Intrepid Potash, Inc

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Intrepid Patash Incorporated third quarter 2023 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be the opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Evan Mapes, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Emily. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss and review Intrepid's third quarter 2023 results. With me today is Intrepid's co-founder, executive chairman and CEO, Bob Dornavis, and CFO, Matt Preston. Also available to answer questions during the Q&A session is our VP of Sales and Marketing, Zachary Adams, and our VP of Operations, John Galassini. Please be advised that our remarks today, including answers to your questions, include forward-looking statements as defined by U.S. securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently anticipated and are based on information available to us today, and we assume no obligation to update them. These risks and uncertainties are described in our periodic reports filed with the SEC, which are incorporated here by reference. During today's call, we referred to certain non-GAAP financial and operational measures. Reconciliations to the mostly directly comparable GAAP measures are included in yesterday's press release. Our SEC filings and press releases are available on our website, IntrepidPottage.com. I'll now turn the call to Bob.

Thank you, Evan. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Intrepid and your attendance for our third quarter 2023 earnings call. Intrepid's third quarter was highlighted by strong sales with our volumes remaining well ahead of last year's pace. For potash and trio, our respective volumes through the third quarter represent approximately 95 and 90 percent of the total we sold in 2022. A couple of reasons for the higher sales include, first, farmers in the United States are finding good value in potash, where U.S. demand is projected to increase by about 10 to 15 percent year over year. And second, the premium feed market remains very important for Intrepid, with this market comprising just over 30% of our potash sales mix in the third quarter, while also providing the added benefit of increased netbacks. Looking ahead, we expect continued solid demand in the fourth quarter as harvest for corn and soybeans is tracking ahead of the five-year average, which helps provide an open window for the fall application season. While our volumes have seen a nice rebound from 2022, owing to the impacts from last year's failed extraction well, we've had fewer tons available to sell in 2023 versus what our markets could support, and correcting our potash production trend has been the key strategic priority for Intrepid. Our capital program has been directly focused on revitalizing our potash assets And owing to our strong project execution, we feel very confident that we are well on the way to increasing our production to the high end of our historical range. Before diving into project details, I wanted to provide some commentary on the outlook for the agricultural markets and potash. Starting with the agricultural markets, as we've been highlighting for several quarters, U.S. farmers are mostly in good shape. They're projected to generate solid profits for the third consecutive year, have healthy balance sheets, farmland values are close to record highs, and futures for soybeans and corn remain supportive. In addition, key international commodities like palm oil, sugar, cocoa, and coffee are all still trading at levels that are either higher than historic averages or pushing for record highs. For potash, Current pricing, which is still being impacted by more supply from continued imports of Russian tons into the United States, has led to much better value for farmers. This has served as a key catalyst for stronger demand with this trend expected to continue for the rest of 2023 and into 2024. On the supply side for potash, global markets still face the possibility of constraints or disruption. And third-party forecasts show that about 40% of the world's potash exports will come from regions with heightened geopolitical risks. Until these risks are resolved, we think we should see a higher floor for pricing in the near to medium term, or at least until some of the more significant supply additions come online. Given the constructive outlook, it's paramount that Intrepid return our annual potash production back to the high end of our historical range. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, I'm very pleased to share that our recent project execution makes us quite confident that we're well on our way to meeting our production goals. We do want to remind folks that our production cycle for potash takes time. From the stages from brine injection to eventual harvest typically being an 18 to 24 month process. However, the impact from the projects we've undertaken has reduced this timeframe to nine to 12 months at HB and 12 to 15 months at our MOA facility for the long foreseeable future. Moreover, since most of the growth projects were started well over a year ago, with several already having been commissioned, we will start to see more significant incremental production benefits beginning in the second half of 2024. I now want to quickly touch on some of the key concepts and drivers of our potash production which will hopefully add some clarity to the technical aspects of our business. After that, I'll then go over our project highlights and implications for our production. Throughout the year, we've stressed the importance of two key goals, maximizing our brine availability and maximizing our underground residence time. Maximizing brine availability essentially means we need to inject as much brine as possible into our caverns at HB. At Moab, we need consistent injection and good brine circulation in the caverns, as well as access to new ore and reserves over time. These reserves have multi-decade lives with significantly higher resource potential, and our drilling projects at Moab are designed to accelerate the process of tapping new ore to increase our brine availability, residence time, which results in higher brine grade. For windover, we need to ensure that we have as much brine as possible to transport through our canal system, which totals approximately 120 miles in length, with the brine then being stored and upgraded in our large-scale surface ponds, which have total evaporative surface area of approximately 11,000 acres. In terms of maximizing residence time, this implies letting the brine we inject stay in contact with ore for long enough time to enhance the potassium chloride concentration of that brine so that that will eventually extract. By achieving both goals of maximizing brine availability and residence time, the resulting effect is having more volume of higher-grade brine to extract, which drives increased production and more tons to sell and improves our unit economics. Moving on to project highlights, at HV, limited brine availability has been a key driver of the lower production in 2023. This is first and foremost being addressed by the new injection pipeline project, HB1. With this phase, the installation of the pipeline was commissioned roughly six months ago and is operating solidly. When phase two of the pipeline is complete, which we expect to occur in the spring of 2024, our injection rates and residence times should be the highest in company history. However, in the near term, we have two other projects at HB that will serve as a bridge to increased potash production, which are also designed to have long-term operational lives. One was recently commissioned in October, where we were already extracting a very high-grade brine into our ponds, with the second project expected to be commissioned in the first half of next year. The first project was press-released last week, the Eddy Shaft Brine Extraction Project. This project targets 270 million gallons of high grade brine in the Eddy Cavern. We expect all of this brine to be pumped into our ponds ahead of the 2024 summer evaporation season. As for production impacts, we estimate this brine source corresponds to incrementally 85 to 100,000 tons of potash product tons, which will be evident in our production figures starting in the second half of 2024 and continuing into 2025. The second project is the replacement extraction well, IP30B, which targets an additional high-grade brine pool in the Eddy Cavern that the shaft can't access. With this brine pool estimated to contain approximately 333 million gallons of brine. Once we finish extracting the Eddy shaft brine, the larger pool will serve as the next brine source for HB. For one final comment on HB, while these two Eddy Cavern projects will contribute to higher potash production in 24 and 25, they serve another key purpose. By extracting the already enriched brine pools in the near and medium term, we're able to keep injecting brine throughout the entire HB Cavern system, including the Eddy Cavern, and let that brine build and develop into other sources of high-grade brine pools. This is crucial for driving sustained higher production over the longer term as we look to 2025 and beyond. Moving on to our most consistent potash asset, Moab, which has seen an average annual production of approximately 105 to 110,000 tons for the past 10 years. Over the course of 2023, we've had three key projects at Moab, all of which were commissioned over the summer. They provided modest contributions to our 2023 production, and more substantial impacts are expected in 2024. The primary project to highlight is 1245 or Cavern 4 project, which created brand new ore for us to target through at least the next decade. Cavern 4 will supplement our brine injection into Caverns 1, 2, and 3 in Potash Bed 9, as well as the old mine workings in Potash Bed 5. Given the consistency of production at Moab, in completely new ore in Cavern 4. We expect our MOAB production to remain pretty consistent with historic levels with room for offset. Lastly, at Windover, which is our smallest potash operation, our production in recent years has been negatively impacted by multiple weather events, with those being compounded by a lack of brine storage. To mitigate this, we recently commenced the construction of a new primary pond. The new primary pond will help increase the amount of brine we can store and evaporate, which is key to improving our production. This project is on track to be commissioned in the summer of 2024. We expect to start seeing positive impacts beginning in early 2025. Overall, we're confident that we're well on our way to returning our annual potash production back to the high end of our historical range. And we look forward to updating the market as we continue to make progress on our potash projects in the coming quarters. I'll now turn the call over to Matt. Please go ahead.