David W. Honeyfield
Analyst · CLSA
Thanks, Kelvin. We had a modest net loss in the first quarter. We successfully narrowed the loss and mitigated the price impact by delivering on the 3 keys that I highlighted in our last call as essential to returning Intrepid to profitability and positive free cash flow. First, we lowered our per ton cash operating costs from the fourth quarter by 8% for potash and 4% for Trio. In fact, despite lower prices, we grew our gross margin for potash and held the Trio gross margin flat from the fourth quarter. Excluding depreciation, we actually expanded our margin for both products from quarter-to-quarter. Second, we reduced our expense run rate with a workforce reduction and other specific cost savings measures. We brought down our SG&A expense by 13% from the fourth quarter and 29% from the comparable period last year, and we expect to have a meaningful reduction in our SG&A expense for 2014. And third, we're closely managing our capital investment level. With the completion of our major capital projects, we have reduced our capital investments significantly this year from recent years to total between $40 million and $50 million in 2014. In the second half of this year, the operational and financial benefits from our capital investment program will become even more evident. We expect to drive down our potash cash operating costs by approximately 10% per ton in the second half of this year as we produce more tons from HB and West. The progress we've made with our new HB Solar Solution mine is impressive. In the first quarter, we produced approximately 13,000 tons from HB, giving me confidence that we will hit our target of full year production of 50,000 to 100,000 tons. Overall, the start-up has gone well. We've identified and corrected the minor commissioning bottlenecks, and the mill is performing consistent with our expectations. The next harvest following the summer evaporation season will be larger, and we already have some visibility into how that will go. All the indicators we use to predict the results of that harvest are tracking with our expectations. We're injecting brine into the mine works on pace with design, we're extracting potassium-enriched brine and filling the ponds timely to take advantage of the summer evaporation season and we're seeing the KCL grades that support our predicted harvest. In simple terms, we feel good about HB today, as we're filling the mines at a strong rate and we have a mill that's running as designed. As a reminder, at full production rates of 150,000 to 200,000 tons per year, cash operating costs will be in the range of $80 to $100 per ton. The first quarter experienced what are likely to be the highest HB costs as the process is always at its least efficient during start-up and as we spread those costs over a relatively small production base. I'd characterize the $2.9 million of our lower cost for market adjustment in the first quarter that was attributed to HB really more as a start-up loss in the commissioning phase of a new operation, and I expect we'll probably have another $1 million of LCM costs associated with HB in the second quarter as we complete this initial harvest. HB cash operating costs will trend down this year and into the next as we have higher production levels with the second harvest season starting late this summer. Moving to our West plant. The final West upgrades are being constructed and installed, and we're making the adjustments in our processes to improve recoveries. Through these improvements to West and the capabilities afforded to us with the new North plant, we'll increase our West production, leading to lower per ton cash operating costs. We increased our premium Trio production again this quarter as we moved closer to meeting our original premium production target. Our net Trio production, however, was down sequentially as we incurred product losses during the process of converting standard-sized product into premium-sized product. This lower net production result led to elevated per ton cash operating costs in the quarter. The team is continuing testing and making adjustments in the plant to improve our production process of premium-sized product to allow us to meet the existing demand, as well as to improve our efficiency and lower our per ton Trio cash operating costs. Overall, I'm pleased with the first quarter progress, and I believe that our commitment to optimization is the right focus for us at this time. I see that we're setting ourselves up in a sustainable manner to deliver the margin and cash flow opportunities we expect from our investments. We are focused on the right set of objectives and on the ongoing optimization of our assets that will allow us to lower costs, increase production and strengthen Intrepid even more. Joe, at this time, we're ready for questions.