Mark Pytosh
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Jay. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s call. The summarized financial highlights for the first quarter of 2020 included net sales of $75 million, a net loss of $21 million; EBITDA of $11 million; and there is no cash available for distribution this quarter. During the first quarter of 2020, we experienced third-party outages at Coffeyville facility that led do approximately 10 days of unplanned downtime. During the downtime at Coffeyville, we proactively completed maintenance work at the facility that allowed us to move its planned turnaround from the fall of 2020 to the summer of 2021. Aside from these third-party issues, Coffeyville operated as expected in the quarter. The ammonia plant operated at 86% utilization, below the first quarter of 2019 at 96%. The unplanned downtime from the third-party outages impacted Coffeyville’s utilization rate by approximately 9%. We had strong utilization at the East Dubuque facility following the completion of its planned turnaround last fall. At East Dubuque, the ammonia plant operated at 101% utilization, compared to utilization of 69% in the prior year period. As a reminder, the fall of 2018 was severely impacted by wet weather, which caused additional ammonia inventory of East Dubuque to be carried into the first quarter of 2019. We managed our storage capacity levels by reducing ammonia utilization during that period last year. Our combined operations produced approximately 201,000 gross tons of ammonia, and 78,000 net tons of ammonia available for sale for the first quarter of 2020. This compares to production of 179,000 gross tons of ammonia, and 41,000 net tons of ammonia available for sale in the prior year period. We produced 317,000 tons of UAN in the first quarter of 2020, compared to 335,000 tons of UAN last year. We sold approximately 284,000 tons of UAN during the first quarter of 2020 at an average price of $166 per ton. In addition, we sold approximately 54,000 tons of ammonia during the first quarter of 2020 at an average price of $264 per ton. Year-over-year, pricing remained soft for UAN and ammonia, which were down 25% and 28%, respectively. UAN pricing continued to be impacted by additional imports into the U.S. from Russia and Trinidad, as a result of the EU tariffs. The ammonia market also remained well-supplied with customers having carried over inventories after the poor fall application season which put pressure on pricing. Natural gas pricing was lower as well, helping offset some of the UAN price weakness. In the first quarter, we saw normal activity from our customer base as they prepared for the spring planting season. So far, spring application has been robust, and we continue to expect a healthy increase to planted corn acreage, compared to last year, which I will discuss further in my closing remarks. I will now turn the call over to Tracy to discuss our financial results.