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Text: I'm Martin Jarosick, Vice President-Investor Relations.
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 statements.
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.
Strong nitrogen demand and lower overall production have tightened the global supply demand balance, supporting much higher prices than in recent years.
At the same time, energy spreads between North America and high-cost regions have expanded considerably, increasing margin opportunities for our cost advantaged network.
These factors helped drive an increase in adjusted EBITDA of nearly 25% compared to last year, and we produced our strongest first half financial results in six years.
Additionally, the business continues to generate strong free cash flow, giving us tremendous flexibility as we focus on achieving investment grade metrics and executing our clean energy initiatives.
The first half was not without its challenges, including the natural gas-driven production interruptions we described on the first quarter call.
The first half also saw a continued demonstration of the harm the UAN industry in the United States faces from subsidized and dumped imports from Russia and Trinidad.
Until the last few years, UAN earned a substantial premium to other upgraded nitrogen products due to the higher capital investment required to produce it and the meaningful agronomic and operational benefit it offers to farmers.
As you can see from our recent results, UAN now trades at a significant discount to all upgraded nitrogen products due to unfair trade practices.
We have taken the necessary steps to address this situation by petitioning the Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission to initiate anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations.
We look forward to the result of the ITC's preliminary vote later this week.
Looking forward, we are very bullish about the next two years.
As Bert will describe in a moment, the need to replenish global coarse grains stocks driving agricultural demand along with the impact of increased economic activity driving industrial demand, should support all-time record global nitrogen demand over the next two years.
Forward energy curves are also very favorable over this timeframe.
We expect these factors to help keep the global nitrogen supply and demand balance much tighter than we've seen in recent years, supporting an extended period of higher nitrogen pricing and higher margins for our cost advantaged network.
Longer term, we believe increased demand for ammonia and its clean energy attributes will become a significant factor in the tighter supply and demand balance, driving further value for our network.
We continue to see broad interest in clean hydrogen and ammonia to help meet the world's clean energy needs.
As we continue to have discussions with market participants, our focus remains on being at the forefront of this significant opportunity, from positioning our network to be the world's leader for blue and green ammonia production to collaborating with other global leaders where our unique capabilities can provide value.
We are pleased with the progress we've made and look forward to additional developments in the coming months.
The global nitrogen supply and demand balance remains far tighter than we have seen in recent years, underpinned by strong agricultural and industrial demand plus higher energy prices in Europe and Asia.
This has created a highly favorable pricing environment that has persisted into the second half of this year.
Based on the agricultural and energy outlook we see today, we believe a positive pricing environment for fertilizer will remain in place at least into 2023.
Strong global nitrogen demand is being led by the world's need to replenish coarse grains stocks.
The global coarse grains stocks-to-use ratio was the lowest since 2012, entering this year's spring planting season, commodity prices have risen significantly in response and farmers are incentivized to maximize yield with fertilizer applications.
Given this, we expect to see sustained demand in the second half led by India and Brazil.
We expect similar strength from North America and Europe leading into the 2022 application season.
We had a positive start to meeting this demand a few weeks ago when we launched our UAN Fill Program.
We have built a solid order book for the third quarter at an all-equivalent price of $285 per ton, though prices remain at a significant discount to urea for the reasons Tony mentioned.
Further out, we expect that high demand for coarse grains, especially from China, will contribute to persistent low global stocks into next year.
As a result, we believe that stocks will still need to be replenished at least into 2023, supporting continued strong nitrogen demand.
Increased economic activity is also driving higher global industrial demand for nitrogen.
In North America, we have seen diesel exhaust fluid sales rise above pre-pandemic levels.
Our first half DEF sales were a Company record and we expect overall demand will continue to grow.
We've also seen higher demand for ammonia and nitric acid from our industrial customers.
Globally, industrial related demand in China and from phosphate producers has also increased.
While we expect demand to remain strong for some time, we believe that global fertilizer inventory in the channel today is low and will need to be rebuilt.
So far in 2021, high energy costs in Europe and Asia have lowered operating rates and reduced supply availability, particularly for ammonia and urea, further supporting global pricing.
As you can see on Slide 9, energy costs in these regions have increased to over $14 per MMBtu and Eastern European producers have become the global marginal producer for the time being.
The higher energy cost has steepened the global nitrogen cost curve substantially, increasing margin opportunities for low-cost producers such as CF.
Forward curve suggests CF will benefit from favorable energy differentials for the foreseeable future.
As a result, we believe we have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us as we leverage our manufacturing, distribution and logistics capabilities to deliver for our customers.
For the first half of 2021, the Company reported net earnings attributable to common stockholders of $397 million or $1.83 per diluted share.
EBITDA was $994 million and adjusted EBITDA was $997 million.
The trailing 12 months net cash provided by operating activities was approximately $1.2 billion and free cash flow was $700 million.
Based on the outlook Tony and Bert have shared, we are well positioned to build on these results and continue to generate significant free cash flow.
First, we raised our estimate for capital expenditures for 2021 from around $450 million to approximately $500 million.
The increase is driven primarily by our decision to pull a significant maintenance event scheduled for next year into this year.
We believe that performing this activity in 2021 is best for the asset and reduces the risk of an unplanned outage during the 2022 spring application season.
Going forward, we expect capital expenditures to return to the range of $450 million per year.
With this additional maintenance project, the high level of previously planned maintenance, and the additional maintenance from severe weather in February, we estimate that gross ammonia production and sales volume will be around 9.5 million tons and 19 million product tons respectively; both at the low end of our forecasts earlier this year.
Looking into 2022, we have a more typical maintenance schedule and we'd expect to return to approximately 10 million tons of ammonia production and sales volume of 19.5 million to 20 million product tons.
Second, we are taking additional steps in line with our focus on achieving investment grade ratings and positioning the Company to execute our clean energy initiatives.
We have announced that we will redeem $250 million of our senior notes due June 2023, which will reduce our gross debt to $3.5 billion.
We expect to lower our gross debt to $3 billion by or before the maturity of the 2023 notes.
We also continue to return cash to our shareholders through quarterly dividend and opportunistic share repurchases at attractive levels.
With that, Tony will provide some closing remarks before we open the call to Q&A.
They successfully managed many challenges in the first six months of the year, setting us up well for the second half.
Most importantly, we did this safely with our recordable incident rate at the end of June at just 0.28 incidents per 200,000 labor hours, significantly better than industry averages.
As we look ahead, we expect strong agricultural and industrial demand to create all-time record global nitrogen demand.
Forward curve show very favorable energy spreads to Europe and Asia over the same timeframe, which should support robust margins and cash generation.
We see good progress on our clean energy initiatives.
Taken together, we are well positioned to create significant shareholder value in the near and longer term.
With that, operator, we will now open the call to questions.

user
compname reports first half 2021 net earnings of $397 million, ebitda of $994 million, adjusted ebitda of $997 million.
projects capital expenditures for full year 2021 will be in range of $500 million.

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