All right. We'll stay on fertilizer again. We're gonna next session with Mosaic, who's, of course, North America's leading phosphate producer and, a large producer of potash as well, of course. Joining us today from Mosaic is Joc O'Rourke, the CEO. Joc's gonna walk us through about ten minutes approximately-
Yeah, if that. If that.
If that. 5-10 minutes of re marks. Then we'll go to Q&A. Please submit your questions on the app. Got some already, then we'll have a conversation. Thank you.
Okay. If I can get this thing running here. Yep, better. Please read the forward-looking statement. It's on our website and, I believe this is webcast. The reason I wanted to put forward a couple of slides is normally I wouldn't do that for a fireside chat, and we'd move straight into question and answering. It seems that the big question today is, with the restrictions in both potash and phosphates, supply, why isn't the market moving faster than it is today? I just wanna put a couple things forward, and give you why we strongly believe while there is some deferral, there certainly is no demand loss, if you will, or demand destruction. It starts with our markets and every other fertilizer ag market. Starts with the grain prices.
We believe there is strong support for grain prices because the stocks-to-use ratio globally for grains and oil seed, for instance, is below 15%. That is extremely bullish for corn, for soybeans. Today, corn and soybean prices are reasonably high, but they're also well supported and probably in a bullish mode. What we expect to see is those prices to at least hold and probably improve over time as demand uses the product that's available from last year's harvest. What does that mean from a fertilizer perspective? It means that the fertilizer price, which has come down significantly, and the grain price, which has held, means the cost of fertilizer in terms of a farmer is quite affordable again.
In the green here is what we call the affordable zone and less affordable as we get out. If you look at the top of that graph where you've seen last year and whatnot, fertilizer became quite expensive compared to the price of the crops, or in Brazil, the barter ratio, if you will, so bags of fertilizer compared to bags of beans. Now that's come back into a much more affordable range. What that means is demand should follow. Do we see that in real life? Yes. If we look at North America, which is sort of the first season to come for us, Brazil won't come until the safras gets ready, which is really the end of this month, sort of getting ready for a July planting of their safras season.
Markets like India and stuff are preparing for post-monsoon. They're preparing now, but those markets don't have to move yet, so they're deferring. They'll go soon. What do we see? In phosphates and potash, we've seen the best April we've seen in five years in North America. That means the North American farmers are buying, and then our dealers are buying from us. What we've also seen... This is just April, but I think it highlights where things are going. We always say, "First you need volume, price follows." What we're seeing in North America is we're not only seeing volume, but we're seeing price movements that would encourage us.
If you look at this from a Midwest price perspective, for instance, you know, DAP, the phosphate fertilizer, is selling for $766 a metric ton right now. A lot has been said recently 'cause publications are writing down what's going on in NOLA. Just to put it in perspective from that last table, we're selling 500,000 tons a month in the Midwest at $765, and they're probably selling a couple of thousand tons at most at NOLA. From the perspective of what's really going on in the market, this is just a couple of traders playing games. It just doesn't matter to the market.
I agree, it hurts sentiment, you know, there will be a Saudi ship coming in in a couple of weeks and on formula pricing and, you know, credit to the traders that they've been able to drive that price down. You know darn well if that gets up upcountry, they'll be selling it for the high price. Recognize $200 difference between those, there's only a $40 transport fee. Normally your upcountry price should be, you know, $40 to $60 above the NOLA price if it were truly trading in unison. The same we're seeing in potash. We've got $470 price mid upcountry.
You know, what that says is it gives us great confidence that what's happening in North America is gonna soon happen in Brazil, and it will soon happen in the rest of the world. You know, frankly, if it doesn't, as the second year of or, you know, if we have a second year of low application, we're gonna start to see drops in yield. You know, that's been proven in the seventies by Norm Borlaug and the Green Revolution. This isn't any kind of, you know. You can put it off like buying an iPhone. You don't put your fertilizer down, you don't grow the crops. 50% of crop growth is dependent on fertilizer. We've had 1 year of lower usage. You can't do that over and over again.
For that reason, we think that we're in a, you know, in a really good position. And in terms of our business itself, just a couple of highlights. We had a really good production quarter in phosphates. We have been recovering from Hurricane Ian. It did a lot of damage, not only to our plants, but to our mines. We've seen that come back and had a pretty darn good quarter. If you look at that other chart, you'll see because of where we were, we focused on North American sales, so the price realization was pretty good. First quarter shipments in potash, you see that. You know, potash in the first quarter, we gained the market grew significantly.
We gained 2%, and we also gained 2% with the highest price realization in the North American market. That, I can't talk about who we took market share from. Probably, I think we took at least all of what was the deficit of the imports and the growth. I, you know, in terms of a real testament to our own salespeople, they had the right time, place, utility. They were there when the product was needed, giving the service to our customers, reliable, et cetera. I think that helped. Mosaic Fertilizantes, you know, we had high-priced inventory. We've now moved through that high-priced inventory, and we're back into sort of normal things. As the Brazil market picks up, we should be doing well there.
Last thing I just wanna mention quickly is capital allocation. You know, we continue to invest in the business. We've got some great projects out there. The next generation of MicroEssentials, the expansion of our Brazil distribution business, the next phase of MicroEssentials, the last ramp-up of the Esterhazy mine, new flotation at Esterhazy. There's just lots of fantastic projects with 1-2 year payback. While you always wanna be careful on capital, at the same time, I wanna make sure if we've got these fantastic opportunity projects that we don't stop doing them. Our balance sheet is in, you know, great position right now. We have a $900 million bond coming up at the end of the year. We will refinance that. We don't feel any need to continue to take down debt.
We will continue to return all our excess cash to shareholders. With all of that, I just thought it was worth probably saying a couple of words because normally, I just open it straight up to questions from Joel here. I think there were some things that just needed to be clarified at the start.
This is interesting. You decided to speak for 9, 10 minutes on this because when you think of the investor base right now, the investor base is quite bearish on the fertilizer names.
Yep
... because the producers have been very positive on projections and shipments and pricing 9 months ago, 6 months ago, 3 months ago. It haven't worked out. It's been weaker than expected. People have guided down numbers and expectations. Now there's a view in a more just-in-time environment that even some of the summer fill programs are gonna be delayed, and people are gonna wait the last minute to buy. What are you seeing in terms of buyer reticence right now? Like, you've presented a very strong view and a lot of reasons why you'll be right. How concerned are you that the channel, the buyers, will push back and make this a tougher year than you hope?
Well, I think the U.S. is the perfect example of, I mean, in March, February, the U.S. buyers were pushing back. They had high-priced inventory. You know, the one public company that reported on their retail in North America, you saw they lost money. Why did they lose money? They probably had high-priced inventory they had to work through, no different than our Brazil business.
In that sense, you know, they wanna sell that high-priced inventory. They're reluctant to bring on new product until they have a farmer coming to the market. Once the farmers came to the market, the U.S., it's been a rush. We've been, you know, we've been pushing hard. You know, we've seen this every year. Brazil is much the same. We've seen this before, where Brazil puts off until, you know, June. Once they start, there's gonna be a mad rush because people are gonna be in a rush to get their product there in time. I don't feel that in any way we've been that we are bullish for unreasonable reasons. We know that prices have come down. We know that what will happen. We have to move the volume before the price moves.
You know, people said our guidance for price in potash, for instance, was weaker than they might have expected. As the ratio of domestic to international moves that way, we would expect that our net backs will go down, and it's just a product mix and a market mix thing. Overall, we're still in a position of believing, and for I think good fundamental reasons, that in both potash and phosphate, potash because no tons or less tons out of Belarus and probably at best the same number of tons out of Russia, we're gonna have a restricted market. Then in phosphates, we still expect the Chinese to restrict exports. You know, with a growing market and restrictions, we see both those markets to be supply-constrained.
Your Canpotex competitor, Nutrien, gives a little more formal full year guidance. What they've got baked into guidance is there'll be a seaborne contract or contract with the buying consortium in China second half of the year. It seems like they're modeling 3 million-4 million tons of seaborne exports, maybe a little more than 1 million goes to Canpotex. Is that your view, that we'll see second half contracts, maybe 1 million more go to Canpotex? 1 million of that go to Canpotex.
Yeah. I think you have to look at China and look at the fundamental change that has been driven by the, well, by the rail, basically. You have a couple things that make the seaborne trade in China a little less relevant than it used to be. You know, you've always had about 1.8 to 2 million tons of product that can come across the Ural Mountain range from Russia. We now have seen the Belarus, BPC is back choosing backhaul to ship all the way from Belarus through to through Kazakhstan and into the western side of China. Now you have that's another 2 million tons that used to be seaborne. You have Qinghai Lake, which is actually seemingly pushing a little more towards potash, where they'd been pushing towards lithium before. That balance, I think last year they would have been over 6 million tons.
Which leads to you have Laos, which is coming across by rail. They are not a large tonnage yet, but I think they're pushing up towards 1 million tons this year. Now the seaborne is, 3 million tons might be a reasonable number for seaborne. I think Canpotex probably would get 1 million tons of that. That's probably not unreasonable. I mean, that's yet to be done. You know, even our own distribution business will take a bunch of tons from Canpotex. I think it's quite reasonable that they'll get that tonnage.
As a lithium analyst, I'm like, "What? You're gonna sell potash at $400? You can sell lithium at $30,000 a ton.
Well, last year.
Okay. Got it.
they might reverse.
It was 80.
T hey might reverse that next year.
It was lithium 80. Okay. It's even better. Do you think then, you know, one of your competitors has been very clear to say, "Well, we think India at $422 a ton, that's the new base price." Of course, Brazil, in potash trades at a premium to India, so prices have to go up. Some of your other large competitors are saying, "No, prices will be kind of stable, maybe flat to down." Where do you shake out on the market clearing price right now?
I, you know, maybe this is the problem, is we got a whole bunch of people who are predicting price. I know whatever price I give you is gonna be wrong.
Right.
All I can tell you is, you know, what normally happens is once the market starts moving, the fundamentals take over, and prices tend to move up in season...
Mm-hmm
as they have in North America, and we keep seeing that. I have seen it before where I think it was in probably 2019 or something like that, where the Brazil price actually was what the Chinese used to negotiate their price. The Brazil doesn't always trade at a premium to China. It probably should, but it doesn't. They're all individual markets, and they all play out as they play out. You know, the can Brazil, though, support a $422 and moving up price? I think so, but right now it's trading below that. Y ou know, we'll have to just get the market moving and see where it goes.
You know, you've used Colonsay Mine in Saskatchewan as your swing mine for many years. It's been down now since, I think, December, so maybe 6 months, plus or minus.
Yeah
... six months. something's come up a lot in the last six months. What are the conditions for Colonsay when it's time to restart it? I think the people are there, they're ready to go. It's just when you turn the switch back on.
Yeah.
Is that fair?
Look, you know, it's pretty simple math from our perspective. If, if the international market starts moving, and we expect and think it will, you know, Colonsay would be needed. If Canpotex does more, you know, and here's, it's simple math. If Canpotex. U.S. domestic is kind of fixed. If Canpotex does more than about 14.5 million tons, you need Colonsay. If Canpotex doesn't do that, we don't need Colonsay.
You know, it's kind of that simple one. And I'm talking about a run rate. You gotta get the export run rate has to be over basically 1.1-1.2 million tons and then you need Colonsay. We can produce, you know, we can produce 500,000 tons a month at Esterhazy now, and we can probably produce 300,000 tons at Belle Plaine. You know, if you think about what the domestic summer fill will be and then add to it what the thing is that turnover point is, I don't know, somewhere around 14 million tons of Canpotex.
I did get a question about K3 or Esterhazy.
Yeah.
When will it be complete in 2024? When will you completely shift over production at Esterhazy from the K1 and K2 shafts to K3?
Well, that's a pretty straightforward answer. We have now sealed, filled concrete pillars on the top of both K1 and K2.
It sounds like it's closed.
They're gone.
Is that what you're saying?
They're gone.
Okay.
We've pulled all the facilities out.
Yeah.
We've filled it with concrete. We put a plug in on the top, so you can pretty much walk over the top of it.
Have you done it?
No, I have not. That is done. Today Esterhazy is producing in the range of 15,000 or whatever tons per day, all from K3. Sorry, that's probably just into K2. It's running full and we have 12 miners running. We have 1 left to go, but it can, you know, it's basically at its capacity today.
Obviously, like, the market hasn't developed, your Canpotex and Nutrien started saying, "We're gonna add more mining machines and miners and conveyor belts to try to ramp up more utilization rates at their operations" hasn't really gone the way they wanted, so it's sort of going slower. If they eventually feel the need to go to 14, 15, 16, 18 million tons, they can't get more allocation from Canpotex.
Well-
Those tons have to go into North America, true? Unless you agree-
They're.
to talk to them about allocation.
They're. Yeah, look, North American market is peaked at a point. You know, it's there's no more huge number of acres of land.
Right.
you know, at 94 million acres of corn. W hatever it is, 87, 88 million acres of beans, there's not a lot of other land there.
Sorry.
Unless you're gonna use a lot more fertilizer per acre, North America's a fixed market.
You would have to agree inside Canpotex to give them greater than their nameplate allocate your base on nameplate capacities, right? You'd have to agree to let them have a greater than, I don't know, 67%. I forget what it is. A greater allocation with offshore Canpotex sales than what they're normally getting now.
I'm not gonna answer this question, but you know what the answer should be.
No. Okay.
Well, let me ask you a question. Let me put it back to you. Why would we do that?
Well, it would increase Canpotex's. It would help make Canpotex at least keep the share going forward, so Canpotex would take share.
We have.
I guess it does hurt your earnings.
We have almost 2 million tons of excess capacity today sitting in Colonsay. Unless Canpotex goes up by, you know, if it's 2/3, 1/3 for easy numbers.
Right.
We're at 1, let's call it 1.5, unless Canpotex goes up another 4.5 million tons, we have enough tons to supply it. It is not Mosaic slowing down Canpotex. It is the market.
Yeah.
If there is a market for Canpotex to sell 17 million tons at a reasonable price, then we're in it. I mean-
So-
Why would you sell You know, again, I'm gonna go back to, and I apologize for being careful here how I say this. Go back to 2012, 2013 at the BPC breakup. Bob Martel, who was the CEO, said, "We're gonna ship, what? 12 million tons versus 11 million tons this year. The price is gonna go down." They shipped 12 million tons at $300, where the year before they'd shipped. 11 million tons at $400. You don't have to do the math. If the market doesn't need it, pushing it into the market just destroys price. They gained 100, I think they gained, like, 0.1% global market share and destroyed about $3 billion on their own revenue alone, plus the rest of the market.
I'm not modeling 18 million tons for Nutrien. I'm modeling 13 going forward. The premise of my question is they can't really push those tons.
No, they can't push those tons.
To do it, they need you to agree-
Canpotex-
You're telling me you're not gonna agree.
Well, no. I'm saying we will agree to a reasonable market.
Yeah.
We're not gonna push tons where they're not needed.
It's gonna be interesting if they do try to expand, 'cause it's gonna have to be a lot of complicated conversations.
Canpotex will decide what their markets are how they can sell.
Maybe switch to phosphates. Hopefully a little less contentious on phosphate.
No, no. I mean, it's not contentious. I mean, it's just simple. You've got a market...
Yeah.
you have to supply it and...
why has phosphate been more resilient in this environment than potash? remember the sanctions against Belarus, right?
Yeah.
Why has phosphate been more resilient?
I think, you know, the reality is if you look at the three nutrients, nitrogen, phosphate, and potash, if you go one time without using the full amount of nitrogen, it shows up immediately. Phosphates is just about like that. Of the three, Look, potash gives you better resilience, better drought protection. It gives you better structure of your root system and your stalks. You don't need potash on grass, for instance. You know, like if your grass at home, because you don't care about those things. If you get dry, your grass, you know, starts going. You know, you can get away without potash or a little less potash for a year. You just can't get away with it forever. I think that's the reason potash is...
You know, it happened in 2008, 2009 when the price went up. There was what they called the potash holiday, and you've termed it the potash holiday again. You know, you can only afford so many vacations, and then you run out.
Since we've been in a good Phos environment, it's like, 'cause Phos prices are well above mid-cycle-
Yeah.
whereas potash is starting to slip close to mid-cycle, and nitrogen is, well, it's probably trading around mid-cycle with some seasonality. How does the phosphate dynamic play out later this year? There's a lot of views that China will start exporting, open up the taps a bit more for exports. OCP's at this conference. We'll see them tomorrow, but I think they're doing a dinner in New York tonight. I don't think they've really, like, produced or sold a lot of their new capacity yet. We're gonna get an up-
I think-
We'll get an update on how that's come to 3 million tons.
Yeah. I think you'd have to talk to them. They have, I think the last phase. -expansion should be done this year. you know, They're not expanding a lot. They are expanding their granulation capacity, but they haven't been expanding their phosphoric acid expansion as much. Which means they're moving from selling the raw phosphoric acid to selling more of the granulated product, which doesn't really change the overall dynamic of the market.
I suspect we'll see the same from them in this market as we have in previous years. Again, some has been asked about this countervailing duty. We're not seeing them at all in North America, but they're in Brazil and other markets where we do compete. I fully expect that'll be the same this year. In terms of China, I think the big question mark for everybody is what's China gonna do this year? We fully expect that really nothing has changed in terms of their overall strategy. They want to focus on self-sufficiency for particularly things like fruits, vegetables, and those consumables, which makes great sense.
If you think about it from a country perspective, they want the rural farmer and those folks to do well, and part of that is making sure they have ample affordable fertilizer. We think that, you know, it'll ebb and flow because of the converse to that is they also need to support the phosphate industry. They don't want the industry to not make money because that would also be negative to their long term. I think they'll allow some exports, but not as much. The other piece is they've shut down about 25% of that industry for environmental reasons. The industry is running a lot closer to its capacity than it used to.
You say, "Okay, I'm running closer to my capacity." You know, we are looking first quarter, I think the use of phosphates in lithium iron phosphate batteries was up 42% after being up almost 100% last year. That's gone from half a million tons of DAP equivalent to 1 million tons of DAP equivalent. This year, we expect it to be probably 1.5 million tons of DAP equivalent.
Again, industrial uses are taking away from it, environmental has shut capacity down, and then overall, we expect them to focus on their own farmers. There will always be Chinese exports, I suspect. We expect they'll be in the range of 7 million-ish tons this year, up from 6 million last year. last year, again, prices were pretty high, and they were really trying to support the Chinese farmers. we think this is a structural change as much as a policy change.
How do you view the inventory dynamic right now and dynamics in general in India and Brazil for phosphate?
I would say Brazil has... I think we're down like 12% from last year, Jenny?
Yeah.
We're down 12% from this time last year, puts us in normal range. I mean, I think we were a little high last year, so at 12% down, we're probably in decent range. The Safras season's coming. We'll need that product, but I don't think we have extra. There'll have to be refill as that season progresses. In terms of India, I suspect their inventory of everything is probably getting pretty darn low because, you know, with they were supposed to have the subsidy all figured out what in the start of April, and I think they came out last night with at least a base. They haven't put the details out, but they started last night from the India.
We should hear in the next couple of days where that sits. India inventory, certainly for potash, is extremely low and phosphates is very low.
On the countervailing duties, right? We saw recently, that, for PhosAgro, the Russians.
Nine-50.
went from 10 to 50.
Yeah.
OC went from 20 to 15, give or take.
Yeah.
I know PhosAgro was importing about 300,000 tons run rate, so that's probably gone now, right? The US-
You'd think so.
Would think so. Then I don't know if 15% or 20% makes a difference to Moroccans.
Well, you know, right now, like I said, there's a price of $750. You know, even if you took the $500, multiply that by, you know, 15, that's $75 a ton. They can get much better returns shipping to Brazil. I still think it doesn't change the overall, it just changes the trade flow. You're not gonna see, you're not gonna see substantial Moroccan tons at 15 any more than you would at 20.
You think I guess the big thing are those changes positive for you for Mosaic because you're gonna probably get completely discouraged at 300,000 from PhosAgro now?
Well, PhosAgro will do less. They'll do what you're gonna see is. Look, if we see it in Europe. Europe gets the tons they need. They've got a 5% duty, so we don't ship to Europe, right? If the prices in the US are higher than. You know, today we get the Jordanians, we get the Saudis, we get the Australians, we get the Mexicans. All of those are importing to the US. The US is getting just as much phosphates as it ever did, but the US market no longer is trading at a discount to the global market. That's really what changed with the countervailing duty. We were trading at a discount to the rest of the market. Now we're trading at parity.
For OCP, they're not going to, I don't think. I mean, if they want to take a $75 hit, that's fair trade. If they, you know, otherwise, they probably won't.
You think about where you might invest in phosphate, you have some options. You can invest more, I guess, with Ma'aden in Saudi Arabia. You're talking about maybe, looking if you can produce purified phos acid, some of your competitors for LFP CAM, you're talking about that. Maybe there's some consolidation opportunities. I mean, what's next for you in phosphate that can move the needle?
I think, Look, I'm quite happy to get a return on the Saudi investment we made 10 years ago. I'm not convinced that that's our next move.
Ma'aden 3.
Ma'aden 3. I mean, I've been pretty vocal about that. I don't see that as something that... I mean, we'll continue our relationship with the Saudis. We, you know, we have a good relationship with them and everything, but I don't think Ma'aden 3 is our next investment. If anything, I'd rather be buying back our own stock than doing that. Our next investments, you know, we're looking at expanding MicroEssentials. I think it's more moving up the value chain than necessarily moving up the volume chain. You know, maybe that's a good way to think of us in general. I'd rather sell value than volume.
The opportunity of purified phosphoric acid would be a market that is a lot less volatile, probably growing a lot faster than the agricultural market, so something we can participate in there. We see that as attractive. We see expansion of our MicroEssentials. We've got a project on the books for expanding our MicroEssentials, which again, is probably our most stable and highest margin phosphate product. Again, moves us up the value chain. You know, the other one we're doing right now is Palmeirante, so that we can move more of our product through our distribution business in Brazil. You know, we're doing things that are gonna add value, not necessarily doing anything that's going to...
I don't see any great consolidation opportunities in the phosphate industry, plus we'd probably be restricted on antitrust anyway, being as big as we are.
Do you think like, I mean, I obviously follow, I was talking about lithium, so I obviously follow batteries and EV a fair bit, and I cover other companies like ICL that's big in the purified phos acid business. Do you think that's? Like, of course, there's a market there. By the time you figure out how to do it, you're a smart company, you'll figure it out. You know, it's not trivial. You have to do some work, right?
Yep.
There's some capital, there's some R&D, there's some work. The time you figure out maybe some years from now, do you think that's a place that Mosaic has to be in? It may not. It'll be a market, but it's not gonna be-
So-
It's not gonna be a 20 million ton market.
No, you know, we're. Just to say where we're at, we have completed the bench and pilot studies. We know we can make it. We're in the process of figuring out what the capital is, and we're actually, you know, as public knowledge, we're permitting a site or sites at our Louisiana facility. I mean, we're not that far away if we want to pull the trigger. Do we have to? Look, I think purified phosphoric acid is going to change the nature. Just if you think about the cost of nickel lithium, sorry, nickel cobalt, lithium nickel cobalt battery compared to the cost of a iron phosphate, lithium battery, you're if you look at not just cars but start thinking about stationary batteries.
You know, if you've got, if you've got solar or you've got wind power, I mean, everybody doesn't take a whole lot to think about it. They don't run all the time. You've got to have some sort of capacitance or buffer to keep that going. That is gonna be stationary batteries, we believe, right? To even that out, you'll build the power up in the, in the daytime or whatever, and you see it with Tesla today. Their solar panels have a big battery. We think that's where, you know, not only vehicles, but that's where the other place where this will get used. Do we have to be the ones to do it? We have to be convinced that, you know, it's gonna be a superior margin.
We have to be convinced that it's going to de-commoditize us to some extent. you know, I would say we'd be searching for long-term contracts with the OEMs like the Teslas, the Fords, the GMs or whoever, the battery makers, the CATLs from China or whoever. The one thing I can tell you for sure is there is a need for or there is a desire for more domestic produced raw materials for those batteries. Rather than getting it from China or other, there is an opportunity in there. Do we have to do it? I think it's gonna change the industry whether we do it or not. I think that question is only about the economics. If somebody else does it's still gonna tighten the phosphate market. Y ou know, we have to see the economics of the project itself.
Do you think like, 'cause you also have a view on, you have to have view on the types of cars we're gonna drive, where we're gonna need this range versus price points, ranges, safety. Are we gonna have more LFP batteries or more NMC 811, you know, batteries with greater range or something in the middle? Are we gonna go to solid-state, go to sodium-ion? By the time you come into production and spend the money, maybe technology has shifted where LFP isn't what you think it's gonna be, right? Do you have to.
Yeah.
have a view on that?
Yeah, I think the, what, the sodium and stuff is probably what? 10+ years away. Is that economic? Don't know. I mean, look-I own an electric car. It has 650 horsepower. You cannot or you will not probably put an LFP battery in a 650 horsepower car. You don't need a 650 horsepower car, just to be clear. If you're... Sorry. I do need a 650-
No one has to drive a Porsche Taycan. They want to.
If you're building a 125 horsepower car or something like that, a commuter car, the benefit of lithium iron phosphate. If you don't need the same range, lithium iron phosphates have a better durability. They last longer, all of that. They're cheaper. If you're trying to build something for the masses, you know, the Henry Ford theory or Volkswagen theory or, you know, people's car, you've got to be looking at that technology. I don't think anything's gonna overtake the lithium iron phosphate fast enough that that won't be the next phase.
I'm gonna ask 2 more questions. Hope we can do it in 2 minutes. Maybe talk about Brazil Fertilizantes. Kind of what's run rate, that business, margins, profitability? However you wanna talk about it and, and where you can grow off of, you know, it's, like you said, some distribution. You had some inventory, losses, like, the whole distribution business. What's kind of runway for that? How can it grow out to be stabilized?
Look, it, you know. You know, I've said this kind of before and. The distribution part of the business is, let's say, a 9 million ton business. It's gonna run at the sort of margins that the distribution business runs, which is, you know, $30 to $40. If we think we're gonna get a $60 margin on an ongoing basis, I mean, obviously it ebbs and flows with the price you buy your product at, but you've got to be competitive in the market. While we're now the largest, there's always somebody, you know, biting at your heels, if you will. We think a $30 to $40 margin means that we can make a decent profit in that on the 9 million tons.
We sell another $100 million or make another $100 million on co-products, which are things like selling excess sulfuric acid, selling our gypsum, all selling other products that, thing. We sell feed, you know. The other is our production business where, you know, although, you know, the costs are kind of in line with other producers, our being in the middle of, you know, the Minas Gerais and the actual agricultural areas of Brazil means we have a very big buffer or whatever you wanna call it, moat around that business in terms of it costs $100 probably to get it from the coast. You know, we know that we can take advantage of that. That business, you know, we're selling what?
3.5-4 million tons, some of it through our own distribution, some of it to third parties. We sell, you know, 2.3-2.4 through other parties, another 1 million through ourselves. And that makes producer margins. You know, you can kinda look at it that way.
We have about 30 seconds left. You know, we've seen a bit of sentiment drop among investors in some of the fertilizer stocks. Fertilizer stocks like Mosaic trading, I think, below around the time when the war started last year. What have investors gotten wrong? How can you prove it to them?
I think, look, a year ago, the argument from investors was, "Well, we're trading you at a low, you know, EBITDA to value ratio, whatever you wanna call it, because we think this is peak pricing." It was peak pricing, but now it's no longer peak pricing. You know, I think what investors get wrong is the, first of all, the fundamentals of being as strong as they are.
I think when that turns around, probably no different than the buyers of our product, we'll start to see the earnings power of the franchise, if you will, and people are gonna look at that and go, "Well, actually, maybe we did get this whole industry wrong and the whole..." I mean, people are negative on ag right now, and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. People got to eat. You know, people have got to eat. You got to grow food. Population continues to grow. The economy doesn't seem to... You know, food consumption doesn't go down when in a recession. None of these things impact our business. What impacts our business is, you know, how much crop is out there and what it takes to grow that crop.
You know, I look at it and I see strong need for the basic agricultural products for the next number of years, which means that our growth will be there. It's a supply-constrained market. You know, financially we expect to do well and, you know, hopefully, that gets recognized.
Thanks, Joc.