CVR Partners, LP Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the First Quarter 2026 CVR Partners LP Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I will now hand today's call over to Richard Roberts, Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in today's call. With me today are Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer; Dane Neumann, our Chief Financial Officer; Mike Wright, our Chief Operating Officer; and other members of management.

Prior to discussing our 2026 first quarter results, let me remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements as that term is defined under federal securities laws. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are cautioned that these statements may be affected by important factors set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our latest earnings release. As a result, actual operations or results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.

This call also includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our 2026 first quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC for the period.

Let me also remind you that we are a variable distribution MLP. We will review our previously established reserves, current cash usage, evaluate future anticipated cash needs and may reserve amounts for other future cash needs as determined by our general partner's Board. As a result, our distributions, if any, will vary from quarter-to-quarter due to several factors, including, but not limited to, operating performance, fluctuations in the prices received for finished products, capital expenditures and cash reserves deemed necessary or appropriate by the Board of Directors of our general partner.

With that said, I'll turn the call over to Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer. Mark?

Thank you, Richard. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. The summarized financial highlights for the first quarter of 2026 include net sales of $180 million, net income of $50 million, EBITDA of $78 million and the Board of Directors declared a first quarter distribution of $4 per common unit, which will be paid on May 18 to unitholders of record at the close of the market on May 11.

For the first quarter of 2026, our ammonia plant utilization was 103% with both plants running well and experiencing minimal downtime during the quarter. We also saw an increase in ammonia sales volume relative to the prior year period, along with increased sales prices for UAN and ammonia. The tightness in the nitrogen fertilizer market that began in the second half of 2025 has only been amplified by the conflicts in the Middle East over the past 2 months and leading to higher prices for the spring, which I will discuss further in my closing remarks.

I will now turn the call over to Dane to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. Turning to our results. For the first quarter of 2026, we reported net sales of $180 million and operating income of $58 million. Net income for the quarter was $50 million or $4.72 per common unit and EBITDA was $78 million. Relative to the first quarter of 2025, the increase in EBITDA was primarily due to a combination of higher UAN and ammonia sales pricing and higher ammonia sales volumes.

Total ammonia production for the first quarter was 220,000 gross tons, of which 70,000 net tons were available for sale and UAN production was 335,000 tons. During the quarter, we sold approximately 310,000 tons of UAN at an average price of $343 per ton and approximately 73,000 tons of ammonia at an average price of $687 per ton. Relative to the first quarter of 2025, total sales volumes were down slightly, primarily due to lower UAN production and sales volume due to some minor planned and unplanned outages at East Dubuque during the quarter. First quarter prices for UAN increased approximately 34% and ammonia prices increased approximately 24% relative to the prior year period.

Direct operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $63 million. Excluding inventory impacts, direct operating expenses increased by approximately $9 million relative to the first quarter of 2025, primarily due to higher natural gas and electricity costs, and repair and maintenance expenses.

Capital spending for the first quarter was $14 million, of which $8 million was maintenance capital. We estimate total capital spending for 2026 to be approximately $60 million to $75 million, of which $35 million to $45 million is expected to be maintenance capital. We anticipate a significant portion of the profit and growth capital spending planned for 2026 will be funded through cash reserves taken over the past few years.

We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $178 million, which consisted of $128 million in cash and availability under the ABL facility of $50 million. Within our cash balance of $128 million, we had approximately $17 million related to customer prepayments for the future delivery of product.

In assessing our cash available for distribution, we generated EBITDA of approximately $78 million and had net cash needs of $36 million for interest costs, maintenance CapEx and other reserves. As a result, there was $42 million of cash available for distribution and the Board of Directors of our general partner declared a distribution of $4 per common unit.

Looking ahead to the second quarter of 2026, we estimate our ammonia utilization rate to be between 95% and 100%, direct operating expenses, excluding inventory and turnaround impacts, to be between $57 million and $62 million and total capital spending to be between $28 million and $32 million.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Dane. In summary, we had another strong quarter of operations with ammonia utilization over 100% and the recent conflicts in the Middle East have caused prices to increase further for the spring. The spring planting season is underway and has gone well so far this year. The USDA is currently estimating approximately 95 million acres of corn will be planted in 2026. While this is a decline from the record levels of 2025, 95 million acres is well above the average level of corn plantings over the last 5 years.

Yield estimates are approximately 183 bushels per acre, resulting in an inventory carryout level below 2025. Soybean planted acreage is expected to be approximately 85 million acres with a yield estimate of 53 bushels per acre, resulting in an inventory carryout roughly in line with 2025.

December corn prices are approximately $4.75 per bushel and soybeans are approximately $11.90 per bushel. The Trump administration and congressional leaders continue to discuss potential subsidy programs for farmers to help offset lower grain prices and higher input costs. As a reminder, the U.S. is a net importer of nitrogen fertilizers, resulting in domestic fertilizer prices being heavily influenced by changes in global fertilizer prices. Europe, Brazil and India all compete with the U.S. for global fertilizer production.

Geopolitical conflicts have impacted the global fertilizer industry for the past few years, beginning with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The recent conflicts in the Middle East have caused further disruptions to global supply with roughly 30% of nitrogen fertilizer production typically transiting through the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, multiple nitrogen fertilizer production facilities across the Middle East have been damaged or have curtailed production over the past few months due to limited natural gas supplies.

Unfortunately, these events occurred at a critical time for farmers needing to secure crop inputs ahead of the spring planting season as fertilizer inventory levels were already tight across the industry after the large planting seasons in the U.S. and Brazil in 2025. While it remains unclear how long these issues in the Middle East and Russia will persist, we will continue to focus on safely and reliably running our plants at high utilization levels to meet the needs of our customers during this challenging time in our industry.

Natural gas prices in Europe have also increased amid the recent Middle East conflicts, currently trading around $14 per MMBtu, while U.S. prices have once again fallen below $3 per MMBtu. Damage sustained at LNG production facilities could take several years to repair, which would likely keep upward pressure on international gas prices relative to U.S. prices. The cost to produce ammonia in Europe has remained durably at the high end of the global cost curve and production remains below historical levels, which has created sales opportunities for U.S. Gulf Coast producers to export ammonia to Europe for upgrade.

We continue to believe Europe faces structural natural gas supply issues that will likely remain in effect through the next few years. The conflicts over the past few years in Ukraine and now Iran are a reminder of the value of U.S. production with adequate and secure feedstock availability.

At our Coffeyville facility, we continue to work on a detailed design and construction plan intended to allow the plant to utilize natural gas as an alternative feedstock to third-party pet coke in addition to increasing ammonia production capacity by up to 8%. We now believe we can achieve the feedstock diversification and capacity expansion of this project without investing the capital to source hydrogen from the adjacent Coffeyville refinery, which should significantly reduce the total capital spend associated with that scope of the project.

We also continue to execute certain debottlenecking projects at both plants that are expected to improve reliability and production rates. These include the brownfield capacity expansion at East Dubuque that we intend to complete during the upcoming turnaround in addition to water quality upgrade projects at both plants and the expansion of our DEF production and load-out capacity. The goal of these projects is to support our target of operating the plants at utilization rates above 95% of nameplate capacity, excluding the impact of turnarounds.

If the 2 brownfield expansion projects are completed, we estimate our consolidated ammonia production capacity would increase by approximately 7%. The funds needed for these projects are coming from the reserves taken over the last few years, and the Board elected to continue reserving capital in the first quarter. While the Board looks at reserves every quarter, I would expect them to continue to elect to reserve some capital, and we anticipate holding higher levels of cash related to these projects in the near term as we ramp up execution and spending. We believe unitholders will see the benefits of these investments in the coming years as these projects are completed and brought online. The first quarter continued to demonstrate the benefits of focusing on safety, reliability and performance.

In the quarter, we executed on all the critical elements of our business plan, which include safely and reliably operating our plants with a keen focus on the health and safety of our employees, contractors and communities, prudently managing costs, being judicious with capital, maximizing our marketing and logistics capabilities and targeting opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint.

In closing, I would like to thank our employees for their excellent execution, safely achieving 103% ammonia utilization and the solid delivery on our marketing and logistics plans, resulting in a distribution of $4 per common unit for the quarter.

With that, we are ready to answer any questions.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, there are no questions. I will now hand the call back over to the presenters for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everybody. We appreciate you joining the call today, and we look forward to discussing our second quarter results in late July. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Bella, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to fourth quarter 2025 CVR Partners LP Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Roberts, Vice President, FP&A and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in today's call.

With me today are Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer; Dane Neumann, our Chief Financial Officer; and other members of management.

Prior to discussing our 2025 fourth quarter and full year results, let me remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements as that term is defined under Federal Securities Laws.

For this purpose, any statements made during this call are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are cautioned that these statements may be affected by important factors set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our latest earnings release. As a result, actual operations or results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.

We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law. This call also includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, are included in our 2025 fourth quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC on Form 10-K for the period and will be discussed during the call.

Let me remind you that we are a variable distribution MLP, and we'll review our previously established reserves, current cash usage, evaluate future anticipated cash needs and may reserve amounts for other future cash needs as determined by our general partner's Board. As a result, our distributions, if any, will vary from quarter to quarter due to several factors, including, but not limited to, operating performance, fluctuations in the prices received for finished products, capital expenditures and cash reserves be necessary or appropriate by the Board of Directors of our general partner.

With that said, I'll turn the call over to Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer. Mark?

Thank you, Richard. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. Before we get into the results, I would like to introduce our new Chief Operating Officer, Mike Wright. Mike also serves as COO of CVR Energy, a position he's held since January of 2022. Mike is nearly 35 years of experience in the refining and petrochemical industries in a variety of operations and commercial roles, and we are excited to have him leading our fertilizer operations teams.

Turning to the results for the fourth quarter of 2025. We reported net sales of $131 million, a net loss of $10 million, EBITDA of $20 million. The Board of Directors declared a fourth quarter distribution of $0.37 per common unit, which will be paid on March 9, the unitholders of record at the close of the market on March 2. For the full year 2025, we reported EBITDA of $211 million and distributions of $10.54 per common unit. We had another year of solid operations from our facilities with an ammonia utilization rate of 88% for the year.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, our ammonia plant utilization was 64%, which was impacted by the planned turnaround and subsequent delayed start-up at the Coffeyville facility. While the turnaround was completed in early November as scheduled, we experienced additional downtime following approximately 3 weeks of start-up issues at the third-party air separation plant. Although production and sales volumes were lower than we expected, pricing for nitrogen fertilizers remain strong throughout the quarter, and we continue to be optimistic about the spring planting season, which I will discuss further in my closing remarks.

I will now turn the call over to Dane to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. Turning to our results for the full year 2025. We reported net sales of $606 million and operating income of $129 million. Net income for the year was $99 million or $9.33 per common unit and EBITDA was $211 million. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we reported net sales of $131 million and an operating loss of $3 million.

Net loss for the fourth quarter was $10 million or $0.97 per common unit and EBITDA was $20 million. Relative to the fourth quarter of 2024, EBITDA decreased primarily due to lower production and sales volumes and higher direct operating costs associated with the planned turnaround of Coffeyville.

Total ammonia production for the fourth quarter was 140,000 gross tons, of which 62,000 net tons were available for sale and UAN production was 169,000 tons. During the quarter, we sold approximately 182,000 tons of UAN at an average price of $355 per ton and approximately 81,000 tons of ammonia at an average price of $626 per ton. Relative to the fourth quarter of 2024, UAN and ammonia sales volumes were lower as a result of the planned turnaround and subsequent start-up issues at Coffeyville that Mark discussed previously.

Fourth quarter prices for UAN increased approximately 55% and ammonia prices increased approximately 32% relative to the prior year period. Direct operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $81 million, which included turnaround expenses of approximately $14 million. Excluding inventory and turnaround impacts, direct operating expenses increased by approximately $9 million from the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily related to higher repair and maintenance and personnel expenses.

Capital spending for the fourth quarter was $27 million, of which $17 million was for maintenance capital. Capital spending for the full year 2025 was $57 million, of which $35 million was maintenance capital. We estimate 2026 maintenance capital spending to be $35 million to $45 million and growth capital spending to be $25 million to $30 million. As a reminder, we expect a significant portion of the 2026 growth capital spending will be funded from the cash the Board elected to reserve over the past several years.

We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $117 million which consisted of $69 million in cash and availability under the ABL facility of $48 million. Within our cash balance of $69 million, we had approximately $3 million related to customer prepayments for the future delivery of product. In assessing our cash available for distribution, we generated EBITDA of $20 million and had net cash needs of approximately $16 million for interest costs, maintenance CapEx and other reserves.

As a result, there was $4 million of cash available for distribution and the Board of Directors of our general partner declared a distribution of $0.37 per common unit.

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2026, we estimate our ammonia utilization rate to be between 95% and 100%. We expect direct operating expenses to be $57 million to $62 million, excluding inventory impacts, and total capital spending to be between $25 million and $30 million.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Dane. In summary, although we were disappointed about the extended downtime associated with the third-party air separation unit during the quarter, nitrogen fertilizer market conditions continue to be constructive and pricing has remained robust. With the 2025 harvest complete, the USDA is now estimating a record crop year with corn yields of nearly 187 bushels per acre on nearly 99 million acres of corn planted. Soybean yields are estimated to be 53 bushels per acre on over 81 million planted acres. U.S. inventory carryout levels are expected to be above the 10-year average for corn and below for soybeans. Despite the record harvest, May corn prices remain around $4.45 per bushel, and current expectations are for approximately 95 million acres of corn to be planted in 2026.

At this level of planting, we expect to see continued strong demand for nitrogen fertilizers through the spring.

On the supply side of the equation, inventory levels around the world continue to appear tight. Geopolitical tensions remain a key risk to nitrogen fertilizer supplies, given the significant production capacity reside in countries across the Middle East, North Africa and Russia. We continue to monitor developments in the Middle East that could impact energy and fertilizer markets, and we expect 2026 will likely be a continued period of higher than historical volatility in the business.

Natural gas prices in the U.S. saw a sharp increase earlier this year due to extreme cold weather across several regions of the country. However, prices have since declined and have been trending between $3 and $4 per MMBtu. Meanwhile, natural gas prices in Europe averaged over $10 per MMBtu for the fourth quarter and had been over $13 since the beginning of the year.

The cost to produce ammonia in Europe has remained durably at the high end of the global cost curve. And production remains below historical levels, which creates opportunities for U.S. Gulf Coast producers to export ammonia to Europe for upgrade. We continue to believe Europe faces a structural natural gas supply issues that will likely remain in effect through 2026.

We continue to execute certain debottlenecking projects at both plants that are expected to improve reliability and production rates. The goal of these projects is to support our target of operating our plants at utilization rates above 95% of nameplate capacity, excluding the impact of turnarounds. For 2026, we are focused on water and electricity reliability and quality at both plants and expanding our DEF production and load-out capacity among other projects.

We also continue working on construction and design plans for the feedstock diversification and ammonia expansion project at the Coffeyville facility. As a reminder, this project should provide us the ability to choose the optimal mix of natural gas and third-party pet coke depending on prevailing prices.

The Board elected to continue reserving capital for these projects in the fourth quarter that we expect to spend over the next 2 years. Our focus is on improving reliability and redundancy at the 2 plants in efforts to provide better production rates and lower downtime in the future.

The funds needed for the 2026 projects are coming from the reserves taken over the last several years. The fourth quarter demonstrated the benefits of focusing on reliability and performance. In the quarter, we continue to focus on all of the critical elements of our business plan, which include safely and reliably operating our plants with a keen focus on the health and safety of our employees, contractors and communities, prudently managing costs, being judicious with capital, maximizing our marketing and logistics capabilities and targeting opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint.

In closing, I would like to thank our employees for all their hard work during the Coffeyville turnaround and continuing to deliver on our marketing and logistics plans, resulting in a distribution of $0.37 per common unit for the fourth quarter.

With that, we're ready to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from the line of Rob McGuire of Granite Research.

Just a few questions. One is, what are you seeing in terms of UAN imports out there? Are you seeing a dart of imports from Trinidad? And in particular, what are you seeing from Russia and any other color you can give to us?

I wouldn't say that we are seeing anything outside the norm. We're still importing some tonnage. The one big item in Trinidad is obviously the Nutrien plant is down, an upgrade is down. So there's less tonnage coming in from Trinidad. So I think that's keeping the market tight for UAN in particular, in the states.

And I just -- I've seen some of the commentary from Nutrient and it doesn't feel like that plant is likely to return to service soon. So there's a combination of among an UAN tightness that was a product that was being imported here. The Russian product has been -- that's been pretty consistently flowing. And I wouldn't say there's any new up or down the market is watching closely. There have been some drone strikes on either Russian fertilizer plants or export terminals. And so that the market is watching that to see. And -- but I would say, generally, it feels like the supply-demand balance in UAN is pretty, I would say, on the tight end of the curve.

Switching searching topics. The current deferred revenue was $23 million at year-end, and that was down from $51 million year-over-year. Does that mean there was less product presold this year rather than relative to last year?

Yes. And I would just say it was a timing issue because it was not -- we typically would see more activity in December for tax planning purposes by the customer base, but we didn't see as much this year, but that's all been picked up in January and first part of February here. So we're, I'd say, normal if anything, maybe a little bigger book or for the spring than we typically see. So it was just -- it didn't fall in December like normal, but the customers were in buying product, and we've got a big book on for the spring.

And then is it safe to assume that ammonia and UAN pricing will

Increase sequentially heading into the first quarter of 2026.

Yes. If you look at our booking business today, it's at higher prices than the fourth quarter. And so yes, there will be an uptick. It won't be dramatic, but there'll be an uptick from the fourth quarter to the first quarter.

Great. And then do you feel confident about the air separator issue at Coffeyville being resolved at this point? Might you receive compensation from the operator for downtime and related shortfall on that?

So let me start -- I'm confident that the issues that caused the delay startup have been dealt with. -- we are not happy with the performance, and we are in discussions with that service provider about the go-forward strategy for the operations and maintenance of that facility. So we're working on that I saw, call it not an amended contract, but an amended business plan which would involve us being more active with the ongoing activities there.

And so we're not going to just sit by and just accept those events. We're going to engage and work on a different approach than what happened in November. The contract does have penalties and there were some penalties paying for that, but it's a fraction of our lost production level at the facility. So -- it is a thorn in the side, and it's meant to incentivize the provider to provide us really good service and onstream, but it can't make up for the shortfall of lost production. So -- but again, we're revisiting our -- how we do business together. And in the coming quarters, we'll talk more about what the go-forward strategy is there, but it won't be status quo.

I appreciate that. And then last question, Mark. I always appreciate your commentary on the market. Acreage is supposed to be down for corn this year, as you mentioned in your opening remarks. And I'm just kind of curious I would think that would hurt demand just a little bit, then again, there are more supply constraints. So can you kind of just give us how you feel the spring is going to work out? And why are you feeling so optimistic about it?

Sure. Well, if you asked me 3 years ago and said it was going to be 95 million acres of corn we'd be thrilled. 95 acres is really at the top end of -- except for last year. And so that's a large amount of acreage and it's going to -- because of the 99 million acres and how much we planned, we've been corn consumes nitrogen from the soil, so you have to replenish it. So the soil has been depleted of nitrogen and you got to come back in and formalize it. And so to your point, it's going to be a really good demand season.

Last year was peak. And we don't -- I would say, even when 99 million acres are planted -- sometimes the application rates can be lower. So it's not apples-to-apples. So you can't just take 99% and 95% and compare them because if on the acreage that you plan, if you plant more productive acreage and you want higher yields, you're going to put more fertilizer on. So it's hard to -- the nuance there is the apples-to-apples. But the supply side of the equation continues to be and we can talk about every region of the world.

There are reasons why the supply is constrained. There's been natural gas availability issues in certain countries. There's still ongoing conflicts in certain areas. We're watching what's going to happen with Iran. Iran is a big producer of nitrogen, big exporter, if there's some activity in the Strait of Hormuz or some activity with that constrains Iran's ability to produce, that can have a -- we're right on top of the spring coming up here in 6 weeks. So that's going to we got to keep our eye on that. But the supply side has really been even a bigger issue.

Demand side has been super solid, but the supply side is not able to keep up with the demand side, I would just tell you to Jess, we're seeing early -- I know it's cold a few weeks ago, but -- if you look in the Midwest, we're already seeing ammonia movement across a pretty broad loss of up into even Iowa and Illinois to a degree but all the way down into the Southern Plains. And so that's a good omen for the spring when we have the ammonia running this early.

We're only -- we're third week of February. So really -- I think, generally, the optimism is high for the spring, and we've got a good jump on it. When you get a good start to it, it really could lead to a much better spring. So we feel really good about where we are. We have a good book of business for the company. We've got a good order book, and we just need to run like we normally have, except for the last quarter. So that will run at a high utilization and move the product for our customers.

But that was really helpful. And just one other follow-on is just with with product moving at this point, is there a change in trend in terms of the farmer living food mouth? Or are they starting to plan early at this point in time or it's just that the application is starting earlier given the weather opportunities.

I think is your last comment there, the conditions have come into place here in February rather than March. So I would say it's probably pulled up by maybe a couple of weeks or 3 weeks. I mean, it doesn't seem like a lot, but in farming farmland, that's a lot. And so if you can get a jump on -- if you're a farmer and you can get a jump on your ammonia application, that really helps you get prepared for the spring.

And so that always makes everybody feel better when money run starts earlier because then you can have a longer process of getting it applied and planting behind it. So just a lot of optimism around conditions. We started the year with super cold everywhere all the way to the Canadian border, but we've turned the corner here from a weather perspective. And so we are being able to move -- we've been moving product from our plants out to the field.

There are no questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mark Pytosh for closing remarks.

Again, I'd like to thank all of you for your interest in CVR Partners and being on the call today and our employees for their hard work and commitment towards safe, reliable and environmentally responsible operations. And we look forward to reviewing our first quarter results here in a couple of months. Thank you for being here today. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Greetings, and welcome to the CVR Partners Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Richard Roberts, Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, Eric. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in today's call. With me today are Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer; Dane Neumann, our Chief Financial Officer; and other members of management. Prior to discussing our 2025 third quarter results, let me remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements as that term is defined under Federal Securities Laws for this purpose.

Any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are cautioned that these statements may be affected by important factors set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our latest earnings release.

As a result, actual operations or results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.

This call also includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, are included in our 2025 third quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC for the period.

Let me also remind you that we are a variable distribution MLP. We will review our previously established reserves, current cash usage, evaluate future anticipated cash needs and may reserve amounts for other future cash needs as determined by our general partner's Board. As a result, our distributions, if any, will vary from quarter-to-quarter due to several factors, including, but not limited to, operating performance, fluctuations in the prices received for finished products, capital expenditures and cash reserves deemed necessary or appropriate by the Board of Directors of our general partner.

With that said, I'll turn the call over to Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer. Mark?

Thank you, Richard. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. The summarized financial highlights for the third quarter of 2025 include net sales of $164 million, net income of $43 million, EBITDA of $71 million, and the Board of Directors declared a third quarter distribution of $4.02 per common unit, which will be paid on November 17 to unitholders of record at the close of the market on November 10.

For the third quarter of 2025, our consolidated ammonia plant utilization was 95%, which was impacted by some planned and unplanned downtime at both facilities during the quarter. Combined ammonia production for the third quarter of 2025 was 208,000 gross tons, of which 59,000 net tons were available for sale and UAN production was 337,000 tons.

During the quarter, we sold approximately 328,000 tons of UAN at an average price of $348 per ton and approximately 48,000 tons of ammonia at an average price of $531 per ton. Relative to the third quarter of 2024, sales volumes were down slightly primarily as a result of low inventory levels at the end of the second quarter, following the strong demand in the first half of 2025.

UAN and ammonia prices increased 52% and 33%, respectively, from the prior year period, driven by tight inventory levels across the system as a result of elevated demand and reduced supply associated with domestic and international production outages. Overall, we had a strong third quarter with UAN pricing above levels we saw in the spring and we believe the setup is favorable for the remainder of the year and into the first half of 2026.

Domestic and global inventories of nitrogen fertilizer remain tight, and that has been supportive of higher prices which I will discuss further in my closing remarks.

I will now turn the call over to Dane to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. For the third quarter of 2025, we reported net sales of $164 million and operating income of $51 million. Net income for the quarter was $43 million, $4.08 per common unit and EBITDA was $71 million. Relative to the third quarter of 2024, the increase in EBITDA was primarily due to a combination of higher UAN and ammonia sales pricing.

Direct operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $58 million. Excluding inventory impacts, direct operating expenses increased by approximately $7 million relative to the third quarter of 2024 primarily due to higher natural gas and electricity costs and some preliminary spending associated with Coffeyville's plant turnaround.

During the third quarter of 2025, we spent $13 million on capital projects, of which $7 million was maintenance capital. We estimate total capital spending for 2025 to be approximately $58 million to $65 million, of which $39 million to $42 million is expected to be maintenance capital.

We anticipate a significant portion of the profit and growth capital spending planned for 2025 will be funded through cash reserves taken over the past two years. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $206 million, which consisted of $156 million in cash and availability under the ABL facility of $50 million.

Within our cash balance of $156 million, we had approximately $28 million related to customer prepayments for the future delivery of product. In assessing our cash available for distribution, we generated EBITDA of approximately $71 million and net cash needs of $34 million for interest costs, maintenance CapEx and other reserves and had $6 million released from previous reserves.

As a result, there was $42 million of cash available for distribution and the Board of Directors of our general partner declared a distribution of $4.02 per common unit. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of 2025, we estimate our ammonia utilization rate to be between 80% and 85%, which will be impacted by the planned turnaround currently underway at the Coffeyville facility.

We expect direct operating expenses, excluding inventory and turnaround impacts be between $58 million and $63 million and total capital spending to be between $30 million and $35 million. Turnaround expense is expected to be between $15 million and $20 million. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Dane. Harvest is currently on schedule and nearing completion. The USDA is estimating yields of approximately 187 bushels per acre on 98.7 million acres of corn and inventory carryout levels of approximately 13%. Soybean yields are estimated to be 54 bushels per acre on 81 million acres planted with inventory carryout levels of 7%, although the soybean numbers will likely be impacted by ongoing trade friction with China. Both of these carryout estimates are at or below the 10-year averages. Grain prices have remained at the lower end of the last 12-month range, driven primarily by expectations of large crop production in Brazil and North America this year and potential trade disputes where the purchase of grains may be used as a negotiating tool and reaching trade agreements.

December corn prices are approximately $4.30 a bushel. In November soybeans are approximately $10.90 per bushel. The Trump administration and congressional leaders have indicated they intend to provide a subsidy program for farmers to help offset lower grain prices and higher input costs.

Geopolitical conflicts are continuing to impact the nitrogen fertilizer industry. In the third quarter, Ukraine continued to target nitrogen fertilizer plants and export infrastructure in Russia, after the large planting seasons in the U.S. and Brazil and the loss of production due to geopolitical factors fertilizer inventory levels across the industry have been tight and are taking time to replenish.

We expect these conditions to persist into the spring of 2026. The wildcard continues to be the potential for tariffs on Russian fertilizer imports that could have significant impacts on pricing in the near term. Natural gas prices in Europe have been steady since our last earnings call and remained around $11 per MMBtu currently, while U.S. prices continue to range between $3 and $4 per MMBtu.

As we near winter, Europe has refilled its natural gas inventories at a lower level than normal and there's a risk of prices moving higher if the winter is cooler than expected. The cost of produced ammonia in Europe has remained durably at the high end of the global cost curve and production remains below historical levels, which has created opportunities for U.S. Gulf Coast producers to export ammonia to Europe for upgrade.

We continue to believe Europe faced structural natural gas supply issues that will likely remain in effect through 2026. We are nearing the completion of the planned turnaround at our Coffeyville facility. In the early phases of the turnaround, we experienced an ammonia release, which we currently anticipate could delay the completion of turnaround work by a few days relative to the original schedule.

We expect the facility to resume full production in the next few weeks. As a reminder, we are currently planning for a 35-day turnaround at our East Dubuque facility in the third quarter of 2026. At our Coffeyville facility, we continue to work on a detailed design and construction plan to allow the plant to utilize natural gas and additional hydrogen from the adjacent Coffeyville refinery as alternative feedstocks to third-party pet coke.

This project could also expand Coffeyville's ammonia production capacity by up to 8%. We also continue to execute certain debottlenecking projects at both plants that are expected to improve reliability and production rates. These include water quality upgrade projects at both plants and the expansion of our DEF production and load-out capacity.

The goal of these projects is to support our target of operating the plants at utilization rates above 95% of nameplate capacity, excluding the impact to turnarounds. The funds needed for these projects are coming from the reserves taken over the last 2 years and the board elected to continue reserving capital in the third quarter.

While the Board looks at reserves every quarter, I would expect them to continue to elect to reserve some capital and we anticipate holding higher levels of cash related to these projects in the near term as we ramp up execution and spending, which we will -- we expect will take place over the next 2 to 3 years.

The third quarter continued to demonstrate the benefits of focusing on safety and reliability and performance. In the quarter, we executed on all the critical elements of our business plan, which includes safely and reliably operating our plants with a keen focus on the health and safety of our employees, contractors and communities prudently managing costs, being judicious with capital, maximizing our marketing and logistics capabilities and targeting opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint.

In closing, I would like to thank our employees for their safe execution during a few brief outages in the quarter, achieving 95% ammonia utilization and the solid delivery on our marketing and logistics plans resulting in a distribution of $4.02 per common unit for the third quarter. With that, we're ready to answer any questions, Eric.

We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rob McGuire with Granite Research.

Could you, Mark, go back to the Coffeyville natural gas feedstock project? I apologize. But can you just -- I think I missed, when do you anticipate that to start. And are you at a point where you can talk to us about total cost for the project and what you expect in terms of returns?

I'm not ready to talk about finalizing the final cost and returns yet. We're in detailed engineering. So we need to kind of confirm some things about that in terms of configuration or reconfiguration and the infrastructure needs, but everything looks like it's kind of penciling out the way we thought it would.

And that's -- it's a combination project to be clear. Part of it is taking additional hydrogen from the refinery. The refinery has a reformer unit. So we are talking about taking additional hydrogen from the refinery plus replacing -- potentially replacing pet coke as a feedstock for a portion with natural gas. But the hydrogen component would be an increase in our production capacity.

So it's a combination project that includes the ability to replace feedstock plus bring additional hydrogen, which means additional ammonia capacity. That's what I've been referring to in my comments about up to 8% increase in our production capacity.

So we have been reserving for that project. And so we will have the capital available set aside for that. And I'm expecting by the next call to be able to talk with more specifics on that project and moving ahead there. But so far, all the engineering work that's coming back in the construction plans look on track with what we thought what the original plan was.

I appreciate that. And shifting gears, any concerns about drought conditions impacting ammonia runs in this ammonia application season. .

Not in the markets where we're placed. We've had some moisture here in the last week, particularly the big ammonia run for us is up in the Northern Plains around East Dubuque, and there was -- there's been moisture. So I actually -- I think conditions are as close to perfect as we could predict because we've had -- the harvest is basically complete there.

So we've emptied the fields. The soil temperatures are down and moisture come in, in the last week. And that combination is about perfect conditions. And I'm expecting a big fall ammonia run. The customers are telling us that we have a good book of business already, but people are coming in now with additional cash orders. And so I expect really a good fall ammonia run. So I'm very optimistic.

Wonderful. And I mean, kind of just moving forward to that question is just how significant of an impact do you think it will be for the acreage to be down this coming season, at least on anticipated acreage? And is it simply that inventories are down, supply is tight, so you're not concerned at all about selling your volume at elevated prices? Or will there be an impact maybe even on imports?

I'm -- so there's a couple of different layers to the answer to that. Number one, we've been expecting that we were thinking that the acreage -- corn acreage, this is corn acreage would drop next year. I'm not sure now based on -- I'm still reading what happened this morning over in Korea with Trump and Jae, but the feeling in the marketplace is that the corn acreage won't drop as much, because there's concern about what is the what are the end markets for soybeans. And so maybe there's going to be more corn acres just on a defensive approach to protect against trade, trade war behavior.

And so I actually think that the corn acreage might surprise on the upside versus a drop -- a lot of people were talking about drop to below 90s, which is still great. That's a great corn run. But it may not drop as far, because I think farmers are of the belief that maybe the end markets will be restricted for soybean exports.

So we may end up with a better answer there. I would tell you that if you look at the inventory balances, we're already -- we're tight and I think lower acreage given where we are from an inventory perspective, probably won't impact us much in '26 as it normally would, because quite frankly, there's a rush to try to replenish what we have -- and you probably saw the announcement that Nutrien has shut down one of the Trinidad plants, which is an importer to the U.S.

And so that's going to affect the replenishment time frame. So I'm not terribly concerned about the acreage. We watch it closely. But right now, I think the market is in a position to absorb that.

That's really interesting. And then with regards to the Trinidad and just looping Russia on imports, are you seeing an impact in the marketplace on those imports at this point in time?

We have not seen any impact on Russian imports. In fact, Russia is the -- particularly like in UAN, Russia is the marginal producer in the marketplace, and they've been exporting to the U.S. in size. So there's been no effect. The fear factor in the market is if there's somehow a tariff or sanctioning of fertilizer coming to the market, that could be a big event from affecting supply. And so that's a fair factor. But we haven't seen any signs. But during the course of this year, even with all the geopolitical events, there's been no restriction on the imports of Russian and I'll focus more on UAN, but there's urea, too. But Russian UAN has been a big factor in the U.S.

Well, that's really helpful. And Mark, last question, and I certainly won't hold you to this, but I'd love to hear what your outlook is for the price of ammonia, UAN and urea heading into fourth quarter. .

It's -- we never give out pricing for those products, but it's going to be a solid quarter. And so we've seen a strong market since the UAN fill season and the ammonia prepay. So pricing will be higher in the fourth quarter versus 3Q, which it normally would be.

So we'll see that show up in the results. And I'm optimistic. I'm not ready to prognosticate on pricing for spring, but I'm optimistic about the supply-demand balance and what we're going to see there. So I expect this kind of these sorts of market conditions to carry through the first half of '26.

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Well, thanks, everybody, for participating in the call today, and we look forward to reviewing our fourth quarter results with you in February. Have a nice day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.

Greetings, and welcome to the CVR Partners Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Richard Roberts, Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis, Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in today's call. With me today are Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer; Dane Newmann, our Chief Financial Officer; and other members of management. Prior to discussing our 2025 second quarter results, let me remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements as that term is defined under federal securities laws. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are cautioned that these statements may be affected by important factors set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our latest earnings release. As a result, actual operations or results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.

We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law. This call also includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our 2025 second quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC for the period.

Let me also remind you that we are a variable distribution MLP. We will review our previously established reserves, current cash usage, evaluate future anticipated cash needs and may reserve amounts for other future cash needs as determined by our general partner's Board. As a result, our distributions, if any, will vary from quarter-to-quarter due to several factors, including, but not limited to, operating performance, fluctuations in the prices received for finished products, capital expenditures and cash reserves deemed necessary or appropriate by the Board of Directors of our general partner. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Mark Pytosh, our Chief Executive Officer. Mark?

Thank you for joining us for today's call. The summarized financial highlights for the second quarter of 2025 include net sales of $169 million, net income of $39 million, EBITDA of $67 million, and the Board of Directors declared a second quarter distribution of $3.89 per common unit, which will be paid on August 18 to unitholders of record at the close of the market on August 11.

For the second quarter of 2025, our consolidated ammonia plant utilization was 91%, which was impacted by some planned and unplanned downtime at both facilities during the quarter. Combined ammonia production for the second quarter of 2025 was 197,000 gross tons, of which 54,000 tons net tons were available for sale and UAN production was 321,000 tons. During the quarter, we sold approximately 345,000 tons of UAN at an average price of $317 per ton and approximately 57,000 tons of ammonia at an average price of $593 per tonne.

Relative to the second quarter of 2024, sales volumes were higher despite lower production volumes, driven by a combination of strong demand in 2025 and a larger shift of product deliveries from 2Q into 1Q last year as a result of favorable weather allowing farmers to plant earlier in the year. UAN and ammonia prices increased 18% and 14%, respectively, from the prior year period, driven by robust demand on increased corn plantings and tight inventories across the system.

Overall, we had another good quarter, and we believe the setup is favorable heading into the second half of the year Domestic and global inventories of nitrogen fertilizer remained tight, and that has been supportive of pricing in the summer, which I will discuss further in my closing remarks. I will now turn the call over to Dane to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. For the second quarter of 2025, we reported net sales of $169 million and operating income of $46 million. Net income for the quarter was $39 million or $3.67 per common unit and EBITDA was $67 million. Relative to the second quarter of 2024, the increase in EBITDA was primarily due to a combination of higher UAN and ammonia sales pricing and volumes, along with lower pet coke feedstock costs. Direct operating expenses for the second quarter of 2025 were $60 million.

Excluding inventory impacts, direct operating expenses increased by approximately $6 million relative to the second quarter of 2024, primarily due to higher natural gas and electricity costs. During the second quarter of 2025, we spent $11 million on capital projects, which was primarily maintenance capital.

We estimate total capital spending for 2025 to be approximately $55 million to $65 million, of which $40 million to $45 million is expected to be maintenance capital. We anticipate a significant portion of the profit growth capital spending planned for 2025 will be funded through cash reserves taken over the past few years. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $162 million, which consisted of $114 million in cash and availability under the ABL facility of $47 million. Within our cash balance of $114 million, we had less than $1 million related to customer prepayments for the future delivery of product.

In assessing our cash available for distribution, we generated EBITDA of $67 million and had net cash needs of $26 million for interest costs, maintenance CapEx and other reserves. As a result, there was $41 million of cash available for distribution and the Board of Directors of our general partner declared a distribution of $3.89 per common unit. Looking ahead to the third quarter of 2025, we estimate our ammonia utilization rate to be between 93% and 98% with some downtime planned at East Dubuque for control system upgrades. We expect direct operating expenses, excluding inventory impacts, to be between $60 million and $65 million and total capital spending to be between $20 million and $25 million. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Dane. In summary, despite some planned and unplanned downtime, we had a good quarter of operations with ammonia utilization of 91% Demand for nitrogen fertilizer remained solid through the end of the planting season, and we are seeing the strength in demand continue for the second half of the year with favorable pricing. The spring planting season went well and demand for nitrogen was strong. The USDA estimates that 95.2 million acres of corn and 83.4 million acres of soybeans were planted in spring 2025, a 4% increase for corn and a 3% decrease for soybeans compared to 2024.

Yield estimates are 181 bushels per acre for corn and 52.5 bushels per acre for soybeans. Based on these planting and corn yield estimates, the USDA is projecting inventory carryout levels for 2026 of approximately 10% for corn and 7% for soybeans, which are below the 10-year averages. Grain prices have softened some recently driven primarily by expectations of large crop production in Brazil and North America in 2025 and potential trade disputes where the purchase of grains may be used as a negotiating tool in reaching trade agreements.

December corn prices are approximately $4.15 per bushel and November soybeans are approximately $10 per bushel. Geopolitical conflicts are continuing to impact the nitrogen fertilizer industry. In the second quarter, Israel attacked Iran and caused the natural gas disruption in the flaring of ammonia inventories in Iran, along with the disruption in natural gas flow to Egypt for an extended period of time. Fertilizer producers in both countries shut in capacity during that time and have only recently begun to ramp up production again.

Additionally, Ukraine damaged 2 nitrogen fertilizer plants in Russia, which reduced product available for export. It is currently unclear when these 2 plants will resume full production. In total, nearly 20% of global urea export capacity was offline for a period of time in the quarter, while India has been seeking to import urea for its planting season.

All of these factors contributed to a tighter global supply-demand balance for nitrogen fertilizers at the end of the planting season and the normal seasonal price declines for summer fill and fall prepay UAN and ammonia have been much narrower this year. In addition to the supply tightness across the fertilizer market, the potential for tariffs on Russian fertilizer exports represents another wildcard that could have significant impacts on pricing in the near term. Natural gas prices in Europe have declined slightly since our last earnings call, but remain around $11 per MMBtu currently, while U.S. prices continue to range between $3 and $4 per MMBtu. Europe has refilled its natural gas inventories at a slower rate than expected, and there are concerns about the ability to replenish the inventory to targeted levels before winter of 2025.

The cost to produce ammonia in Europe has remained durably at the high end of the global cost curve and production remains below historic levels, which has created opportunities for U.S. Gulf Coast producers to export ammonia to Europe for upgrade. We continue to believe Europe faces structural natural gas supply challenges that will likely remain in effect through 2026.

At our Coffeyville facility, we're working on a detailed design and construction plan to utilize natural gas and additional hydrogen from the adjacent Coffeyville refinery as alternative feedstocks to third-party pet coke in addition to expanding nameplate ammonia capacity by approximately 8%. We expect to begin implementing the project this fall.

To remind everyone, this project would give us the ability to choose the optimal feedstock mix between natural gas and pet coke, and this would make Coffeyville the only nitrogen fertilizer plant in the U.S. with that feedstock flexibility. We also continue to execute certain debottlenecking projects at both plants that are expected to improve reliability and production rates, including the expansion of our DEF production and load-out capacity. The goal of these projects to support our target of operating our plants at utilization rates above 95% of nameplate capacity, excluding the impact of turnarounds.

We have water quality upgrade projects at both plants underway and the electricity reliability upgrade project at Coffeyville is also progressing in partnership with the city. During the upcoming fall turnaround at Coffeyville, we plan to install a nitrous oxide abatement unit, after which we could have -- we will have nitrous oxide abatement units on all 4 of our nitric acid plants.

This would further our strategy of reducing the carbon footprint of our operations, and we are continuing our efforts to have Coffeyville certified as the low-carbon nitrogen fertilizer production facility. The funds needed for the 2025 projects are coming from the reserves taken over the last 2 years, and the Board elected to continue reserving capital in the second quarter. While the Board looks at reserves every quarter, I would expect them to continue to elect to reserve some capital, and we anticipate holding higher levels of cash related to these projects in the near term as we ramp up execution and spending, which we expect will take place over the next 2 to 3 years. We have a planned 30-day turnaround at our Coffeyville facility starting in early October. In addition to the normal open clean and inspect of many of our units, we will be replacing the ammonia converter internals and installing the nitrous oxide abatement unit.

The expense for the turnaround is expected to be approximately $15 million, and we have the cash to fund the turnaround expenses and reserves. The second quarter continued to demonstrate the benefits of focusing on safety, reliability and performance. In the quarter, we executed on all the critical elements of our business plan, which include safely and reliably operating our plants with a keen focus on the health and safety of our employees, contractors and communities, prudently managing costs, being judicious with capital, maximizing our marketing and logistics capabilities and targeting opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint.

Yesterday, our parent company, CVR Energy, announced that its CEO, David Lamp, would be retiring at year-end. As part of the transition, I have agreed to take on his role starting on January 1, 2026, in addition to my role as CEO of CVR Partners. I will continue to focus on having our great team execute CVR Partners' mission to deliver safe, reliable operations and generate attractive unitholder returns. We aren't going to lose focus. In closing, I'd like to thank our employees for their safe execution during a few brief outages, achieving 91% ammonia utilization and the solid delivery on our marketing and logistics plans, resulting in a distribution of $3.89 per common unit for the second quarter. With that, we are ready to answer any questions. Christine?

Our first question comes from the line of Rob McGuire with Granite Research.

So a couple of questions on UAN. Can you just comment on the timing of your UAN summer fill program? What your thoughts are in terms of getting out there? And are you seeing enough strength to hold pricing without needing to offer discounts?

So Rob, the -- we have not yet completed the summer UAN fill. We have completed the summer fill and fall prepay for ammonia. But the season was extended into July. There was a lot of demand for UAN at the end of the season. So that went into July and inventories are very low. So the fill season got pushed back. We do expect it in the next couple of weeks. And the prices typically -- and you've been through this before, Rob, but typically we would see a pretty good -- maybe a 25% or 30% decline in price from the in-season price to the summer fill and that percentage decline is going to be a lot less this year and because of the tightness in the supply/demand. So it's not going to be at season prices, but it won't be at the big discount that it typically is.

Okay. I appreciate you getting me on track there. And then is it safe to assume that the third quarter UAN pricing -- I mean, it's going to drop, it sounds like, at some point, given the seasonality you just discussed. But I guess, do you have an outlook on ammonia pricing through the fall application? And then would you be open to sharing that?

What I would tell you is that the fall pricing was, I'd say, relatively similar to the spring pricing. It depends on the geography and -- but we expect the fall to look a lot like the spring. And again, typically, we would expect that to be a pretty good discount from the spring, but the ammonia will be priced around where the spring price was for fall.

Okay. I appreciate that. And then just switching gears here. Direct operating costs increased to $60.5 million in the second quarter, up from $54.5 million in the first quarter. But the gross ammonia production was down modestly. Was there higher than usual maintenance and repair costs in the second quarter number? And just sort of related to the new control systems installed at East Dubuque. Is there any background -- well, anything you can let me know along those lines?

Yes, a couple of factors there. We did have a bunch of repairs go through in the quarter with the outages that we had. And we did draw on the inventory. So that would draw out more DOE because we sort of effectively made it in the first quarter and shipped it in the second quarter. So that would tend to lift the DOE there.

Got it. And then you guided the third quarter direct operating costs to $60 million to $60.5 million. Can you give me an idea of what the breakdown there is? I think Jan might have talked about that, but just with regards to maintenance versus growth CapEx?

That's for the year. For the year. I'll let Dane answer. You're saying CapEx or DOE?

Yes, I think we crossed both there. Which one are we looking at?

The direct operating cost guidance was $60 million to $65 million, I thought.

Yes. So with the -- as it relates to the DOE, we're looking at $60 million to $65 million. We're expecting to continue to see the elevated natural gas and electricity costs that we saw in the second quarter. In addition, we have the work on the Clark controls. There'll be some expense associated with that as well. Outside of that, nothing really abnormal that we would expect in our OpEx for the third quarter.

Yes. One of the things that we've seen this year, Rob, in the summer, in particular, is elevated electricity pricing. And we haven't had any brownouts or blackouts, but the pricing that we're seeing come through at peak demand periods has been higher this year than last year. And so that's lifted up our DOE a bit. And gas is higher year-over-year. That will start to normalize in the second half, but it was higher in the first half. So all of those are kind of -- they're all little pieces that add up to the total.

I appreciate that. And then with regards to the unplanned downtime, is that -- is everything okay now? Or is that part of your expectation of utilization running a little lower? I know you're going into a turnaround as well, so.

Yes. The planned part was okay. We -- and we had said on the last call, we're upgrading our control system for our compressors at our East Dubuque facility, and it requires us to take an outage on the compressor. So that reduces our rate for a period of time until the control system is installed and then tuned up and brought into operation. But the unplanned, we had a couple of outages, and we've dealt with those issues and don't expect that to recur. But there's -- there are always going to be unplanned outages in events, but we've been pretty good about either avoiding them or dealing with them and keeping them as short as possible. And so we just -- we had several factors that happened at Coffeyville and East Dubuque in the quarter. So we lost a few days in both plants.

Okay. I appreciate that. And by the way, Mark, congratulations on being named the incoming CEO of CVR as well. And I get you're going to do both roles, but do you envision at some point naming a new head to CVR Partners?

Like it's -- we're in the first 24 hours, so I don't want to try to speculate on the go forward there. But CVR Partners is an important part of the family and a valuable asset for CVR Energy. And I intend to continue to manage and follow it closely and do the best that we can to maximize returns there. So not planning on giving that up in the short run. We have a great team in place, and so I can count on them. And so I'm going to -- at least initially, I will start with both roles. So you're not getting rid of me here, Rob.

Appreciate that. We're glad you're there. And then with regards -- do you have a view on industry consolidation at this point with the new administration? Do you think they're a smidge more indulgent towards consolidation?

Obviously, this administration seems to be more, I'd say, look more favorably upon consolidation in the context of lowering cost and ultimately lowering cost out to consumers. I don't -- like I've always felt like there probably was some more consolidation to occur in the nitrogen fertilizer space. It is a global business. And some of the geopolitical events, I think, are causing people to reconsider where they own assets, where they're a producer. And so it wouldn't surprise me to see more consolidation down the road.

The one thing that we are watching, which has obviously emerged here in the last week is the potential merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. We think that may very well open up some new lanes for us that we're not currently in. And not sure if there'll be another merger consideration there like in the BN, CSX, but that's -- I think that's a sign of kind of where we are. But it could very well spill into the fertilizer space in terms of more consolidation. You heard in my comments, we -- the U.S. has become an exporter to Europe for ammonia. They're keeping their upgrade plants up and running, but they're taking more ammonia from the U.S. And so I think production capacity in the United States is more valuable because it is -- we have cheap feedstock. We have good logistics. And now with a lot of the carbon capture going on, we're increasingly lower carbon intensity. So I think the U.S. could be a durable exporter of fertilizer, which would make production assets more valuable in the U.S.

That's great. One last question. With regards to your brownfield reliability and redundancy projects, could you give us an idea of where your capacity is today and what those projects will add in terms of volumes?

Sure. And so what I said in the remarks on Coffeyville, we think we can get somewhere in the ballpark of about 100 tonnes a day of ammonia production out of the projects that we've been talking about for the last few quarters. And at East Dubuque, we're looking at potential projects that might add 5% plus to our capacity there. So those are -- and those -- if you look at what it costs to build new capacity, we're getting a bargain price for these brownfield projects where we're adding capacity for a fraction of what it would cost to build actual new production capacity. So they're great investments for us because it's a lot cheaper to build brownfield than it is to try to build a new one.

That makes sense. And can you just confirm for me, are all those projects maintenance or growth CapEx or a mix?

Those are all in the growth whathat Dane described as the growth CapEx that are being reserved. So that doesn't -- we've been reserving against that for a period of time, and that doesn't really come out of the maintenance side of the capital budget. So if you kind of think about reliability, we're spending our ongoing maintenance dollars to maintain our reliability and address issues plus address some what I call bigger bottleneck issues or bigger reliability, single point of failures at the 2 plants. And that's -- those are the dollars that are being reserved in the growth capital, but we get -- we're going to get production capacity for that. So it's not -- it's a combination of reliability plus, which just means higher -- if we operate at higher nameplate capacity, we're going to have more production, plus we're going to increase the nameplate. So ideally, what we would do is higher percentage of a higher nameplate. That's the goal.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

I want to again, I want to thank everybody for being on the call today, and we look forward to discussing our third quarter results in October, early November. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.