Yara International Asa

Welcome to your SFOA quarter results presentation. Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Svein Tore Holsetter and our CFO, Tor Eber. There'll be a conference call at 1 p.m. also time where you can dial in and out questions. Login details can be find on our web page under Investors. And with that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Svein Tore Holsetter.

Thank you, Maria. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And thank you very much for joining our fourth quarter presentation. As always, we start by looking at our safety performance. And the TRI has continued on an improving trend and reached an all time low at the year end. And then in 2024, we had our 10 year anniversary for our Safe by Choice way of working. And we're now below one for TRI and that marks a significant milestone in our continuous work to improve safety. However, safety requires continuous focus and we still have incidents and we still have accidents that should have been avoided and could have been avoided. And we have had a weaker start of 2025 than we did in 2024. But we will solve this with our Safe by Choice way of working and we will continue to work on reaching our ambition of zero accidents. JAN has delivered a strong operational performance in the fourth quarter. We've achieved record high production and safety performance as it just went through. And we've delivered on our emission reduction target as well. At the same time, we're delivering on our cost reduction program. We had $90 million of reduction in fixed costs since launch. And combined with the improved deliveries, we have partly offset the effect of lower market prices resulting in an EBTA excluding special items down 10% this quarter. However, we do see improving nitrogen markets going into 2025. We're proposing an annual dividend of Norwegian Kroner five per share to the annual general meeting. Our top priority remains to increase free cashflow and shareholder returns. We're pleased to report a record production performance in 2024. And I want to give a huge credit to all my colleagues for this great achievement. We have produced all time high ammonia volumes. It's up .4% compared to last year. And that excludes major planned maintenance and curtailments. We have also produced a record high finished products volume and we're running our plants as effectively as possible. And this is a key to maximizing our production margins and also contributes to reducing our emission intensity. For 2024, our greenhouse gas intensity reached an all time low of 2.8, putting us on a good track to reach the 2025 target of 2.7. Turning now to the EBTA variance for the quarter. nitrogen prices are lower this quarter compared to a year ago while energy cost is fairly stable year over year, giving an overall negative margin impact on the EBITDA. Total volumes are up 5% main in Europe, reflecting increased premium deliveries. Fixed costs are $28 million lower than a year earlier and that's reflecting progress on our cost reduction program including both divestments and also the first wave of actions taken across Yara. Yara's capital allocation policy remains firm with an overarching objective to maintain a mid investment grade rating. Although underlying results for 2024 have improved compared with a year earlier, one of costs including restructuring costs and the impairment saw reported net income for 2024 ending at the same level as 2023. Furthermore, we ended the year with a net debt EBTA at 1.8 towards the higher end of our target range of one and a half to two times. On this basis, Yara proposes an annual dividend of Norwegian Kroner five per share for 2024. However, we remain confident that with the combination of cost reduction, portfolio optimization and a tightening nitrogen market that Yara's financial position is set to strengthen with increased cash flow and sustainable profitability. This in turn will enable funding of value accretive growth and increased shareholder returns. As part of this, Yara will consider further cash distributions in line with our capital allocation policy. Maximizing long-term shareholder value is the sole driver for Yara's capital allocation. Over time, this means both improving earnings in our core business and achieving value accretive growth. However, improving returns is a core focus irrespective of potential future growth plans. This includes cost and capex optimization, re-prioritizing assets and markets and potential divestments to grow free cash flow. Whether redeployment of capital is ultimately made through dividend payments or investing in large scale growth price depends solely on what generates the strongest long-term value creation for our shareholders. And investments in large scale growth projects will require excellent strategic fit, strong returns and sound funding. Funding such investments will require multiple levers to enable flexibility and cost efficiency, both through the product funding period and the market cycle. There is generally strong interest in ammonia growth projects enabling Yara to explore equity partnerships and different potential structures as part of a funding plan. I will now hand over to our CFO, Tor Gevr.

Thank you, Svante Oude. We've already seen that underlying EBITDA is down 10% year over year, mainly due to lower market prices. Fourth quarter 2024 results were also impacted by several non-cash effects, including negative special items of $200 million and $230 million in operating income and a currency loss of $260 million. This resulted in a negative net income in fourth quarter of $290 million compared with a positive $246 million a year earlier. Underlying earnings per share decreased more than EBITDA, primarily reflecting a close to zero effective tax rate on a loss before tax of $292 million compared with a year earlier when we had a 20% effective tax rate on an income before tax of $246 million. The main reason for the low effective tax rates this quarter is that we have not recognized deferred tax assets in all subsidiaries due to uncertainty of recoverability. The negative special items and tax impacts I just described resulted in a ROIC of only .5% for the quarter in isolation. However, for the full year, ROIC was 5% on a 12-month rolling basis, showing an improvement from .9% in 2023, but clearly with more work needed to reach a satisfactory return level. Turning to operating capital, the increase this quarter reflects seasonally higher inventory volumes in addition to increasing market prices. And there was a similar effect to that also a year earlier. Cash from operations was stable year over year as the lower earnings after tax were offset by a lower operating capital increase. Finally, our investments are lower, reflecting strict capital discipline with lower CAPEX. We had a 5% increase overall in crop nutrition deliveries compared with a year earlier, mainly thanks to a significant increase in nitrates and MPK deliveries in Europe. In America's lower commodity deliveries in Brazil were offset by higher premium product deliveries across the region. In Africa and Asia, deliveries were down mainly due to flooding in Thailand, which impacted application. Industrial deliveries were slightly higher, mainly within chemical applications. And for clean ammonia, deliveries were slightly lower due to limited availability from our ammonia plants in the US and Australia. Turning to our cost reduction program, we've seen good progress since the launch of the program with a total reduction of $90 million when comparing with the run rate or rather the last 12 months as of the end of second quarter 2024. The next phase of FTE reductions is already initiated, including a voluntary process carried out in Norway during the quarter, achieving approximately 20% FTE reduction. In most of our locations, FTE reductions will be implemented during 2025, and we anticipate the full savings to be gradually phased in during mid to end 2025 with a restructuring cost of approximately $130 million. Longer term fixed cost targets are under development, and we continue to assess further cash release and return improvement opportunities. Our capex for 2024 ended at $1.1 billion, $100 million below guidance, reflecting strict prioritization of both maintenance and growth capex. The 2025 capex guidance remains at $1.2 billion, reflecting a cyclical low maintenance capex of $750 million and $450 million in growth capex, of which $300 million is committed. The committed growth capex is related to highly profitable projects that are progressing well, namely Sloyskill CCS, the new Yarra Vita plant in the UK, and the sulfuric acid project in Finland to safeguard our highly profitable NPK production. Uncommitted capex increases from 2026 onwards, representing significant financial capacity, which will only be allocated to projects with strong double digit returns and strong strategic fit. In addition, we'll continue reviewing our plant portfolio to further optimize capex. Together, optimization of maintenance and uncommitted growth capex represents significant funding capacity for value accretive investments and shareholder returns. We saw a slight increase in net debt through the quarter as cash earnings were more than offset by investments and the seasonal buildup of operating capital. The positive other category mainly reflects the non-cash effects, mainly recognition of pension plan assets, currency translation, and leasing impacts. Now let's take a look at our full year P&L statement. Compared to 2023, we had lower revenues and variable costs, mainly reflecting lower prices for both finished products and raw materials. Despite negative impacts from one-off costs, pension fund buyouts and impairments, operating income increased significantly compared with 2023. This reflects higher margins and deliveries, including a positive mix effect on delivered volumes. 2023 operating income was also impacted by inventory write downs, position losses, and impairment loss, the latter mainly for our Tatra plant in Belgium. In 2024, we recognized a non-cash currency loss of $321 million. Which is a translation loss on US debt positions, partly offset by gains on internal positions in other currencies. The effective tax rate in 2024 was high as tax losses in some countries are not recognized as deferred tax assets due to uncertainty of recoverability. Including these one-offs and non-cash items, our basic earnings per share decreased from 19.00 US cents per share in 2023 to five US cents per share in 2024. Looking at the balance sheet, total assets were 6% lower compared to 2023, mainly reflecting currency impact on non-current assets and lower current assets. Lower trade receivables mainly reflect lower prices, while the lower cash is driven by repayment of bonds. The change in equity is explained by currency translation and dividend payment. All in all, we've kept a solid balance sheet. Finally, for this section, let's take a look at the fundamentals for the nitrogen market. Going into 2025, nitrogen fundamentals are strong. The key factors are US nitrogen imports, Indian imports and Chinese exports. For US net nitrogen imports, they are lagging with below a quarter of a million tons of nitrogen imported season to date as of December, compared to a total estimated import need of approximately three million tons. In India, lower production, higher sales and lower imports indicate a 4.1 million ton lower inventory coverage compared to a year ago. And on the supply side, Chinese exports have been very limited in 2024. The sum of these factors has led to demand-driven price increases well above historical averages. And in addition, looking ahead the next couple of years, there are very limited urea capacity additions in the pipeline compared with trend consumption growth. We therefore expect nitrogen markets to tighten in the coming years. And with that, I will hand you back to Sven Torre.

Thank you very much, Torre. First, let's take a look at what is driving Yara's core nitrogen margins. Upgrading from gas to nitrate is at the core of our business and total margins. However, more than half of our ammonia production is based in Europe with a competitive disadvantage due to high feedstock costs. And this represents a clear opportunity to increase margins and further strengthen our core by shifting Yara's ammonia position downwards on the cost curve. And in order to better understand this opportunity, let's take a look at our ammonia balance in Europe. Firstly, we have annual ammonia production capacity of 4.7 million tons in Europe. Of this, roughly 2 million tons is consumed in urea production. This is captive ammonia consumption as urea production facilities are integrated ammonia production. The larger part of our ammonia consumption is in our nitrate and NPK plants, which require approximately 3.7 million tons of ammonia. These plants can, for the most part, run on imported ammonia. And this means that Yara currently has a structural net short position in Europe of roughly 1 million tons. Although at the global level, we have a long position of approximately 1 million tons. Yara is well set up to manage this position with its globally leading midstream ammonia position and infrastructures, where we source also ammonia partly from other Yara plants and partly from third party suppliers. Going forward, our European ammonia production is set to reduce by a further 1 million tons with several actions we have initiated, including mothballing of our hull plant, optimizing excess ammonia production in industrial plants and our intention to transform our tautricite in Belgium. This change in our European ammonia position presents an opportunity to optimize our sourcing while also increasing nitrate upgrading margins. This opportunity has two main components, improving margins and securing supply. Both are important to sustain and strengthen our high value nitrate and NPK business. Upgrading to nitrates based on low cost ammonia from the US looks like an attractive route to achieve this. As an example, upgrading nitrates based on US produced low carbon ammonia would enable both a more competitive feedstock cost and a decarbonization margin as well. Yara is in the unique position where it can use its competitive edge within ammonia to select its optimization and growth path solely based on shareholder returns. We're not locked to one path, but we'll choose a portfolio that maximizes long-term returns. Yara has a strong track record on ammonia investments with plants such as Tringen, Bell Plain, and Freeport all delivering consistently excellent returns. Yara has also shown restraint with regard to growth investments with unclear return profiles. So with a strong midstream position, we have an unrivaled position to understand and develop the entire ammonia value chain. In addition, we have a large offtake need for our European upgrading business. This makes Yara a natural partner for any ammonia project, whether it is for building or sourcing, for existing demand or new markets. Yara has 110 years experience in the nitrogen market and will utilize its experience and competitive edge when optimizing how to strengthen returns. So to summarize, the key focus of the whole organization is now to optimize our core operations to increase free cash flow and generate high returns to in order to fund improved shareholder returns and value accretive growth. We have made progress across all elements during 2024. Fixed costs are at $90 million lower at year end, reflecting good progress on cost reduction initiatives. And as Tor mentioned, we are continuously looking for opportunities for further reductions. We have made good progress on the portfolio optimization with both repurposing of plants and several minor divestments. We continue to mature our growth product portfolio and final investment decision is currently planned for first half of 2026. We are in no rush and we will continue to mature the business case, both from a financial and technical perspective. We continue to deliver strong premium generation and premium volumes. We see strong fundamentals for the nitrogen market with improving pricing into 2025. With limited Urea capacity additions, we also see longer term tightening nitrogen supply. Summarizing, we are very much on the right track to refocus our core operations and prepare for value accretive growth. This will support a future proof YARA with sustainable earnings and increased shareholder returns. So with that, I will now hand back to Maria.

Thank you, Sainte-Ore. I will just take the opportunity then to give a final reminder about the conference call starting at 1 p.m. also time. You can find dial-in details on yara.com under investors. That concludes today's presentation. Thank you for watching.