Compass Minerals Intl Inc

Good morning and welcome everyone to the Compass Minerals fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brent Collins, VP of Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to the Compass Minerals Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today, we will discuss our most recent quarterly and full year results and provide some commentary on our outlook for fiscal 2026. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Edward Dowling, our CFO, Peter Feldman, and our Chief Operations Officer, Pat Marin. Joining in for the question and answer portion of the call will be Ben Nichols, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we get started, I'll remind everyone that the remarks we make today reflect financial and operational outlooks as of today's date, December 9, 2025. These outlooks entail assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. A discussion of these risks can be found in our SEC filings located online at investors.compassminerals.com. Our remarks today also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliation of these items in our earnings release or in our presentation, both of which are also available online. I'll now turn the call over to Ed.

Thank you, Brent. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin our call this morning by recapping our accomplishments for fiscal 2025. Krampus Minerals today is a significantly healthier, more focused company than it was a year ago. The story of 2025 is primarily one of improving our financial position of the company and providing the foundation to pursue its back to basic business model. You'll recall that the company began last year with an excess amount of North American Highway de-icing salt following two milder winters. To address this issue, We made the deliberate decision to scale back on production ahead of the 24-25 de-icing season. This action, combined with more normal winter weather across our service markets, allowed inventory levels to revert to more sustainable levels and provide a substantial release of working capital. That working capital dividend, in turn, allowed us to deliver during the year and reduce our net debt by 14% or $125 million. During the year, the company also took steps to rationalize its corporate cost base. In March, we carried out a sizable reduction in force and also made a strategic decision to wind down Fortress, the company's fire retardant business. These efforts contributed to a $25 million improvement in reported SG&A year over year, representing an 18% reduction. Our ability to demonstrate that we can generate cash, reduce debt, and cut costs contributed to the successful refinancing mid-year that provided a number of positives for the company. First, it allowed for an amendment to our credit agreement that enhances our liquidity and provides more financial flexibility. Second, it allowed us to extend the maturity wall of our outstanding debt. These improvements in our debt structure provide us with time and flexibility to support our back-to-basics strategy. While the action is being taken to improve our financial position and foundation have been at the forefront, we've also been taking steps to improve the operational and organizational aspects of the business. In the salt segment, the decision to curtail rock salt production following the 23-24 deicing season resulted in an adverse impact to margins during 2025 due to the higher per ton cost profile. However, that negative margin impact is transitory and we have already ramped up both Godrich and Cote Blanche mines to more normal levels of production, which will result in a reduction of production costs per ton, all things being equal. Throughout the year, we've progressed a number of initiatives to improve the operations of our salt assets, including continuous improvement initiatives of Godrich mine and Cote Blanche, as well as an overhaul of our safety system and program. The plant nutrition segment, our primary efforts have been centered on restoring the health of the pond complex out at Ogden. Our SOP operation in Utah is similar to any other manufacturing plant in the world, but it operates better when higher quality feedstock is flowing through the facility. The restoration of the pond complex will improve the quality of material that goes into Ogden, which improves how the plant operates and helps drive down costs. That will speak more in a moment about some of the work that we have planned for 2026. We expect further enhancements of the operations in Utah. Our results in fiscal 2025 are already reflecting these improvements, with sales volumes growing up by 19% year over year, adjusted EBITDA increasing by almost 107% during the same period to $35 million. From a leadership perspective, Our executive structure and team have overhauled during the year. We took steps to simplify the organization as part of a reduction of force I referred to earlier. We added leaders whose skill sets and experience better align with our back to basics framework. As we reflect on the year, I think 2025 will be remembered as a pivotal year for Compass Minerals. We successfully reset the organization and established a foundation that enables us to sharpen our focus on improving operations, enhancing profitability, and reducing debt. Internally, we speak often about people, processes, and systems. We are approaching all three of these with a mindset of continuous improvement, and our focus on these will allow us to continue building on the progress we've made this year. I am energized by the opportunities ahead and believe we're well positioned to build a sustainable value through the Back to Basics framework. We've cited time to be part of Compass Minerals, Before turning the call over to Peter, I want to acknowledge the efforts of our employees over the last year. Strategic pivots and transitions like the one Compass Minerals has been undertaking are both exciting and disruptive. Our workforce has embraced our new strategy, and I'm proud of how they've risen to the challenge. With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter for a review of our fourth quarter and full year results, as well as a quick summary of our 2026 guidance.