The Mosaic Company - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 net sales were $3.01B, GAAP diluted EPS was $1.29, and adjusted EPS was $0.51; adjusted EBITDA was $566M. GAAP EPS benefited from $0.78 of notable items (FX/derivatives/Ma’aden mark-to-market), while adjusted EBITDA was pressured by larger-than-usual provisions and elevated idle/turnaround costs.
• Mosaic Fertilizantes outperformed with operating income of $109M and adjusted EBITDA of $159M; management guided Q3 segment EBITDA to “over $200M” on peak seasonal volumes and distribution margins normalizing.
• Guidance updates: Potash production raised to 9.3–9.5Mt (from 9.0–9.4Mt); Phosphate production lowered to 6.9–7.2Mt (from 7.2–7.6Mt); SG&A raised to $520–$550M (from $470–$500M); Q3 DAP $700–$720/t and MOP $270–$290/t.
• Stock reaction: Results missed Street estimates (EPS $0.51 vs $0.72; revenue $3.01B vs $3.16B), and shares fell ~11.32% on the day of the release.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Mosaic Fertilizantes execution drove higher prices, lower unit costs, and segment adjusted EBITDA of $159M; management expects Q3 EBITDA “significantly above” Q2 and to exceed $200M.
• Potash pricing strengthened (MOP $261/t, +$37/t QoQ) with sales volumes at 2.3Mt and segment adjusted EBITDA at $278M; Hydrofloat commissioning adds 400k t/yr low-cost capacity at Esterhazy.
• Cost program achieved $150M and expanded to $250M, targeting automation, supply chain optimization, margin optimization, and fixed-cost absorption improvements as phosphate run-rates normalize.
• Quote: “The work we completed in the first six months of the year sets the stage for a strong second half… We expect to generate significant free cash flow through the balance of the year” — Bruce Bodine, CEO.

What Went Wrong

• Phosphate operating earnings were $(8)M; adjusted EBITDA fell to $217M, with 1.5Mt sales (down from 1.7Mt YoY) due to turnarounds/reliability work; conversion costs were $126/t (vs $100/t YoY) and idle/turnaround expenses rose $48M YoY to $84M.
• SG&A rose to $167M (+$39M YoY) driven by $33M bad-debt provisions (including a $30M single customer) and global digital project amortization; management expects insurance to recover a significant portion over time.
• Distribution margins in Brazil ran “mid-$20s” in Q2 below the normalized $30–$40/t; shipment deferrals amid credit challenges pushed volumes into Q3.

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good morning and welcome to The Mosaic Company's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. After the company completes their prepared remarks, the lines will be open to take your questions. Now I'll turn the call over to Mr. Jason Tremblay. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings call. Opening comments will be provided by Bruce Bodine, President and Chief Executive Officer. Jenny Wang, Executive Vice President, Commercial, will then cover the market update, and Luciano Siani Pires, Chief Financial Officer, will review the financial results and capital allocation progress. We will then open the floor for questions. We will be making forward-looking statements during this conference call. The statements include, but are not limited to, statements about future financial and operating results. They are based on management's beliefs and expectations as of today's date and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from projected results. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are included in our press release published yesterday and in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We will also be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our press release and performance data also contain important information on these non-GAAP measures. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bruce.

Speaker 0

Good morning. Thank you for joining our call. I'll start with an overview of our performance and outlook, then Jenny will provide insight into the markets, and Luciano will discuss details of our earnings. Our key messages for today are: First, our hard work to improve operating performance is paying off. It's apparent in our Brazil results, and we expect to see improvements in our U.S. phosphate production business now that the vast majority of our work to enhance reliability is complete. Second, the market environment remains strong, with tight supply leading to very strong phosphate margins and rising potash prices. In fact, we raised our full-year potash production to capture strong demand. Third, the cost reduction efforts we've been pursuing in Brazil have led to a strong first half of the year, and we expect earnings growth to accelerate in the remainder of 2025.

Fourth, our extensive market access continues to be a key competitive advantage for Mosaic. The current market situation demonstrates this point. With some unevenness in the Americas, there is still more than enough demand around the world for all the tons we can produce. We have the agility to send tons to markets where demand is strongest. To cover our second quarter results, we generated net income of $411 million and adjusted EBITDA of $566 million, compared with a net loss of $162 million and adjusted EBITDA of $584 million in the same quarter of 2024. The factors that drove earnings lower are behind us, and across the business, we are poised for a strong second half of 2025. Potash and phosphate markets are tight, and we are maximizing production to benefit fully. We see no signs of a second-half price reset that has occurred in the past few years.

The global phosphate market has been tight for two years now, and we do not expect that to change in the near to medium term, even with the additional supply we expect to provide to the market. All of the supply and demand dynamics we've been discussing remain in effect. While China recently resumed exports at a low level, Chinese exports remain restricted as producers there meet domestic demand for agriculture and growing demand for industrial uses. Global farmer demand for phosphate fertilizers remains robust. As an example, Indian importers have come back to the market with increased government support and are now working to meet two years' worth of pent-up demand. Also, remember there is not much additional capacity that is expected to come to the market over the next few years, and announced projects take quite some time to come online.

Put simply, there is not enough phosphate fertilizer available to meet demand, and we expect this dynamic to continue well into 2026, even if there is some demand deferral in the Americas. In our business, our work to fortify our U.S. phosphate assets to maximize future production took longer than we expected, but there is no more planned maintenance that would impede us from reaching our target run rate of 8 million tons per year. To provide more detail, our extraordinary level of work is complete at Riverview in Louisiana. Our Bartow plant has been operating at target rates for a couple of months, and in New Wales, where installation of our final new gypsum pumping station was delayed, all three new stations are complete. We are now returning to our normal cycle for turnarounds.

Our third quarter sales volume guidance of 1.8 to 2 million tons reflects our confidence in our strengthened assets. Our annual guidance for phosphate production is now 6.9 to 7.2 million tons, reflecting the more extensive maintenance downtime we experienced in June and July. It's also important to note that as our volumes improve, so do our unit costs. We expect to reach our analyst day per ton cost targets later this year. In potash, the market has evolved from balanced to tight. Maintenance activities at multiple producers around the world have reduced near-term supply, and demand remains strong, underpinned in part by continuing high palm oil prices in Southeast Asia. We are running hard to meet demand and benefit from the market conditions. A second quarter turnaround at Esterhazy is complete, and we plan to run our Calanza mine at least through the end of this year.

As a result, and to meet very strong global demand, we have increased our annual potash production guidance to 9.3 to 9.5 million tons. We're feeling very good about our business in Brazil too. While credit issues are persisting, we expect fertilizer demand to remain strong and supply limited. As a result, we anticipate EBITDA from the Mosaic Fertilizantes segment to push higher from the strong levels we've seen in the past two quarters. Before Jenny provides more details on the markets, I'd like to highlight the important competitive advantage our market access brings to Mosaic. The new Pomeranzi facility, which was inaugurated last month, adds a million tons of distribution capacity in the fast-growing northern region and reinforces our market-leading presence in the country. We also continue to leverage our market access to grow the Mosaic Biosciences business.

First half revenues for biosciences more than doubled compared with a year ago. We expect Mosaic Biosciences to contribute positively to adjusted EBITDA beginning in the fourth quarter. Finally, a note on capital allocation. We're continuing to make progress on our work to reclaim capital so that we can deploy it in pursuit of better returns. The Hydrofloat project and the new Pomeranzi facility are good examples of this. We hope to have news on the processes we've announced, including Carlsbad and Tucuri, in the near future. At the same time, we are expecting stronger free cash flow in the second half of the year, which would allow us to pay down debt and return capital to shareholders. All in all, we have made important and substantial progress this year, and we are in an excellent position for a very strong second half of 2025.

Now, I'll pass the call to Jenny.

Speaker 3

Bruce Bodine highlighted strong fertilizer market fundamentals. Before I dive deeper into the phosphate and potash market, I'd like to address the recent pressure on ag commodities and why we are still up a bit on global agriculture. The commodity market has been pressured by both trade and macro uncertainties, as well as the record soybean harvest in Brazil and the potential for a record U.S. crop this fall. However, as we mentioned before, ag fundamentals remain positive across much of the world, including in many of the key geographies where we operate. The global ag market continues to be supported by strong demand, including supportive new biofuel policies in India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the U.S., which support the ag market in the long run.

The headwinds we see in certain geographies related to fertilizer affordability will necessarily trim some demand, for example, in the Americas, but this provides a tailwind to demand in the future as growers will need to replenish their soil nutrients. Specifically on phosphate, prices have steadily climbed this year with strong demand that is constrained by supply. Despite higher prices and the lack of available supply that may result in some demand deferral, global shipments are expected to approach a new record. The most notable factor on the supply side remains China, which has returned seasonally to the export market, though we anticipate a further reduction in high analysis phosphate exports this year as the country limits export quotas in support of the domestic market and industrial phosphate production. On the demand side, government financial support has energized Indian buying at higher prices.

While we expect growth in India shipments this year, supply constraints will likely leave India facing another year of pent-up demand that bodes well as we move towards 2026. In North America, summer fill was earlier than expected given the empty pipeline and fewer imports. We're largely sold out for the quarter and at higher values than spring season. Import supply is down around 20% year over year given tariffs on most of the origins, and these volumes are expected to stay subdued. This means that even if there is meaningful demand deferral at the grower level this fall, there should be ample demand for The Mosaic Company's products. In Brazil, we're expecting another fertilizer shipment record this year with imports up sharply in the first half to meet the demand.

With no significant price reset expected in the near term, we expect stripping margins to remain elevated as sulfur prices appear to have stabilized and ammonia looks like it could soften through the balance of the year. Longer term, we anticipate elevated stripping margin will continue as solid fundamentals carry into next year. As I mentioned, we'd like to again see pent-up demand as we enter 2026, driven by demand deferral this year and limited channel inventories. On the supply side, new capacity takes time to build and won't feature meaningfully until at least 2027. On top of this, we expect China to continue to reduce export availability as independent projections for LFP demand through 2030 exceed even our own projection.

In the case of potash, the market shifted from balanced to tight in the first half of this year, and we anticipate prices to hold around current levels driven by what could again be a record global shipment. Global supply is now feeling the effects of the announced maintenance in Russia and Belarus, the slowdown in Laos expansion, and lower production from China and Chile. Regarding demand, U.S. customers indicate it will be about normal for fall season despite prices that are higher than last year, given they still find good value at these levels. Like phosphate, offshore potash imports are also trailing last year, further tightening the domestic market. Brazilian demand has also proved resilient in this higher-priced environment, with inventories near normal despite higher imports so far this year. Finally, the annual contract in China and India was signed about $65 per ton higher than last year.

With this expected healthy baseload of contract market offtake plus a continued strong pull from Southeast Asia, where solid grower economics are supported by elevated palm oil prices, we believe that supply and demand will remain tight in the near term and limit any late-year seasonal price resets that usually we experience. Let me pass things over to Luciano, where he will dive deeper into financial results, our strategies, and the capital allocation.

Speaker 5

Good morning. This was a very unusual quarter in terms of results, with a lot of noise. We encourage you to see the underlying performance of the business through the numbers and also see why we believe Q3 performance will be amongst the strongest in many, many quarters. First, on net income, the notable numbers were actually on the positive side. The U.S. dollar lost value compared to most currencies, including the Brazilian real and the Canadian dollar. There was a reversal of the foreign exchange effects experienced in previous quarters, a total of $220 million. In addition to that, we had a gain of $216 million in the market value of our modern shares. With these two main effects, net income was $411 million compared to a net loss of $162 million a year before.

Second, on EBITDA, you saw we had these larger than usual provisions that amounted to more than $60 million on a net basis. Most of these did not have any cash effect in the quarter, and some also will not have cash effects going forward, such as, for example, the bad debt expense, the inventory adjustments, one asset write-off. Some will have a cash component. For example, we recorded $8 million in environmental reserves for future remediation at our Taquari Potter's Mine. We recorded $4 million for legal reserves. We had a number of net and favorable items that all came together this quarter. While we always have some level of this kind of activity, it was quite large. We don't expect to repeat this level in Q3 and Q4. Just a note on bad debt.

The $30 million bad debt expense in Mosaic Future Dispatches, we had it with a single customer. It is 90% backed by insurance, so we expect recoveries going forward. For example, this quarter we collected $50 million related to a bad debt expense booked in Q3 last year. Also, on EBITDA, you can see that all the work of turnarounds that we talked extensively cost us money, a lot of money. We have been speaking about $100 million overall aggregate investment to increase reliability. Part of that, you can see in these elevated idle and turnaround expenditures, some of the work just can't be capitalized; it has to be expensed. Not a surprise, a significant part of the increase in idle and turnaround expenses came from phosphates. Why is that?

We not only extended the duration of our turnarounds, which impacted our production volumes, which impacted our fixed cost absorption, but we also spent more actual dollars in repairs and maintenance. These works, another reminder, are all with the goal to de-risk not just our second half performance, but well into the future as we return to a sustained and more normal production output level. Therefore, we also expect Q3 idle and turnaround expenses to decline from Q2 to get to a more normalized level because the work has been completed to improve asset reliability. Now the bright part. Phosphates, for example, you know that everything hinges upon the volumes. As we said, 85% of our cash cost of conversion is fixed. Given the low production volumes, the unit cost metric of $126 per ton in Q2 behaved exactly as it should.

It is above our investor-day target of $95 to $100 per ton, but only because of low production volumes. On a positive note, cash mine rock costs in Florida are the lowest in 10 quarters, $51 per ton against an average of $55 per ton in 2024. You're not seeing it yet because of the low volumes of finished product, but these results will flow into the blended rock costs once finished product volumes come back. In potash, the cash production cost per ton was $75, up from the same quarter last year, again due to less fixed cost absorption and low volume. It was down from $78 in the first quarter. We conducted a turnaround at Esterhazy in Q2 this year versus Q3 last year, and the shift in timing impacted a lot of metrics year over year when you compare Q2 2025 to Q2 2024.

It impacted production volumes, unit costs, and turnaround and idle expenses. As in phosphates, you should expect potash Q3 turnaround and idle expenses to decline from Q2. Mosaic Future Designs, so far, the nicest story. There we have achieved $106 million of our $150 million cost reduction target. These cost reductions and the higher realized prices are behind the $150 million in EBITDA, despite the bad debt expense of $18 million net of recoveries. In Q3, with increased volumes, no further bad debt expenses, and a recovery in distribution margins, we're bound to have an excellent quarter. The question is if we're going to be above the $200 million mark or well above the $200 million mark. This will depend on our management of sales volumes, given the credit environment.

Finally, for you to better model Mosaic Future Designs, this quarter we added disclosure on production sales volumes in the result and outlook tables in the press release. We provide margins that are earned by these tons, and we provide further breakdown of these tons in the performance data sheet. All this new disclosure hopefully will add some transparency to this segment. Back to cost reductions, we have achieved the $150 million cost reduction targets established last year. How? On the back of Mosaic Future Designs, as we discussed, and SG&A alone. However, in SG&A, the bottom line is clouded because of the bad debt expenses and because of the non-cash amortization of the large technology investment we made, and that amortization started in Q3 2024. We also included in the appendix of the presentation a demonstration of the SG&A savings.

With this achievement, we're now extending our goal from $150 million to $250 million. Going forward, this additional $100 million in value capture is expected to be achieved by the end of 2026 and will come from further cost reductions by automating administrative functions, optimizing supply chain, and other cost reductions in operations, gross margin optimization, and fixed cost absorption as we ramp up our production levels. The prospects here are very, very exciting. To conclude, quarter three EBITDA in all segments is expected to be significantly higher than last quarter, with an extraordinary level of turnaround to improve asset health and reliability behind us. In phosphates, we expect volumes to increase, cash conversion cost per ton to decline significantly in the third quarter, turnaround and idle expenses to come down as well, and therefore having strong EBITDA growth from Q2 to Q3.

In potash, we're pedal to the metal, increasing production, sales outlook to take advantage of favorable market conditions. Mosaic Future Designs will be peak sales, peak margin season in Q3. We definitely have the wind at our back. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Speaker 0

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We also ask that you please limit yourself to one question. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Ben Isaacson with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning, everyone. You know, just looking at the share price performance today, I was hoping you could parse out the noise from what has actually changed from your investor day, for better or worse. Thank you.

Ben, thanks for your question. I assume you want to go through everything in investor day that has changed.

I just want to understand why the market, or why do you think the market is reacting so negatively to what seems like a couple of bumpy quarters, but nothing has really changed in terms of the main outlook since your investor day. That's what I'm trying to understand.

Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate the question and I appreciate your report this morning as well. I thought it was well done. I think there's a question, and even I know you've asked this in your report on, you know, how much of this extraordinary expense that we've all been talking about and that we documented in Q2 is recurring or is transitory or extraordinary. I think that's one thing because, you know, how do you kind of bake into what the underlying performance was when you normalize things? No doubt our production volume in phosphates was down from what we had in analyst day. We've talked about that in a number of conferences. There were discoverables, particularly at New Wales on kind of our phos acid, waste disposal handling systems on all three trains that needed to be upgraded.

The final upgrade, as we communicated, we tried to pull that into June, just couldn't get the parts in time. We're targeting to have that done in mid-July. It ended up going all the way to the end of July due to parts availability. That was the biggest change from a production to, although we did guide, in early June of what we anticipated there, and actually we're right at the midpoint of guidance. That is a definite difference in what we had in our analyst day numbers. As far as the extraordinary expenses, we've talked a lot about this and dug into kind of what is kind of average on turnaround and idle expense for our active facilities.

Although it's not a perfect closure because idle and turnaround always has some variability to it, we feel that about $50 million of that expense in phosphates, particularly, was kind of non-normal and was truly due to the extraordinary efforts, which we're happy to have behind us to get reliability and asset health back to where we needed to be to do exactly what we said in analyst day, which is to get to that 8 million ton run rate. You know, everything else is actually trending quite good. Potash costs are a little bit higher with FX and the production mix with more runtime from Colonsay particularly in quarter two, with Esterhazy being down, you know, the horse, rather in Q2 versus Q3, which is maybe more normal for turnaround. That cost difference probably was more highlighted and elevated.

Listen, on biosciences, we're making good progress on fertilization as Luciano just highlighted in the prerecorded section. Really excited about what we're seeing in the underlying performance of that. All of our analyst day targets, you know, potash cost, conversion cost, as well as mine rock cost, all are trending towards exactly where we wanted them to be on analyst day, outside of maybe a little bit of impact of FX that's a little bit more than what we would have thought at that moment in March earlier this year. Ben, it's a great question, but I think it's the phosphate volumes and, hey, when is executions going to come to bear, and how much of this large extraordinary expense was reoccurring and how much of that was kind of one time?

The next question will come from Christopher S. Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks so much for taking my question. A simple yet complex question. What was your run rate roughly in July and how are we, you know, where are we trending in August and September? Just, you know, essentially what's underscoring your confidence into the balance of the year? When I take a look at slide eight as kind of the foundation for those comments, perhaps, it looks like Bartow pretty much has been there where it needs to be. New Wales and Riverview are in the process of just, you know, kind of getting there. Louisiana looks a little uncertain. If you could just hit on those remarks and piece that together for us, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Yeah, Chris, appreciate the question. Thanks, as always. In July, run rate was not what we were hoping for. Primarily, what I said earlier is because of the large, the delay by about two weeks on the third jet pumping system at New Wales. Listen, New Wales is our horse. Now that that is complete, we're seeing exactly like we saw on the other two trains of that not being an issue and getting the elevated rates. It's still early into August. This went all the way to the end of the month. We don't have a lot of free and clear run rate into August. What we're seeing in the numbers is very encouraging. Louisiana actually is more encouraging than you may realize.

I know our graphic, how we're trying to represent asset health, is an interesting way to do that, but actually really encouraged by the numbers that we're seeing in Louisiana. As you said, Bartow is kind of humming along right at its 2 million ton annualized capacity without much of a hiccup. Riverview, all the major work is done, and you know we're excited in what the opportunity is that we're seeing there. We just need to, now that maintenance activities, there's nothing scheduled more in extraordinary work, is to really just, now that that is out of the way, as Luciano said in potash, putting the pedal down in phosphate and stringing together days, weeks, months. We're very encouraged by what we're seeing. Hence our guidance at 1.8 to 2 million ton range.

That's the confidence we have in what we're seeing and the confidence we have in what we've executed and got behind us going forward.

The next question will come from Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for getting my question. Luciano, Bruce, team. Okay, so we have $50 million idle and turnaround one-off costs in Q2. You've been very clear about that in lots of different ways. You say that those costs are going down in Q3. I think what investors and shareholders really want to understand is, you know, these $50 million of extraordinary costs, how do these exactly ramp down? If you can give us as much granularity as possible with that, $30 million in Q3, $10 million in Q4, zero in Q1. Is it zero in Q4? Please tell us.

Yeah, Joel, I'm not going to answer it the way you're asking because we don't guide on this on a quarter basis. Let me try this. As we've looked back historically at turnaround costs and phosphates as an example, they're in the zip code on an annualized basis of $100 to $110 million. It is lumpy because unit operations have different schedules for phos acid, granulation, and sulfuric. It's not that easy. You will always have one quarter higher than another year over year because of that kind of lumpiness. On average, I think a good number to model for an annualized basis for phosphates is about $100 to $110 million. In potash, that number is going to be a different number. I know you asked about phosphates particularly. You can look at the history there. I don't think the history is different in potash.

You look at what we had at Esterhazy Q2. We executed a turnaround this year in Q2 rather than what is more traditionally Q3. That was to try to do the Hydrofloat tie-in so that we had the 400,000 tons of additional capacity going into the back half of the year due to that high return capital project. I know you'd like a perfect answer. There's no way to give you one. Hopefully, giving you a little more color on an annualized basis allows you to better appreciate what to expect on a more normalized ongoing basis.

Speaker 4

Joel, Luciano, I don't know if you had the time to go through it, but the presentation on our website has one slide, which is slide nine, which gives the actual numbers for Q2 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025. You can do some comparisons, and you're going to.

Speaker 0

That's the question.

Speaker 4

See?

Speaker 0

That's the question I'm asking.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 0

That's the question I'm asking. We're going to be doing Q3. The next question will come from Andrew D. Wong with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, thank you for taking my questions. Good morning. Maybe a couple of things here on the phosphate side again. First is I think we're about to enter the typical hurricane season in Florida. Just curious, what has The Mosaic Company done to harden the assets against any potential weather disruptions? How much does that factor into the Q3 guide? Then just a general question, and I guess Bruce has kind of answered it already, but when we think back to the earlier parts of this year, it sounded like a lot of the work was set to be completed by Q1. There were other things that seemed like they needed more work, like for example, the new gypsum handling systems. I don't think that was something that was previously mentioned or that we really had discussed.

I'm just kind of curious, as you're thinking about production going forward, are there any items at all that still need a major maintenance that should support that run rate, or are all those things complete? Thank you.

Yeah, Andrew, appreciate that. You got a two-part question there. Hurricane season is approaching, and we do preparation and crisis planning and practice on that front every single year leading into hurricane season, and that has been complete. As far as hardening the assets, we've looked at our motor control centers, particularly those on the coastal areas, given storm surge potential, and made sure that those sit above, you know, kind of that flood stage probability given categories of storms. We've also gone through with our insurance carriers and made modifications due to their recommendations for wind improvements in a lot of our stationary buildings, particularly our warehouses, with better venting and things like that to allow wind to pass through more easily rather than having a higher potential of ripping off a roof or damaging a roof.

There's a number and host of things that we've done, again, looking at storm surge, looking at wind. The difficult thing that is hard to harden for and what we do in preparation going into hurricane season is making sure we have free board in our gypsum stacks and clay settling areas, just accounting for how much rain you could get in any given storm. If you went back to some of the storms we had late last year, one in a thousand-year storm event is awfully hard to prepare for. There's billions of gallons of water that can end up, you know, falling on our areas that we have to manage, and then we have to deal with that water.

We go to great lengths to make sure our free board, and there's regulatory requirements around those as well with our state agencies, that we have to comply with going into hurricane season. Putting in power backup, pumping backup, for all sorts of contingencies, is part of our game plan every single year. The second part of your question was, phosphate, any major? Oh, Eddie. Yeah, Andrew, a great question. We talk about that always, and we do with our reliability maintenance folks, assessments of each of our unit operations. We don't see any obvious issues in the remainder of the asset base. For us, any planned maintenance for asset health and reliability is truly now behind us from an execution standpoint.

Those gypsum stack pumping systems, maybe we didn't talk about it in an earnings call in Q1, but we did, we've talked about it in a number of different investor conferences. As we de-bottleneck sulfuric acid and put the pedal down, particularly at New Wales, we ran into, because we haven't run in four years at these rates, issues in phosphoric acid, particularly on our gypsum handling. As the rock quality has changed over the last four or five years, we're actually making more gypsum per ton of rock feed than we had historically. Those systems just simply were a bottleneck that they didn't use to be, and it was not something that we knew until we got to actually trying to push to full rates.

That ended up being a throttle limiter at New Wales, and we had to actually replace all three phosphoric acid train gypsum pumping systems between April, May, June, and July. We don't see anything else like that at any of our other facilities as we've ramped up throughout the last several weeks.

The next question will come from Jeffrey John Zekauskas with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Can you talk about how import tariffs have raised the costs of imports of phosphate into the U.S., on some kind of percentage or per ton basis?

Yeah, Jeff, thanks. Talk about a dynamic subject, as that seems to be changing on an almost weekly basis these days again. In general, imports of phosphate have a 10% tariff on top of those, depending on the location, but most locations have that. There's nothing on Russia as of today, but you know the threat that, outside of the CVD, there's CVD duties, but as far as tariffs go, you've seen in the press, as we all have, that there is a threat of, you know, the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire doesn't happen, that maybe we would put more tariffs on Russia. As of today, there's none. Jenny's got a little more detail that I'll let her go into. Jenny?

Speaker 3

Sure. Jeff, I think Bruce talked about the tariff impact to the market, which actually indirectly supported the market in the U.S. as this reduced import. Year to date, we see around 20% of the import reduction for both P and K. It looks like it is going to continue. In terms of the direct impact to our own business, we are raw materials on sulfur and ammonia. Sulfur, the majority of the sulfur for our own production in North America is coming from the Gulf, meaning there's no impact from the tariff. We do buy some solid dry sulfur from Canada, which is exempt from the USMCA agreement. In terms of ammonia, the majority of the ammonia that we use or consume in the U.S. are coming from two sources. One is contracted with the suppliers in the U.S. The second part is our own self-produced in Festina.

We do buy a small percentage of the ammonia from the market. In this bucket, we have a very small volume coming from Trinidad, which we won't need to pay 15% of the import tariff. That volume is very small. I would say the direct impact as of today to our cost from the raw materials side are probably minimal.

Speaker 0

Yeah, Jeff, that's probably more of an answer than you asked on your question, but that gives a general tariff response on not only what's happening to competitors coming into North America, but into the U.S., and also impacts on our own business due to tariffs.

The next question will come from Vincent Stephen Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I've got a follow-up on question eight, sorry, on slide eight. You know that asset health target that you have of 85% to 95% is based on turnaround timing. Can you just help us better understand? 85% to 95% means it could be one or the other depending on how heavy your planned turnarounds are in a particular year. Is that correct? Is it also not assuming that there are any unplanned outages in the year? Is it your expectation that with all of the work that you've done over the past few years on a go-forward basis, that the amount of unplanned outages, let's leave hurricanes aside for argument's sake, but the amount of kind of run-of-the-mill unplanned outages would be de minimis? Is that correct?

Yeah, Vincent, great question. I know this is an unusual metric. It's not operating rate, and that was on purpose. Yes, you kind of nailed it. That pie chart will start to open up the piece of the pie from 95% to 85% as duration. I'll use an example of a sulfuric acid plant. Turnaround is on a three-year cycle. In year two from the turnaround that you previously did, the asset health is starting to tick down a little bit until you hit your third-year turnaround, which then goes back to full asset health again. It's just a timing issue of asset health just by nature of erosion and corrosion on piping and mechanical equipment incrementally changes at any moment in time from its last turnaround.

The reason it's not 100% is that it does allow for normal unplanned downtime, which is just run-of-the-mill stuff that happens all the time, not these extraordinary unplanned downtimes that we've seen more prevalent in the past. The answer is yes, you should think about it, that there's no extraordinary unplanned downtime in those numbers, and we don't anticipate that being normal on a go-forward basis now that the asset health is where we're showing on slide eight, which is where we're targeting given all the extraordinary efforts and spending and work that we've done over the last few years.

The next question will come from Aron Ceccarelli with Joh. Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question on fertilizers. In fact, I see that you talked about shrinking perhaps your customer base because you're focusing more on a better credit profile. At the same time, you are adding capacity in Pomeranzi, and now you're talking about $200 million or even more than $200 million of EBITDA for next quarter. I'd like to understand, you know, we also have Mosaic Biosciences becoming EBITDA positive later in the year. How should we think about the earnings power of this business in a mid-cycle scenario? Thank you.

Yeah, Aron, thanks for the question. I know that the two may seem to conflict with each other, but it is just part of our credit management or our risk management process with customers given the credit situation in Brazil. Knowing that if credit continues to be a pervasive issue with some customers, we may choose not to do business. That is why we have a guidance range that is probably as wide as it is, and that we are saying that tend to be in fertilizer maybe on the lower end with that risk included. That may or may not happen, but you know we are not going to take undue risk.

I am going to let Jenny kind of talk a little bit more about that, and then maybe turn it over to Luciano to talk a little bit about his view on forward-look financial performance in that fertilizer segment, given everything that has changed fundamentally from a cost structure standpoint, as well as our growth in distribution capability with Pomeranzi, and what we have planned over the next several years to continue to grow organically with latent capacity as the market continues to grow. Jenny?

Speaker 3

Sure. Thanks. In terms of Brazil, I would think the credit risks are actually related to, A, the macro environment, the high interest rate, but also the overall commodity prices. As we are in the market, it is cyclical. You will see the price. The market will come back. The expansion in the northern part of the country in Brazil, we're not only looking into the current season or next season. We're looking at the growth of the overall agriculture expansion in that part of the market. We see the growth itself, it is going to come along in the next few years. Is that contradictory to our smaller customer base?

I would say, I would argue as the market grows in the northern part of the country, our customers are growing in that part of the country as well, especially those customers, the end users like megapharmacy and some of the major trading companies. They're expanding their presence in the market. We are growing as our customers are growing, and the customers, they have a much more solid credit situation growth in that market as well. I would say it is not really contradictory. It is actually complementary as we go through the growth journey in Brazil. In terms of the bioscience, we are getting into the stage by the end of the year that we're going to be EBITDA positive. From next year, the growth is going to be from the new product launches.

This year, we have launched two new products already, and we have three new in the pipeline to be launched in the rest of the year. Next year, we have new products to be launched as we're going through the regulatory process. The growth is also coming from the customers, the new customers, and also new crops. I can preview that the first half of bioscience growth is not only coming from new customers, new crops, and also existing customers, those who have used our bioscience product. This year, they can see the benefit of using PowerCode and the BioPath, especially in the environment when fertilizers are more expensive, which helps them to improve the efficiency of those expensive fertilizers. In terms of the financial projection, I would ask Luciano to provide you some insight.

Lastly, I would also say Luciano probably also can help some of the ideas on finding financial solutions in helping us navigating this credit-challenged market environment in Brazil this year as well. Over to you.

Speaker 5

If you look five years from now, we have targets on the investor day deck to kind of reach around 13 million tons of sales in Brazil. If we use, for example, the upper end of our $30 to $40 distribution margin, you get around the ballpark of $500 million just for distribution. If you want a low end for that, for example, just picking a number like 10 million tons times the lower bound for the distribution margin, $30, you would get to $300 million. $300 million to $500 million would be kind of a range and an aspiration to grow into that range for just the distribution portion. We now speak also about $75 to $80 per ton on current market for the tons that we produce, which is around 4 million. That gets you another $300 million to $350 million for our own tons.

You see that the earnings potential for The Mosaic Company, and when you add also the co-products, which are around $40 million per quarter, could actually reach $1 billion over the long term. That's definitely what we are going to pursue. We'd like to call attention as well, we don't disclose, but maybe in the future we will, that our China business is becoming more material. We had around $30 million in the first half of this year, so we may have around $60 million. There's a potential to double or triple this number very quickly. In biosciences, we continue to pursue our target of $250 million EBITDA longer term. The speed to which we'll attain it is more dependent on regulatory approvals for some of our products than anything else.

Speaker 0

The next question will come from David Symonds with BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. First question, if I back out the implied specialties price from the phosphate division, it looks like the price realization was quite low for phosphate specialties. Is there any reason for that? Perhaps you could talk through what happened with MicroEssentials pricing in the quarter. Could you give an idea of what's happening on the ground in Brazil? You mentioned the change to government financing support for farmers. We've seen potash prices stall a little bit in Brazil over the past few weeks. It's interesting to hear your very positive outlook for first percenters at the same time as talking about potentially some headwinds in the Brazilian market. Maybe you could elaborate on that. I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that you expect the third quarter to be the best quarter for some time.

Given the share price reaction today and given the consensus, I think it was around $850 million adjusted EBITDA for Q3. Could you maybe give a bit more color on those remarks too? Thank you.

David, can you clarify your question on specialty phosphates? I think none of us kind of followed that. Are you saying MicroEssentials margins or what particularly are you asking? We answer this way.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. If I take the ASP in the phosphates division and then I back out the realized DAP price using DAP volumes and the price you give for DAP, the remainder I'm taking as a kind of benchmark for the specialties pricing. That seemed to fall quarter on quarter with worse realization in the rest of the business if I take out the DAP part. I'm just curious whether that's a quirk of the calculation or whether there's anything happening in specialties pricing in Q2.

Yeah, I think David, that's one that's probably better handled offline to get into more detail because there's feed products in there. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that calculation, and we're already running up on time. Not trying to avoid that question. The second part was more Brazil, what's going on on the ground, I think is what you said.

Yeah, exactly. Maybe some comments specifically around the government's reduction in support for farmer financing of input costs.

Yeah, I'm going to turn that over to Jenny, and if Luciano's got anything to add as well, Jenny, go ahead.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so David, let me start from Brazil. We have a very strong first half of the market where we're supported by the last spring corn crop. The first half of the market was very strong. What we're seeing is really a slower, much slower soybean summer season. The farm economics are challenged given the higher input prices and the lower crop prices. Also, the credit challenge has made the market move much slower. What we are seeing on the ground at this point in time is normally only 5% of the summer season fertilizers would be purchased, but this year, around 20% to be purchased, which shows how slow this market is. We are telling the customers the window is closing. In order to get their fertilizers on the ground, they will need to get up to the purchases. Otherwise, we will see some significant logistic challenges.

The bright side is really on the next safrina, our second corn crop, where the farmers are really on pace of selling their crops and also buying fertilizers. In fact, the farmers buying their future corn fertilizers already, they've bought 35% for the next second corn crop versus 25% as average. The real challenge is really in the current summer season for soybean, and the credit issue is the main challenge. We can tell you the customers on the ground are really trying to find any possible solutions. Probably government support is one of them, which I need to ask Luciano to comment.

Speaker 5

Very quickly, high interest rates, yes, less government support. What's happening is that the big farmers, they continue to do well, but the small ones are being squeezed. You're seeing consolidation. When we talk about credit issues, it's just on that range of small farmers and the retailers that buy and sell and have a lot of working capital needs. The planted area is actually growing because the big ones are making up for the difficulties of the small farmers. That's the situation. It's a consolidation of the market driven by tightness in financial conditions.

Speaker 0

The next question will come from Richard Garchitorena with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks for squeezing me in. Maybe just shifting to potash, you took your full-year production guidance up. Just curious, maybe on the third quarter, you had basically in the second quarter idle costs of $26 million, I'm sorry, $34 million in potash. Do you expect to get any of that back in the third quarter? Maybe just bigger picture, with the Esterhazy Hydrofloat ramping up, how should we think about 2026 production levels if the market continues to stay strong? Thank you. Yeah, Richard, third quarter turnaround costs, because Esterhazy would usually be it, and it's usually in the $25 million to $30 million range for a turnaround in Esterhazy, was pulled in the second quarter. We don't have that in the third quarter. Belle Plaine still has a turnaround that straddles third and fourth quarter.

You should expect, as we've said, to see a significant decrease in third quarter on turnaround costs in potash. As far as running our facilities, we're going to continue to run Colonsay to meet the strong demand that we're seeing, hence why we raised guidance. That's really coming from Southeast Asia. We have good solid demand in the Americas. Where we're seeing good growth is on the international side. In fact, Canpotex had a record shipment in the first half of the year and is anticipating something similar in the second half of the year, given strong demand. There's good demand at the right value proposition for us to run all of our assets right now. How does that look going into 2026, given that Hydrofloat is now ramping back up? We're going to have to continue to evaluate that.

If Canpotex and The Mosaic Company domestically have enough share and enough volume and demand exists for our products and the value creation is there, we'll continue to run those facilities. It's too early to say outside of running Belle Plaine full and Esterhazy full, what we're going to do with Colonsay at this moment in time until we get a little bit closer to quarter one and quarter two of next year.

The next question will come from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Please go ahead.

Hi, and thank you very much for fitting me in. I actually want to finish here on the beginning question and forgive the simplicity of it, but asking on behalf of myself as the newcomer and on behalf of some of the shareholders, the more broad shareholder base that you've attracted post-investor day. Given what you know today about your operating rates, you've given guidance on pricing, you've given guidance on volume, you've suggested you're sold out in potash for 3Q. How much better can 3Q EBITDA be versus 2Q? Any sort of quantification of that sequential step-up would be extremely helpful. Thank you.

Kristen, it's kind of like the earlier question on guiding to turnaround costs. We just don't guide on EBITDA, but you know, maybe Luciano can help give you some things to think about as maybe you're modeling because the growth should be pretty significant based on those numbers from Q2 to Q3. Luciano?

Speaker 4

Kristen, for example, starting with phosphates. Shrinking margins are going to go up, right? We're guiding $700 to $720 per ton prices compared to $668 realized this quarter, and sulfur and ammonia prices might be stable. If you take that change in margin times the tons of the quarter, it is an increase. Then you have phosphate volumes increasing. You can, for example, use the change in tons that we're guiding times even the Q2 margins. You have turnaround and idle costs coming down. We discussed this extensively, so another plus. Conversion costs are going to come down, another plus. Conversion costs per ton could come down. You can make an estimate and multiply it by the tons. Blended rock costs. In other words, a lot of tailwinds. When you go to potash, same thing. Prices are, we're guiding $270 to $290 compared to $261.

That increase flows directly into the bottom line. You can multiply the changes by the difference in volumes. The volumes, let's say, kind of stable. Production costs are going to certainly decrease with Hydrofloat coming in. Turnaround and idle expenses we also discussed, they're going to come down. Another estimate you could do. Mosaic Fertilizantes EBITDA, we kind of guided it over $200 million, maybe it would be well above, depending on how much we sell. A lot of levers that a good estimate should consider to see what's going on in Q3, and certainly it's going to be a much better number.

Speaker 0

That's all the time we have for this call. I apologize to the five or six folks that we didn't get a chance to get to. I really appreciate the interest in our call today. I had a good lineup. I think we talked about a very robust set of topics. I appreciate that, but I encourage you to follow up with the IR team and ask your questions. They're well prepared to talk about that. I'd like to close our call by reminding you of our key messages. First, our work to improve asset reliability is paying off, and we expect strong production performance, as we talked about, for the remainder of the year. Second, fertilizer market fundamentals are compelling, with tight supply and good global demand driving prices higher for both potash and phosphate.

Third, our Brazil business is performing very well, and we expect significant earnings growth in the second half of this year. Finally, we're continuing to derive value from our extensive market excellence.

have the ability to move tons to the markets where demand is highest, and we have the pipelines to introduce new products like our Mosaic Biosciences innovations at scale. All in all, we've done the work necessary to set Mosaic up for a very strong second half. Again, thanks for joining our call and have a great, safe day.

Speaker 4

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.