Compass Minerals International, Inc. (NYSE:CMP) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jamie Standen: Given the circumstances you should expect them to — thus far, because winter hasn’t been robust, because we haven’t outsold our commitments or gotten into fully delivering under our contracts, once you fully deliver under your contracts, spot prices come after that point. So we haven’t seen weather to really drive that. What we have done though in our contractual negotiations through last summer, in both municipality state bidding process as well as our commercial negotiations, we’ve captured or recaptured inflationary pressures through our pricing actions, which you’ll see as this winter continues to unfold and is embedded in the 12% bid season price improvement that we were able to achieve, which includes both commercial activity, commercial customers, commitments as well as the bid commitments that we do annually.

Kevin Crutchfield: Let me add a little bit of color to Jamie’s comments as well. I mean, to the extent that you experienced a season where you sold through the upper end of your committed level, which is typically 120% of the initial arrangement, that would imply that you’re having a pretty tough winter from a — or a good winter from our perspective. And thus, you could fully expect spot prices to be in excess of contract price. I think, it would just stand to reason and what fair market value for those, that next ton would be above that, I think, it would be speculative. But I think it’s easy to say or safe to say that it would exceed the contract price. And your ability to earn margin on that incrementals, given that fixed cost absorption is already taken care of, it’s much more powerful than under contract scenario.

David Silver: Thank you for that color. And I agree, usually, it’s a question when the snowfall is quite strong. I was thinking of it a little bit more this time just related to the cost — the volatile cost elements. But thank you for all the color. Last question would be kind of a general question. Really kind of about the Great Salt Lake. So I am tapping in a little bit to the national headlines. But the Governor of Utah recently issued an executive order kind of involving berm heights and other complicated things, but maybe to direct more water into parts of the Great Salt Lake. And I know time is limited here. But I was just wondering if you could take a couple of minutes and maybe just sketch out the broad strokes of what seems to be a high priority issue for the Governor there involving the management of the Great Salt Lake?

And if you wouldn’t mind, what is your base case and what might be a best case, worst case scenario from Compass Minerals’ perspective on that?

Kevin Crutchfield: Thanks for bringing that up. We obviously would use the Governor’s executive order. And it probably wouldn’t come as any surprise to you that we have worked closely along with the government agencies in Utah as it relates to the executive order and what will ultimately become the berm management plan. We have been an active operator out there for 50 years and working proactively with both the DNR and the DEQ as it relates to this berm management plan. So again, that’s kind of point number one, unanswered questions yet until the berm management plan is decided upon it gets put in place. The second point I would make is based on what we know right now, we expect a temporary short term raising of the berm height to have a de minimis impact on our operations in 2023, and that’s largely a function of the above average rainfall that we’ve experienced out there over the last few months.