Q4, Q1 average at very attractive levels for the American and Canadian farmer. We were pleased with how we have worked with our channel partners, the retailers, the wholesalers, and We don't sell to farmers, but that group that serves the farmer to make sure that the product is where it's supposed to be, when it's needed for planting. That's for nitrogen, for you folks out there, that's ammonia first, which goes down in the fall, and then the spring. UAN, urea and those products.
We feel very good about that supply, and we will then pivot to the global market and once the U.S. and Canada are satisfied and begin exporting.
I forgot to mention that today, right now, and for the rest of the two days, if you wanna submit questions to these sessions on the app, you can download the conference app. People will be happy to help you out in the lobby. Then we have the iPad here to get your questions. I think we're seeing, you know, bifurcated markets right now, right? We've seen U.S. I don't remember what it is yesterday, I don't think I was reading yesterday, NOLA is around $600, maybe sub $600 a short ton. Offshore prices are closer to maybe high $700s, $800 a metric ton. There's some arbitrage or there's some opportunities here with bifurcated markets. Talk about that.
You're correct, and it's an interesting phenomenon in that, we are the lowest valued market today in the world at that $600 a short ton, where Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, those that have available tons to export, are closer to $800. Part of that's a reflection of, again, the North American market is satisfied. We've imported sufficient volumes. CF has produced and kept those tons in market. I think we had a drop in corn acres from 98. We were estimating 95 million acres, so a little bit less applied. We had a very good fall application and spring of ammonia. When you add up the nitrogen needs, I think there has been sufficient, where now the game is buying NOLA tons on a barge, and re-exporting them.
You're gonna see vessels that have brought tons in, put on a barge, put on a vessel, and sent out, because of that price arbitrage. That'll eventually correct, but kinda year in, year out, NOLA is one of the lowest priced markets in the world, and there's a reason for that. It's an easy place for, let's just say Russia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria. You're along a vessel, you can send it to NOLA and discharge it into vessel and store it that way, where in Brazil, you can't berth until you have it all sold and paper is nationalized. Most markets operate that way.
I don't wanna get anybody in trouble, but, in thinking about the export opportunities and some arbitrage or some better net backs, I mean, the U.S. government, the new administration's been very vocal the last bunch of weeks and months, Brooke Rollins, other players in the government about fertilizer shortages, that I don't think actually are in the States, fertilizer shortage, but just talking about pricing and things like that. Is there a concern that the government, if this, if this conflict continues, Is there a concern that the U.S. could put a new policy, like, "No, you can't export nitrogen. No, you can't do things like that." Like other countries we've seen, you know, do it. Is that a crazy thought?
Does crazy drive crazy? I don't know. I think you have to take a step back and say, "Is that something that's in the interest of the government? Is that something that's in the interest of the in terms of policy? And is that something that makes long-term and short-term sense?" I would say no, because it's a global market. Things, products move all over the world. We've, at CF, we do export at times, but it's a, I would say, a de minimis part of our portfolio. We're heavily focused on North America. We have an industrial base, an ag base, and then that incremental volume that's exported generally during the off-season because you have a bell curve of demand. You're building inventory until about March, April, and then you're dumping inventory, or you're applying that product to the ground.
The goal of a retail, our customers, is to be at empty by the end of June. That's a good goal because it's a reset. We supply those customers. We announce our fill programs, where we're filling the inventory. During that natural time of declining demand, we're still producing 24/7, 365. We're, you know, we're always going. We have inventory space for probably 2 months, we at CF. There is a natural time because of our assets are located, that we can load vessels very efficiently, and that's good for the market because it takes 2 to play in this game. We produce and we want to sell, but we need our customers who want to buy.
Generally, they don't want to commit their capital, their working capital, nor their risk capital, to fill their inventory maybe in June, July. They'd prefer to do that in August through December. This is a natural oscillating market that there is a need to export at certain times.
I think it's fair, like we're getting to the part of the year where maybe some of the pressure comes off the Northern Hemisphere, you know, not so much the Southern Hemisphere, but Northern Hemisphere. It's early, but do you have any views on how fill might go versus other year, prior years?
Oh, I always have views.
Go, tell us.
You guys wanna hear them?
Yes.
No, they, we believe that, this year fill will do very well because of that earlier comment on there's gonna be almost no inventory at the retail level. The focus of, from our communication and discussions with our customers is we're gonna be empty, we want to be empty, and then we want to reassess where the market is, whether that's the corn market, or wheat, or whatever crops are being supplied. Understand the credit needs and position of their customer, the farmer, and then we like to work synergistically with our channel partners and price based on the world market, but also be attractive that they're willing to buy and commit their capital to this process. I expect to have a very good fill program. What we did last year was interesting.
We communicated a month before and said to the customer base, "We're gonna start fill on this date in August.
Yeah.
We will call you on that day and offer you a price, and then get your tons, your needs organized with your customers. If it went very efficiently. I anticipate doing the same thing.
What day do you know what day in your head right now you think you're gonna do that?
I would say sometime in early August.
okay, so early July, like, starting telling people about it, so you got a month to get ready.
Yeah, we got that, and we have the Southwestern Fertilizer Conference.
Right. Okay
where we meet and talk about all things fertilizer.
Okay, do you think we'll see any change in sort of retail purchasing behavior where maybe they don't wanna empty the bins end of the season, maybe they're worried about supply, or do you think it'll be similar behavior?
No, I think they're gonna empty the bins. I'm speaking only of nitrogen. you have nitrogen-
Yeah.
Phosphate, potash, some sulfur products that, and then the crop protection and seeds, I would anticipate all that is focused on liquidation and the repositioning.
I mean, we've known in quotes for, you know, 9 months, 10 months that we were gonna see an acre reduction from or acre shift from corn to soy in 2026, and we got our first USDA estimates, you know, end of March. And then, you know, a lot of people in the industry think, "Well, there'll be a more, a wider shift, like, more acre reduction, more soybean acres." Do you have a view if the USDA's got it right?
Our view would be, whether they're right or wrong, I don't wanna comment, but our view is 95 or maybe even higher than that. There's a reason. The one product you can make if you're a farmer that you have a yield impact is corn. If you're a 200 bushel per acre producer, and you've prepared your land, you've picked your seed optimization, and you've got good soil moisture, which all is in place today, if you fertilize, and specific to nitrogen fertilizer, the yield uplift opportunity, and that's the revenue opportunity is there. In this kind of market where you're at $5 corn, today we're at $5.03 for December, the corn-to-soybean ratio favors corn.
Again, if you can get 10, 5 additional bushels per acre, which is highly possible, when you're looking out into the world today, what is going to happen to the supply, the stocks-to-use ratio of corn? You should ask the Bunge and ADM guys this. Our perspective is that you've got an opportunity because of what's going on in the world and the lack of nitrogen and the lack of movement. Second crop corn is something, place where you might see an impact, but that'll be in 2027. If you're a farmer here, you shoot for yield, you've got on-farm storage, you hold your crop in the fall of 2026, and we expect to see an increasing value for that output, and that's fantastic for the American farmer.
I actually spent some time Monday and yesterday with AGCO, right, the big equipment manufacturer, in Toronto and Montreal, and the view that they're trying to push is 2027 should be bullish and maybe get people buying tractors again because sort of some of the things you're touching on, you know, which is that, okay, farmers might apply. Well, their view is farmers are gonna apply less nitrogen per acre, yields will go down. This'll crop prices will go up. Everyone's now gonna buy another new tractor next year because they're gonna have more money. I don't know if I necessarily subscribe to that because I think sophisticated farmers, if they're gonna apply corn, they're gonna do their 200 pounds or whatever of nitrogen. If they don't wanna do that, they'll just apply, they'll plant some other crop that doesn't use nitrogen.
Like, do you have any views on, you know, yields, application rates, and what it means for next year?
My view on yield is you're gonna apply nitrogen for yield. I do think that phosphate is expensive, that goes to soybeans. Potash at $350 is probably reasonable.
It's cheap. Come on, it's cheap.
Well, if I were Canadian, I'd say that.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
I do think that, around the world, the calculations that farmers around the world are making, but on nitrogen, and this goes, again, back to yields, is we're short 5 million tons at a minimum coming out of the Gulf. That's not going to be replaced. Every day that this goes on, the untanglement of the strait, you got 1,000, 1,500 ships on the west side. You've got ships on the other, on the entrance side that need to come in. That's like, it's a little highway. You've got this movement of ships that has to. What ships go first? Do petroleum go first?
Does refined fuels go second?
Sulfur. Come on, sulfur.
Well, we're short sulfur.
Yeah.
Last night, Darl and I were flying in, I was on the phone with a guy I deal with in China, talking about some of the needs and movements and the impacts, sulfur on phosphate in China.
Totally.
We are gonna be short phosphate in the world, but we're also short nitrogen, so yields are gonna be hit in some places. Who's gonna be impacted are those that either can't afford it or can't get it. Again, back to this, in a needs-based world where a majority of, at least in the United States, corn goes to feed and then to ethanol and, or corn refining, we have consistent demand for that output for the farmer. Again, back to where I think the impact is rising prices, which we hope leads to rising incomes for the farmer.
Okay, I got a question from someone in the app. Thank you. You mentioned you were liquidating inventories to reassess. Would that keep prices high and availability tight? How are you managing credit terms to customers?
Credit terms.
For credit terms, we keep them pretty tight. You can see from our financials we don't have bad debt expense, we don't have write-offs. We manage our credit very tightly, and as prices go up, it generally becomes tighter.
I would say he manages it very tightly. We have negative working capital.
Right.
A lot of our product is prepaid, so I think our position. Again, on the pricing issue, it's a global market, so it's as much as we would I think people like to say that that that's controlled by industry, it's not. This is a dispersed industry. We're the world's largest producer of ammonia, and we're 5% of that 200 million tons of ammonia that's consumed. 200 million tons of urea, we're 5 million of that tonnage. As products move or are demanded. During this crisis, I had phone calls from many different places around the world, and it wasn't a question of price. I need a vessel of this product or that product, can you load it? No, we can't, because we're committed to the North American market.
When can you? I'll pay this price. That's the kind of drivers that are taking place right now.
A silly question, but we all get asked every day. The war ends tomorrow, although it did end 2 weeks ago. War ends tomorrow, and things unwind, take some time, whatever. Some reasonable question. The war ends tomorrow, things start to unwind. How do you see the market sort of normalizing or developing in that ridiculous, preposterous, impossible to understand scenario?
Yeah. I got an answer.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I-
You get my gist.
Oh, I do. I remember on February 28th and March 1st when I got the call. You know, in general I wake up and I look at the gas market, I look at the corn market, and which it's kind of annoying to my wife, but then I look at the news, what's happening today. When the hostilities commenced, it was, you know, pull pricing.
Let's sit down and assess. The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday after that was calling customers. What do you need? Where are you at? What does this mean? Thinking that was a 2-week issue. Okay, maybe it's a 3-week issue. Okay, maybe it's a month issue. Well, now it's a 2 and a half month issue, and we can end hostilities and open the strait. Again, I would say it's 2 months.
We don't know. We know that, in terms of operations that are not operating today are nitrogen plants, and that's Bahrain, Qatar, Iran. We don't know what's been bombed, we don't know what LNG is available. I mean, you got to think about it's not just urea coming out of the Gulf, it's LNG that goes to.
Right.
India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Bangladesh has shut down their 4 plants because they don't have energy. India's operating their plants, they're 60% driven, or they're 60% of their gas needs are imported LNG. They're operating their nitrogen plants because of that lack of product at 70%. That's just adding more millions of tons of needs. We estimate that India last year imported 10 million tons of urea. We thought this year it'd be like maybe 7 million, 8 million, 9 million tons, we weren't sure. They're gonna be 10 million-13 million tons. You're short, it's not available, but these countries that produce it aren't producing it. They need more, the import demand goes up. These people need, we need these, the Middle Eastern producers to be producing again. Does China come in?
There's so many questions about supply, where it's gonna come from, back to nationalistic moves and attitudes and thinking, that when you look at the forward market, I don't think we untangle this, and I'm just gonna project, we're almost in June now, till August.
I think what's interesting is, and Martin you'd probably agree with this, like if we were going back 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, I think a very simplistic investor, a very simplistic view by a lot of the buy side has been CF is a proxy stock to TTF or for Henry gas spreads. Like if you just have to explain to someone in 5 seconds, right? That was what people were just fixated on. The last few months have definitely changed the story a bit, right? Because it's much more complicated. I don't know if you have any views on what I'm getting at, but now it's not just about gas prices, it's about so many other things, you know?
Well, I think that's right. I think the world has changed. We'll probably have a new normal.
Yeah.
from where we were in the past. In the not too distant past, the world was running pretty smoothly in our industry and, with not a lot of friction, and barriers to overcome. Now you have a very complicated global situation. It's affecting shipments, it's changing the risk profile of assets that we'd previously considered first quartile just based on their.
Yeah.
gas price alone. Now you have to factor in their ability to actually ship that product out.
Yeah, I think how the market valued nitrogen assets and again, where are you going to build new assets, that has a risk premium that wasn't, I don't think, incorporated. If you're looking at a cost of capital of X or a return of Y, that needs to, that calculus needs to change. Again, that's where CF is. We're located in the best market with the best gas supply, the best ability to distribute the product. It all works very well.
Speaking of complicated, CBAM has been around now, what, for fertilizer for four and a half months. There's a lot of political discussion about it all the time. Seems like it's pretty much in place. Any views on how CBAM has changed the market?
CBAM. It's a difficult because you don't know until the end of the year what your actual cost is going to be. My European friends in our industry, it's a struggle. To one, you've got older assets, you don't have gas, or the price of gas is at $16, we're paying $2.60. It's a much different calculus. Where I go with that, though, is what, again, how CF Industries is prepared and how we've thoughtfully worked through this with decarbonizing our footprint. We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in decarbonizing first at Donaldsonville, where we now have up to close to 2 million tons of decarbonized product. Now we're building the world scale Blue Point project that'll come on in 2029.
We'll be 95% decarbonized, and we have space for four more ammonia plants with our partners or independently. Our partners are JERA and Mitsui, which we're really pleased because they're taking some of that offtake to new applications in Japan for co-firing. CBAM, there's two different schools of thought. What the U.S. did, or our government did, was give the carrot. The 45Q of decarbonizing, we lean into that, and we're partnering with Exxon for our decarbonization projects. As well as, who's the other one? I can't remember. We are on that path.
We need Amanda. See, we need Amanda here.
I know she's fast.
Fast. She know.
We are on that path of decarbonizing, one, 'cause we're getting paid for it, but two, we believe it's the right thing to do, we're looking to supply some of the nitrogen needs to Europe and meet those CBAM goals.
Okay, let's talk about that since a question just came in as well. You've been running some low-carbon ammonia out of Donaldsonville now since third quarter last year. Third quarter, fourth quarter, third quarter. you know, how is demand How is that going? What are customers saying, and how do you think demand is evolving for sustainable and low carbon nitrogen?
It's evolving in many facets. What we've been doing over the years in terms of this journey has been going on for almost five years of decarbonization. What have we done? We've gone out and worked with and talked to the retail sector, specifically the co-ops, so Land O'Lakes, CHS, GROWMARK. That's the connection with the farmer and working with them and, one, explaining, this is what's coming. This is what the uplift is. We've had pilot projects with POET, the ethanol company.
Yeah.
where we're supplying. This is where it's called the corn value chain, we're really excited about this. It's because we play in You know, we're the fertilizer supplier that goes to the retailer, that goes to the farmer, whose output goes to the processor. That corn value chain, that processor could be as feed for cattle and poultry and pork, but the processor we're looking at now is the industrial processor. Low carbon fertilizer in that corn value chain can lower the carb score for ethanol by about 10%. As these ethanol plants decarbonize themselves, you've got a full decarbonized value chain that we think adds, or we believe it adds value, 'cause we're getting paid for that decarbonization.
Then what the value of that in that corn value chain that the farmer will benefit, the retailer has consistent movement, and the processor as well. You've seen our announcements with Pepsi on Low Carbon Initiative with UAN, and then we have contracts for low carbon products into Europe to industrials as well as, farm or fertilizer companies.
You know, like Intel Inside? You like CF Inside on the Pepsi bottle.
Oof.
Yeah.
Everybody's gonna buy that?
No. It's good for you. You guys had talked about the premium pricing. You'd hope to get the blue premium. I think you talked about $25-$50 a ton on blue ammonia at Donaldsonville, and then as you get to Blue Point in a few years, maybe more than that. Is that right?
The where we are today is we are getting a premium, and it's the, on the lower side of that, $20-$30. We're being very prescriptive to our customers and to the market of, this is a new product, and demand is going to build. Demand's going to build because of CBAM anyway. As the penalties increase and we're able to produce and under that, there's a value that's associated with that. There's also the CPG companies and their own scope emissions, and what we're finding is a lot of them want to partner with us to lower those emissions themselves or those, that Scope 3.
All of the above, but what we're investing for now is we're being paid for by the 45Q system, and we see that market pricing being associated and increasing over time.
Blue Point, things are on pace now. You kept your CapEx trajectory on earnings on your release last week. Anything going on there, talk about any concerns about inflation risk?
I mean, for me, in terms of the inflation risk, we're out. We've already partnered with, and we know where we're going to be producing these modules. We're gonna be bringing them in. We're in terms of what we're doing with groundwork and pilings and building our, the bridge that's gonna go over the highway. It's infrastructure work today. We have a great team that's focused on that. So the inflation risk in terms of the modules, I don't think that's a great risk to us.
Again, back to the U.S. government, which has had, you know, been a little chatty these days about fertilizer supply and building more capacity in the U.S. You're building a new plant. It wasn't designed really to be sold to farmers. It could be, right? I mean, in the end.
Sure.
if maybe some of the low carbon opportunities weren't as attractive. You know, I've already heard questions from people saying, you know, with all the windfall free cash flow you're gonna get, with what's going on in the war, could you guys build more nitrogen capacity? Could you build a Blue Point 2? We're only in the early days of Blue Point 1. What do you think about that?
Well, I think we have demonstrated, in terms of we're the one company that has added capacity.
Right.
Over the last 15 years, we purchased Terra in 2010, so let's go back 16 years. Really revamped that system, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in bringing that capacity, increasing that capacity through higher throughputs. In 2012, we announced the building of Donaldsonville and Port Neal. That was $5.2 billion for two world scale plants.
Yep.
1 in Louisiana, 1 in Iowa. We purchased Waggaman 2 years ago maybe, which was an ammonia plant run by Dyno Nobel, which was running about 800,000 tons a year. When we have purchased, whether it's Terra or our own assets, we run them at 100% over nameplate. The new plants are running at 110% of capacity of static capacity. We're the company that has a great engineering team. We have, I think, a very focused, staying within the things we're capable of doing and improving on, and we've demonstrated that.
That's our communication to our government, the U.S. government at least, is, we are committed to growing and investing in our United States, I'd say North America, 'cause we have 2 plants in Canada. Our North American asset base. That includes plants and distribution capability. We have 20 plus ammonia terminals in the United States, as well as UAN terminals. We have our own barges that move product, and we have 5,000 rail cars. When you integrate all that together, we are about serving the American or the North American market. We could invest. We look at projects all the time. I think you're right, we're throwing off a lot of free cash. We're the free cash company. That will be used for CapEx, for buybacks, for dividends, and for new investments.
I guess in the interim, I mean, as you're generating this extra free cash flow right now, you're expecting 3 months ago, I mean, I imagine it'd be going to the buyback. Is that fair? Would you be trying to build a bit of cash balance for some dry powder?
No, if you look at our history, we've done both. We've built cash in times when we're generating very large amounts of free cash. If you look over, like last year, we bought back 10% of the outstanding shares. Year before that, we bought back 10% of the outstanding shares. We have a consistent track record of redeploying that capital, either into our own network through accretive projects or through share repurchases.
I mean, it's a bit, now this year's a bit different. You got, you know, some more earnings, but you have a bigger CapEx profile 'cause Blue Point is starting, you know, with your partners are spending money on it. Does that change the calculus at all? Sort of both sides of the equation have moved up, you know, costs and inflow.
We like to maintain a high degree of financial flexibility. You've seen our balance sheet has a fair amount of cash on it. That enables us to do a lot of things that are opportunistic, whether it's buying Waggaman, where we had cash on the balance sheet, we just wrote a check for that entire plant. To have the dry powder to execute the share repurchase program.
I think something we've learned also is we've been through the tough times of 2016 when EBITDA was low and debt was high. We now have a wonderful balance sheet. We're well-positioned. Things happen in this industry, and opportunities come, and it's better to have cash on hand or opportunities with that and a good balance sheet to execute.
That's a good part. Like, I mean, I lived through the times when you guys are like, "Oh, CF's going bankrupt." Like I remember those months, right?
Yeah.
That was just after the OCI deal kind of had broken. You had a bit of some interesting debt on the balance sheet. What was your sort of biggest takeaways from that, and what takeaways have you been from the like the peak times, you know?
Cash matters.
Yeah.
Having, you know, in terms of how Martin manages our treasury book and the people we work with, a good balance sheet is something always to work for. We're in a commodity business. The oscillations of the products that we make against the products our products make, against the products that our products' products make, that's just the price of corn. If corn is $4, a farmer cannot afford it. If corn's $7, he's happy. He's gonna go to AGCO and buy that new tractor.
Yeah.
It's the same thing as cattle. If your protein price is high, that corn, that feed value to the beef, pork or poultry is high. That's another revenue source. In our industry, the oscillations of gas, the oscillations of price, the oscillations of the output can be punishing, and we learned that in 2016, and we don't want to relive that.
You're a nitrogen company, right? That's what you do. Any ideas to want to get into other commodities, go a little more downstream? I don't know. Any ideas?
Nah. Nitrogen's pretty awesome right now.
Yeah.
I'm pretty happy to be in nitrogen. We've looked at a lot of different things over the years. You talk about OCI, we almost partnered with them. We almost partnered with Yara. We did purchase Terra. We used to be in phosphate. We sold the phosphate business to Mosaic in 2014, and I think that was a very elegant solution for CF. It was something that we had an asset, but they had the land surrounding our land, so our phosphate resources were limited. This is a good transaction for Mosaic. We had an ammonia supply contract. We make the ammonia, so we did an ammonia supply contract with them. I think that demonstrates that, you know, they do what they do. We're different industries, but we're very satisfied being in the nitrogen space.
Are you, I mean, are you a North American nitrogen producer? I know you've got some assets in Trinidad, or JV, but, I mean, are you a North American nitrogen producer? Is that, would you consider branching out? I mean, you have in the past, like Yara and OCI, some deals, but would you branch out?
We have our U.K. asset that.
Right, yeah.
produce ammonium nitrate there, and we import ammonia.
Yeah.
We have our Trinidadian asset.
Yeah.
That's a joint venture with Koch.
Those are like in U.K.'s small, smallish, right? They're very small.
We have the two plants in Canada.
I said North America, we're from North America.
Good job.
We're friends. We're friends.
That's right.
Yeah.
Again, a lot of things come our way.
Yeah.
We look at things and we talk about things. I'm not gonna say I would say never say never. But we do enjoy the benefits of being a North American producer are substantial, and we do like our asset base.
What would it take for you to get conviction to look at another, well, to look at another like greenfield? Is there a greenfield opportunity? Is there a brownfield you have sitting in your portfolio that would make some sense? What would you need to see to conviction to go down that road?
Yeah. I think we're always, I wanna be thoughtful that we're always looking at things to, towards the future. DEF is a very good example of that. Diesel Exhaust Fluid. It's urea liquor. Urea liquor goes in to make urea, which is a dry product. Urea liquor goes in to make UAN, which is urea ammonium nitrate. It's substream now, where we're the largest producer, I think, in the world, but at least for sure in North America. That Diesel Exhaust Fluid, as Class 8 trucks' power units have been dosing from, let's say starting in 2010, as those new engines came in, and dosing rates went from 2%-4% and increasing up. That has been a very good business for us.
A good example of identifying something early, building capacity to meet it, and we would look at other opportunities in the same way.
Are there any other, like, are there any other Waggamans out there, like plants that are available or could be available, you don't have to name them, but that you think you could maybe run a bit better?
Uh-
On your radar?
I don't have any specific to announce or to talk about.
Yeah, yeah. Like just things, I'm not asking you to name, announce a transaction right now live at the BMO.
I think our skill set is-
That'd be great.
Our skill set is running these plants very well.
Yeah.
Our safety record, I do want to give a shout-out to our team.
Sure
our engineering and management and production teams. Our safety record is the best in the industry, we focus on that. We believe safe operations lead to better operations. Our do it right culture is something that if we were to take on another asset, we would embed that with that performance and as well as the investments to take an asset to max capacity.
Let's start to wrap this up. What is kind of your base case how, like going back to what we were talking about half an hour ago, but what is sort of your base case and how, and these are just reviews, but you know, how the next six months are gonna play out and how CF's positioning for that to, you know, maximize it for CF?
We're in, let's say June 1st, so the first half is over. We've had a very good first half. We've supplied the North American market. We've kept our customers supplied. They're happy. They're ending up with a good performance. We got Daren from the ARA and can speak for the retailers, but we believe we've done a very good job of partnering with our retail partners. Now it shifts to the farmer and yields. We're in an El Niño year, so the risk on climate and a severe El Niño with what that means for drought and for South America as well, we have to watch. This goes to, I think, with the lack of nutrients that are available in the world, I think you're going to see underperformance in other areas of the world.
That's gonna yield, move to lack of yield, price increases for those carbohydrate products, corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans Or corn, wheat, cotton, rice, sugar. I would think that there'll be higher values to the farmer at the tail end of the year. I think North America is very well positioned for that eventuality with serving the world with the food that is needed.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thank you.