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Text: I'm Martin Jarosick, Vice President of Investor Relations.
These statements are not guarantees of future performance and will 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.
These results reflect the drastically improving industry fundamentals that we experienced over the course of the year.
Nitrogen prices are at their highest levels in over a decade as strong demand and lower worldwide production have tightened the global supply demand balance considerably.
At the same time, energy spreads between North America and high-cost regions have widened dramatically, supporting margin expansion for our cost advantage network.
The CF team also continues to perform exceptionally well, navigating a couple of severe weather events in the U.S., our highest levels of turnaround and maintenance activity ever, and a challenging natural gas situation in the U.K. Most importantly, they did so safely.
Our recordable incident rate at the end of September was just 0.24 incidents per 200,000 labor hours, significantly better than industry averages.
These factors have driven substantial cash generation over the last year.
Our trailing 12-month net cash from operations was $1.7 billion and free cash flow was $1 billion.
As we look ahead, we're excited about the opportunities to build on this performance.
We have good visibility into the fourth quarter of 2021.
We have priced virtually all of our product shipments through the end of the year while also hedging our natural gas requirements.
While there is always some uncertainty about the volume of ammonia that will be applied in Q4, given the dependency on weather, we would expect full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA to land between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion.
Further out, we believe nitrogen industry conditions will remain positive for an extended period.
As Bert will describe in a moment, we see very strong demand, constrained global supply and wide energy spreads between North America and Europe to persist for some time.
These factors support our ability to continue to generate significant free cash and to deploy that capital to create shareholder value.
Our priorities remain the same: invest in growth where opportunities offer returns above our cost of capital and return excess capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
We remain focused on disciplined investments and are excited about the two new projects supporting our clean energy growth platform.
Once completed, these projects will enable us to produce over one million tons of blue or carbon-free ammonia.
Chris will share more about our announcement yesterday in a moment.
We are also pleased to have achieved investment-grade credit ratings, which recognizes and underscores all of the work we have done to remove fixed costs in the business, reduce debt and highlights the positive industry fundamentals for a North American producer.
On the balance sheet, we are quickly closing in on our target of $3 billion of gross debt and expect to repay the remaining $500 million outstanding on our 2023 notes on or before their maturity.
However, that still leaves a substantial amount of excess free cash flow we expect to generate.
And as such, the Board has authorized a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program to facilitate the return of capital to shareholders.
Then Chris will follow to talk about our financial position and clean energy initiatives, before I return for some closing comments.
The last six to nine months have seen a dramatic tightening of the global nitrogen supply and demand balance.
High crop prices and increased economic activity continue to drive demand.
Meanwhile, lower global production and government actions have created a supply constrained global market.
The impact of this can be seen on Slides 11 and 12, where both our spot cost curve and 2022 cost curve are much higher and steeper than in recent years.
As you can see, the margin opportunities available to our network have expanded greatly due to a widened energy spread between North America and marginal production in Europe.
We expect strong global fertilizer demand to last into at least 2023.
As you can see on Slide 8, global stocks-to-use ratios for both grains and oilseeds are at their lowest levels in nearly a decade, supporting high crop prices.
These prices will support farm profitability in North America, even with higher input prices, incentivizing farmers to plant acres and maximize yield.
Based on our order book, we expect the fall ammonia application season will be the largest since 2012, demonstrating farmer commitment to planting corn and applying fertilizer.
We believe farmers around the world will make similar decisions, with import demand continuing to be led by India and Brazil.
We believe global supply will remain constrained in the near term, with relief unlikely to appear anytime soon.
We believe inventory in the channel is very low.
Global production has been lower in 2021 due to severe weather in North America, higher maintenance worldwide, and ongoing European shutdowns and curtailments.
Further, the Russian and Chinese governments are discouraging nitrogen fertilizer exports through the spring.
These factors suggest the potential for strong fertilizer demand to last beyond 2023 even as some regions are unable to secure enough product in this supply constrained environment, resulting in lower yields.
If this were to happen, demand would be deferred into future years as it would take more than two growing seasons to replenish global grain and oilseed stocks.
As we prepare for the spring application season, we continue to receive substantial interest for any product we offer into the marketplace.
We are building a solid order book for the first quarter of 2022 at the prices you see in the market today.
Similar to what we did for the fourth quarter, we are adding natural gas hedges as we make first quarter product commitments in order to lock in margin and protect against significant energy price spikes.
As a result, we believe we're in a strong position heading into 2022.
In this dynamic market, we remain focused on leveraging our manufacturing, distribution and logistics capabilities to serve our customers and look forward to the opportunities before us.
For the first nine months of 2021, the company reported net earnings attributable to common stockholders of $212 million or $0.98 per diluted share.
EBITDA was $984 million and adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.5 billion.
Net earnings and EBITDA reflect the recognition of a noncash impairment charges related to our U.K. operations.
We continue to monitor market conditions for the U.K. assets, which accounted for two of our gross margin in 2020.
The Billingham complex is operating due to recently improved carbon dioxide contracts and industrial contracts that pass through natural gas costs.
Operations at Ince remain halted.
Free cash flow -- free cash generation remains strong.
The trailing 12 months net cash provided by operating activities was approximately $1.7 billion and free cash flow was $1 billion.
We believe we have a good opportunity in 2022 to build on these results based not only on our positive outlook, but also on increased production from our network.
In 2021, we completed a record level of maintenance activity that included turnarounds at seven of our 17 ammonia plants.
We will return to a more normal level of turnaround activity in 2022.
As a result, we expect to return to our typical high ammonia utilization rates, with gross ammonia production between 9.5 million and 10 million tons.
We expect to sell everything we produce and achieve sales volume between 19 million and 20 million tons in 2022.
As we sell these product volumes into a favorable market environment, we expect to continue to generate substantial free cash flow and create shareholder value.
As Tony said, our Board authorized the new $1.5 billion share repurchase program, which becomes effective January 1, 2022.
We continue to operate under our existing program, which has enabled us to acquire more than 11 million shares to be repurchased since 2019.
This program expires at the end of the year.
At the same time, we'll continue to evaluate clean energy initiatives to meet the demand for ammonia's clean energy capabilities that we expect to emerge in the second half of the decade.
This includes positioning our network for the production of blue and green ammonia to support the development of a market for low-carbon ammonia.
Constructing carbon dioxide dehydration and compression units at Donaldsonville and Yard of the City are a necessary step to enable blue ammonia production through carbon capture and sequestration.
These projects leverage our existing asset base and represented an efficient use of capital, with a return profile we expect to be above our cost of capital.
Once sequestration is initiated, we'll be able to produce more than one million tons of blue ammonia annually while reducing our carbon emissions in a meaningful way.
With our strong balance sheet, we also have the flexibility to evaluate additional opportunities in the years ahead.
We continue to collaborate with global leaders where we can provide value, including jointly exploring with Mitsui the development of blue ammonia projects in the United States.
With that, Tony will provide some closing remarks before we open the call to Q&A.
Their commitment and dedication continue to be the foundation of our success.
We are excited about what lies ahead for CF Industries.
In fact, I think the company is better positioned today than we have ever been in our history.
We are again an investment-grade credit issuer.
We have the fewest shares outstanding ever.
We expect the business to produce between $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion of adjusted EBITDA this year.
And as we look forward to next year, we should have significantly more tons to sell at overall average higher prices than this year.
So the business should generate all-time records for free cash flow per share.
We see demand for low-carbon ammonia developing that should provide a long-term growth platform for the company.
And with our investments in both green and blue ammonia production, we will be at the forefront of this exciting opportunity.
Taken together, we have never been in a better position to create value for shareholders.

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compname reports nine month 2021 net earnings of $212 million, ebitda of $984 million, adjusted ebitda of $1,485 million.
cf industries holdings - management believes global nitrogen supply will remain constrained with production in key regions affected by high energy prices.

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