Stephen Wilson
Analyst · David Silver from Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks, Terry, and thank you, all, for joining us this morning. For the second quarter of 2010, CF Industries reported net income of $105 million or $1.54 per diluted share, down from earnings of $213 million or $4.33 per share in the same period last year. The quarter included some significant onetime costs related to our acquisition of Terra Industries and some other unusual items, which Tony will discuss later in the call. We came in to this acquisition with a vision of a great company we can build by bringing these two businesses together. Now we have the chance to make that vision a reality, and we like what we're finding every day as we do that. Of course, there's a lot of work to integrate the business practices, systems and organizations of two public companies, and we'll be at it for some time to come. But that effort is energizing those of us who are working on it because we can see the benefits and opportunities available to us. Briefly, those benefits and opportunities come in two forms. First is a set of synergies we've outlined in past discussions, which we've targeted at $105 million to $135 million per year. Since April 5, teams of employees with a CF Industries heritage and employees with a Terra heritage have identified scores of individual initiatives that add up to an amount greater than the high end of this targeted range. Over the coming quarters, we'll continue our rigorous process to implement these actions and make sure that these savings and more are realized. Second, we've always believed that as the integration proceeds, we'll find that we have better market intelligence and that we'll identify expanded capabilities and a host of new options available to us. While we're far from completely optimizing the combined manufacturing, logistics and sales organizations, we are finding new improvement opportunities and rapid succession. Some of these can be implemented immediately, while others require modifications to business processes and systems. We've focused our attention on the low-hanging fruit now, even while we're finalizing plans for the future state. This allowed us to make some successful tactical moves in the second quarter and into July that wouldn't have been possible for either the legacy companies alone. We told you in our first quarter report that our first priority through the spring would be serving our customers without any gaps or missteps. I'm proud of the way our team performed to make sure that this was the case, and I'm happy to report that we didn't drop the ball for any of our customers. The extremely strong ammonia season challenged our ability to meet all the demand, and employees from all parts of the company responded, delivering more ammonia to our customers than many of us thought possible in a single quarter. As an example, one of our ammonia terminals, which had extended to 24-hour operations, emptied half of its 30,000-ton ammonia tank in just 3 1/2 days. For the industry, this turned out to be the highest volume of spring for direct-application ammonia volume since 1994, surpassing our industry expectations by approximately 600,000 tons. The favorable weather for ammonia application changed more than just the mix among nitrogen products. It also raised the total amount of nitrogen applied in the fertilizer year by a meaningful amount. However, it wasn't until late June or early July that the marketplace fully appreciated this fact and realized its implications for urea and UAN inventories throughout the distribution chain. Prices of those two products, and especially of UAN, drifted lower during the second quarter because of the weather-impaired first quarter application season in the Southern Plains and the mix shift toward ammonia. The recent trend of reluctance to hold inventory downstream seemed to peak at the end of the spring season, which kept additional pressure on domestic urea and UAN pricing at the time when global prices also were in decline. By the end of June, supply and demand factors collided to spur a global rebound in prices. On the supply side, summer maintenance schedules pulled production off the market in Central Europe and other locations. on the demand side, India and Pakistan came into the market for large nitrogen purchases, which they had deferred relative to past year's buying patterns. As global prices moved up, the extent of the destocking in North America became apparent, and price increases here outpaced those in the international market. While that upward move reinforces our confidence about what we can do in the second half of the year, it came too late to help second quarter results for these products. Our acquisition of Terra was very timely in helping us respond to somewhat unusual buying patterns. Reluctance by wholesaler to take large positions this spring increased the portion of business transacted in relatively small lots. This pattern favored inland distribution points, including our new plants in Oklahoma and Iowa. We took that opportunity to switch the plant sourcing for some other more distant customers that those plants have served in the past to Donaldsonville. That enabled us to focus Oklahoma and Iowa production to close in regional customers. It's precisely this type of opportunity that we intend to exploit in the months and years ahead to benefit both customers and investors. The story for our Phosphate business was very different. I would characterize the sales volume in the quarter as normal, although it suffered by comparison to last year's elevated volume. 2009 phosphate volumes were high because we are working off an excess inventory position after the collapse of the 2008 commodities level, which also led to depressed phosphate prices at the time. Our average selling price for DAP this quarter was $400 per ton, about $100 higher than in the 2009 quarter. Gross margin rose to 16% for our Phosphate segment. With more normal industry supply and demand conditions, we focused more on the domestic markets compared to last year. Domestic sales of DAP and MAP were about 4% higher year-over-year, whereas exports were 33% lower. Tampa contract sulfur prices decreased from $145 per long ton in the second quarter to $95 per long ton in the third quarter. Ammonia costs for our phosphate operations have risen by $25 per ton for the current period. Natural gas prices got below $4 per MMBtu in April with a warm in to winter. Hot summer weather eventually led to rising natural gas cost, as demand for electric power surged and perceived hurricane risk increased. On top of that, the Gulf oil spill presented the possibility that drilling would be curtailed in the Gulf. As a result, natural gas costs rose above $5 before again retrieving. Our average North American realized cost was $4.42 per MMBtu during the quarter. As we look back on the second quarter, we feel good about the way we responded to these conditions in natural gas markets. We didn't panic, which could have led us to lock in higher gas costs. We kept an even hand because of our long-term outlook that gas costs will remain advantageous for North American buyer. The one move we did make was to cap our pricing risk again possible hurricane-related spikes over the next three months, which we think was a prudent thing to do. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Tony to review our second quarter financial performance in more detail.