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Text: I'm Martin Jarosick, Vice President, Investor Relations for CF.
These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict.
Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statement.
More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance may be found in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our website.
Now let me introduce Tony Will, our President and CEO.
Yesterday, we posted our financial results for the first nine months of 2020, in which we generated adjusted EBITDA of just over $1 billion.
We feel good about our position as we near the end of the year.
This is because there can be significant shifts across quarters due to weather or other events.
However, that spikiness tends to smooth out over time so a longer time period provides a better picture of actual performance than focusing on an individual quarter.
As of today, with two months to go and most of the fall ammonia season still ahead of us, we continue to expect that our full year 2020 results will end up within plus or minus a few percentage points of our 2018 performance for adjusted EBITDA.
Our outlook hasn't changed since back in February when we first gave our expectations for the full year.
Overall, the CF team continues to execute exceptionally well.
Asset utilization remains high, and our sales volumes through nine months are new company record.
We also continue to efficiently convert EBITDA into free cash.
Most importantly, we are operating safely.
Our 12-month rolling recordable incident rate at the end of September was 0.17 incidents per 200,000 labor hours, which is a new company record and substantially better than industry benchmarks.
This is a tremendous accomplishment, and we're extraordinarily proud of our team's unwavering focus on safety, particularly in the face of the pandemic.
Speaking of which, our pandemic-related precautionary measures have been working well, and we have not had a single known transmission of the COVID-19 virus within any of our locations.
With these precautions in place, we were able to complete safely critical turnaround activity at several locations during the quarter.
As we look toward next year, the company is well positioned for the opportunities ahead.
As Bert will describe in a few moments, we expect solid global demand and widening energy spreads, which will create greater price realization opportunities during '21 compared to this year.
Given our position at the low end of the global cost curve, we believe these dynamics will support continued strong free cash flow generation.
We are very excited about our announcement last week and our commitment to the clean energy economy, which provides a real growth platform for the company.
As we discussed, hydrogen has emerged as a leading clean energy source to help the world achieve net zero carbon emissions, and ammonia is one of the most efficient ways to transport and store hydrogen.
Because CF is the world's largest producer of ammonia, we are uniquely positioned with our unparalleled asset base and technical knowledge to serve this developing demand.
As we decarbonize our network and aggressively scale our ability to produce green and low-carbon ammonia, we believe we will be able to realize the clean fuel value for ammonia rather than its nutrient value.
In doing so, we expect to realize a substantial premium compared to the value of ammonia as a fertilizer or a feedstock.
Last Thursday, we announced our first steps in seizing this growth opportunity with the green ammonia project at Donaldsonville as the centerpiece of initial investments.
We look forward to sharing our progress and our follow-on steps in the months ahead.
Hen Chris will follow to talk about our financial position and capital allocation before I return for some closing comments.
Year-to-date, the global nitrogen market has been incredibly resilient in light of the pandemic.
Demand for agricultural applications has grown in 2020, and industrial demand continues to recover from the disruptions in April and May.
Looking ahead to 2021, we expect solid global demand led by North America, India and Brazil.
We also project improving price dynamics as the global cost curve steepens with rising energy prices and wider energy spreads compared to North America.
We are forecasting approximately 90 million planted corn acres in the United States in 2021.
This is in line with the levels of the last 10 years and supported by improved farm economics due to higher corn futures, government payments and lower input prices.
If weather conditions allow, we would expect to have a strong fall ammonia season due to the farm economics I just described and the attractiveness of ammonia prices today compared to the other nitrogen products.
We expect that industrial demand will continue to recover in line with economic activity.
We believe industrial demand for ammonia has been mostly tied to the state of the economy due to the pandemic.
In contrast, demand for feed-grade urea and diesel exhaust fluid has been relatively resilient.
Our year-to-date DEF sales volumes are up 6% compared to 2019, which would have been difficult to foresee in April when economic activity and miles driven declined so dramatically.
Outside of North America, we continue to expect positive demand in most growing regions, particularly India and Brazil.
We believe India is likely to exceed nine million metric tons of urea imports through tenders in 2020.
We also expect demand for urea imports into Brazil of approximately 6.5 million metric tons will continue to be supported by improved farm incomes and no active domestic urea production.
As we look at our cost curve projection for the next year on slide 12, we see opportunities for greater price realizations during 2021 compared to this year.
In 2020, the convergence of global natural gas prices in the first half led to a largely flat global cost curve.
Formally, high-cost producers pursued this temporary margin opportunity available to them, increasing operating rates and pressuring product prices.
In recent months, energy prices have risen across the globe but at a much higher rate in Europe and Asia than in North America.
These higher gas costs and the steeper global cost curve that results increases opportunities for low-cost producers like CF to achieve greater price realizations.
Indeed, some of our most profitable years has been when our own natural gas costs were higher but energy spreads were wider.
We are well prepared as the nitrogen market dynamics adjust over the coming year and the direction of the global response to the pandemic becomes clearer.
For the first nine months of 2020, the company reported net earnings attributable to common stockholders of $230 million or $1.07 per diluted share.
EBITDA was $982 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $1 billion.
For the third quarter of 2020, we reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $28 million or $0.13 per diluted share.
EBITDA was $196 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $204 million.
As you know, the third quarter typically has our lowest realized prices, lowest volumes and highest level of maintenance and turnaround activity.
This quarter was no different.
However, both our year-to-date and quarterly results reflect the same overall factors: lower year-over-year global nitrogen prices partially offset by lower natural gas and SG&A costs.
On a trailing 12-month basis, net cash provided by operating activities was approximately $1.2 billion, and free cash flow was $756 million.
At the end of October, cash on the balance sheet was well over $600 million, and we are well positioned to fulfill our commitment to repay the remaining $250 million on our 2021 notes.
We expect capital expenditures for 2020 to be approximately $350 million as we maintain our high standards of reliability and safety.
We expect our capital budget will return to our typical $400 million to $450 million range in 2021 and beyond.
Each year, our capital -- capex budget includes not only turnarounds and other sustaining activities, but also investments in improvement projects that allow us to pursue strategic opportunities.
Recent examples from this lighter include the nitric acid expansion project announced this year and the diesel exhaust fluid unit completed in 2017, both at our Donaldsonville facility.
The green ammonia project at Donaldsonville will fit into this improvement portion of our capital expenditure budget over the next three years, which allows us to maintain our overall capex at normal levels.
That said, we expect that additional steps we will take to enable the production of green and low-carbon ammonia will require investment beyond this $400 million to $450 million annual range.
We are excited to invest in the growth of the company given the expected profile -- expected return profile, and we see a lot of opportunities ahead to do just that.
So after the repayment of the $250 million in 2021 notes, we would expect that our primary use of cash in the coming years will be in support of our strategic focus on clean hydrogen and ammonia projects.
With that, Tony will provide some closing remarks before we open the call to Q&A.
Our team continues to demonstrate their focus, operational excellence and the strength of our business during the most unusual of years.
I also want to recognize the winner of our annual Wilson Award for Excellence in Safety.
This year's winner is our Courtright Nitrogen Facility in Ontario for their deployment of wireless technology to better predict and prevent equipment failures.
This award is a great reflection of our safety culture at work, and I encourage everyone to view the impressive ideas from this year's finalists, which can be found on our website.
As the world focuses on decarbonization, hydrogen will be a key clean energy source, and ammonia is a critical enabler for the storage and transport of hydrogen.
CF Industries is the world's largest producer of ammonia, and we will leverage our significant competitive advantages, which include the strength of our team, our operational excellence, technical knowledge and unparalleled asset base, advantages that will enable us to deliver green and low-carbon ammonia at scale years faster and billions of dollars less capital-intensive than many others looking at this opportunity.
This will propel us to the forefront of hydrogen supply, being a leader in producing clean fuels for a sustainable world and providing a growth platform to create shareholder value.

user
compname reports nine month 2020 net earnings of $230 million, ebitda of $982 million.
q3 loss per share $0.13.

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