Mosaic Company (The)

Good morning, and welcome to the Mosaic Company's third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants will have been placed in a listen-only mode. After the company completes their prepared remarks, the lines will be open to take your questions. Your host for today's call is Mr. Paul Massoud, Vice President of Investor Relations and Financial Planning and Analysis of the Mosaic Company. Mr. Massoud, you may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Opening comments will be provided by Jock O'Rourke, President and Chief Executive Officer, followed by a fireside chat, then open Q&A. Clint Freeland, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Jenny Wong, Senior Vice President, Global Strategic Marketing, will also be available to answer your questions. We will be making forward-looking statements during this conference call. The statements include, but are not limited to, statements about future financial and operating results. They are based on management's beliefs and expectations as of today's date and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from projected results. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are included in our press release published yesterday and in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We will also be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release and performance data also contain important information on these non-GAAP measures. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Jock.

Good morning. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Mosaic delivered record third quarter revenues of $5.3 billion, which resulted in net income of $842 million or earnings per share of $2.42. Adjusted earnings per share was $3.22 and adjusted EBITDA was $1.7 billion. These results are driving significant cash flow generation, which is allowing us to return significant capital to shareholders. while also continuing to invest in the business and strengthen the balance sheet. During the quarter, we returned roughly $670 million to shareholders, including $600 million of share buybacks. Now, before diving into our operations, I'd like to address current market dynamics. Food security remains a concern around the world. Global grain and oilseed stock-to-use ratios remain at 20-year lows, and early data continues to suggest there may be further downside to total production once the fall harvest is complete. It is important to remember that the market was tight when the year began, well before the start of the war, and issues over the last several months have further exacerbated the situation. Ukraine's production shortfall is significant, but weather issues like high temperatures and drought conditions in other major growing regions are having an even bigger impact on an already tight market. In the US, weather-delayed spring planting and the compressed planting window reduced nutrient applications. The growing season was further impacted by high temperatures and drought in some areas. Weather tends to be a significant factor in yield, but under-fertilization doesn't help, and you can only mine the soil for so long. Both are contributing to an expectation of weaker-than-normal North American harvest, and this was reflected in the most recent USDA yield forecast. In Brazil, fertilizer shipments appear poised to have dropped around 10% year-over-year, and La Nina remains a threat, despite the market counting on record-breaking corn and soybean production. Beyond grains and oilseeds, we're seeing food security issues play out in other crops as well. Staples like rice are also seeing significant production shortages, driving some countries like India to restrict exports. Because of this, we see a tight market for global grains and oilseeds continuing into 2023 and beyond. The global fertilizer market remains tight, with supply constraints in both potash and phosphate still unresolved. Global potash supply remains impacted by the significant reduction in Belarusian exports, which we think will be down 8 million tons in 2022. Of the 4 million tons they will export this year, we estimate about 2 million tons were shipped in the first quarter before the sanctions and Lithuania's decision to prevent Belarus from using its ports. Belarus exports are down significantly from the first quarter, and we do not expect much recovery through the rest of the year or for most of 2023. This means the market will continue to be short of potash in 2023. The phosphate market is also impacted by supply constraints. China production is down because of environmental concerns and exports are being restricted to ensure domestic availability and affordability. This year, we expect China's phosphate exports will be down by up to 5 million tons. Those restrictions could extend through at least the first half of 2023 and possibly beyond as China prioritizes securing domestic food supply and meeting growing industrial demand. While global channel inventories of phosphate and potash remain below historic norms, certain regions, especially in the areas where we do most of our business, saw inventories build in the first half of the year. But prices have retreated back to levels low enough to entice growers to step back into the market. We expect inventories to continue working lower through the end of the year and into early 2023. U.S. fall application has been trending back towards normal levels. We believe we could end the season with inventories significantly depleted, especially for phosphates. The U.S. is also experiencing low water levels on the Mississippi River, which is delaying supply coming through New Orleans. In Brazil, the higher priced inventory built during the first half of the year has slowed third quarter shipments. But sentiment is improving. Prices have retreated enough to encourage sales and we expect inventories will end the year much the same as where they started. The barter ratio suggests we're approaching a much more constructive environment for demand. In India, importers are taking advantage of the price pullback in phosphates India's phosphate inventory is still low, while farmer demand remains strong. Government subsidies remain at a level that is supportive of phosphate imports, but are likely to leave the country short of adequate supply of potash. To summarize, the strength of crop prices and more affordable fertilizer prices suggest nutrient demand will recover from the summer lull we experienced during the third quarter. Given the constructive ag backdrop, we believe our business is well positioned to benefit. In our phosphates business, Hurricane Ian forced us to shut down operations late in the third quarter, which delayed shipments at the end of September. Our team performed admirably and was able to get our Florida operations back up and running quickly following the hurricane. We estimate the shortfall in production to be in the range of 200,000 tons. Looking forward, We now expect fourth quarter sales to be in the range of 1.7 to 2 million tons. Our phosphate business is expected to benefit from lower raw material prices in the fourth quarter, particularly as low sulfur prices start flowing through our costs. We expect a fourth quarter benefit of $40 to $45 per ton from lower raw materials in our North American phosphate business over the costs in the third quarter. In our potash business, We are realizing the benefits of improved volumes from Esterhazy and from the addition of Colonze. 11 of the 13 planned miners are now running at Esterhazy, and improved operating rates at Colonze together are driving higher volumes. We anticipate some turnarounds during the fourth quarter that will impact total production, but expect sales volumes to be 2 to 2.2 million tons. Mosaic Fertilizantes continues to be a very good business. having earned $1.2 billion in EBITDA over the last 12 months. High inventories built during the second quarter led to slower than initially expected demand during the third quarter, as shipments typically seen during quarter three didn't materialize. But pricing trends towards the end of the third quarter reached a level that is beginning to drive shipments, and we've begun seeing that in our business. Some of the third quarter buyer hesitancy is impacting the fourth quarter, but we expect trends to begin normalizing as we finish out the year. Before moving on, I'd like to address the next iteration of our transformation process. Over the last three years, we've extracted significant cost efficiencies in Brazil, lowered our cost profile in the potash business with transition to Esterhazy K3, and benefited from the combination of support functions across North America. Our next area of focus is the realization of efficiencies through a digital transformation of how we manage our business. In our release last night, we introduced our Global Digital Acceleration Project, an initiative that will transform how we use data to manage a complex business across our global footprint. This effort will upgrade our core systems and allow for more seamless integration across sales, production, supply chain, and global support functions. Over the next several years, the total cost will be about $200 to $250 million, split roughly evenly between SG&A and capital expenditures. As a result of this transformation, we expect to realize significant benefits in our sales and production planning and our cost and capital management. Similar to our early transformation efforts, this initiative will continue the trend of adding shareholder value We expect this investment will have a payback in the range of three to four years. Finally, I want to reiterate that we remain committed to our capital allocation strategy. Later this month, we expect to retire the remaining $550 million of long-term debt that completes our goal of $1 billion of long-term debt reduction. Our CapEx expenditures expectation this year remains unchanged at $1.3 billion. and all remaining free cash flow after these commitments will be returned to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. During the quarter, we returned roughly $670 million to shareholders, which included $600 million of share repurchases. Over the last year, we've reduced our share count from approximately 380 million shares to 340 million shares. Putting all of this together, our outlook is quite strong. The global agriculture market continues to point to tight supply and demand for grains and oilseeds. We've strengthened our balance sheet, our team has recovered from Hurricane Ian in Florida, our potash business continues to benefit from our low-cost position at Esterhazy, and the flexibility gained from restarting Colonze. Our Brazil distribution business has a significant and growing footprint in an important agricultural market. We have positioned ourselves to maximize value across our business, and this has allowed us to return significant capital to shareholders. With that, let's move on to the fireside chat portion of our call. Paul?

Thanks, Chuck. Similar to last quarter, before we open the lines for live Q&A, we're going to address some of the most common questions that came in last night. First, we received several questions on our general view of both the potash and phosphate markets. Where are we most optimistic and where do we continue to see risk as we move into 2023?

Thanks, Paul. I'm going to hand this over to Jenny for some detail here, but let me summarize by saying we're very positive on both markets as both remain supply constrained. Ag fundamentals remain strong and fertilizer prices have moderated from the previous peak seen earlier this year, which is driving a return to more historic levels. So, Jenny, can you give us some detail?

I'd like to start from North America. The warm and dry weather has allowed farmers to go to the field for application with a wide open window. And as of today, we are still saying products are going to the ground. This improved farm economics and affordability has encouraged farmers to put down their phosphate and potash in the fall. In fact, we started to get customers' inquiries and the requests for the spring season demand. We sold a block of phosphate to one of our major customers yesterday. As their customers, the farmers, have come to the table to buy products with the concern of the potential logistic issues for the spring supply and very strong cash flow the farmers are having to manage before end of the year. So a good and normal fall applications are setting a good stage for the inventory drawdown in North America and set a good stage for spring season in 2023. Moving over to Brazil, the barter ratios have improved significantly with the moderation of fertilizer prices and elevated commodity prices. We are saying the Brazilian customers are re-engaging in the purchases in order to prepare the coming safrinha seasons, and the inventories are coming down. Moving over to India, the farm economics have been very strong this year with the support from their government. The monsoon has also been helpful as we see demand increases, especially for phosphate. The recently announced subsidy program from the Indian government has been very supportive to their phosphate input and also consumption. We are seeing steady buy-ins from Indian customers on PAP recently at $750 per ton level. With the strong demand in Q4 and getting into 2023, we continue to see the supply constraints for both phosphate and potash. On phosphate, we expect that Chinese export control will continue as we get into 2023 as the Chinese government to ensure the domestic supply availability and that their farmers to be able to get fertilizers for their food production. And there's very little new capacities coming online in phosphate production in 2023. Similarly to potash, we envision Belarus and Russia's supply will remain constrained in 2023, and the alternatives elsewhere will not be able to ramp up quickly to offset the continued constraints from that part of the world. To summarize, as you mentioned, Jacques, we are very positive to both phosphate and potash as we move into 2023.

The next question is on channel inventories for both potash and phosphates. Can you provide some detail on recent channel inventory levels and what we expect for the balance of the year and early 2023?

Thanks, Paul. I'm going to hand this one straight over to Jenny. Jenny?

Sure, Chuck. The inventory level in most parts of the world are pretty low. In some of the regions, like in Europe, the inventory level is really, really low given the supply situation in 2022. I probably want to provide some color on the inventory situation in North America and Brazil where we believe most of the questions about. In North America, for both phosphate and potash, the current channel inventory are about average relative to historical norm at the same time of this year. As of yesterday, our upper country warehouse capacity for phosphate has come down to 30% used, and for potash, that have come down to 50 percent used. This level of the imagery are right at the same level as we see historically at this point of time. As we are saying, good known fall application, the channel imagery are expected to come down further. I will also want to remind ourselves, logistics remain very challenging in North America, particularly on the river. which highlights the unique strength of Mosaic's asset, which can serve North America by both rail and barges. Move over to Brazil. Since the war started in the first quarter, a lot of Brazilian customers rushed to buy products from all around the world in order to ensure their supply. As a result of this rushed buying, we are saying a very high inventory building at port in Brazil started in July. That inventory at port has gradually slowed down over the last few months. By end of October, we are saying that inventory at port has come down by 35% versus the peak in the end of July. The other thing that I want to mention is the import shipment to Brazil. In the middle of the year, the vessels coming to Brazil had to wait for over eight weeks to unload product because the port's warehouses are so full. Now the waiting time has come down to less than two weeks. That's a signal. And in the meantime, we are seeing re-export vessels for both potash and phosphate. With that, we believe the market reached to the bottom in Brazil.

Jack, the next question is on the status of our potash production increases, especially given what we've seen with recent demand and price trends. Are we committed to continuing to increase production in 2023?

Thank you, Paul. Let me start by talking about Esterhazy. Esterhazy has been a 10-year plan, and in that plan, we not only brought out a new mine at K3, but fully intended to bring on an extra million tons of production which was aligned with the capacity of the K1 and K2 mills. So as we talk about that, we've always looked at Esterhazy as being our most efficient, lowest cost operation. So yes, we absolutely will expand the capacity of Esterhazy's K3 mine to meet the capacity of the mill. In terms of Colonse, we see an immediate need for those tons as the gap in capacity Supply from Belarus has meant there's been an opportunity for us and through Campotex exporting more product. That near-term need we expect will continue into 2023, so we certainly see a need for Colanzi in the near term. Bringing that production on has been relatively inexpensive, likely in the range of $50 per capacity tonne. So on that basis, that's paid off over a matter of months. So how will we look at it as we go forward? We will always be focused on working towards value, not volume. And as such, we will meet the needs of the market and no more.

The fourth question we should cover is on Fertilizante's gross margins in the fourth quarter. How should investors think about the impact of cost inflation in Brazil across our production and distribution businesses, But what are the key takeaways on costs?

Thank you, Paul. Yes, inflation is showing up in our cost structure through the increased price of commodities, labor, and inputs, as well as our raw materials. We expect overall the impact on our cost structure to be around 15%. Our distribution business in Brazil benefited by matching low-cost inventory with high-priced sales in Q2. We saw a reversal of that in the third quarter. For a distribution business... Due to the timing of purchases, a step down in gross margin per ton is expected. However, even with that, we are still seeing gross margins above our historic norms. With that, operator, can we open the call to questions from the audience?

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit yourself to only one question.

And at this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. And the first question will come from Steve Byron with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Jock, you were talking about lower pricing kind of incentivizing farmers to start to purchase again. Is that what was delaying it or were they just simply deferring purchases because prices were falling and now that it's showing some stabilization, there could be a bit of a flood of purchasing going on from here going forward. Is that reasonable?

Yeah, thank you, Steve. And good morning. Certainly, as prices are declining, Nobody wants to step into a market. There's necessary caution. I would argue probably when the prices were higher, there was also a psychological or sentimental response. The economics of planting and using fertilizer never went negative. So it isn't a matter of the fundamentals. It was a matter of the sentiment, I would think, at some point. And then as the price has declined, as you suggest, the buyers take a step back and wait. If they think the price is going to be lower tomorrow, they'll wait and start buying when they absolutely need to. I think The indication now is the price has, in fact, stabilized. It's stabilized at a price where they can see easy value, if you will, and so they're stepping back in, and absolutely we expect there will be a pretty steady buying. Remember, at least in North America, though, we are in the fall season, so they are taking a price risk for next spring. So there might be a little more caution in terms of coming all in, but we're seeing good movement, and that indicates that they believe that this is good value, and that'll continue.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I guess... My question is, thinking about your market outlook into 2023 with the increases that you're forecasting in potash and phosphate shipments, how should we think about Mosaic's ability to grow shipments in excess of the market, lapping some of the production issues this year, the increased capacity at Esterhazy? I mean, what's a rough framework, Jock, for how much production for you can be up in a market that has higher shipments next year.

Yeah, thanks, Adam, and good morning. If I think about 2023, starting with potash, and we've been saying this, and with the lack of sales coming out of Belarus, we do see that the market's going to have to ration supply which does, as you mentioned, bring up an opportunity for us to potentially move more product. I will say that North America, we expect to stay relatively flat. It's not a high growth market. So this is all an export opportunity, if you will. The challenge there are twofold. One is, do we get to the right markets that really need it? And then the other question is, can we even move it? So those are the first points. You know, the supply chain is at its limit right now, and we struggle to get the tons out, particularly, say, in the first quarter, which I think everyone sees problems getting product out of Canada in the first quarter with winter and all the rest. And then it comes down to what's the production capacity. We have, I think, developed real great flexibility there with Esther Hazy now reaching what I would call its full capacity, bringing on Kalonze to augment that capacity and give us some flexibility so that we can hit the seasonality as well as the increased demand. So I think we're well positioned there. I can't give you a specific number at this stage of what we think the year is going to bring for But, I mean, we're looking at a global market of, you know, 64 million tons next year in potash, up probably a little bit off this year. I think this year we might have been as low as 62. So we do see an improvement in the market. We see the rush of tons that came in the first quarter from Russia and Belarus are probably not coming, though a good opportunity for us in that first and second quarter certainly of next year and then throughout the year. In terms of phosphates, we're probably a little more production limited in phosphates. I mean, we're running those assets, but between the limitations of the resource base, whatnot, we don't have an expansion opportunity really there. So we expect that to stay similar in that sort of eight maybe eight and a half, nine million tons of capacity. How well we utilize those will depend on the market. And so our expectation is our utilization will be quite high next year. And in both those cases, we're looking forward to being very well sold, if you will, and having high utilization of all our assets. And that would include our production assets in Brazil, of course, as well.

Chris. The next question will come from Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. I guess just given consensus seems to be that the market will be short something like 5 to 8 million tons of potash next year. I'm curious where you think support level is for pricing for potash in that environment. Just given your 4Q expectations of around $600 per ton, do you think pricing moves up from here as inventories come down or is there a support level you would think about? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Josh. If I think about prices, I think there's really, at this stage, it's going to be sentiment and fundamentals that are really going to be the limitation to prices. I would argue that what we saw, particularly in Brazil, when the price of potash went to, say, $1,200, the Economics was still okay, but it was starting to get pretty difficult for the Brazilian farmer. And the one that they probably work off more is their barter ratio, which became quite elevated. So in other words, it was costing them a lot more of their production to buy the inputs than it had in previous years. So I think there's a risk if you go too high in price that you will actually start really destroying demand. So, look, I think there is a great opportunity for a, you know, at the same reasonable barter ratios as we've had with elevated crop prices that we can have very good margins and that the market should be able to move up from here. I don't believe it's going to move to 1,200, but I think there's probably some good room to move from where we are today.

The next question will come from John Roberts with Credit Suisse.

Please go ahead.

Thank you. Actually, it's Edlin Rodriguez. Jenny did an excellent job highlighting the strengths of both potash and phosphate. Granted, it's always difficult to choose between your children, but if you have to differentiate between potash and phosphate, which one do you believe will prove more resilient price-wise over the next three to six months?

Yeah, thanks, Edlin.

So, yes, we love all our children, as you highlight. If I look at the market fundamentals, and they're both strong, but clearly today Potash has a very good position in that as the slightly smaller of the two markets, and it has the bigger market, supply disruption. The supply disruption in China, while we believe will continue through 2023 or the export restrictions out of China, we expect those to continue. But that's 5 million-ish tons on a 70-something million ton market, where in potash you're talking about an 8 million ton decline on a 70 million ton market. So as you think about it from that perspective, the problems in Belarus in terms of exports are A, less likely to be resolved, and B, more significant to the overall market. So if I had to be asked which of the two had higher resilience, you'd probably say at this stage it would be the potash market.

Thank you. The next question will come from Christopher Parkinson with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you so much. Jack, just, you know, taking a step back and looking at the various costs in both of your businesses, in potash, it seems like, you know, SRNZ is running well and Comté is, you know, getting back on track. And on the, you know, on the phosphate side, you know, you have relative stability right now in NH3, Faustina Ops, and then, you know, a decline in the sulfur price. So just, you know, on any just preliminary basis, how should we be thinking about the margins or the strip margins of phosphates as we hit on 23? What are the big puts and takes in your team's view? Thank you so much.

Thanks, Chris. So if I'm thinking about potash, I'll just hit potash real quick because I think you've touched on that. In potash, it's Two things that matter. One is where the product comes from. So obviously running Colanzi at a little higher cost. The other thing that we have to take into account is Bell Plain is highly dependent on the price of natural gas. It uses arguably some 30 million MMBTUs per year of natural gas. So if you add a couple of dollars to the natural gas price, it has a pretty big impact on that operation. So other than that, though, as you mentioned, the potash pricing or the potash cost is pretty stable. If we then look at phosphates, you know, and quite frankly, we are seeing some inflation in both mining costs and processing. Mining, the distances are getting longer. the grades probably over the years is declining slightly, so you've got some costs in there that come up, but they pale in comparison to when you look at the raw materials. If we think about $1,000 ammonia, that represents $200 on the cost of a ton of phosphates. If you think about a $400 sulfur, that represents about a $180 cost on top. So you could have, you know, at the peak, there was probably $420 a ton in our, or sorry, $380 a ton in our phosphate costs just on those two raw materials. Now, they've retracted back to $100 for sulfur and I think our average ammonia cost is now in the range of $600 if you take into account our own production and all the rest. So that's stable and I think we talked about a $40 or $50 decline in raw materials costs and that will fall straight to the margins. So assuming flat prices, you could expect a margin to increase by about $40 to $50. And so we'll see where the price goes in the next quarter.

But that's kind of how that plays out.

The next question will come from Jeff Sikakis with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. It's a two-part question. In your slide deck, you said that you were contemplating a special dividend. Why is it that you're contemplating a special dividend given your very low valuation and your high free cash flow generation, wouldn't continuing share repurchases be a higher return for your shareholder? And second, I was hoping you would comment on the possibility of Chinese phosphate rock capacity expansions or DAP or MAP expansions in 2024.

Okay, so first one first, special dividend.

I think we've been consistent in saying that we would look at both dividends, regular dividends, share buybacks, and special dividends. So far, we have definitely focused on the share buybacks, and one of the main reasons for that is Exactly as you say, we believe our shares offer as good of value as anything we can think of, and so that's a good place to return money to shareholders. At the same time, we have to consider all of our shareholders. Some of the long-term shareholders would like to see income. I would say as a shareholder myself, I don't mind the idea of seeing some of it come back as stable income, and quite frankly, If I decide, as I think I would, that the value of that meant I could buy more shares, I'm free to do that as well. So I don't think the idea of a combination is bad. We certainly have focused more on share buybacks, but I think we want to make sure we look at all of our shareholders. And if a small portion of our return to shareholders is through a special dividend when we're doing well, I think that's fair too. And obviously, on a yearly basis, we'll look at our overall dividend and make sure that we give a fair but affordable dividend there, too. Second question, P-ROC. I'm not sure I 100% understood the question, Jeff, but there's no question in general that phosphate rock mining in China... has been restricted greatly because of its proximity to the Yangtze River. And so for environmental reasons, they've done a lot of restrictions on mining in China. So if anything, I would argue that China is probably somewhat resource constrained from a phosphate rock process and so We don't expect expansion there. And what we've seen as well in terms of finished fertilizers is they have dropped their capacity significantly and shut down plants, particularly, again, along the Yancey River, and have not rebuilt them. So I think their capacity is down about 25% now. And in terms of their exports, two things are going on there. More product is going to industrial, and particularly purified phosphoric acid. I can't help but mention again the growth of lithium iron phosphate batteries in China is just incredible. It seems like that may well be the future of batteries is the more economic lithium iron phosphate rather than nickel, iron, or nickel, lithium, cobalt. So putting all that together, we see a Chinese government needing to make sure fertilizer stays affordable in China, and they're doing that by restricting exports. And so we think that'll continue. I hope that answers the question you were asking. If you're asking about potash, I think what we've seen is Qinghai Lake has actually decreased in capacity over time. And I suspect that's just the quality of the resource and what they can extract on a year-by-year basis.

The next question will come from PJ Juvcar with Citi. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Good morning, Jock and team. Just a couple of quick questions. One you kind of partially answered earlier. I had a question on, you know, raw materials, particularly sulfur impact on phosphates. I guess my question there would be, you know, you expect to keep that benefit, you said, straight to the bottom line. What gives you confidence that it falls to the bottom line and you don't have to share that with your customers? And secondly, just on this LFP batteries that you just mentioned, you know, my understanding is that the use of phosphate in LFP, it's a very small part of phosphate that goes into LFP. Do you really think that LFP is going to have an impact on the phosphate markets? Thank you.

Excuse me. Thanks, PJ. Okay, so raw materials first, lithium iron phosphate second. So when I say that the benefit of the raw materials will fall to the bottom line, Look, in general, that's a flow-through to the customer. But what we find, of course, is always supply and demand impacts. So in the case of a tight market, more of that sticks with us. In the case of a sloppy market, if you will, the customer takes all of that benefit. Today we see the market as relatively tight, so we think we can maintain our margins and potentially benefit from that falling cost. In terms of is LFP battery a significant use of phosphates, what we're seeing today I think is I think we've gone from 100,000 tons of purified phosphoric acid, this is China alone, moving up in a couple of years to about 400,000 tons of purified phosphoric acid. And even year to date, the LFPs has gone up to 670,000. And we expect 2022 will be a million tons total. So what we're seeing is a you know, an extremely quick increase in consumption, which we think over time definitely will have an impact on the supply and demand balance for the product. It is a big industrial use for phosphates.

The next question will come from Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Market.

Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. I have two questions. Maybe I'll ask them one after the other, if that's okay. So, sorry. So, Mosaic had a relatively lower... Question rule.

You know that.

That's three in a row. What's that?

Sorry, Joel. I'm just kidding. Go ahead.

Oh, sorry. I missed that. Sorry. Mosaic had a relatively lower potash sales volume decline in Q3 than your capex parts in Nutrien. You're also going to flat volumes in Q4 versus Nutrien guiding lower So, I mean, you're just a sponsor for yourself, but you're linked on the offshore with Campotex. So, are you, like, you just said that you think that potash volumes in the channel in North America are normal, but do you think that the pause in purchases in the North American channel is a longer period than the offshore market?

Yeah, look, first of all, I can't comment on anyone other than Mosaic, obviously. And I also don't know the differences in selling strategies or RevRec and all that. So making any kind of comparison, what I will say is what we saw in North America in the third quarter was a pretty good slowdown. What we... did also see, though, was a reduction of imports. I mean, imports year-to-date are probably down by 50% or close to a million tons. I suspect we had a pretty good uptake of our summer fill program, or considering how the markets played out, we had a pretty good uptake of our summer fill program. So we think our customers came to the table and again, saw good value and saw that they were willing to price, and that was a good thing. So we rev-recked what we think was reasonable considering the market. In terms of going forward, again, there's just a high level of uncertainty of where that market's going to be. And I would argue that that pertains both to Campotex and to... In the North American market, we expect a decent fall season. If we do better than that, hey, all the better, but the expectation is a decent or normal fall season, and that's exactly what we're seeing. We expect to see the inventory work its way down throughout the season, which is good. I think Jenny said earlier we're down to 50% of our in-market inventory, so that's been run down significantly to where a normal level for middle of November. So we're seeing a very normal sort of play out, and that is what we would expect. Now, we had a summer-filled program. We didn't discount or anything, so I think that just says the fundamentals are there. And, you know, people are ready to buy.

The next question will come from Andrew Wong with RBC Capital Market. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. So I just had actually a few questions on Fertilizantes. I find it a little bit difficult sometimes for us to get some good visibility there. In phosphate production, it looks like it's kind of trended a little bit lower in the past few quarters now. Can you maybe shed some light on what's going on there and what your expectations are on production going forward? And then on gross margins going into Q4, if I'm understanding the commentary correctly, it sounds like it'll still be relatively quite high, but maybe sequentially down into Q3, even if you include the wholesale market. margins. Is that correct? And then just the last one.

Can you repeat the second piece, Andrew? I didn't quite get the Q4 question.

Well, just wondering, like margins going to Q4, the commentary sounded like it'll still be very strong historically, but maybe down sequentially versus Q3. Sounds like there's some pressure on distribution. And then just wondering if you include the wholesale sales, which are typically higher margin, would the margin still be down sequentially? And then just on costs, yeah.

Costs. Costs, margin, and distribution.

Sure, sure. And just like what you expect going forward, like, you know, should these costs this year that we're seeing in Ferrazantes, is that what we should expect going forward? Thanks.

Okay. Okay, that's a brainful. Let me try and hit these one at a time. First of all, Phosphate production, I guess we have over the last couple of years up and down a little bit on phosphate production. Some of that obviously is from time to time reliability, from time to time moving in different areas of the mining, et cetera, which will happen. But the other piece is the market started moving pretty slow and we ran into where our sales out of production haven't really been up to where we might have loved them, and as such, you've got to match your production to your sales. We've had a situation, particularly if you look at single superphosphate, SSP, where we're actually pretty loaded up on our inventory, and so continuing to run against a full inventory doesn't make a whole lot of sense. From a cost perspective, that hurts your unit cost. So there's a couple things in play there. In terms of our, when I was talking about margin, I just want to highlight, we take positions, and normally we try and keep our positions, you know, fairly balanced, but you tend to take a position as much as a couple months ahead of when you sell. So if you are in a declining market and you buy, you know, in, you buy in July and you sell in September, you tend to take that price risk for those two months. If the prices are going up, you have extraordinary, or you have gains in that positioning, and if the prices are going down, you have losses in that positioning. So if we look at Brazil right now, you're seeing that we had very good margins in quarter two, that reversed to some extent in quarter three, although as I said in the earlier comments, the margins are still looking pretty strong, and I think I would credit that with our product management teams, not only globally, but in Brazil specifically, who are able to understand the market dynamic, decide how far ahead or how late they want to address the pricing and how much inventory they're holding. So I mean, there's a great art to that. As a production company, however, there's limitations on how much of that you can really do. So I think that answers most of what you asked there, Andrew.

The next question is a follow-up from Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Sorry, I wanted to follow up that question. It's a tough one, but, Jock, so Nutrien is going to add some tons going forward here, and obviously their campus allocation is set because that capacity, I assume, proving realm is already done. So for them to place those extra tons has to be all in North America. And then you said that demand might be 64 million tons next year based on your preliminary guess. up only a couple million from 2022, assuming Bethune has a little bit more, that's capable of that, assuming Israeli Chemical has a little bit more, assuming ICL has a little bit more, assuming Belarus is going to get a little bit out more, who knows what happens with Eurochem. It would seem that Nutrient can't place all those tons. So I guess I'm trying to figure out, I don't have an answer, but how do you think about all this? And if Kalant is a swing mine, Are you cautious to want to run it at the beginning of the year, full out, if it looks like, based on your own numbers, it may not be needed?

Yeah, so as you aptly mentioned, I can't and won't contemplate either my competitor or partner or whatever and what their plans are. I think you have to ask their new CEO. However, let me say how we view the market. Like I said, we see next year that that 8 million tons won't come back, yes. I'm sure ICL will try and push out what they can. I'm sure Eurochem seems to be reasonably effective in getting to market. I will say that Eurocali seems to be not as active in the market this year as previous, and there's been a couple of rumors and whatnot about why, but I can't tell you. That would be, again, a question for them. And the Belarusians, as long as they can't get product through the Lithuanian ports, they're going to be restricted to either a long rail haul to St. Petersburg, assuming they can get port capacity there, or a long and complicated rail haul to China, which they have done relatively successfully. I think they've probably been able to move a million and a half-ish tons to China through that rail link. But with all of that together, we see a supply side, even with extra tons from Campotex, we see a supply side in the range of 64 million tons. And from our perspective, if the market will have to find a way to be at that 64 million tons. So in other words, we think there's good need or there's need for all the Colanzi tons next year. What happens beyond that, who knows? Again, I will emphasize with Colanzi, it cost us virtually, you know, a couple of months' production to restart it. So we're making a good margin at Colonse right now, and the downside risk of restarting it was virtually zero, and the upside opportunity was large. So to us, that's a perfect value-adding decision.

This concludes our question-and-answer session.

I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Jock O'Rourke for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Well, to conclude our call, I would like to emphasize the strength of Mosaic's financial performance. We delivered excellent results, and our outlook remains strong. Global agricultural market conditions remain constructive, and tight supply of grain and oil seeds is very likely to continue for the foreseeable future. As a result, fertilizer demand remains strong and supply constraints persist. We're using this opportunity to return significant capital to shareholders, to invest in our business, and to strengthen our balance sheet. Mosaic is in an excellent position to continue to benefit from compelling business conditions throughout 2023 and beyond. Thank you for joining the call. Have a good and safe day and go out and vote. Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.