Good afternoon and welcome to Brazil Potash's April 2025 Business Update Call. Today's call is being recorded, and at this time I'd like to turn the conference over to Ashish Gupta of Investor Relations. Thank you, you may begin.
Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Brazil Potash's April 2025 Business Update Call. Joining me on the call today are Matt Simpson, Chief Executive Officer and Board Director; Mayo Schmidt, Executive Chairman; and Ryan Ptolemy, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. We refer you to our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Matt Simpson, CEO of Brazil Potash.
Thank you, Ashish, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss the significant progress we've made on our mission to enable Brazil's transition to a more secure domestic supply of potash fertilizer. I'm incredibly proud of our team's commitment to developing what we believe will be a transformative domestic source of potash fertilizer in Brazil, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing agricultural producers. Despite being a global agricultural powerhouse, Brazil imported approximately 98% of its potash needs, with nearly half coming from regions impacted by geopolitical tensions. Our Autazes Potash Project in the Amazonas state aims to address this vulnerability by producing up to 2.4 million tons of potash annually once operational, which we believe would supply approximately 17% of Brazil's current demand. What truly differentiates Brazil Potash is our sustainable cost advantage.
While other suppliers must ship potash 9,000-12,000 mil to reach a Brazilian farmer, our project sits just five mi from a major inland river system that allows for efficient and cost-effective transportation. We believe this location advantage will enable us to deliver potash to Brazilian farmers at a cost that is estimated to be approximately 71% lower than imported alternatives. Since our last update, we've reached several important milestones, including an offtake agreement, advancements in site development, and robust stakeholder engagement, amongst other achievements. First off, we signed a memorandum of understanding with Keytrade AG for offtake of up to 1 million tons per annum of potash and are very close to finalizing a definitive agreement with them. This represents our second major offtake agreement, combined with our existing agreement with the Amaggi Group for 550,000 tons per year.
We have now secured commitments for approximately 1.5 million tons of our planned 2.4 million tons of annual potash production and expect to sign a third offtake agreement in the coming months that will cover in total about 85% of our annual production. We are intentionally leaving a small buffer for spot sales to cover any variability in production that inevitably occurs and also an allowance for major maintenance outages that may be required over time. Regarding site development, we received approval to begin fauna rescue and vegetation suppression activities in the mine area. This represents an important milestone in our project's installation phase and will allow for the subsequent excavation of two deep shafts to access the underground potash mine. These activities are being conducted in full accordance with the environmental licenses issued by the Amazonas State Environmental Protection Agency, IPAAM.
We've also signed a key vegetation management contract with GRS MG Logística for site preparation at our Autazes project. This contract covers critical ground preparation activities, transportation, and materials management required to advance the project towards construction. In terms of stakeholder engagement, we hosted several federal and state government officials at our project site in Autazes. During this site visit, our guests toured several social, economic, and environmental projects supported by the company and visited the area where operations will be installed. This visit underscores the strong government support we continue to receive at both the federal and state levels, which is critical for our success.
Meetings were also held with several international finance institutes and export credit agencies regarding long-tenor debt funding for project construction, given the project is fully permitted for construction of the mine shafts, processing plant, roughly 8 mi road connecting the processing plant to the port, and the river barge port itself. Regarding the current potash price, we're seeing early signs of rising prices after a period of great volatility. Potash started this year at about $300 a ton and is currently selling into Brazil for about $340 a ton, with market observers seeing contracts out to June priced at $350-$360 a ton. Several factors are contributing to this increase, including production discipline from major producers and continued strong demand from key agricultural regions.
Notably, the Belarusian government recently announced plans to reduce production by approximately 1 million tons in the first half of this year, which should help support pricing in the near term. In Brazil, we're seeing state demand growing at about 2.8% annually, which significantly is outpacing the global average of about 1.7%. This robust demand, combined with Brazil's strategic focus on reducing import dependence, creates a favorable environment for our project as we progress towards production. Now I'll turn the call over to Mayo Schmidt, our Executive Chairman, to discuss our strategic vision and partnerships.
Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. As I've mentioned in previous calls, I was drawn to Brazil Potash because it addresses a critical vulnerability in global food security. With a growing world population and increasing food demands, the strategic importance of fertilizer security cannot be overstated. Having spent decades building world-class agriculture businesses, including my roles as Chairman and CEO of Nutrien and CEO of Viterra, I see tremendous potential in Brazil Potash's ability to establish a critical domestic supply of potash for Brazil's agriculture sector and reduce reliance on foreign imports. My fellow board member, Christian Joerg, who previously headed SALIC's Global Food Security Program, and I will be meeting with several sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East later this month to discuss project construction funding.
The participation of federal and state government officials at our recent site visit reinforces the importance the Brazilian government places on domestic potash production. Our project directly addresses a strategic national priority within Brazil's National Fertilizer Plan, which designates potash as a critical mineral and aims to reduce the country's dependence on fertilizer imports from 85% to 45% by 2050. Our MOU with Keytrade AG is another significant milestone. Keytrade is one of the world's leading fertilizer trading companies, and their commitment provides further validation of our business model and the quality of our project. Offtake agreements now represent nearly two-thirds of our anticipated annual potash production. This provides a strong foundation for our project financing efforts and is already energizing engagement with potential partners who understand the strategic importance of potash for global food security.
With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ryan Ptolemy, our Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, Mayo, and good afternoon, everyone. Having served as the CFO of Brazil Potash since 2011 and prior to that as CFO for various Toronto Stock Exchange-traded companies, I could not be more pleased with the progress we've made towards funding the construction of the Autazes project since taking this company public. I will now turn to providing a brief financial overview. As of the end of December 2024, our cash position stands at approximately $18.9 million, which reflects our ongoing capital expenditures for the Autazes project. Our operating expenses remain in line with expectations as we carefully manage our pre-revenue operations. Regarding our financial strategy, we maintain our expectation that the Autazes project can be funded through traditional project financing sources.
We continue to explore various financing options and are in active discussions with potential partners, including sovereign wealth funds, strategic partners, export credit agencies, international financial institutions, and banks. The interest we're seeing from these parties reflects the critical nature of our project for global food security. With that, I'll turn the call back to Matt for closing remarks.
Thank you, Ryan. To summarize, we're making substantial progress on multiple fronts. First, our preliminary activities to initiate construction are advancing with the commencement of fauna rescue and vegetation suppression work, which keeps us firmly on track at this stage of our development. Second, we strengthened our commercial position with the Keytrade MOU for offtake. Third, we continue to build and deepen our relationships with government stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels, which is critical for our long-term success. Fourth, we're maintaining a disciplined approach to capital management while advancing discussions with potential partners for project financing.
Looking ahead, we're very focused on several key objectives over the next 6 to 12 months, including advancing site preparation for the next stage of development, which is shaft sinking, finalizing agreements with potential carve-out partners for our power line construction, securing a third offtake agreement, and initiating formal due diligence work with financial institutions for project construction financing. We believe Brazil Potash is well positioned to create substantial shareholder value while addressing a critical need in global food security. The potash market continues to show signs of strengthening, with prices rising after recent volatility and the long-term fundamentals remaining strong, particularly for in-market production like ours. Mayo and I feel the stock price is not a reasonable reflection of the project's intrinsic value, and thus we have purchased stock recently in the market, which investors can find in our filings on SEDAR, which is the Canadian registry.
I'd like to thank our team for their hard work and dedication, our partners for their continued support, and our shareholders for their confidence in our vision. We remain committed to transparent communication and look forward to providing further updates with shareholders as we reach additional milestones. Before we open the call for questions, I want to mention that we will be participating in several industry conferences in the coming months, including the Bradesco Bank Conference in Brazil this week, the BMO Bank of Montreal Farm to Market Conference in May, and Wells Fargo's Industrial Conference in June. I look forward to seeing some of you at these events. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Great, thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your cell phone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. First question is from Joseph Reager from Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. On your outlook for the rest of this year, do you guys have a guide for us on capital spending pre-FID and then potential timing when you think you'll have all the ducks in a row to go forward with an FID and financing?
Hi, Joe. It's Matt speaking. For us, the key action that needs to be done in order to hit a final investment decision is the completion of a front-end engineering design. To do that work, we're actually out right now with requests for quotations on both the time and the cost to do that work. I do expect in roughly one month's time to be able to answer that question more definitively. We do believe that that engineering work onward to start will take roughly one year's time.
Okay. I guess fair way to sum that up is spending is going to be a little later in the first half of this year and then maybe start to pick up towards the end of the year and then FID kind of early next year.
Yes. That's a very fair statement, Joe. Most of the spending right now is largely on completion of the offtake agreements. It's working with different financial institutes to pull together the funding for construction, all in parallel to completing that additional engineering work that the key lending parties require.
Okay. Thanks. That is all I had.
Thanks. We'll now turn to the moderated question-and-answer session. In the meantime, if anyone would like to ask a question, you can enter the queue by pressing star one , and Ashish, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Matt. We'll turn it to the moderated Q&A session. These are questions that are the most common questions we received in the IR inbox. We appreciate all the investor support and want to turn our time to those. We selected these from the most frequently asked from our investment community. First question is for our CEO, Matt Simpson, on the topic that's been dominating the news, even with Liberation Day behind us. Matt, can you touch on the potential impacts of the new tariffs on the potash market and specifically how they impact Brazil Potash?
See, U.S. tariffs on potash have been very confusing as U.S. policy has changed several times over the last two months, including just today, as I'm sure everyone on this call is likely aware. Initially, potash was subject to a 25% tariff that was quickly reduced to a 10% tariff based on substantial pushback and lobbying from the farm and agricultural groups within the United States. Most recently, the United States has agreed that they're going to follow the United States-Mexico trade agreement. Under that trade agreement, potash that is produced in Canada has a 0% tariff. Any potash import from Canada that's not actually produced in Canada, which to my knowledge does not exist, would be subjected to a 10% import tariff.
The bottom line to cut through some of the confusion is at this point, my understanding is it's a 0% tariff on potash. Potash has recently been deemed a critical mineral in the U.S., given its import to the farming industry and the exposure that the U.S. has, given that they import 95% of their 10.5 million tons a year of potash. 85% of it comes from Canada, the balance largely from Russia. Since 2022, Brazil also designated potash as a critical mineral, given its importance to efficiently growing food. While other nations are behind us, we do believe that Brazil and the U.S. are leading the way. Our business model of domestic production for domestic consumption becomes increasingly attractive in this environment of trade tensions and tariffs because it really reinforces the strategic value of supply security.
There is definitely going to be supply price fluctuations, given supply-demand dynamics. Companies and farmers are going to feel the pressure on their margins, and domestic producers are going to have a competitive advantage because they're not going to be exposed to some of those trade variations and tariffs that can come in place. There are a few regions that can produce potash in the world, given that it's formed by failed oceans that dried up. These basins tend to be large, but very rare. Brazil Potash is uniquely positioned in the market adjacent to Mato Grosso, which is Brazil's key farming state to offer better prices because of our in-country location. By developing a domestic source of potash, it really is strengthening food security, not just for Brazil, but also globally.
Mayo, maybe I'll turn it over to you just to also share some of your thoughts, having grown up on a farm in the United States in this regard.
I can address that, Matt. I think it's a great point you made when we talk about supply-demand dynamics and adjusting. I think one of the things, and I've experienced this even in recent years, the last five years when potash sanctions came in, when the Russian and Belarus government were importing into the center gulf of the U.S., competing with Canadian production. Even if you look beyond that, you look at farming today, and my family's been farming since relatives in our family since 1886 in the Midwest. When you've got to buy your fertilizer, buy your seed, then you count on the weather, whether you're going to be able to produce the crop. Of course, not all farmers are on irrigation. Then you have the volatility in the market in terms of the pricing.
You say, "I produced a crop, but what price am I going to get?" The differentiation between the first day you start with purchasing your inputs and then making your sales and then delivery to market, and then you have a day like today where all of a sudden China has been announced for a 125% tariff. Of course, China then puts an 84% tariff on. You think about, "Okay, the export price to which markets?" That fundamentally drives a customer such as China down to its alternatives. As we sit with Brazil, which is in-country supply for in-country demand and a country that is focusing on global food security, China is one of many, South Korea, the Middle East. It really draws them into suppliers that have the symmetry and balance and do not have the price volatility and even, quite frankly, the risk of supply.
We look at these conflicts, a combination of not only the tariffs, but the conflicts of war that are existing, strikes, whether it's at port or rail, which Brazil's exposed to, thus congestion at ports, the cost to deliver, the carbon footprint to deliver. Now you add the tariffs. It's a lot of volatility, and people seek a safe harbor. Brazil is that with this supply of potash, which today is 98% imported. That is going to change. It is a one-for-one displacement of what would have been its historic supply chain.
Thank you, Mayo and Matt, for that very detailed perspective. Greatly appreciated. Matt, can you kind of go in a little bit more detail on Keytrade and the MOU? How are you thinking about it becoming definitive? How are you thinking about the timeline for finalization?
We expect to convert the Keytrade Memorandum of Understanding for up to 1 million tons per year of potash offtake into a binding agreement in the very near term. We actually even had a meeting with them just this week to finalize a few clauses that are outstanding. This is going to represent a very significant commercial milestone following our 550,000-ton-year take-or-pay agreement with Amaggi. Because combined, it's going to mean that we'll have about 1.5 million tons of our planned 2.4 million tons of annual production under contracts that are going to be longer than the debt facility that we're looking to put in place. This is going to be longer than the 10-12 years of debt. The contract with Amaggi specifically is 15-17 years. We're also in discussions with a third potential offtake provider.
They'll bring our total contracted volume to around 85% of our total production capacity. We are intentionally leaving a small buffer for spot sales to accommodate for inevitable maintenance outages and production availability that occur, as is pretty standard industry practice.
My apologies. Can you please elaborate on the funding strategy for development of the Autazes project? What are you thinking about for the next milestones?
There are several parallel pathways that we're working on to secure funding for project construction. The key is really to lock in an anchor equity investor. We'll ideally do this at the asset level so that we can better justify a reasonable valuation and minimize the dilution for our existing shareholders that hold shares on the New York Stock Exchange. We're talking to, as we mentioned a little bit earlier in the call, some sovereign wealth funds. There's a trip set up for later this month. We're also talking to some of the massive agricultural and natural resources companies, both in Brazil and globally. Also pension funds, insurance companies, family offices, people that like an annuity-style investment because this project is going to have downside price protection for a product people have no choice but to buy to grow food in the world's largest, fastest-growing market.
It is a very attractive long-term investment. In addition to the anchor equity, we also have the royalty option agreement with Franco-Nevada. That will be a key part of our funding strategy. That money will only kick in once the balance of funding for construction is largely secured. We are speaking to several construction companies that could invest in exchange for future work or take a portion of their fee in shares. We are looking at some creative structures in that regard. We have also initiated discussions with international finance institutes and export credit agencies on debt for the project, in addition to some traditional project finance banks. The attraction with the international finance institutes and the export credit agencies is they tend to give you far superior interest rates and much longer-term to repay your debt, which reduces the amount of equity that we need.
The final key part of the puzzle is we are looking to carve out about $200 million for construction of our power line. We are speaking to several different companies that supply electricity and also infrastructure-focused funds.
Great. Appreciate that perspective. Could you help us think through how the designation of potash as a critical mineral in Brazil specifically benefits our project in terms of government support?
On average, Brazil imports about $25 billion a year of nitrogen phosphate potassium fertilizer, which is more than twice the United States and about four to six times every other country in the world. They have a stated goal to reduce their import dependence from 85% to 45% by 2050. Brazil's National Fertilizer Plan does designate potash as a critical mineral, as mentioned a bit earlier. They have a stated goal to increase domestic production from the currently about 350,000 tons by Mosaic to 2.2 million tons by 2030 and 6 million tons by 2050. We are the only development potash project in Brazil, let alone being fully permitted for construction.
Our project has been designated by Brazil's government as a project of national importance, which provides several tangible benefits through our permitting process being prioritized and potential access to domestic funding from BNDES, which is the government-backed finance agency. There are other countries, as mentioned before, such as the U.S. and Europe, that also recently announced funding for critical minerals projects. We're talking significant money here, billions of dollars. We're also lobbying Brazil's government at this time to follow suit.
Great. I think for our final question we have related to the power transmission line carve-out, could you explain the structure of the $200 million power line transmission carve-out and how it improves the capital structure?
There are a number of funds, as I mentioned. There are also companies that currently transmit electricity that have very large balance sheets that could take on the construction of our power line and its financing as a standalone project in exchange for a long-term contract with us. Brazil's electricity grid is about 80% renewable-sourced energy. This is important because it aligns with our commitment of developing this project in a sustainable manner with a much lower carbon footprint. If you compared our project to the next best in Canada, we would be about 80% lower, as I mentioned, 1.4 million tons a year. There is also a dual benefit here in that we will connect to the city of Autazes, which is about 40,000 people. In between Manaus, where the power line would connect, and Autazes itself, there are about 200,000 people that live.
These people use diesel-fired generators as their only source of electricity. By building this power line, we provide the base load and fund the cost that will then take all of these people off of the diesel generators and put them on that much cleaner grid power. It will also be life-changing for them because it is going to be much more reliable and a lot lower cost. The power line itself is about 110 mi long. By carving this out, we do reduce the direct capital from the $2.4 billion that is required to build this project by also securing a much more renewable, reliable source for our project and those communities around us.
Thank you, Matt. Very important project, clearly, for the community and for Brazil Potash. That wraps up our Q&A from investors. If you want to have some closing remarks, I'll turn it back to you.
I'd like to again thank all of our shareholders for listening in on this call and for the analysts to also participate and continue to follow our story. I think there's a lot of exciting things happening with the company and that the share price, again, is severely undervalued, which is why Mayo and myself have been stepping into the market. We look forward to continuing to keep our shareholders updated as we advance this project towards construction.
Thank you, Matt. Operator, I think that concludes the call.
Okay. Great. Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line.