Compass Minerals Intl Inc

Hello, everyone, and thank you for standing by. My name is Ian, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Compass Minerals second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. 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 star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, that is star followed by the number one. If you would like to withdraw your question, plus star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn a call over to Brent Collins, Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations. Brent, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to the Compass Minerals Fiscal Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today, we will discuss our most recent quarterly results. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Edward Dowling, and our CFO, Peter Fellman. Joining in for the question and answer portion of the call will be Ben Nichols, our Chief Commercial Officer, and our Chief Operations Officer, Pat Marin. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that the remarks we make today reflect financial and operational outlooks as of today's date, May 7th, 2026. 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 reconciliations of these items in our earnings release or in our presentation, both of which are also available online. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Ed.

Thank you, Brent. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll get right to it. In the second quarter, we retired our remaining $150 million of the 2027 senior unsecured notes earlier than anticipated. We continued to push on operational improvements at Godrich and elsewhere. We had a strong winter across much of North America, and our salt business delivered on high level of sale commitments while continuing to build on the foundation we put in place. We are making progress, and we recognize that we have more work to do. In the plant nutrition, we are showing outstanding momentum with the objectives we outlined two years ago. With the winter season behind us, it's worth looking at how much the first half of this year has improved from last year. In both the salt and plant nutrition businesses, revenues are up. Operating margins are up. EBITDA is up. Company-wide debt is down, and SG&A is down. And we completed new collecting bargain agreements with two of our sites, including the Godrich Mine. That's quite a great start for the year. Now let's talk about what we're doing in each of our businesses. The improvement processes that we've successfully deployed within our SOP business is the same approach that we are using in the SALT business, starting with our larger operations. A focus on restoring good long-term operating practice is critical to improving performance. This requires that we focus on key metrics that will drive performance, safety, utilization, equipment availability, production and development rates, and improve mining planning crosses, all of which are advancing. This is a key part of our back to basics framework. Production costs per ton of the salt business moved up year over year, and I want to explain why. The reported number reflects several factors, regional weather activity, the product mix, the pace of our operational improvements. During the quarter, we began selling production from the current year's production, which flows through the P&L. While the production costs per ton within the mines are improving, we've not yet met the efficiency gains we've expected. Pete will walk you through this in more detail. As I noted earlier, we recently completed a new CBA with a workforce at Godrich. It was a fair agreement for everyone. It reflects a genuine partnership between the company and our workforce. This mutually beneficial arrangement allows us to continue building on the safe, reliable operation while allowing us the mine's efficiency and flexibility. We've also concluded CBA at another site in the process of completing negotiation at others. While the highway de-icing season is behind us, our focus turns to building inventory and preparing for next year's de-icing bid season. Our production and inventory planning will be informed in part by the commitments we win in the upcoming bid season. The North American highway de-icing market remains structurally tight. Inventories across the system are low following the past winter, which is constructed from both the pricing and tender size growth. We're moving into the bid season within this framework firmly in mind. We'll be focused on maximizing the value of every ton we commit for the next season. The market conditions are constructive, and we will approach the upcoming bid season with the same discipline that we've brought to the market in recent years that has allowed us to see growth in pricing and margins. Based on our first half performance, the current operational plans, we've updated our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance within the midpoint, essentially unchanged. We have adjusted the segment outlook. Plant nutrition is running ahead. We have moderated salt to reflect the impact of regional product mix sales as well as the pace of operational improvements I described earlier. It will walk you through the updated ranges. Consistent with our Back to Basics framework, as announced earlier this year, we simplified our portfolio with the sale of our Wynyard SOP operation, which was completed during the quarter. The sales strengthened our cash position and now allows plant nutrition business to focus on our world class Ogden facility. Turning to the balance sheet, At the end of March, we redeemed the remaining 150 million of our 2027 senior unsecured notes. We funded the pay down from cash on hand and removed our nearest maturity. This represents a significant deleveraging milestone and provides us with more financial flexibility. Reducing debt remains one of our top priorities and strengthening our balance sheet as a result. This is what investors expect and it's what we're doing. Before I hand it over to Peter, I want to briefly note the recent changes to our board. We've added four new directors over the past year. Each brings deep knowledge and relevant experience in the industrial manufacturing businesses, some of which have direct experience in salt and plant nutrition industries. The board is aligned with our strategy and brings operating and financial expertise we need for this phase of the company's development. With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter to walk you through the numbers and our outlook. Thanks, Ed.