Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first nine months and third quarter 2021 CF Industries Holdings earnings conference call. My name is Erica, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will facilitate a question-and-answer session towards the end of the presentation. To pose a question at any time, please press star one on your touchtone telephone keypad. If at any time during this call you require assistance, please press star zero, and a coordinator will be happy to assist you. I would now like to turn the presentation over to the host for today, Mr. Martin Jarosick with CF Investor Relations. Sir, please proceed.
Good morning, and thanks for joining the CF Industries earnings conference call. I'm Martin Jarosick, Vice President of Investor Relations. With me today are Tony Will, CEO, Chris Bohn, CFO, and Bert Frost, Senior Vice President of Sales, Market Development, and Supply Chain. CF Industries reported its results for the first nine months and third quarter of 2021 yesterday afternoon. On this call, we'll review the CF Industries results in detail, discuss our outlook, and then host a question-and-answer session. Statements made on this call and in the presentation on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and will involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes or results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statements.
More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance may be found in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our website. Also, you will find the reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in the press release and presentation posted on our website. Now let me introduce Tony Will, our President and CEO.
Thanks, Martin, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, we posted our financial results for the first nine months of 2021, in which we generated adjusted EBITDA of $1.5 billion. These results reflect the drastically improving industry fundamentals that we experienced over the course of the year. Nitrogen prices are at their highest levels in over a decade, as strong demand and lower worldwide production have tightened the global supply-demand balance considerably. At the same time, energy spreads between North America and high-cost regions have widened dramatically, supporting margin expansion for our cost-advantaged network. The CF team also continues to perform exceptionally well, navigating a couple of severe weather events in the U.S., our highest levels of turnaround and maintenance activity ever, and a challenging natural gas situation in the U.K. Most importantly, they did so safely.
Our recordable incident rate at the end of September was just 0.24 incidents per 200,000 labor hours, significantly better than industry averages. These factors have driven substantial cash generation over the last year. Our trailing 12-month net cash from operations was $1.7 billion, and free cash flow was $1 billion. As we look ahead, we're excited about the opportunities to build on this performance. We have good visibility into the fourth quarter of 2021. We have priced virtually all of our product shipments through the end of the year while also hedging our natural gas requirements. While there is always some uncertainty about the volume of ammonia that will be applied in Q4, given the dependency on weather, we would expect full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA to land between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion.
Further out, we believe nitrogen industry conditions will remain positive for an extended period. As Bert will describe in a moment, we see very strong demand, constrained global supply, and wide energy spreads between North America and Europe to persist for some time. These factors support our ability to continue to generate significant free cash and to deploy that capital to create shareholder value. Our priorities remain the same, invest in growth where opportunities offer returns above our cost of capital and return excess capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We remain focused on disciplined investments and are excited about the two new projects supporting our clean energy growth platform. Once completed, these projects will enable us to produce over a million tons of blue or carbon-free ammonia. Chris will share more about our announcement yesterday in a moment.
We are also pleased to have achieved investment-grade credit ratings, which recognizes and underscores all of the work we have done to remove fixed costs in the business, reduce debt, and highlights the positive industry fundamentals for a North American producer. On the balance sheet, we are quickly closing in on our target of $3 billion of gross debt and expect to repay the remaining $500 million outstanding on our 2023 notes on or before their maturity. However, that still leaves a substantial amount of excess free cash flow we expect to generate. As such, the board has authorized a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program to facilitate the return of capital to shareholders. With that, let me turn it over to Bert, who will discuss the global nitrogen outlook in more detail.
Chris will follow to talk about our financial position and clean energy initiatives before I return for some closing comments. Bert?
Thanks, Tony. The last 6 months-9 months have seen a dramatic tightening of the global nitrogen supply and demand balance. High crop prices and increased economic activity continue to drive demand. Meanwhile, lower global production and government actions have created a supply-constrained global market. The impact of this can be seen on slides 11 and 12, where both our spot cost curve and 2022 cost curve are much higher and steeper than in recent years.
As you can see, the margin opportunities available to our network have expanded greatly due to a wide energy spread between North America and marginal production in Europe. We expect strong global fertilizer demand to last into at least 2023. As you can see on slide eight, global stocks-to-use ratios for both grains and oilseeds are at their lowest levels in nearly a decade, supporting high crop prices. These prices will support farm profitability in North America, even with higher input prices, incentivizing farmers to plant acres and maximize yield. Based on our order book, we expect the fall ammonia application season will be the largest since 2012, demonstrating farmer commitment to planting corn and applying fertilizer. We believe farmers around the world will make similar decisions, with import demand continuing to be led by India and Brazil.
We believe global supply will remain constrained in the near term, with relief unlikely to appear anytime soon. We believe inventory in the channel is very low. Global production has been lower in 2021 due to severe weather in North America, higher maintenance worldwide, and ongoing European shutdowns and curtailments. Further, the Russian and Chinese governments are discouraging nitrogen fertilizer exports through the spring. These factors suggest the potential for strong fertilizer demand to last beyond 2023, even as some regions are unable to secure enough product in this supply-constrained environment, resulting in lower yields. If this were to happen, demand would be deferred into future years as it would take more than two growing seasons to replenish global grain and oilseed stocks. As we prepare for the spring application season, we continue to receive substantial interest for any product we offer into the marketplace.
We are building a solid order book for the first quarter of 2022 at the prices you see in the market today. Similar to what we did for the fourth quarter, we are adding natural gas hedges as we make first quarter product commitments in order to lock in margin and protect against significant energy price spikes. As a result, we believe we're in a strong position heading into 2022. In this dynamic market, we remain focused on leveraging our manufacturing, distribution, and logistics capabilities to serve our customers and look forward to the opportunities before us. With that, let me turn the call over to Chris.
Thanks, Bert. For the first 9 months of 2021, the company reported net earnings attributable to common stockholders of $212 million or $0.98 per diluted share. EBITDA was $984 million and adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.5 billion. Net earnings and EBITDA reflect the recognition of non-cash impairment charges related to our U.K. operations. As discussed in the earnings release, our results for the first 9 months and third quarter are preliminary pending the completion of the impairment analysis and finalization of the non-cash impairment charges. We continue to monitor market conditions for the U.K. assets, which accounted for 2% of our gross margin in 2020. The Billingham complex is operating due to recently improved carbon dioxide contracts and industrial contracts that pass through natural gas costs. Operations at Ince remain halted.
Free cash flow, free cash generation remains strong. The trailing 12 months net cash provided by operating activities was approximately $1.7 billion, and free cash flow was $1 billion. We believe we have a good opportunity in 2022 to build on these results based not only on our positive outlook, but also on increased production from our network. In 2021, we completed a record level of maintenance activity that included turnarounds at seven of our 17 ammonia plants. We will return to a more normal level of turnaround activity in 2022. As a result, we expect to return to our typical high ammonia utilization rates with gross ammonia production between 9.5 millions and 10 million tons. We expect to sell everything we produce and achieve sales volume between 19 millions and 20 million tons in 2022.
As we sell these product volumes into a favorable market environment, we expect to continue to generate substantial free cash flow and create shareholder value. As Tony said, our board authorized the new $1.5 billion share repurchase program, which becomes effective January 1st, 2022. We continue to operate under our existing program, which has enabled us to acquire more than 11 million shares to be repurchased since 2019. This program expires at the end of the year. At the same time, we'll continue to evaluate clean energy initiatives to meet the demand for ammonia's clean energy capabilities that we expect to emerge in the second half of the decade. This includes positioning our network for the production of blue and green ammonia to support the development of a market for low carbon ammonia.
Constructing carbon dioxide dehydration and compression units at Donaldsonville and Yazoo City are a necessary step to enable blue ammonia production through carbon capture and sequestration. These projects leverage our existing asset base and represent an efficient use of capital with a return profile we expect to be above our cost of capital. Once sequestration is initiated, we'll be able to produce more than 1 million tons of blue ammonia annually while reducing our carbon emissions in a meaningful way. With our strong balance sheet, we also have the flexibility to evaluate additional opportunities in the years ahead.
We continue to collaborate with global leaders where we can provide value, including jointly exploring with Mitsui the development of blue ammonia projects in the United States. With that, Tony will provide some closing remarks before we open the call to Q&A.
Thanks, Chris. Before we move on to your questions, I want to recognize our team here at CF for their strong work so far in 2021. Their commitment and dedication continue to be the foundation of our success. We are excited about what lies ahead for CF Industries. In fact, I think the company is better positioned today than we have ever been in our history. We are again an investment grade credit issuer. We have the fewest shares outstanding ever. We expect the business to produce between $2.2 billion-$2.4 billion of adjusted EBITDA this year. As we look forward to next year, we should have significantly more tons to sell at overall average higher prices than this year. The business should generate all-time records for free cash flow per share.
We see demand for low carbon ammonia developing that should provide a long-term growth platform for the company. With our investments in both green and blue ammonia production, we will be at the forefront of this exciting opportunity. Taken together, we have never been in a better position to create value for shareholders. With that operator, we will now open the call to your questions.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Adam Samuelson from Goldman Sachs. You may please go ahead, sir.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Morning, Adam.
Morning. Tony Will, Bert Frost, Chris Bohn, I guess, what I'm trying to reconcile and think about is the risk of demand destruction at current nitrogen and fertilizer prices broadly. I mean, you talked about record demand for ammonia in the fall. Those prices were also booked several hundred dollars ago relative to where the spot market is. As you think about the order patterns into the first quarter, do you see any risks on farmers and their application rates? Obviously, nitrogen is less discretionary, but do you think that could have any impact on economic yield, given where affordability is today?
You know, you look across the world and where we are starting with just supply, it's just not there. This is more of a supply-constrained market. The demand is definitely there. You're seeing India desperately trying to pull in tons and will continue to do so through, I expect, into their next fertilizer year, which begins in April. Brazil is ahead 10% year-on-year, and probably will continue at that pace through importing urea at least through February for their safrinha. We hit our spring in the northern hemisphere. With what's going on in Europe with gas prices and the level of shutdowns, it's over 11 million tons of ammonia that is currently not being upgraded into ammonium nitrate, urea or CAN.
Tons need to flow, which were not planned in the supply and demand scenario to Europe. We were in a supply limited market, and that's what's gonna keep prices elevated. The demand side of the equation is still very strong. You're correct, what we sold for fall and we're applying today was sold at levels much lower than the current market, which is probably over $1,000 for ammonia. That being said, we're selling $1,000 ammonia for fall application on our incremental tons that are available. Whereas I said in my prepared remarks, we're selling urea and there is significant demand at that $730-$750 short ton NOLA. It's even higher in the interior at over $800, which we've transacted at Port Neal.
You've seen in the publications the UAN reaction and the demand pulling. I just looked at the analysis of where we are to date with order books and demand. Again, at a very good place at $550 UAN. Calculating all that forward with current trend yield at 177 bushels per acre on the trend yield, that's not considering the I states where you'll be 200 bushels- 275 bushels. Even with rented land at today's economics, you're cash positive. You're actually profitable at a pretty healthy level. If you own your land even more so. There are ways to economize. If you're a farmer, you can look at different options, but that's not gonna come at the expense of nitrogen and probably even at fertilizer.
It's gonna come at some other issues. We're constructively, as I said, positive. I would say very positive. The customer advances continue to come in, and we're working with our retail partners to make sure that that supply is available and our retail partners are buying that and moving. There's gonna be a substantial amount of cash coming into our retail friends through year-end as farmers prepare for 2022.
I would just add one thing, Adam, which is, you know, as Bert said, demand is clearly there. If you look at customer advances, our order book is strong. We can continue to sell forward. It looks like, you know, farmer economics are positive. But given the supply shortfall, particularly now with both Russia and China withholding tons from the export marketplace, there is a real shortage of nitrogen. Price has got to basically arbitrate who's gonna get the scarce tons that are out there.
It's not so much that you're gonna destroy demand. There's gonna be a lot of unmet demand that's gonna be pent up. We do think yield is gonna be, on a global basis, off next year. Again, not because demand destruction, just because there's not enough tons available. What that means is where it's gonna promote favorable supply-demand dynamics in coarse grains as we get out into 2023 and probably beyond. You know, our view is that this is a very, very healthy dynamic that leads to a much longer period of positive fundamentals for our business.
All right. I appreciate all that, Color. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone.
Morning, Joel.
Just thinking about your order book, and Bert, I don't wanna misquote you, but I think you talked about before when, you know, when prices go up, you tend to book more product more forward. You have a kind of a longer dated order book as prices go up. Prices have really gone up. Would that be the case that really you book more product into Q1 than you normally have at this time?
Yeah. We're pleased with our order book, and like the position that we've placed ourselves in with the opportunities that the market has given us. You're right, we have seen an accelerated market. We started the year at $350 per ton of urea, moved to $400 by April, moved to $500 by July, $600 in September, and $700 in October. We have index contracts at every week price, and you can see in the publications, we started our fill program in July at $285 NOLA equivalent, and then moved to $435 in September, and then in October, $535.
As I said, we're booked for Q4, and the majority of the $285 UAN was shipped in Q3, a little bit in Q4, and then those other prices will be bled in. As we look forward to Q1, we're starting to book those values today. You're looking at that $535-$550 for Q1 and $700-$750 probably for urea. We have yet to price Q2 ammonia. Once we book out Q1, then we'll look at Q2. But there's substantial demand for Q2, we would rather sell Q1 first.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Steve Byrne from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. You laid out the significant levels of disruption in supply that are going on, and most recently, you have Russia jumping into that theme. I wanted to get your view on how significant is that. I understand that essentially all of the ammonium nitrate that Brazil imports comes from Russia. If that is the case, and where are they gonna get it now? Are there regions of the world that you think are just flat out not gonna be able to get nitrogen for the spring?
Yeah. When you look at the Russia announcement, I would say in context, the Chinese announcement is much more significant. Because of what has come out traditionally from China, the 4-5 million tons of urea exports and also phosphates, that is gonna have, because that's the incremental ton that is continually bid in. In a world of 50 million tons of world traded urea, to take out up to 10% is gonna be felt on top of the demand, as I mentioned earlier, from Europe that needs to move. You're gonna see North African tons moving into Europe, and there's gonna be a hole. Like Tony said, somebody is gonna have to struggle or pay up. The Russia announcement was a little bit of a surprise.
The Russian demand for nitrogen fertilizers has been fairly consistent in that 5.5 million-6.5 million tons of demand per year, and they've exported the remainder. When you look at year-on-year, what Russia has consumed and what Russia has exported, on the margin, there's probably gonna be a shortage of up to 0.5 million tons. Brazil will be able to get their ammonium nitrate, and I believe the suppliers from Russia, EuroChem, Acron, and the others will do that, as well as supply some of the portion that's needed in Europe. It's gonna come, again, on the margin, and every month there'll be less tons available from an expected source, which further exacerbates this supply-demand imbalance that we've been discussing.
Maybe a question for Chris. The decision to focus on Yazoo City as another carbon capture project in addition to Donaldsonville, do you have any more clarity about where the demand is gonna be coming from for this, you know, the blue ammonia? Are you increasingly confident that you can move those tons and generate a sufficient premium to offset your capital investment and generate a return?
Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, Yazoo City, as you know, has excess CO2, and that's why that was one of the sites also chosen to do the dehydration and compression unit there. As with Donaldsonville, we're in pretty extended discussions with different
To sequestration areas, whether it be EOR or people who are in the process of filing their Class VI permits related to both those areas. I think when you look at the economics, Steve, both at Donaldsonville and Yazoo City, given, you know, what's been proposed from the 45Q tax incentive, it allows us to, you know, not only more than fund those particular capital expenditures, but also see a return above our cost of capital. The reason for that is, as you know better than a lot of people do, is because we're already capturing the CO2 off of our ammonia process today. So that equipment's already in place, and that's limited the amount of CapEx that we would need, and therefore, you know, increases our return profile on that.
I think, Steve, we are confident we'll be able to move that product into position, and even if that demand is international, make that, you know, effectively show up at Donaldsonville for not very much cost, and be able to export it as appropriate. It's not very far from Yazoo to Donaldsonville. You know, we feel comfortable that there's a ready market for those tons. The other thing that makes Yazoo attractive, as Chris said, is a lot of excess CO2. It's very close to existing CO2 pipeline capacity with Denbury, and there's a lot of options in the area. The geology there is really attractive. Yazoo is an obvious add-on with the Donaldsonville project.
I think when these projects do come online, 'cause it'll take 2-3 years, you also see domestic demand for blue, you know, specifically at the levels that would be being produced at Yazoo.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. When do you expect to produce 1.25 million tons of blue ammonia? And how do you think about the price of blue ammonia? Is it relative to the price of agricultural ammonia, or is it independent, or it's relative to fuel prices? With all, you know, with those kinds of issues, how do you figure out the returns on selling blue ammonia?
Yeah. Relative to kind of the value of blue ammonia, at a minimum, I would say the value is equivalent to a regular conventional ton, plus whatever carbon jurisdiction you're talking about. You know, in Europe, you're talking about you know, EUR 50 or above a ton. In the U.K., it's more like GBP 50. Other regions are gonna have different you know, cost structures from a regulatory environment. At a minimum, I would say you're able to get whatever prevailing value of carbon is on top of a regular sort of traded ton.
As you know, as Chris highlighted, if you think about the total variable cost required to produce a ton of blue ammonia, you know, we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-$10 a ton of electricity cost on plant site. Then we're in pretty advanced discussions with a number of potential parties on the transport and injection, and believe that that is a very manageable number from an overall cost standpoint. The all-in variable cost that we incur is less than the value of the 45Q credit. The differential will go toward paying back the capital even before you put any premium on blue ammonia.
Just on the value of the 45Q, you know, we feel comfortable that we'll get returns above our cost of capital. Then to the extent you're able to realize margins and additional premium on blue, that just further adds to the attractiveness of this investment for us.
For my follow-up, some farmers say that they really can't secure nitrogen product for the second quarter. You know, in your commentary, you know, you said you're really trying to put together your first quarter order book. Is that a generally correct description, you know, that farmers can't really get commitments into the second quarter just yet?
Yeah. I would say that's not necessarily true. We don't deal directly with farmers. We deal with the kind of the retail wholesale trader group. First retail, then some wholesalers, and a little bit of trading for exports. We are selling our tons are being moved to the market. Those are in the hands of the retail group. They have tons available to sell. We're producing record amounts of UAN, and you can see with some of the disruptions from the hurricane and weather problems, you know, we did lose some tons, but we are moving our tons into the market. We have a record number of UAN loads in service since I've been here.
As well, none of our rail cars are in storage, which is the first time since I've been here in 13 years that all of our rail cars are occupied. Product is moving to market. Product is available. Now that being said, CF is not pricing Q2 as of yet, and that's a pricing in position. That's not a volume nor a commitment situation. I believe if retailers wanted to take that out or a farmer wanted to get a quote or an offer that should be available in the market, and there will be sufficient tons to meet spring demands, not only from CF, but from the broader industry group. Imports are up. Domestic production will recover. We will have a spring.
Jeff, I realize I didn't, sorry, answer your first part of the question about blue ammonia in terms of when is it gonna be available.
Yeah, thanks.
You know, we've gone ahead and launched those projects now. We anticipate probably end of 2024 or early 2025. You know, by 2025, we expect, you know, basically a full year of operating on that basis.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning, everyone. Tony, would love to get your thoughts on just sort of, you know, as we think about the next few years, or 3-5 years, or however you wanna frame it, you know, we're in a precarious situation now with obviously very tight grain stocks, and now we've had this spike in gas and coal prices and so forth. You know, we're having a lot of food inflation. You know, Bert laid out a, you know, very plausible scenario where, you know, we could have lower yields because of, you know, the inability of everybody to get nitrogen and so forth.
What do you think the global response to this is gonna be over time in terms of you know trying to manage the food supply and make sure that you know we kind of don't get into extreme situations like this into perpetuity. But at the same time we need to balance our sort of climate goals and our you know green energy aspirations and so forth. How does this needle get threaded in your view?
Yeah. Vincent, it's a great question. I think as you point out, there are a lot of competing priorities out there that have second order and tertiary kind of knock on effects that not everyone understands well. The push to reduce availability and affordability of fossil fuels, you know, because of a focus on climate change and move towards renewable, you know, I think is directly part of what's going on in Europe right now with extremely high natural gas costs. That means that all of those plants that Bert talked about earlier curtailed or offline.
You know, at the same time, you've got a number of governments around the world that are very focused on trying to limit rate of nitrogen fertilizer in particular because they're concerned about nutrient loss to the environment and runoff. Whether it's nitrous oxide produced on the field that, you know, is pretty potent greenhouse gas or whether it's other kinds of runoff into waterways and so forth. There's a real push in some areas, you know, Canada notably and other places as well to reduce application rate. If you do that, you're gonna have a year one impact on yield. There are a number of, I would say, competing priorities out there, all of which generally speaking, I would say benefit North American producers because we do have ready access to low cost gas.
We're on the very low end of the supply curve. As yields continue to struggle due to either lack of availability of nutrients or these programs designed to reduce nutrient application, that's just gonna keep grain prices higher for longer. I mean, ultimately, I think where this goes is governments are gonna have to capitulate to the requirements of their people and provide affordable food, which means some of those priorities that they have heretofore held out as being these holy grails are gonna probably have to take a back seat for a while, just to make sure that we can feed the people of the world. You know, I think that you will see people backing off. I mean, again, Germany has decommissioned their nukes, and they've brought on coal-fired power plants.
That's not exactly what I would call a green initiative. You know, you've seen the same thing in China as well, and the U.K. and continental Europe are struggling with high gas costs. I do think there is gonna have to be a reassessment of what is required for the planet to be able to eat and fuel itself.
Thanks very much. I appreciate all those thoughts.
Your next question comes from the line of John Roberts from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Back on the earlier question on the blue ammonia. Do you expect to sell it as fuel, or do you expect to sell it as fertilizer and have some carbon credit broker get you the revenue for the sequestration values?
Yeah, John. As Chris mentioned and we've highlighted earlier, we do have this, you know, MOU in place with Mitsui. We're having very productive conversations with them. I think there is a real emphasis, particularly in Japan, but in some other regions as well, to go into co-combustion of ammonia with coal to reduce the CO2 emissions out of those plants. We think that, you know, that is something that will develop into a pretty sizable market. You know, estimates can be as much as 5 million tons by the time you get to 2030 or possibly even before.
That, you know, that's a huge increase in terms of the total amount of ammonia being consumed, particularly when you've got curtailments and outages and, you know, across broad swaths of the production universe here in Europe and the U.K. We're excited about the clean energy attributes that blue ammonia has. We think that that's probably where the majority of value sits, at least in the near term. While I think there is certainly the possibility to get some incremental value off of carbon sequestration in the soils from an agricultural application, given that most of that is going into the voluntary marketplace today where values trade at a pretty small discount to where structured carbon trades in the rest of the world.
You know, I think that's probably the last place just because of lower values that we would go. Now, if the U.S. develops a more structured approach to the cost of carbon and you can get a scientific valuation placed on, you know, carbon capture and sequestration in the soil, then that may change the math. But I think in the near term, what we're really looking at is more of a clean energy source, and we're working very closely with, you know, Mitsui to help develop that and bring that about. The other point, though, that I would say is we believe these projects are attractive just based on the 45Q credit.
That we ought to be able to generate a return on these projects, you know, without any embedded premium on blue. Now, our expectation is there's gonna be a sizable premium on blue. You know, to be clear, we're able to make the math work pretty easily just with the 45Q credit.
How are you thinking about the pace of buyback under the new authorization? Is it gonna be opportunistic or are you thinking something that's just gonna be more structured over the two years?
Yeah, I mean, I think based on what we're looking at in terms of not only current year performance, but our expectations for next year, you know, there's gonna be a lot of cash that needs to find a home. While, you know, we'll certainly buy more on dips or at lower prices, I think it needs to be, you know, the volume that we're talking about is sizable enough that it probably needs to be a bit of a structured leg in there as well. Ultimately, probably a combination of approaches.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson from Mizuho. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Just over the last five years, there's been a plethora of variables that's still driving a bit of volatility in the N unit, UAN pricing, versus urea. Just given current supply demand dynamics, trade flow adjustments over the last few years, and the recent, you know, DOC case, can you just comment on your outlook, for, you know, UAN pricing for 2022, 2023 as it pertains, to N units versus urea? Thank you so much.
You're correct in terms of a lot of variables, a lot of volatility. In the last year and a half, we've traded as low as $115 a short ton for UAN and as high as $550 in NOLA. What drove that volatility? We believe we were pushed down low because of excessive imports of subsidized products and consigned products. Therefore, we took the case forward to the Department of Commerce and the ITC, and we're successful. We're pleased with that result, and we believe that information will come out with what the ruling will be and how that will be applied, step one.
The discount to urea took place for several years, and that was an inappropriate response to a more valued product, an expensive invested product and an asset base that we've invested $several billion to maintain and construct. We're entering probably a normalized market now where UAN, again, is trading at a premium to urea for the reasons I just articulated it, and it should. Through spring, most definitely it will trade at a premium. We'll reset in July as we always do. We believe at a higher level for the reasons we have articulated. We are in a different or a differentiated global market driven by a lack of supply with high levels of demand that is not going to correct itself probably for a couple more years.
In that context, we see UAN trading at a advantaged position to urea as well as ammonia and ammonium nitrate. That market, you know, we don't see demand destruction. We just see differences of supply availability.
That's a great color. Just, as a quick follow-up, just given what's going on in China, what's your intermediate to long-term view of export trends, and what the ultimate price will be for those ton and tons on an MMBtu basis? Thank you.
Yeah. Where you're looking at export trends, I would look at the Chinese economy holistically and looking at what they're trying to do with energy and where they are. You've got the risk of entering winter and grandma may not be able to have heat in some of these big cities. Are you gonna value the urea production or are you gonna value the population and the ability to heat homes and to produce value-added products or a commodity product.
I would bet on the latter than the former. Or the former rather than the latter. There you go. What we're seeing in China is a result of several factors coming to play, whether that's pollution, economically driven decisions, higher polluting level production taken offline, and then this restriction to have products available. You've seen their production capacity, fullest capacity fall from 90 million tons at its peak to probably 75 million tons today. You take an operating rate that's ranged from 55% to 75%. In China, you only have available probably 53 million-55 million tons of urea per year. Domestic consumption has rebounded and is over 50 million tons. There is not that substantial amount of tonnage to export. Why export a value-destructive product?
That's where we see the future of China and other production is going to have to come on stream in other locales. You have Nigeria coming up, Russia coming up. We need more, and so more construction will probably take place, but it's long dated. You're not gonna see this market correct for the arrival of new production, even though we need it.
I would also add, Chris, just based on what the forward curves look like, it's moved, you know, really Europe, and in particular Eastern Europe, into what I would call the marginal production ton in the world as opposed to out of China. The factors that Bert was talking about means that China's not gonna overwhelm the global marketplace with excess exports. That's gonna maintain what we believe is gonna be a relatively tight supply side equation. Just based on energy spread differentials that you can look forward, it's a much steeper supply curve than it's been, you know, recently. That gives us a lot of opportunity here to generate cash in the U.S. We're very constructive about all of these trends.
It's great color as always. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of P.J. Juvekar from Citi. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, good morning.
Morning, P.J.
You know, there's all this resource nationalism going on about nitrogen that you talked about, but U.S. is still a net importer of urea. How does this play out? Would growers switch from corn to soybeans at the margin? Or maybe the industrial demand has to back down to make room for agricultural demand. In your mind, how does this play out in the medium term?
I mean, I think that the U.S., based on crop prices and efficiency of growers and, you know, requirements on the industrial side, is able to bid away tons from other parts of the world that are less able to do so. Particularly those economies that require government subsidies in which to bring tons in. Our expectation is that there's, you know, there's gonna be availability of product here in North America. Honestly, you know, I don't see a scenario where industrial demand starts backing off based on ag demand. I see a situation where you end up with inflation in terms of the industrial goods as opposed to some reduction in economic output.
I think ultimately, as Bert talked about, you see some, you know, new projects on the drawing board, but not very many, and particularly not enough with respect to some of the closures and shutdowns or even curtailments that you see out there right now. I think what's gonna have to happen is you end up seeing more capacity added because the world just needs more than what's available. That's before you even get to clean energy applications for ammonia going forward. I think the net of all of that suggests that, you know, there are new plants that the world is gonna need to construct in order to be able to feed itself and utilize ammonia in these kinda new alternative applications versus what we've seen in the past.
Yeah. I think it's a false narrative, P.J., that those two are competing. You have to go back to, in the United States or in North America, we're in the resource-rich region of natural gas and energy products. We have the capability to construct and move with the infrastructure that's in place, whether that be rail, barge, truck, pipe, and we are set up to do that very efficiently. What I could see over time is these other economies progress into lower carbon output or lower carbon consumption using natural gas or renewables. You're gonna see the natural gas spreads continue to expand or stay expanded. Maybe not at its current level today of $20 per MMBtu, but maybe it's $10 rather than $6.
That maintains North America as a low cost, high margin region in the world. I think you'll see maybe some industrial production in other areas compromised. That would be Europe and maybe some even in China over time as we move to a new market. On the corn to soybean competition, today it's favoring corn, and it has been. This is the time when it makes sense, when it's very good for us to have that favorability because that's when today or in this period is when farmers are making that spring planting decision and allocating their resources accordingly and therefore booking fertilizer, which is positive for us.
We're seeing very strong industrial demand in our book, and we balance both of those, we think well as well as our industry. I think it's a net positive.
Great. That's good color. Just one quick one. Tony, when you talked about, and thank you for giving the details on blue versus gray ammonia, it seems like blue ammonia will be more costly to make by $20 or $30 or something like that per ton. Why would growers buy more expensive ammonia unless they're incented to buy? I mean, what is the mechanism for them to, you know, spend more?
Yeah. Remember, $20-$30, and that might be in the range or it might be a little high relative to our expectations. You know, that's not a crazy number. Remember, the 45Q tax credit, the way that it was originally constructed, was gonna be a you know, sort of $45-ish to $50. In the current regs, it's substantially above that, right? Although it's a little bit more expensive for us to make, if you net against it, the 45Q tax credit, it's actually a discount relative to conventional ammonia from a producer side. The reason why a grower would pay for it is if they wanna be able to make you know, carbon labeling claims that go into consumer products companies because they're gonna care about that.
Or if you're trying to produce low carbon ethanol, that might qualify for California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, that might be a reason for it. Or even in the voluntary market, if you can get $5-$10 a ton for sequestering carbon in the soil, being a grower, you know, there were a couple of high-profile transactions that happened along those lines a couple of months ago. I think there's a lot of value there, potentially for growers, to try to differentiate what they're doing versus just a commodity bushel of corn. Based on kinda where some of those pockets of value are, we would expect there to be some margin opportunity for us or at least some incremental demand, you know, for that product.
To the extent that the U.S. actually adopts a more regulated and structured cost of carbon, then there's real economics available to the farmer if they can demonstrate the sequestration and sell those credits into a structured marketplace.
Yeah, I was just gonna add to that. I think one of the benefits of this is the incremental demand that Tony's speaking of is, you know, agriculture's already using ammonia, but as you start to see more of the industrial move in, that's where you'll start to see the bidding on ammonia go up and more constrained. It's really about the demand addition that we think is gonna occur here. Plus, you have to remember, if it's $50 more a ton, let's take it there than conventional. To a farmer, that's $10 an acre.
That's two bushels. The cost is insignificant to the farmer based on the benefits that Tony articulated, and we already have people wanting to buy blue ammonia. We think there's gonna be a demand challenge, which is very good for our business in the future years.
That's also honestly why, you know, Donaldsonville and Yazoo City are not the last dehydration compression projects that, you know, we're likely to build. We wanna continue to evaluate other places with ready access to sequestration and continue to build out our network because our belief is, you know, it's a project that pays for itself and also gives upside opportunity on accessing the clean energy market in a way that is differential for us versus other market participants.
Thank you. You guys always give great color. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Piken from Cleveland Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the question. Just wanted to discuss in a little bit more detail the status of your U.K. operations. I know they were down for a couple of days, and then you guys reached an agreement with the government to restart it. When you talked about getting back to, you know, kind of 19.5 million to 20 million tons, the implication I assume there is that those plants are gonna run full next year. Maybe you could just talk about, you know, the status of those plants and, you know, are they gonna be profitable or what type of, you know, returns we're looking at there, given the higher gas costs?
Yeah. Michael, thanks. The first thing that I wanna just highlight is the relative importance of the U.K. in terms of the overall portfolio. As Chris mentioned, if you look back to our results in 2020, it represented 2% of our total gross margin. From an aggregate profitability standpoint, it's on the small end of the scale. Now, you know, it does provide a little bit of a natural hedge for us when global energy costs are low and relatively flat, then we earn you know a better return there. When energy costs are high, we earn a much better return in the U.S. on a larger production base. It's a little bit of a kind of natural hedge in that regard.
As you mentioned, because of a huge spike in gas costs in September, we took the plants offline. We worked, I would say, very constructively with the U.K. government to restart the facility at Billingham and be able to provide CO2 into the U.K. marketplace. That's pretty critical for the normal functioning of a number of different industries over there. During that period of time, the U.K. government also was very helpful in us working with us and the CO2 offtake companies, the industrial gas companies from Billingham, to restructure those contracts in a way that makes that plant viable. You know, we're really pleased with how that whole process developed. The Billingham plant is up and operational and, you know, we expect that to be viable in the long term.
The Ince plant in the Northwest is not yet back online. We're evaluating a number of different options and scenarios there, including being able to secure a vessel to bring ammonia into the facility so we can, at a minimum, run the upgrade plants. Given again the high cost of natural gas through the winter, it doesn't look like ammonia production there is gonna make a lot of sense. Being able to bring in ammonia, you know, will allow us to run the upgrades and make an appropriate return on, you know, on those products. We're kind of in a little bit of a wait and see mode in terms of what the longer range situation develops in the U.K.
I think, for now, you know, Billingham is up and operational. We expect that to happen. Again, we expect to be able to turn the back end of the fertilizer portion of the plant up and running in Ince, hopefully, you know, soon within the next couple of weeks once we get the ammonia vessel squared away.
Great. Then, you know, just understanding a little bit longer term, you know, by the time some of these blue ammonia projects are up and running, I mean, is this gonna increase your number of product tons? Is this gonna come out of, some of your other products? Like, how should we be thinking about, you know, the cadence of your product tons, sold over the next, you know, call it 3-5 years? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, we already run our ammonia plants at full operating rate with the one exception of the U.K., which, you know, we just talked about, right? It's not necessarily a situation where there's new tons unless we engage in some debottlenecks or, you know, new capacity or other things like that. This is definitely pulling tons away from the least profitable portion of our segment of our business and reallocating them to a higher margin application. It's a margin upgrade as opposed to new production at this time.
Great. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Wong from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just going back on blue green ammonia here. Can you talk about how the blue green ammonia market could impact the dynamics around the gray ammonia market in the future? I mean, we have projects like Donaldsonville and Yazoo turning some of the volumes from gray to blue. As those tons are sold into clean ammonia applications, like maybe with Mitsui, does that effectively mean a loss of supply for the gray ammonia market? Then on the demand side, like the molecules are the same, could there be a scenario where demand and supply maybe aren't matched up properly, so you have some applications that maybe need blue green ammonia, but if there isn't enough, you use a little bit of gray?
You know, just in general, does the emergence of a blue green ammonia market mean potentially a tighter gray market in the future? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, I certainly think that's where we see things headed. I also think that's where, you know, not wanting to interpret things for them, but I think that's consistent also with where Air Products and others see things headed, hence the announcement both of the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia, but also the recent announcement they had in Louisiana around a blue project. I think a number of the market participants see this coming. I think ultimately what that's gonna mean is you've got more demand than what current supply is in ammonia. It's going to be, at the end, new production, new capacity, which the world is gonna need. You know, that's pretty attractive relative to valuing existing assets.
We think, you know, overall this is a terrific set of factors that, you know, that create a revaluation or rethinking about what the value of our asset base is, being that we're the, you know, largest ammonia producer in the world.
Great. Thank you.
You know, I think the situation is not unlike what we've got today, right? Which is, today, as Bert mentioned, it's more of a supply side constraint given a bunch of curtailments and shutdowns and other disruptions. In the future, even if those plants are off and running and you see demand continue to exceed where supply is capable of reaching, you see price escalation like we're experiencing right now.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Adrien Tamagno from Berenberg. Your line is open.
Hello. Good morning. Yes. As a follow-up from the previous question. From a CF Industries perspective, the combination of t he world being short of ammonia as you described, and the current technical difficulty to make significant volumes in a low carbon way. Would that make you thinking about going for greenfield ammonia at some point in time, or it's out of question for you?
Well, I mean, we constantly are evaluating ways to add capacities that are appropriate. I think our biggest focus area and the thing that we use as a lens to make all of those decisions is ultimately cash flow per share. If we can find an opportunity that allows us to expand capacity, whether that's a debottleneck, an inorganic, you know, acquisition or inorganic kind of growth, where we believe that that's gonna grow our free cash per share, then, you know, we'll take a serious run at it. I think in these kind of contexts, we'd be much more likely to think about partnership structures or other things like that if we were gonna move forward on any of those things.
I do think it's a positive sign when others out there are making announcements about adding capacity. I do believe we're the best operators of ammonia plants in the world. If there's you know opportunities for new capacity additions, we ought to be thinking about that along with other people. I do think the world's gonna need it. It's a question of you know when and in the interim, are you better off buying existing assets or debottlenecking what you already have versus building new? I think you know those are appropriate questions that you know that anyone in the industry today is kind of mulling over and really thinking about.
Yeah, thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions today. I would like to turn the call back to Martin Jarosick for closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you throughout the quarter.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.