Yara International Aktienkurs
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📘 Marktkapitalisierung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Marktkapitalisierung zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen laut Börse aktuell wert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft Unternehmen in Größenklassen (Large, Mid, Small Cap) einzuordnen und gibt Hinweise auf Marktmacht und Stabilität.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Große Unternehmen gelten als stabiler, zahlen oft Dividenden, wachsen aber langsamer.
- Kleine Firmen können stärker wachsen, sind aber schwankungsanfälliger.
- Die Marktkapitalisierung ist ein guter Indikator für Unternehmensgröße, aber kein Maß für Unter- oder Überbewertung.
📘 Enterprise Value (Unternehmenswert)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Enterprise Value (EV) zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich kostet, wenn man es komplett übernehmen würde – inklusive Schulden und abzüglich Cash.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
(= Marktkapitalisierung + Nettoverschuldung)
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der EV ist eine realistischere Bewertungsbasis als die Marktkapitalisierung, da er die Kapitalstruktur berücksichtigt. Er ist Grundlage für Kennzahlen wie EV/FCF oder EV/Sales.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Der Enterprise Value zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich wert ist – unabhängig davon, wie es finanziert ist.
- Er ist besonders wichtig für professionelle Investoren, da er eine objektivere Grundlage für Bewertungsvergleiche bietet als die Marktkapitalisierung allein.
- Ein Unternehmen mit hoher Verschuldung erscheint im EV teurer, eines mit viel Cash günstiger – auch wenn sie an der Börse gleich viel wert sind.
📘 Nettoverschuldung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettoverschuldung zeigt, wie viele Schulden nach Abzug des verfügbaren Cashs tatsächlich verbleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen von Fremdkapital abhängig ist – und wie gut es in der Lage ist, seine Schulden kurzfristig zu bedienen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine niedrige oder negative Nettoverschuldung bedeutet hohe finanzielle Stabilität.
- Unternehmen mit viel Cash und geringer Verschuldung sind besser gerüstet für Krisen.
- Eine hohe Nettoverschuldung erhöht das Risiko – besonders bei steigenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
📘 Cash
📈 Was ist das?
Der Cashbestand zeigt, wie viele liquide Mittel einem Unternehmen sofort zur Verfügung stehen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Er gibt Auskunft über die finanzielle Flexibilität: Ein hoher Cashbestand ermöglicht Investitionen, Rückkäufe oder Krisenresistenz.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Cashbestand zeigt finanzielle Stärke und Handlungsspielraum.
- Cash kann für Investitionen, Schuldentilgung oder Aktienrückkäufe genutzt werden.
- Allerdings: Zu viel ungenutztes Kapital kann auch auf mangelnde Investitionsideen hinweisen.
📘 Anzahl ausstehender Aktien
📈 Was ist das?
Die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien gibt an, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell im Umlauf sind und von Investoren gehalten werden.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie ist die Grundlage für viele Kennzahlen wie Gewinn je Aktie (EPS), Marktkapitalisierung oder KGV.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Je weniger Aktien im Umlauf sind, desto höher fällt z. B. der Gewinn je Aktie aus – wichtig für Bewertung und Dividendenrendite.
- Aktienrückkäufe verringern die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien – und steigern den Wert je Aktie.
- Kapitalerhöhungen haben den gegenteiligen Effekt: mehr Aktien → Verwässerung der bestehenden Anteile.
📘 Kurs-Gewinn-Verhältnis (KGV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KGV zeigt, wie oft der Gewinn pro Aktie im aktuellen Aktienkurs enthalten ist – also wie „teuer“ eine Aktie im Verhältnis zum Gewinn ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KGV gehört zu den bekanntesten Bewertungskennzahlen. Es hilft Anlegern einzuschätzen, ob eine Aktie im Vergleich zu ihrem Gewinn eher günstig oder teuer erscheint.
🧮 Berechnung
📊 KGV (TTM) = bezogen auf den Gewinn der letzten 12 Monate (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KGV kann auf eine günstige Bewertung hindeuten – oder auf Probleme im Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein hohes KGV kann Wachstumserwartungen widerspiegeln – oder eine überbewertete Aktie.
📘 Kurs-Umsatz-Verhältnis (KUV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KUV zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen – unabhängig vom Gewinn.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KUV ist besonders bei wachstumsstarken oder noch nicht profitablen Unternehmen hilfreich. Es zeigt, wie hoch der Umsatz an der Börse bewertet wird.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KUV kann auf Unterbewertung hindeuten – oder auf schwache Margen.
- Ein hohes KUV kann hohe Erwartungen widerspiegeln – oder übermäßigen Optimismus.
- Besonders sinnvoll bei Wachstumsunternehmen, bei denen der Gewinn oder Free Cashflow (noch) keine Aussagekraft hat.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Umsatz (EV/Sales)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/Sales zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen, wenn man auch Schulden und Cash berücksichtigt – es ist eine kapitalstrukturbereinigte Version des KUV.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl eignet sich besonders für den Vergleich von Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Verschuldung – sie zeigt, wie teuer ein Unternehmen tatsächlich im Verhältnis zum Umsatz ist.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EV/Sales ist neutral gegenüber der Kapitalstruktur und eignet sich gut für Unternehmensvergleiche.
- Ein niedriges Verhältnis kann auf eine günstig bewertete Aktie hindeuten – ein hohes Verhältnis auf hohe Erwartungen oder Überbewertung.
- Besonders nützlich bei wachstumsstarken, noch nicht profitablen Firmen.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Free Cashflow (EV/FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/FCF zeigt, wie viele Jahre es dauern würde, bis ein Unternehmen seinen Unternehmenswert durch freien Cashflow „zurückverdient”.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Unternehmen auf Basis ihrer tatsächlichen Cash-Erträge zu bewerten – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder buchhalterischem Gewinn.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges EV/FCF deutet auf eine günstige Bewertung bei starker Cashgenerierung hin.
- Ein hohes EV/FCF kann entweder auf Optimismus oder auf temporär schwachen Cashflow hindeuten.
- Besonders hilfreich bei reifen, profitablen Unternehmen mit stabilen Cashflows.
📘 Kurs-Buchwert-Verhältnis (KBV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KBV zeigt, wie hoch der Marktwert eines Unternehmens im Verhältnis zu seinem bilanziellen Eigenkapital ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KBV ist besonders bei Substanzwerten (z. B. Banken, Industrie) relevant. Es hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob ein Unternehmen unter oder über seinem buchhalterischen Vermögen bewertet ist.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein KBV unter 1 kann auf Unterbewertung oder schwache Rentabilität hindeuten.
- Ein KBV über 1 zeigt, dass der Markt dem Unternehmen Mehrwert über den Buchwert hinaus zuschreibt (z. B. Marken, Patente, Wachstum).
- Das KBV eignet sich besonders gut für Unternehmen mit stabilen, materiellen Vermögenswerten.
📘 Dividende je Aktie
📈 Was ist das?
Die Dividende je Aktie zeigt, wie viel Geld ein Unternehmen pro Aktie an seine Aktionäre ausschüttet – typischerweise jährlich oder quartalsweise.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie ist die absolute Größe der Auszahlung je Aktie – wichtig für alle, die regelmäßige Erträge suchen oder Dividendenstrategien verfolgen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine stabile oder wachsende Dividende je Aktie ist oft ein Zeichen für ein solides Geschäftsmodell.
- Die Dividende je Aktie allein sagt aber nichts über die Rendite – dafür ist auch der Aktienkurs relevant (→ Dividendenrendite).
- Langfristig steigende Dividenden sind oft ein sehr gutes Merkmal (z. B. Dividenden-Aristokraten).
📘 Dividendenrendite
📈 Was ist das?
Die Dividendenrendite zeigt, wie hoch die Dividende eines Unternehmens im Verhältnis zum Aktienkurs ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft dabei, Dividendenaktien vergleichbar zu machen – unabhängig vom absoluten Auszahlungsbetrag.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine stabile Dividendenrendite kann auf verlässliche Ausschüttungen hinweisen.
- Ein Vergleich der 1J- und 5J-Rendite hilft zu erkennen, ob das Dividendenwachstum mit dem Kurswachstum Schritt hält.
- Eine niedrige Rendite ist nicht zwingend negativ – sie kann auf starkes Kurswachstum hindeuten.
📘 Dividendenwachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Dividendenwachstum zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen seine Dividende je Aktie über die Zeit gesteigert hat.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
5J: durchschnittliche jährliche Wachstumsrate (CAGR)
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Stetig steigende Dividenden gelten als Zeichen für finanzielle Stärke und Aktionärsorientierung – besonders interessant für langfristige Investoren.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein stabiles Dividendenwachstum ist ein Zeichen nachhaltiger Ertragskraft.
- Ein hohes Dividendenwachstum kann ein erheblicher Hebel deiner Rendite sein:
- Wenn ein Unternehmen z. B. 1 € Dividende zahlt und diese über 5 Jahre jährlich um 15 % erhöht, bekommst du im 5. Jahr bereits 2 € je Aktie – doppelt so viel wie zu Beginn!
📘 Ausschüttungsquote (Payout)
📈 Was ist das?
Die Ausschüttungsquote zeigt, wie viel Prozent des Unternehmensgewinns (pro Aktie) als Dividende an die Aktionäre ausgeschüttet wird.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Quote hilft einzuschätzen, ob eine Dividende auf Dauer tragfähig ist – besonders im Verhältnis zum erzielten Gewinn.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine niedrige Ausschüttungsquote bedeutet: Das Unternehmen behält einen größeren Teil des Gewinns für Investitionen – typisch für Wachstumsunternehmen.
- Eine moderate Quote (z. B. 25–50 %) steht oft für ein gesundes Gleichgewicht zwischen Ausschüttung und Zukunftsinvestitionen.
- Hohe Ausschüttungsquoten können attraktiv wirken, sind aber riskanter, wenn die Gewinne schwanken oder sinken.
📘 Dividendensteigerungen in Folge (Erhöhungen)
📈 Was ist das?
Diese Kennzahl zeigt, wie viele Jahre in Folge ein Unternehmen seine Dividende pro Aktie erhöht hat – ohne Kürzung oder Aussetzung.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein langer Track Record kontinuierlicher Erhöhungen spricht für Verlässlichkeit, solide Finanzen und aktionärsfreundliche Unternehmenspolitik.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein langer Zeitraum mit Dividendensteigerungen stärkt das Vertrauen – besonders in Krisenzeiten.
- Solche Unternehmen gelten als verlässlich und planbar für Einkommensinvestoren.
- Je länger die Serie, desto stärker das Commitment gegenüber den Aktionären.
📘 Umsatz
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen insgesamt mit seinen Produkten und Dienstleistungen verdient – also den Bruttoerlös vor Abzug von Kosten.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Umsatz ist eine der zentralen Kennzahlen zur Einschätzung der Unternehmensgröße, Marktstellung und Wachstumskraft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein wachsender Umsatz zeigt eine steigende Nachfrage und kann ein guter Frühindikator für Gewinnsteigerungen sein.
- Vergleiche von aktuellem und erwartetem Umsatz geben Hinweise auf das Marktumfeld und Analystenerwartungen.
- Wichtig: Starker Umsatz allein genügt nicht – auch Margen und Profitabilität zählen.
📘 EBITDA
📈 Was ist das?
EBITDA steht für „Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens, bereinigt um bilanztechnische und finanzierungsbedingte Effekte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBITDA ist eine verbreitete Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der operativen Leistungsfähigkeit – insbesondere bei kapitalintensiven Unternehmen oder im internationalen Vergleich.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes oder wachsendes EBITDA spricht für starke operative Erträge – unabhängig von Bilanzierung oder Steuerlast.
- EBITDA ist besonders nützlich, um Unternehmen branchenübergreifend zu vergleichen.
- Wichtig: EBITDA ist keine offizielle Gewinnkennzahl – Abschreibungen und Finanzierungskosten werden ausgeklammert.
📘 EBIT
📈 Was ist das?
EBIT steht für „Earnings Before Interest and Taxes“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen und Steuern. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Finanzierungs- und Steueraufwand.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBIT ist eine zentrale Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der Profitabilität aus dem Kerngeschäft – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder Steuersystem.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes EBIT deutet auf ein profitables Kerngeschäft hin – vor Zinslasten oder steuerlichen Effekten.
- Es erlaubt objektivere Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Finanzierung.
- Im Vergleich mit EBITDA zeigt EBIT bereits den Einfluss von Abschreibungen auf das operative Ergebnis.
📘 Nettogewinn
📈 Was ist das?
Der Nettogewinn ist der verbleibende Jahresüberschuss (oder -fehlbetrag) eines Unternehmens – nach Abzug aller Kosten, Steuern, Zinsen und Abschreibungen
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Nettogewinn ist die zentrale Erfolgskennzahl – er zeigt, wie profitabel ein Unternehmen nach allen Kosten tatsächlich arbeitet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein steigender Nettogewinn zeigt, dass das Unternehmen effizient wirtschaftet – trotz aller Kosten.
- Die Entwicklung des Gewinns beeinflusst z. B. direkt das KGV und weitere Kennzahlen.
- Im Zeitverlauf lässt sich ablesen, wie stabil und profitabel ein Geschäftsmodell wirklich ist.
📘 Free Cashflow (FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow gibt Aufschluss über die echte finanzielle Stärke eines Unternehmens – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln. Er zeigt, wie viel Spielraum für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldenabbau besteht.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow bedeutet, dass ein Unternehmen echte Finanzkraft besitzt – unabhängig vom bilanzierten Gewinn.
- Er ist oft die solideste Grundlage für nachhaltige Dividenden und Aktienrückkäufe.
- Sinkender FCF kann ein Warnsignal sein – auch wenn der Gewinn stabil aussieht.
📘 Umsatzwachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Umsatzwachstum zeigt, wie stark sich die Erlöse eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert haben – tatsächlich (TTM) und auf Prognosebasis (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (Umsatz erwartet ÷ Umsatz Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein wachsender Umsatz ist ein zentrales Signal für steigende Nachfrage, Geschäftsausweitung und Marktanteilsgewinne – besonders bei Wachstumsunternehmen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachstum ist der Motor langfristiger Wertsteigerung – besonders bei Technologie- und Wachstumsaktien.
- Wichtig ist nicht nur das aktuelle Wachstum, sondern auch dessen Nachhaltigkeit.
- Prognosen zeigen, ob Analysten weiteres Potenzial erwarten – oder eine Verlangsamung.
📘 EBITDA-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBITDA-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBITDA ÷ EBITDA Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein steigendes EBITDA ist ein Zeichen für verbesserte operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Finanzierungsstruktur oder Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Starkes EBITDA-Wachstum signalisiert operative Effizienz und Skalierung – besonders relevant in Wachstumsphasen.
- EBITDA-Wachstum ist ein Frühindikator für Margen- und Gewinnentwicklung – sollte aber stets im Zusammenhang mit Umsatz und EBIT betrachtet werden.
📘 EBIT Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBIT-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens (nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern) im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gewachsen ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBIT ÷ EBIT Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein direkter Indikator für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des operativen Geschäfts – unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (Abschreibungen).
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Steigendes EBIT signalisiert wachsende operative Rentabilität – auch unter Berücksichtigung von Abschreibungen.
- Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein wichtiges Maß zur Beurteilung von Geschäftsmodellen mit hohen Investitionskosten.
- Im Zusammenspiel mit Umsatz- und EBITDA-Wachstum ergibt sich ein umfassendes Bild zur operativen Entwicklung.
📘 Nettogewinn-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Nettogewinn-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark der Jahresüberschuss eines Unternehmens gegenüber dem Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist – sowohl tatsächlich (TTM) als auch auf Basis von Prognosen (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwarteter Nettogewinn ÷ Nettogewinn Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Der erwartete Wert basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Gewinn ist die entscheidende Ergebnisgröße für ein Unternehmen. Ein wachsender Nettogewinn deutet auf steigende Effizienz, stabile Kostenkontrolle und nachhaltige Ertragskraft hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachsender Nettogewinn stärkt die Bewertung, Dividendenfähigkeit und Kursfantasie.
- Stagnierender oder rückläufiger Gewinn trotz Umsatzwachstum kann auf Margendruck hinweisen.
📘 Free Cashflow-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Free-Cashflow-Wachstum zeigt, wie sich der freie Mittelzufluss eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert hat – also der Betrag, der nach allen operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Free Cashflow ist der echte, verfügbare Geldzufluss. Wachstum in diesem Bereich ist ein Zeichen für finanzielle Stärke und steigende Flexibilität bei Dividenden, Rückkäufen oder Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Sinkender Free Cashflow kann auf steigende Investitionen, höhere Kosten oder stagnierende operative Erträge hindeuten.
- Besonders bei Dividendenwerten ist das FCF-Wachstum wichtig – denn Dividenden werden letztlich aus dem verfügbaren Cash gezahlt.
- Ein negativer Trend sollte genauer analysiert werden – er ist nicht zwangsläufig schlecht, aber potenziell ein Warnsignal.
📘 Bruttomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Bruttomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug der direkten Herstellungskosten (Material, Produktion) als Bruttogewinn übrig bleibt – also der „Rohgewinn“ eines Unternehmens.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Auch: Bruttomarge = Bruttogewinn ÷ Umsatz × 100
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Bruttomarge gibt Aufschluss über die Profitabilität eines Produkts oder Geschäftsmodells vor Fixkosten, Steuern und Zinsen. Sie zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen produzieren oder einkaufen kann.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Bruttomarge deutet auf starke Preissetzungsmacht und effiziente Herstellung hin.
- Sinkende Bruttomargen können auf Kostensteigerungen oder Preisdruck hindeuten.
- Besonders im Vergleich zu Wettbewerbern liefert die Bruttomarge wertvolle Einblicke in die Geschäftsqualität.
📘 EBITDA-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBITDA-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz als operativer Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen (EBITDA) übrig bleibt. Sie misst die operative Effizienz – ohne Verzerrungen durch Finanzierung oder Buchwerte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBITDA-Marge hilft zu verstehen, wie viel operativer Gewinn ein Unternehmen aus jedem Euro Umsatz erzielt – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder steuerlichem Umfeld.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBITDA-Marge zeigt starke operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Bilanzierungseffekten.
- Die Marge ermöglicht gute Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen und Branchen.
- Ein stabiler oder wachsender Wert kann auf effiziente Kostenkontrolle und Skalierbarkeit hindeuten.
📘 EBIT-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBIT-Marge zeigt, wie viel Prozent des Umsatzes als operativer Gewinn nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern übrig bleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBIT-Marge misst die operative Ertragskraft eines Unternehmens unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (z. B. Maschinen, Anlagen). Sie eignet sich gut zum Vergleich von Geschäftsmodellen mit unterschiedlich hohen Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBIT-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen auch nach Abschreibungen effizient arbeitet.
- Sie ist besonders relevant in kapitalintensiven Branchen.
- Langfristig stabile oder steigende Margen sind ein Zeichen wirtschaftlicher Stärke und Preissetzungsmacht.
📘 Nettomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz am Ende als „Reingewinn“ übrig bleibt – also nach Abzug aller Kosten, Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Nettomarge gibt an, wie effizient ein Unternehmen über alle Stufen hinweg wirtschaftet. Sie zeigt, wie viel Gewinn tatsächlich je Euro Umsatz übrig bleibt.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Nettomarge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nicht nur operativ stark ist, sondern auch seine Finanzierung und Steuerbelastung im Griff hat.
- Vergleiche mit Wettbewerbern geben Einblicke in die wirtschaftliche Qualität.
- Sinkende Nettomargen trotz Umsatzwachstum können ein Warnsignal sein – etwa für steigende Kosten oder sinkende Effizienz.
📘 Free Cashflow Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug aller operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen tatsächlich als freier Mittelzufluss übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Marge misst die echte Liquidität, die ein Unternehmen erwirtschaftet – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder Abschreibungen. Sie ist besonders relevant für Dividenden, Rückkäufe und Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nachhaltig liquide Mittel erwirtschaftet.
- Sie ist ein starkes Signal für finanzielle Stabilität und Ausschüttungspotenzial.
- Wichtig ist der langfristige Trend – sinkende Werte können auf steigende Investitionen oder rückläufige operative Effizienz hindeuten.
📘 Eigenkapitalquote
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalquote zeigt, wie hoch der Anteil des Eigenkapitals an der Bilanzsumme eines Unternehmens ist – also wie stark es sich aus eigenen Mitteln finanziert.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote steht für finanzielle Stabilität, Krisenfestigkeit und gute Bonität. Sie ist besonders relevant bei der Beurteilung der Verschuldung.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote signalisiert finanzielle Stabilität – besonders in Krisenzeiten.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf ein höheres Risiko oder eine aggressive Verschuldung hinweisen.
- Wichtig: Die Eigenkapitalquote sollte immer gemeinsam mit der Eigenkapitalrendite betrachtet werden. Nur so lässt sich beurteilen, ob ein Unternehmen nicht nur solide, sondern auch effizient wirtschaftet.
📘 Eigenkapitalrendite (ROE)
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen mit dem Kapital seiner Aktionäre arbeitet – also wie viel Gewinn es pro Euro Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite ist eine zentrale Rentabilitätskennzahl. Sie hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob das Unternehmen eine attraktive Verzinsung auf das eingesetzte Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalrendite spricht für ein starkes, effizientes Geschäftsmodell.
- Besonders interessant ist sie bei kapitalintensiven Firmen oder solchen mit hoher Eigenkapitalquote.
- Wichtig: Ein sehr hoher ROE kann auch auf hohe Schulden hinweisen – daher sollte sie immer im Kontext mit der Eigenkapitalquote betrachtet werden.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 Was ist das?
ROCE misst die Gesamtrentabilität eines Unternehmens – also wie effizient es das eingesetzte Kapital (Eigen- und Fremdkapital) zur Gewinnerzielung nutzt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Das eingesetzte Kapital ist das gesamte betriebsnotwendige Kapital, unabhängig von der Finanzierungsquelle.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROCE eignet sich besonders gut für den Vergleich unterschiedlich finanzierter Unternehmen. Es zeigt, wie effektiv ein Unternehmen Kapital investiert – unabhängig von der Kapitalstruktur.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROCE zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen sein Kapital effizient einsetzt – unabhängig davon, ob es durch Eigen- oder Fremdkapital finanziert ist.
- Je höher der ROCE im Vergleich zu ähnlichen Unternehmen, desto mehr Wert schafft das Unternehmen mit seinem investierten Kapital.
- Besonders wichtig ist der ROCE bei Firmen mit hohen Investitionen – z. B. in Industrie, Energie oder Infrastruktur.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 Was ist das?
ROIC zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen das Kapital investiert, das langfristig im operativen Geschäft gebunden ist – unabhängig davon, ob es aus Eigen- oder Fremdkapital stammt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
- NOPAT = „Net Operating Profit After Taxes“
- Investiertes Kapital = operatives Vermögen abzüglich nicht-verzinster Schulden
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROIC ist eine der präzisesten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung der Kapitalrendite – besonders im Vergleich zur Eigenkapitalrendite, weil es Verzerrungen durch Schulden vermeidet. Er zeigt, ob ein Unternehmen Mehrwert für alle Kapitalgeber schafft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROIC zeigt, wie gut ein Unternehmen mit dem tatsächlich investierten (betriebsnotwendigen) Kapital wirtschaftet.
- Im Unterschied zu ROCE wird nur Kapital betrachtet, das wirklich zur Finanzierung operativer Aktivitäten dient – und verzinst werden muss.
- Besonders hilfreich, um die Kapitalrendite von Unternehmen mit viel „überschüssigem“ Kapital oder zinsfreien Verbindlichkeiten realistisch zu vergleichen.
📘 Verschuldungsgrad (Leverage Ratio)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Verschuldungsgrad zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen durch verzinsliche Schulden (z. B. Kredite und Anleihen) im Verhältnis zum Eigenkapital finanziert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Kennzahl hilft, das finanzielle Risiko und die Abhängigkeit von Fremdkapital zu beurteilen. Ein hoher Verschuldungsgrad kann die Eigenkapitalrendite steigern – birgt aber auch erhöhte Risiken bei Zinsanstiegen oder Liquiditätsengpässen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Verschuldungsgrad steht für finanzielle Stabilität und Unabhängigkeit.
- Ein hoher Wert kann auf erhöhte Risiken hinweisen – insbesondere bei schwankenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
- Wichtig: Immer im Kontext zur Branche und Kapitalintensität bewerten.
📘 Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS)
📈 Was ist das?
Das Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS) zeigt, wie viel Gewinn auf eine einzelne Aktie entfällt – und ist eine der wichtigsten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung von Unternehmen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die verwässerte Aktienanzahl berücksichtigt auch potenzielle neue Aktien, etwa durch Optionen, Wandelanleihen oder andere Umtauschrechte.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EPS bildet die Basis für viele Bewertungskennzahlen wie KGV, PEG oder Payout Ratio. Es macht den Gewinn für Aktionäre vergleichbar – unabhängig von der Unternehmensgröße.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EPS hilft, die Profitabilität pro Aktie zu erfassen – und ist besonders wichtig im Zeitvergleich oder im Vergleich mit Analystenschätzungen.
- Steigendes EPS kann ein Zeichen für stabiles Wachstum oder Aktienrückkäufe sein.
- Wichtig: Verwende verwässertes EPS für realistische Bewertungen – besonders bei stark aktienbasierten Vergütungssystemen.
📘 Free Cashflow je Aktie (FCF je Aktie)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow je Aktie zeigt, wie viel freier Mittelzufluss einem Unternehmen pro Aktie zur Verfügung steht – nach Investitionen, aber vor Dividenden oder Schuldentilgung.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der FCF je Aktie zeigt, wie viel liquide Mittel pro Aktie tatsächlich im Unternehmen verbleiben – wichtig für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldentilgung. Im Gegensatz zum Gewinn ist er schwerer manipulierbar und daher besonders aussagekräftig.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow je Aktie ist ein Zeichen für hohe finanzielle Flexibilität.
- Er zeigt, wie viel Kapital ein Unternehmen effektiv einsetzen oder ausschütten kann.
- Besonders relevant für dividendenstarke Unternehmen oder solche mit starker Kapitalrendite.
📘 Short Interest
📈 Was ist das?
Short Interest zeigt, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell leerverkauft wurden – also von Investoren geliehen und verkauft, in der Erwartung fallender Kurse.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Der Wert zeigt den Anteil der Aktien, der aktuell auf fallende Kurse spekuliert wird.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Short Interest dient als Stimmungsindikator: Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Skepsis oder negative Erwartungen gegenüber dem Unternehmen hin – kann aber auch zu einem „Short Squeeze“ führen, wenn der Kurs plötzlich steigt.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Short Interest deutet auf Vertrauen in das Unternehmen hin.
- Ein hoher Wert kann ein Warnsignal sein – oder eine Chance, wenn sich die Stimmung dreht.
- Besonders spannend in volatilen Märkten oder vor wichtigen Quartalszahlen.
📘 Employees
📈 Was ist das?
Die Mitarbeiteranzahl zeigt, wie viele Personen ein Unternehmen weltweit beschäftigt – ein Indikator für Größe, Struktur und Geschäftsmodell.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft bei der Einschätzung von Skaleneffekten, Effizienz und Personalkosten. Zusammen mit Umsatz und Gewinn lassen sich Kennzahlen wie Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ableiten.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Viele Mitarbeiter bedeuten große operative Komplexität – aber auch hohes Umsatzpotenzial.
- Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ist ein wichtiger Indikator für Effizienz.
- Besonders spannend bei stark wachsenden Tech- oder Industrieunternehmen.
📘 Umsatz je Mitarbeiter
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz je Mitarbeiter zeigt, wie viel Erlös ein Unternehmen durchschnittlich pro Beschäftigtem erwirtschaftet – eine Kennzahl für Effizienz und Produktivität.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die Mitarbeiterzahl stammt in der Regel aus dem letzten verfügbaren Jahresbericht.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Geschäftsmodelle zu vergleichen – insbesondere zwischen arbeitsintensiven und technologiegetriebenen Unternehmen. Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Automatisierung, Effizienz oder hohen Wertschöpfungsanteil hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Umsatz je Mitarbeiter spricht für ein skalierbares und margenstarkes Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf arbeitsintensive Prozesse oder geringere Wertschöpfung hinweisen.
- Besonders hilfreich beim Vergleich von Tech- vs. Industrieunternehmen.
Yara International Aktie Analyse
Analystenmeinungen
28 Analysten haben eine Yara International Prognose abgegeben:
Analystenmeinungen
28 Analysten haben eine Yara International Prognose abgegeben:
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aktien.guide Basis
Yara International — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Welcome to Yara's First Quarter Results Presentation. The presentation today will be held by Yara's CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; and Yara's CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand. I would like to mention that we have a change in how we do our Q&A session today. Once the presentation is done, we will move straight into the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] But first, let's start the presentation. It is my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether.
Thank you, Maria. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you're dialing in from. And thank you for joining our first quarter presentation. As always, I'm starting with our safety performance. Our license to operate is creating a safe working environment for all our employees and contractors. And we have a lot to be proud of our performance in the first quarter, but safety is not one of them.
We continue to see an increase in accidents, and this has also been the case in April, which means that we will likely see further deterioration as we get into the second quarter. And there is only one responsible for it, and that is me. And I take that responsibility very seriously. I'm now in my 30th year in industry. And what I've learned from safety is that you cannot dictate your way to safety and also that campaigns, they only have a short-term impact.
It is what we do every day, every week and every year that matters. And we know what to do. We will continue to work according to our Safe by Choice approach that has now been in place for 12 years. This is our joint commitment to safety throughout the whole organization because at the end of the day, 1.2 TRI, that's a ratio. But behind that, there are 59 accidents, 59 colleagues, someone's mother, father, brother, sister, friend that got injured at work during the last 12 months. We can, and we will bring that to 0.
But for now, we need to turn the negative trend. On Tuesday next week, we will have our Annual Safety Day, and that is another opportunity for us to spend time together and get this right. That was the low light. Now let's take a look at some of the key highlights for the first quarter. Yara delivered a strong quarter with an EBITDA, excluding special items of $896 million. This is an increase of 40% compared to last year, and that's reflecting higher nitrogen upgrading margins in a tight market in the start of 2026.
And in addition, Yara has increased deliveries to customers in the quarter, reflecting a strong commercial execution. And this also enables us to maximize production volumes and consequently also capital efficiency. First quarter results mostly reflect pre-war markets, but the Middle East conflict has disrupted global fertilizer markets since the end of February. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz disrupts around 1/3 of global traded urea.
It also has other key raw materials for fertilizer production such as its gas, its ammonia, its phosphates, and sulfur. And this supply shock has led to significant increase in global fertilizer prices. And that, coupled with weak crop prices and high regulatory burdens, farmer affordability has increasingly come under pressure. And the high prices are increasing volatility and also risk premiums across the fertilizer value chain and eventually into the food markets as well.
As we said at our Capital Markets Day in January, Yara is a battle-proven organization due to our global diversification, our energy flexibility in Europe and also our highly competent workforce. And now that is being put to the test again, and we are demonstrating the strength of our business model where our global system enables us to uphold production and to ensure the continuity of supply.
And this means that we are uniquely positioned in the current situation with strong commercial and operational execution in a disrupted nitrogen market. And I want to thank all my colleagues in Yara for their strong performance this quarter. Looking then at the EBITDA variance for the quarter. The increase of 40% since last year mainly reflects the increased nitrogen spreads. Nitrogen prices have seen a significant increase since first quarter of 2025.
And gas price changes are typically reflected after 2 months in our earnings. So this quarter, EBITDA is largely based on pre-war market dynamics. Volumes are also up, reflecting strong commercial execution in the season to date. And keep in mind here that we also had a strong fourth quarter on volumes. We continue to see a positive impact on EBITDA from our fixed cost reduction program and a further $18 million down from last year.
Return on invested capital has doubled from 6% last year to 12.2% on a rolling 12-month basis. And that's above our through-the-cycle target of 10%. Global fertilizer markets are currently heavily affected by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Around 1/3 of globally traded urea is exported through the Strait of Hormuz, but also 1/4 of the world's ammonia as well as 50% of sulfur, which is significantly impacting the availability of phosphate fertilizer.
And furthermore, 20% of global LNG trade is disrupted, and that's leading to urea production curtailments as well, such as in India. The disruption to urea availability has led to a significant price increase, so far, 47% since February. And urea FOB Egypt is up even more at 77%. TTF gas prices have also increased, however, less so than urea and phosphate prices.
Farmers' situation was challenging before the war driven by weak crop prices and cost inflation across many input factors as well as regulatory burdens and global market volatility, which all add to this pressure, and this is concerning. And those that will be hit the hardest are smallholder farmers in the poorest parts of the world because of lower ability to pay.
But it's actually a double hit because it's likely also impacting the farmers where the yield curves are the steepest, meaning that marginally lower fertilizer application will have a higher yield impact. Fertilizers are essential for food production and stable access is really critical for farmers to produce the food that the world needs. Yara's role is to remain robust and to ensure the continuity of our production and also the deliveries to the farmers.
Building on long-term operational improvements, our production system has seen a steady increase in output. And this is also our core focus in the current situation. And as you see here, deliveries to customers are also up in the same period. Volumes on this slide are not adjusted for turnarounds, but it's reflecting actual production and actual deliveries.
And ensuring a high uptime of our assets is really a key objective, and it improves our capital utilization and also our energy efficiency. In addition, our energy flexibility enables us to import ammonia if needed in order to keep finished goods production running.
And this has enabled Yara to be a reliable source of fertilizer in this critical period as well, alleviating some of the pressure on markets and serving farmers around the world. Yara's position is unique globally and the flexibility in our system continues to limit cyclical downside as well as maximizing output in the current situation. And with that, I'll now hand over to our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand.
Thank you, Svein Tore. As mentioned, EBITDA is up more than 40% on a strong first quarter 2025, predominantly driven by increased nitrogen operating margins before the effects of this ongoing conflict in the Middle East. This translated into a 60% increase in earnings per share as depreciation, interest and tax remained stable. Return on invested capital increased to 12.2% on a 12-month rolling basis, reflecting both increased earnings as well as portfolio adjustments.
The quarter saw a USD 35 million increase in operating capital, driven by an increased price environment. However, this was more than offset by an increase in cash from operations, resulting in a significant increase in free cash flow of USD 196 million as net investments were flat. This increase in cash returns is attributable both to the improvements undertaken as well as the constructive nitrogen market in the first quarter.
Turning to deliveries. We see an increase of 3% in Crop Nutrition deliveries compared to first quarter last year. This was primarily driven by increases in the Americas, but worth noting that stable deliveries in Europe, comes on top of a strong first quarter last year that saw a 15% increase over the year before and a 6% increase in volumes in Q4 2025. That means that season-to-date deliveries in Europe are up 2.5% and are among the highest in the last 5 years.
In Africa and Asia, we saw a reduction of commodity volumes, however, an increase in deliveries of our premium products. And deliveries in Industrial Solutions are down 5% for the quarter, following plant closures in Brazil. However, these portfolio changes have a positive impact on our cash flow. Yara has focused through the last months to ensure both production and supply chains flow in the extreme situation to safeguard deliveries to our customers worldwide, and we have not experienced major disruptions to our production or supplies.
This then increases our cash earnings further and strengthens our balance sheet, putting Yara in a robust position in the ongoing market volatility. Cash earnings are partly offset by an increase in net operating capital, which despite the seasonal release of inventory is up due to the increased values driven by prices. We are currently experiencing a strong market for all nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphate.
This increase in Yara's nitrogen and phosphate operating margins and increases the bar for our premiums, which we measure above commodity value for the nutrients. That, combined with lower crop prices in general, exercised some pressure on our premiums in certain markets. For the fourth quarter, strong demand and pre-buying in Europe supported European nitrate premiums ahead of the year-end and premiums in the first quarter of 2026 were comparable to the fourth quarter, but lower than first quarter last year given the higher nitrogen prices in general.
NPK premiums are somewhat pressured, and primarily driven by Asia, we see a contraction towards more normalized premium levels at a very high commodity price base. Yara has a robust commercial organization and is on a day-to-day assessing the market environment on how to optimize volumes and margins globally. This also underlines flexibility of our business model and the ability to create value both on the upstream margin as well as the premiums, which also limits the commodity downside through the cycle.
And building on that, there is no doubt that the current global situation puts significant stress on supply chains, and this is particularly visible in the fertilizer space. Yara's global reach and flexibility is uniquely positioned to navigate this. The current price environment, coupled with weak crop prices, is already leading to a substantial difference in buying appetite in prompt markets versus off-season markets.
Despite moving into the end of the season in the Northern Hemisphere, the significant loss of nitrogen and phosphates as described by Svein Tore, means a supply and demand shortage in several Southern Hemisphere market as well in addition to India being a main driver for demand in the period to come. And due to Yara's global reach, we are able to optimize global deliveries and ensure we can keep our production system running at full speed, also by changing from locally produced to imported ammonia, if necessary, due to gas prices in Europe.
And this is vital to keep serving a market in severe shortage of nutrients in our core markets such as Latin America. Ensuring our assets are uninterrupted is a core part of our operational excellence. However, we have had an unfortunate outage in Pilbara since mid-March, expecting to come back on stream in May. That is our ammonia plant that was stopped. In addition, we will execute a long-planned major turnaround in Belle Plaine after the season is over in June.
And this will lead to a reduction of approximately 150,000 tonnes of urea in Belle Plaine compared to a full year of production and a loss of 140,000 tonnes of ammonia in Pilbara due to the outage. Diving deeper into this market situation, it is clear that the ongoing crisis in the Middle East has an unprecedented impact on global supply, not only urea and phosphate, but also other raw materials essential for fertilizer production such as sulfur are stranded and limiting fertilizer supply globally.
And with as much as 1/3 of urea supply impacted and further supply reductions from Russian plants as well as reduced production in India due to LNG shortages, global availability is severely reduced and in an already tight urea market without spare capacity, significant demand reduction is required to balance the lack of supply. And naturally, market prices go up to balance the market and ration demand.
This has been exacerbated by the ongoing season in Europe and the U.S., and it's obviously an extraordinary situation given the crisis in the Middle East. Market development going forward will depend a lot on the duration of the blocked Strait of Hormuz, the level of damage to infrastructure and the ramp-up time required to get back on stream. Demand reduction is a balancing factor as is potential exports out of China.
In the medium term, as previously illustrated at our Capital Markets Day, there's a limited number of supply additions from ongoing urea projects, and this already seem to increase market tightness versus historic demand growth. And recently and recent announcements suggest that several of these projects are -- that were announced to be commissioned in 2027 will be further delayed, driven by both the Middle East situation and other factors.
Capacity and export out of China is likely to remain the balancing factor in the medium term. And for Yara, this medium-term constructive nitrogen outlook is set to drive further value creation. However, our strategic priorities are designed to increase shareholder value irrespective of market developments. As presented at our Capital Markets Day, our strategic priorities rest on 2 pillars: driving performance and competitiveness and growing from our core.
The former is the operationalization of our improvement program, focus on asset utilization, logistical optimization, capital reallocation and commercial excellence, all aimed at increasing our EBITDA and cash flow. Our medium-term goal of diversifying our energy position further remains a core part of that agenda. Meanwhile, growing from our core is key to increase value creation, scale and return to our shareholders.
This includes healthy organic growth from recent and future production increases, up to 1 million tonnes on premium products as we announced in January. In addition, this includes realization of recent growth projects such as the NPK expansion in Cartagena, our YaraVita plant in the U.K. and the CCS project in Sluiskil, all to be completed this year. In addition, Yara will explore further growth opportunities linked to our core, all within our commitment to strict capital discipline and focus on cash returns.
As mentioned on the previous slide, energy diversification is core for Yara and the collaboration with Air Products is a strong strategic fit to deliver this. The combination of Yara's significant ammonia system, including import infrastructure in Europe and Air Products advanced projects in the ammonia space is a strong strategic fit for both parties. For Yara, the drivers are threefold: access to low-cost gas, asset competitiveness and renewal through scale and the ability to harness carbon premiums.
Predominantly through CBAM and with our collaboration with Air Products, we get all of these 3. At the same time, Yara is able to place volumes from Air Products more cheaply and efficiently into the core markets without the significant infrastructure investments otherwise needed. Commercial negotiations are proceeding according to plan with a priority on the NEOM project that is due to commission in 2027, and the U.S. project is progressing according to the previously announced time line.
Yara is fully underway to materialize the improvement program announced in January. And summarizing the first part, our cost program that we launched almost 2 years ago, we already have a head start on that. Excluding currency changes, our fixed cost level on a 12-month basis is at USD 2.3 billion, down approximately USD 230 million from the second quarter of 2024, and this incorporates the underlying inflation in those 2 years as well.
Going forward, we will include this into our improvement program, which expands the value levers into a range of other areas as well, but having achieved a strong cost control environment upfront provides us with a very solid starting point. And the improvement program remains a core focus going forward, aiming at more than USD 200 million EBITDA improvement by the end of 2027 and USD 350 million by the end of 2030.
This includes our 10% ROIC target through the cycle, and we are starting to see strong financial metrics through a combination of market developments and improvements. It is, however, important that our aim of improvements irrespective of market developments. Looking at the last 12 months, we see a significantly increased EBITDA of about USD 3 billion, and accumulated cash flow close to USD 1.2 billion and perhaps most importantly, a return on invested capital firmly above 12%. And with that, I will give the word back to Svein Tore.
Thank you, Magnus. The current situation is really unprecedented for the global markets, and the fertilizer industry is no exception to that. Together with the Ukraine war, the current conflict in the Middle East adds to the geopolitical volatility. Yara's business model is well adapted to navigate such volatility. And as we said at our Capital Markets Day, we have improved our resilience, building on our experience over recent years. And our competitive edges are really key in achieving this.
The bedrock of this is our scale and global optimization, which is even more vital in the current situation. Operational excellence combined with flexible energy sourcing helps us to uphold finished fertilizer production. And our premium and diversified product portfolio provides a strong foundation helping to mitigate earnings volatility when commodity prices fluctuate.
Finally, a disciplined and flexible investment approach, clearly anchored in our strategic priorities, will continue to strengthen our long-term competitiveness. Then to conclude our presentation, it is important to highlight that our ambitions and commitments remain firm despite the current market turmoil, further maturing our resilient business model and delivering on the improvement program launched at our Capital Markets Day back in January.
They remain core focus areas. And our long-term goals of diversifying our exposure to lower gas costs and enabling low-carbon ammonia opportunities remain key priorities with a strong balance sheet, capital discipline maintained and a clear commitment to our credit rating, Yara is well positioned to deliver sustainable long-term value creation. And with that, I'll hand back to Maria.
Thank you, Svein Tore. That concludes today's presentation. We will now take a short break to set up and get ready for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] With that, we'll see you in a short bit. Thank you.
[Break]
Okay. Welcome back to everyone. We are now ready for the Q&A session. This is Maria speaking. I'm here joined by today's presenters, our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; and our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand, in addition to our Head of Market Intelligence, Dag Tore Mo. [Operator Instructions] Christian Faitz, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
2. Question Answer
Two questions, if I may. First of all, can you remind us how you deal with the volatility in gas prices at this point in time? And are you considering hedging at some point? And how are you secured through the rest of the year on the gas side? That's the first question. And then the second question, obviously, yes, thanks for the helpful slides you had in the presentation and in the slide deck.
And you did show, obviously, that a large part of the European -- of the Northern Hemisphere is actually covered in terms of fertilizer demand. But if I was a farmer, I would obviously try to optimize costs and maybe also skip one or the other topping during the season. Is that what you see? And could that also be an inventory issue at some point heading into the '27 season?
Yes. It's Svein Tore. I can start with the first and then I'll hand over to my colleagues on the second one. When it comes to gas prices, we're not hedging that. And that's been our practice over a very long time period because we see a very strong correlation between global energy prices and nitrogen prices that we have that flexibility to move with the market. And then we've built in additional robustness in our system by also being able to switch between producing ammonia and then I can use Europe as an example, where it's most exposed.
So we don't have to produce the ammonia in Europe for about 75% of our finished goods. We can bring ammonia into Europe, and that gives us flexibility to switch if it should not be economical to use gas to produce ammonia in Europe. For the time being, the upgrading margins from gas to ammonia in Europe are also at a level that justifies continued operation, and we're running at full blast. And should that, for some reason, change, well, then we will do like we did back in 2021 and 2022 to bring ammonia in.
And that's part of the strength in our business model where we can utilize the global network that we have on ammonia. We're one of, if not the largest ammonia traders in the world, and we have ships that can transport ammonia across the world, and we're utilizing that to maintain finished goods production. And should we have hedged, then we would have lost some of that flexibility. So that's the reason we have that structure in place. And then I'll hand over to Dag Tore or Magnus on the second question.
Yes. When it comes to, let's say, markets like Europe or North America, in some ways, they are kind of well covered when you talk about the import situation and urea in particular, I think I should mention that we are still seeing nitrogen demand. I mean we are delivering both from Belle Plaine and from our production system in Europe now in the second quarter as well. But if you look at -- if you just look at the urea situation, both the U.S. Gulf, which is far away from the application areas in North America at the moment and in Europe, pricing now is such that they do not match, let's say, the India price or the peak pricing elsewhere.
So from that perspective, at the current global urea values, there is very low demand, import demand and probably not the need for it either if you look at relative pricing between nitrates and urea, for instance, in Europe. So in that sense, covered on the application, I think that nitrogen application, most areas that are exposed to the global values today will see some demand destruction more or less, you have kind of -- you have China and India covers almost half of global demand for urea, which are not covering -- which are not following the global market and have their own domestic pricing, which is way below.
So that leaves kind of half the global market that has to do the demand rationing in a situation where there are significant supply losses. So if we again take Europe as an example, just to give some more details, I think that the industry deliveries in Europe are fairly stable, season over season.
And we see that imports according to Eurostat and the numbers from the European Union, so far this season through March, Europe or EU has imported 4.2 million tonnes of urea, which is down from 4.9 million tonnes of urea same period last year, and there's probably been some declines also in other products or there has been some declines in other products, although urea is the dominant one.
So I think that just looking at the current supply situation, it's logical to expect, let's say, a short fall of demand or a drop in demand of 5% to 10%, something like that in Europe probably. On your question of inventories, that is something that I kind of concerned us or we have been trying to follow that as well. And what we hear from the field is that from our commercial units is that the farmers are generally using the fertilizer they have bought.
So no big carryover risk there into next season, we think, and that distributors and retailers are also back-to-back mostly so that in Europe, and that is normal, there are kind of regularly -- people are quite careful about not having too much inventories. North America, that can be a little bit different because of the longer lead times on the import side that it could end up with a situation where, let's say, imports are a little bit more than what is needed. So I hope that helps.
The next question is then from Magnus Rasmussen.
Magnus Rasmussen, SEB. I wanted to touch upon volumes as well. And I wonder if you can give some comments about what you are thinking for Q2. You stated in the presentation that Europe had among the highest season-to-date levels, but also strong volumes in America in Q1. I think Dag Tore touched upon it a bit as well, but some further comments sort of for Yara specifically as well would be helpful.
Also a question on price realization in Q2. I mean we see urea prices skyrocketing and nitrate prices not so much and Profercy also reduced their European nitrate prices yesterday. Your sensitivities cover a mix of different products. Is there anything that we should keep in mind and be aware of in terms of price realization into Q2? And also how do you read the low nitrate prices in Europe relative to urea from, call it, demand or market perspective in Europe?
Yes. I can maybe start a bit on the volume side. We don't -- as normal, we don't give any future guiding on volumes as such. I think what we can comment, as we also said in our presentation, is that Yara has a global system. And of course, that's also in normal circumstances, obviously, benefit given the difference between season in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. And we think that will be even more so the case this year.
And of course, beyond that, I mean, our production levels are a question of whether we are -- whether we have sufficient margin to actually produce at different times. And so in a way, looking at market prices and gas prices throughout the quarter, that will kind of explain that situation. But of course, in addition to that, it's important to keep in mind the fact that we also can import ammonia from -- into Europe if gas prices were to go up.
But obviously, as everyone can see right now in the current situation, nitrogen prices have increased a lot more than gas prices. So I mean, so that in terms of what we produce and then ultimately sell, that's really what determines that. And of course, where we sell it depends a bit on how markets develop. And I think on maybe the urea nitrate pricing, I can give to you, Dag Tore.
Yes. I think it's, of course, a bit more challenging for you and others to monitor this now that prices are so extremely high because it leads to some more fragmentation and regional differentiation than otherwise. When prices are more normal, then you can use fairly straightforward sensitivities, right, because everything is kind of correlating very strongly. Some of that is now kind of a little bit distorted.
Let's say, if you put in spot prices in the Arab Gulf, that is basically the netback from the India tender which they paid kind of $950, say, there are very few regions now in the world that are willing to pay $100 -- $950 for urea, as you can observe, if you observe carefully in the regional prices that the publications quotes, nothing secret about that. You see that U.S. Gulf is discounted. Even Europe is somewhat discounted.
Brazil is discounted. So just putting in, let's say, $910, $920 for Arab Gulf, for instance, is giving a little bit exaggerated picture probably. So that is one thing that, of course, we have to be a little bit careful about. When it comes to Europe, of course, I mean, if you were a farmer now that needs urea for March, would you buy it now, question mark. And of course, that is an understandable dynamic.
I think that for a while now, maybe the urea import parity is not really the main driver of nitrogen prices in Europe for a period and that we see already as you were hinting at, right? You have 0, say, round numbers, 0 nitrate premiums right now based on the publication references. And it wouldn't be a surprise if you, let's say, with a starting price for next season that you will see a negative nitrate premium versus urea unless urea comes down a bit.
So I think that as Svein Tore was saying, I mean, the farmer affordability is so stretched that I think that there will be more regional differentiation based on what farmers need the product right now and what -- and those farmers that can defer the purchasing to closer to their application season. So a bit more challenging, I think, to be very precise on price realization than normal.
And just to remind everyone as well, the sensitivities are based on high-level easy assumptions, right, 1-month lag and 2 or 3 market prices in volatile markets and with increased regionalization, like you say, it's natural that they will be less precise than in a more stable market environment, yes. Moving to the next question is from John Campbell.
It's John from Bank of America. I have 2 quick questions. So maybe if we continue kind of on the NPK and nitrate premium. If I remember properly, I think second quarter '25 had pretty robust reported NPK, I think it was $265 per tonne. I think you've discontinued the practice of actually quoting the specific figure. But presumably, based on what you're kind of saying, gathering the comments you've made on this call, it sounds like that will be down maybe quite steeply into the second quarter.
That was my first question. Second question, just very quickly, any comments or assumptions or expectations for resumption of Chinese exports of urea in 2026? I think Bloomberg had a comment saying that it could be something like 3 million tonnes, which should be down year-on-year, but anything you've heard interesting, given, as you say, it's kind of one of the market balancing areas of supply.
Should I take the China question first. Nobody knows, of course. I think there is discussions ongoing in Beijing as we speak. So our understanding, they are debating this right now. The flow started in July last year, so a little bit of time left for that. We also see that there are quite a few market players that have already started to move products to ports. I mean, effectively removing that product from the domestic market already.
And that has caused some reactions both from the government and from the nitrogen association. It seems that are a little bit upset about this development ahead of approval. So that there are even some discussions of maybe that -- whether that could lead to some delays in the export approvals. Let's see how that fits. And I also said you referred to those 3 million tonnes. I've also seen those referred.
And to me, I haven't seen anything concrete yet nor from our experts in the market. So I tend to believe that must be some kind of speculation. But I also saw 3 million tonnes mentioned. I would think that would be a first tranche then in that case and not necessarily the total volume for the year. But that's what they also did last year, right?
They first approved 2 million tonnes and then they added to that quota as they saw that the domestic market did not react to the export volumes. So I don't think you should conclude -- I wouldn't have concluded that those 3 million tonnes, that's it. But be open that this is a really important factor in the market for the rest of the year.
And on NPK premiums, and again, of course, we don't give guiding on premiums, exact premium levels as such. But I think it's fair to say that the last couple of years, NPK premiums have been very high and higher than maybe average over a longer time period. But obviously, now with commodity prices increasing as much as they have and nitrogen, as we talked about, but also phosphates with a significant increase in -- due to -- well, same reasons that for nitrogen in the current crisis.
It's also natural that, that puts some pressure on the premium that farmers are -- can pay on top of that, of course, also considering the farmer economics. But -- so even though NPK premiums are somewhat down since last quarter and a year ago, it's still holding up quite well, and we'll see how that plays out, which will depend as well on the commodity development in the next quarter. But of course, for Yara, we -- I mean, we, of course, make money both on the premium as well as the operating margin or the commodity margin.
And there, of course, on both end, but also particularly phosphate, of course, there's been a significant increase. And I think also worth to mention in our production system, roughly only 1/3 of our NPK production depends on sulfur in the production system. And of course, sulfur is right now being a significant cost driver in phosphate or DAP production and phosphate prices. That's, of course, an advantage that we have on the margin side.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from David Symonds.
It's David from BNP. I have 3, I think, please. First one, could you talk about your assessment of damage to Middle Eastern nitrogen and LNG facilities so far? How much do you think we've lost longer term? And if the war ends this weekend, let's say, what would be the time lag before we get back to a more normal situation in nitrogen? Second, could you -- this is more just a modeling question. You very generously gave us the 150,000-tonne number for the Belle Plaine turnaround.
Is there an estimate of how much you might lose from the India and Australia outages and curtailments that you announced in the second quarter? And then thirdly, what could the policy response to this current crisis be? Is there an increased likelihood of CBAM suspension for fertilizers in the near term? Do you think we might see reopening of plants as we saw Brazil do with Petrobras? Any thoughts on that would be great.
On the Middle East, it's, of course, hard for us to know. We -- what has been announced is that Qatar has had some damage to their natural gas infrastructure that will take quite some years to repair. We don't think that the fertilizer plant is damaged, so that should be able to restart very quickly. There has been some damage in Bahrain and some damage in Saudi Arabia also we hear, a little bit unclear how much and how long it will last.
And in Iran, there is quite a lot of damage to the gas infrastructure, and there are only a few of the plants in Iran that has been able to start up. So -- but to your question about how long time this would take to normalize, I think it's hard for us to speculate around that. It certainly takes some time, how much -- yes, it's hard to estimate.
I think on your questions on India and Australia, I mean, on the Indian side, the impact to -- I mean, to our results is fairly limited from the current curtailment there. On the Australian part -- sorry, Australian ammonia plant, as I said, we assessed roughly 140,000 tonnes in total. I think we also said in the market that we expect start-up sometime in the first half of May. So then -- I mean, from a -- you can sort of do math on how much that -- because -- I mean, when the plant went down, so how much of that will be in the second quarter versus the first quarter policy?
Policies, here. You mentioned CBAM. I think the last thing that Europe should do right now is to create any uncertainty around CBAM because that's in place in order to create a level playing field so that imported volume pays the same emission cost as European players do. And if there's one region that has felt the consequence of dependencies, it's Europe, look at what happened in the energy sector on the energy crisis and what that meant for households and industries that we're still struggling with in Europe right now.
So then -- to then weaken such a vital industry as fertilizer and farming would further emphasize the challenges in Europe. So I think what the policymakers should consider here is rather use the CBAM revenue and redirect that towards farmers to not put a burden on the shoulders of the farmers. They don't have the margins to support this, but we need food production in Europe, and we need a healthy fertilizer production system in Europe as well.
And if we're -- as a result of this creating an uneven or not a level playing field, that would maybe come at a very short-term relief maybe, but a very high-cost long term because then we would be even more dependent on imports. So it's important to keep the long term in mind here as well. But any uncertainty on CBAM in Europe for the industry right now will have impact on the ability to invest in long-term projects.
But of course, as we look globally and with fertilizer being responsible for half of the world's food production, I understand that this is something that is very high on the agenda for politicians all over right now, but it's important that we balance the short-term need with the long-term implications for that interventions could have.
But we really do think that CBAM is an important lever and that in combination with ETS, if you are to reach the Paris Agreement to reach the emission targets for Europe, that needs to stay here. And that's also important for the long term of actually growing food because we also have to solve the climate challenge here. And I would say that one of the occupations hardest hit by climate change is actually farming.
They work out in nature, and they work, whether it's floods or droughts or record heat or record cold, that's where they have to produce food. So it is in our interest that we deal with the climate challenge as well, but it's not something that we could just put on the shoulders of farmers.
Let's move to the next question, which is from Tristan Lamotte.
Tristan Lamotte, Deutsche Bank. Two questions, please. The first one is how high is the risk that the CapEx number that you quoted for central blue ammonia projects has to move up given the developments in the world since you first gave those numbers and given that the final agreement is yet to be signed? And the second question is, I'm just wondering if you could talk about any opportunities for permanent market share gains relating to the conflict.
Yes. When it comes to the project with Air Products, as we said when we had the announcement, I mean, the time we spend towards midyear to the next phase of that project, including the preparations of the potential FID is sort of around the contracting market and evaluating the technical side the project together with AP. And I think that work is still ongoing, and there's nothing particular that's happened since then that sort of changed anything substantial in that regard.
So I mean, it depends on the market, depends on the bids. And so yes, there's nothing new as such there and sort of things are proceeding according to the plan that we had. I think in terms of market share, I would say -- our primary objective also sort of reflected in our improvement program is to increase organically production output for organic growth from our production system, so up to 1 million tonnes of additional premium products through production improvement and debottlenecking.
And in addition, we have a few projects coming online now with NPK expansions in Cartagena as well as YaraVita biological plant in the U.K. and so on. So obviously, that will go into increasing our market share as we sell what we produce. But in addition to that, and also as a part of the improvement program, we are looking at optimizing our global system, taking more market share in our most profitable markets.
I think -- and as we also communicated there, Europe is one, not the only, but one core market for us, of course. And I think that is also why it is very important for us to keep production running now as we have, take some risk in doing that. But of course, at the current levels so far, we have good production margin on finished products. We also had good operating margin on ammonia.
And if gas prices were to go up further, we also have the possibility to import ammonia and keep finished fertilizer production going. So we believe that Yara as such as a quite strong competitive edge also against competition, also in Europe in terms of being a very stable, reliable supplier for the European market and gaining market share.
And to add on, you put it very well, Magnus. And as we said at our Capital Markets Day back on January 9th as well, we said that we're a battle-proven organization, and we've been tested again now. And I want to thank all our colleagues for an outstanding performance where finished goods production is at one of the highest levels we've seen. But one thing is to produce, but also to get it out to our customers as well and it's been an outstanding performance on really working hard throughout our whole supply chain in order to get that done.
And we've used the robustness and the flexibility that we knew that we had in our business model before the energy crisis and before Russia's war in Ukraine, but the learnings that we had from that, we've also built in even more flexibility in our system, and that's what we're fully utilizing now to maintain production at high levels, but also moving the product.
[Operator Instructions] With that, we'll move to the next question, which is from Mazahir Mammadli.
So 2 questions from my side. Sorry, firstly, as we near the planting season in the Southern Hemisphere and if the situation stays the same, how should we think about the market development, whether it's volumes, demand destructions, acreage decisions and also perhaps some relief from amsul substitution in Brazil from Chinese imports?
And my second question is, with the free cash flow that you are generating now and perhaps in the next few quarters, what's the plan first, in the scenario where you decide to go ahead with the Air Products project? And second, in the scenario where you decide not to do that, what would be the capital allocation decision there?
On the first, I think it's hard to -- at least for me here in Oslo now - to have a full picture on exactly how the decision-making is going to be on the Southern Hemisphere by the farmers. What we have heard -- it's logical that the topic is on the agenda, right? We hear from Australia, for instance, where -- which has a peak import season for urea now in the second quarter and maybe one of the regions that are hardest hit by the timing of this conflict.
There are some talks about reducing wheat acreage, for instance, to go for maybe barley, maybe some canola, find some other crops that are a little bit less nutrient demanding. And I would think that, that would be also a topic in places like Brazil, Argentina. We know South Africa is struggling with high prices and low margins. So exactly -- I think a good -- very good questions, but I think it's hard for us to speculate on exactly how that will play out. But surely, there will be efforts to try to find solutions that would maybe require less nutrients.
To the question on cash flow and capital allocation, I mean, for us, it obviously starts with strong capital discipline and as we outlined in January, investing into U.S. projects, as we said, is a core priority for our energy diversification strategy. And then we outlined there as well roughly over the period up to 2030, how much money we sort of -- or much CapEx we plan to spend on that. I think irrespective of sort of FID decision there, I mean, capital discipline will stay strong.
Potentially, we would do other projects, pursue other similar type projects for the same objective, but still with the same discipline. And that's really driven by how much we believe that we can take on at one point in time, not only sort of from a balance sheet perspective, but also to make sure we actually deliver a strong return on those projects. And that's kind of the guiding star for that.
And of course, if our cash flow was to increase significantly in the period as well, I mean, that doesn't change our plans on the investment side materially necessarily as such. But of course, then we would look at the levers that we have at hand. And of course, as we've said, additional distribution is also something that we would always consider, right, in such a scenario. And I think also on that note, of course, also important to mention that with the current market volatility that we see, we also, of course, need to keep in mind that there could be changes in the market as well.
And I think particularly with what we see now, of course, maintaining a very strong balance sheet is extremely important for our flexibility, both to navigate the market, but also to sort of make shareholder-friendly decisions. But sort of regardless, of course, our capital discipline remains even though our cash flow would increase. But that said, we are sticking to our capital allocation policy, our dividend policy, and we will, as a part of that, always consider additional distributions.
The next question is then from Angelina Glazova.
Angelina Glazova from JPMorgan. I just have one question left actually, and that's on the U.S. blue ammonia project. I am wondering how you think about the time line for mid-2026 FID that you provided us with. Do you view it as a hard deadline? Or do you think that this is a goalpost that can be moved potentially? And the reason I'm asking is that we had quite a detailed discussion on policy earlier on the conference call.
And it is a possibility that we might not get final certainty on CBAM regulation in Europe by mid-2026. And I'm wondering, in this case, how would you approach the decision? Would you still make the decision in conditions of uncertainty? Or would you rather wait until we get this final certainty on regulation?
Yes. Thank you for the question. I think when it comes to certainty around political decisions, whether it's CBAM or tax rates for that matter, you never get that right. They never get 100% certainty. So I think we, as such, are -- always have to make decisions knowing that there is that level of uncertainty. Everything that's politically decided could, of course, be undecided.
That being said, I think sort of the tendency that we see on CBAM now as well, also politically and the signals that are public out there is that the appetite for changing it seems to meet with resistance in many places and importantly, among those European parliament as an example. That being said, when we do a project like this, obviously, we don't base that solely on subsidies or sort of political incentives like that, right? As we've said many times before, basically 3 main objectives.
It's lower gas prices, it's increased scale and with that comes lower fixed cost and CapEx per tonne. And then it's tapping into carbon -- sort of carbon margin as well. So all 3 are important and play a role in the business case. Obviously, if you take one away, then the business case is less strong. But I mean, still, for us as a big ammonia producer, the 2 first ones are very important. When it comes to the time line, I think that is our plan, and we work by the plan.
But I mean, what's important both for us and for Air Products is to make the right decision. So I mean, if there's outstanding technical matters or any other good reason that it makes more sense to wait a little bit, that's, of course, what we do. I mean there's nothing forcing our hand to make a decision on a certain date. I mean we will make the right decision for both companies, and that is one that is value-creating for all our shareholders.
Thank you. We only have one more question so far. So if anyone else has a burning question, they should raise their hand now. First, Bengt Jonassen, the line is yours.
Bengt Jonassen, ABG. Just one follow-up question on the comment on the Industrial segment. I think you stated in the webcast that there were some curtailments or permanent curtailments of some capacity in the industrials. Could you confirm that? And how much of the capacity was curtailed?
So yes, so it's -- on the volume side, we have made -- we announced last year a few closures of segments in Brazil for the industrial side. In addition to that, we had some smaller production issues as well in Cubatao this quarter that also impacted on the volumes. So it was a bit remiss not mentioning that in the presentation as well.
It's the hibernation of the sulfuric acid plant in Paulinia which we've mentioned last year, if you remember. Smaller plants as such or a smaller volume impact. Okay. There are no further questions, it seems like. So that means that we will end the Q&A session now. Should you have any need for follow-ups, the IR team remains at your disposal. But with that, thank you for joining, and we wish you a pleasant day. Thank you.
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Yara International — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Yara International — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Starke Q1-Ergebnisse dank hoher Nitrogenmargen und operativer Flexibilität, aber erhebliche Marktrisiken durch den Konflikt im Nahen Osten und gestiegene Preise.
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- EBITDA: $896 Mio. (exkl. Sondereffekte, +40% YoY)
- EPS: +60% YoY
- Free Cash Flow: Operativer Cash-Anstieg führte zu einer Verbesserung um ca. $196 Mio.
- ROIC: 12,2% (rolling 12M; Ziel >10%)
- Volumen: Crop Nutrition +3% YoY; Industrial Solutions -5%; geplante Produktionsverluste: Belle Plaine ≈150.000 t Urea, Pilbara ≈140.000 t Ammoniak.
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- Operative Stärke: Globale Diversifikation und Energieflexibilität ermöglichen hohe Auslastung und Lieferkontinuität trotz Marktstörung.
- Kostenprogramm: Fixkosten auf $2,3 Mrd. (12M), Ziel >$200 Mio. EBITDA-Verbesserung bis 2027 und $350 Mio. bis 2030.
- Energie‑Diversifizierung: Strategische Partnerschaft mit Air Products (NEOM, US‑Projekt) zur Sicherung günstigerer Gasversorgung und Skalenvorteile.
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Markterwartung: Mittelfristig konstruktive Nitrogen‑Bilanz wegen verzögerter Kapazitätszubauten; starke Abhängigkeit von Dauer der Sperrung Straße von Hormuz und China‑Exportentscheiden.
- Produktion & Nachfrage: Q2‑Volumes werden nicht prognostiziert; Management betont Fähigkeit, je nach Gasökonomie zwischen Eigenproduktion und Ammoniakimport zu wechseln.
- Risiken: Nachfrageeinschnitte (Farmer‑Affordability), regionale Preisspaltung, mögliche Politik‑Eingriffe (z.B. CBAM‑Debatten) und Sicherheitsvorfälle intern.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Gas/Hedging: Keine Gashedging‑Strategie; Präferenz für operative Flexibilität (Import von Ammoniak statt Absicherung).
- Preis/Volumen‑Realisation: Analysen zu regionaler Fragmentierung (Urea vs. Nitrate), keine präzisen Q2‑Guides; China‑Export (Spekulationen ~3 Mio. t) bleibt ungewiss.
- Kapitalallokation & FID: Air Products‑Projekt verfolgt Zeitplan (Mitte 2026), Entscheidung soll werthaltig sein; bei höheren Cashflows bleibt Kapitaldisziplin und Dividendenpolitik vorrangig.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Aktionäre sehen kurzfristig stärkere Rentabilität und Cashflow dank hoher Margen und guter Auslastung; zentrale Risiken sind Nachfrageausfälle durch hohe Endpreise, geopolitische Störungen und operative Safety‑Issues. Entscheidende Beobachtungspunkte: Umsetzung des Improvement‑Programms, Air Products‑FID und Entwicklung der Lieferengpässe im Nahen Osten sowie China‑Exportentscheidungen.
Yara International — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Yara's Fourth Quarter Results Call. Please note that this call is being recorded.
I will now hand over the call to Maria Gabrielsen, Head of Investor Relations in Yara. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome to everyone for joining us for this conference call for our fourth quarter results. And I'm here together with the representatives in Yara's management, our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand; Head of Market Intelligence, on Dag Tore Mo, well is the representative from Yara. We're not planning to give a presentation or further opening remarks as we hope you all just watched our webcast, and we will therefore go straight into questions.
And I will ask operator, if you may please open the first line.
Our first question comes from the line of Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Markets.
2. Question Answer
I'll ask a couple of questions, maybe one by one.
Can you talk a little bit about the difference in Q4 between Europe and the Americas. You had a lot of buying in Q4 in Europe. Was that ahead of CBAM, and the Americas was flat. Was that weather? Can you talk about that, please?
Yes. Yes, in Europe, we had a strong Q4, both when it comes to our own sales, but also the market in general, both up because we think a large part of that was due to positioning ahead of CBAM already from November, in particular, there was quite strong interest in buying, importing as well as from domestic producers to avoid the CBAM charge from January 1, and it's actually led to a price increase across the products already in Q4 because of that partly then reflecting the CBAM charge already in Q4.
In the U.S., I think it's more -- there has been [indiscernible]. The norms of the recent seasons has been quite a lot of late buying in North America and the U.S. with a lot of imports focused in, let's say, the February through April period. And this season looks to be similar. It's just slightly ahead. But I would say that's not more than just more or less random variation. I have not seen anything kind of specific or any structure when it comes to that. There's a lot of buying from the U.S. that remains.
Okay. And then I'm trying to reconcile your comments around Q1. So you talk about how -- because there is some pre-bond in Q4 in Europe, your Q1 is ahead of [ a season ]. You kind of talk about, yes, but there's lots of products still to buy in Europe. So in one hand, you're kind of saying like, oh, people have bought ahead, but oh, they haven't bought enough. I'm just trying to understand your comments.
And then can you -- as part of that, with some of the uncertainties around CBAM, whether there might be some offsets or not, can you try to sort of talk about that and how it's affecting the market and your strategy?
I can start with some comments, and then Magnus can add if he wish. First of all, given that we -- as our estimate, that deliveries are 7% ahead as of end December compared to last year, even if not, you would think that the first application for the farmers are generally already purchased.
And now we still have winter. So until there is a kind of a movement in the field there is no real need for farmers to replenish their inventories or further buying in order to -- for the subsequent applications. So -- and also, as you hint that there is now a CBAM in force. There's some political uncertainties that has kind of surfaced through January around this. So it's logical then that as we start the new year that we have a relative slowdown -- a little bit of a slowdown in the market after Christmas.
But 7% ahead, almost half of the seasonal demand has yet to be bought. And we think that imports is slowing now in Q1. So that's where we are kind of coming from that, yes, it's a little bit slow start. No, we are kind of depending a little bit on spring arriving. And then it could be a very -- quite a busy period actually, and it depends a little bit on how much will be imported. Just for your reference, urea is the main product on the nitrogen side that is imported, less for nitrates. And Q1 last year, EU imported 2.2 million tonnes of urea. That's quite a lot.
So even if imports is down, there is quite a lot needed. So that's kind of -- I can understand that you are a little bit puzzled by the formulations maybe. But -- so yes, the market is a little bit ahead by the end of December, but it's a lot that remains and we'll see how that plays out in a market where imports is now more expensive.
Yes. No. I think that's the key point. And obviously, with the prospect of CBAM in Q4, there was a bit of a rush on the import side, which is also reflected on the pricing or in prices. But I think it's also key to remember that CBAM is still enforced. I mean every ton that goes into Europe now faces CBAM. And of course, by the time any changes to that would be in place.
Of course, that project will have been sold and probably applied a long time ago. So I mean we don't really see that. From a market perspective, this spring that any CBAM changes would impact anything on prices as such. And then also we believe it's highly questionable that there will be any changes to the CBAM at all.
Okay. Just to fit one more in. Would you expect '26 -- for ammonia production, would you expect '26 to play out largely like 2025 and 2024, where you're producing 1.7 million, 1.8 million tonnes a quarter, except for Q3, where you produce significantly more. Should it be similar kind of ranges across the quarters this year?
I think when -- if you're referring to Yara's ammonia production, I mean, we...
Yara. Just Yara, 1.7%, 1.8% a quarter except for Q3, where you produce more.
Well, I mean, we run our facilities 24/7 all year around, if there's a positive cash margin. So -- and then, of course, there are some turnarounds that impact the schedule. And of course, from now and then, there's a plan to stop as well. But in general, our uptime is very, very strong.
So I think our plan is to produce sort of the practical production rate that we have. Right now, there is strong -- right now, there is good cash margin in all our production facilities.
So do you have any special turnarounds or any additions this year in '26, that would be significantly different than '25, excluding unplanned adages?
No. No. I mean I think we distribute our turnarounds fairly evenly. So there's nothing special compared to other years.
Next question comes from the line of Christian Faitz of Kepler Cheuvreux.
Two questions, please. First, your scheduled maintenance CapEx for '26, some USD 200 million higher versus '25. I'm aware of the phasing that you mentioned in the webcast, but can you elucidate this a bit, for example, which plants are mainly concerned? And the second question would be, can I ask whether the sequential property plant equipment increase over the past few quarters is largely U.S. dollar driven?
Yes. No, I think on the first question, our maintenance schedule is basically driven by the turnaround. So we do have a few turnarounds this year, which have a bigger scope. I think in referring to the previous question in terms of sort of how much we will produce this year or not produce because of turnarounds, that's pretty stable, but some turnaround are more expensive than others because scope change from turnaround to turnaround.
So that's why the maintenance for 2026 is somewhat higher than the sort of the -- or in the upper part of the range that we've given from sort of USD 700 million to USD 850 million per year. And then that includes -- a small portion of that includes a little bit of phasing from 2025 as well, but that's not much.
And could you repeat your question on PP&E, please?
Your plant, property and equipment in your balance sheet seems to be going up sequentially over the past 3 quarters or so. Is that largely U.S. dollar driven?
Yes. Most of the increase is -- most of our assets are booked in euros across Europe. So that will likely reflect the currency rate.
Your next question comes from the line of Lisa De Neve of Morgan Stanley.
I want to follow up on the first question around spring demand. If you can give us an idea of what you think current channel inventories are across the Americas and Europe? Some idea on that would be great. That's my first question.
And my second question would be around CBAM. I mean to which extent have you been involved with European policymakers around what your view is on the importance of CBAM and what sort of variables are being discussed to make the -- potentially move ahead with banning CBAM for fertilizers or maintaining that structure?
On your first question, when it comes to North America, I mean players supplying nitrogen to the U.S. or North American markets are normally coming down with their feet on the ground, playing this out quite well.
And I can say that already now, U.S. Gulf pricing for urea is up at $500, which is kind of sufficient to attract quite a lot of tonnage. So it seems -- to us, it seems like it is fairly normal. It's one of the reasons why the market globally is so tight, I mean it's $500 basically, is part of that reason is outstanding U.S. demand.
And there is also activity into Europe from North Africa, in particular. You've probably seen last week, there was quite a substantial volume that was bought. So there is also that's going on in anticipation of the spring that will come. So I would say it's fairly normal, both in North America and Europe in that sense.
And now you have Indian addition that is trying to fight for March availability by announcing a 1.5 million tonne tender as we probably saw. So it's fairly busy in the very short term.
And on CBAM, I think what's important, first and foremost, is to kind of be accurate on what's actually happening, right? So right now, CBAM as per EU legislation is in force. Then there is a proposal, Paragraph 27a, which is passed was open for temporary suspension or give the commission a temporary suspension opportunity. If there are unforeseen impact on the single market or something like that.
For that to even be a possibility, that paragraph has to be passed by the European Parliament, which is obviously not a given -- this is not something that either the member states or the commission can decide on their own. So obviously, and referring to your questions, we are, of course, in close contact with at the political level, in several member states with the EU Commission and also the EU Parliament to voice our view on that.
And I think our CEO has been very clear on that, of course, there's absolutely nothing with CBAM that is unforeseen. I think it should be evident that prices will go up equivalent to the import tax you put on ag. So it's very difficult from our perspective to see any logic in implementing such a paragraph. But of course, politics is politics. And this will then -- we will see what the mood in Europe and how receptive the MEP will be for that.
But as a reference, in the same -- same event where this was introduced, the commission also and the member state agreed on Mercosur, which was later rejected by the MEP. So, there is certainly no guarantee that the proposal from the EU Commission is approved by the European Parliament.
Your next question comes from the line of John Campbell of Bank of America.
Maybe sticking with CBAM. So do you have a sense within Yara of the potential time line for when the EU could pass or not pass this modification to the suspension tool, et cetera, number one.
Number two, on your Air Products projects, sort of what confidence do you have at this stage that it can be delivered within the NOK 8 billion to NOK 9 billion budget. I think it's probably fair to say the projects have seen numerous costs increases. Air Products, I think, are quite clear on their calls that there's a lot of construction market labor bids from data centers.
I think Air Products has tried to basically split up the construction to several different tenders, et cetera. Maybe you could tell us how that's going? But I can tell you, at least from the Air Product call, they said 90% of the missing puzzle piece to reach FID relates to the cost. So is there any reassurance you can offer that NOK 8 billion to NOK 9 billion figure will be achieved?
Yes. I think on your CBAM question, I mean it's difficult for us to sort of give us sort of a fair estimate on how much time EU need to pass this through parliament. So that's, of course, something that we are watching closely. However, we do note that there is significant resistance both in the European parliament, but also from several member states as well as the industry as well as commissioners against this proposal of opening for a possibility of suspension. So at least, I think it's fair to say that it's going to be a fight -- pretty good fight.
I think -- and whether that sort of comes in time or how that sort of matches up with our time line for the Air Products project is, of course, equally difficult to say. But of course, next month, we'll hopefully, provide some direct entities in terms of what the political mood is and where this is going.
On the cost increases, we don't have any sort of further update to what we and Air Products have stated earlier in terms of the range that we are looking at. I think, of course, as you say, from the original outset of that project from a product side, CapEx has gone up, but it's also important to remember that the technical maturity of the work detailed engineering, et cetera, has developed a lot as well, right?
So I think sort of costs that -- comparing cost estimates, is not like comparing apples and apples necessarily, right? It's a big difference between cost estimate after detailed engineering and the cost estimate that you do on your first FID as an example.
So they are working diligently to get these estimates in place. We are supporting that as well with our expertise. And as you said, there is competition for this, but there are also not many ammonia plants being actually being built in the U.S. So we will see how that works out over the next month. And of course, a very important element in the decision making as Air Products have pointed out. And of course, that will case for us as well.
The question comes from the line of David Symonds of BNP Paribas.
So 2 questions for me, please. Firstly, you mentioned strong demand fundamentals, but you're showing optimal nitrogen application on Slide 29 for a wheat farmer. As being 4% lower versus this time last year. And I think if you scale that up to the whole nitrogen market, the equipment of losing maybe 5 million tonnes of urea demand in 2026 ex-China.
Now I know you're not just selling to wheat farmers, but soy and corn, economics are very weak as well. So could you comment on expectations for supply and demand balances in 2026 based on current farmer economics as opposed to long-term averages that you show on the slide? That's question one.
And then question two, the NPK margins have come down, and you mentioned that's normal in a type and nitrogen market. But I noticed that compound NPK inventories also look like they've built in the 3Q and 4Q. So are you seeing farmers down trading to straight nutrients? Or what's behind that larger than usual inventory build in compound NPKs?
Yes. As you mentioned, the example we showed there is, kind of, course, a little bit of a theoretic issue where we have a yield curve that we have, kind of, based ourselves on from a research center in Germany. And it, as you say, if a farmer already is at optimal application rate, it does show what hold that optimal application rate is changing with the price ratio between wheat and fertilizer.
And the fertilizer is clearly expensive. I mean, affordability issues is high on the agenda, both on nitrogen, even more on phosphate. So it's a limiting factor. I think that if not for relatively modest or low grain prices, we will have even higher prices for N and P than what we have today.
And if you look at, as you said, demand, has this led to lower global demand, this pressure on affordability, it hasn't. And that's, of course, maybe it can be more or less surprised by that. If you look at 2025, with that increase in Chinese exports of 5 million tonnes, even if you then take away some production outside China due to India producing less, due to Iran and Egypt producing less, due to the conflict and also gas diverted to other purposes, I think you'll find that fairly healthy supply growth for nitrogen in 2025 and into '26 and even despite that we are having $500 urea prices now.
So -- and I think that has taken some players by surprise. If you look at -- if you look, let's say, a year ago at forecast for 2025 and 2026 pricing from most players, consultants, et cetera, they will be considerably lower than what we have been realizing. So yes, we have a very strong and tight supply demand balance despite relatively poor affordability.
On the NPK side, I think what's important to remember is that most of our NPKs goes into what we call premium products, where, of course, the value of those products on yield quality and several other aspects, is kind of what determines price and the willingness to pay, which is, of course, on the absolute price that the farmers pay. When we talk about premiums, we refer to that price less sort of commodity value of the 3 nutrients in the product.
So in that scenario, even though sort of NPK prices go up when NP&K go up as well, when they go up as much as they do now, it's natural to sort of see some contraction in the premium in the way we measure it. And I think if you look at across nitros and NPK, premiums that actually hold up very well, I would say, considering the high commodity price environment that we have. But we have, as we reported, seen some tightening on the premium side, particularly in Asia, whereas sort of margins, which is Yara margin, are not down in the same way.
When it comes to inventories, actually, our sales in Q4 and the year in total are slightly up. But our production levels are also significantly up due to improvements in productivity in our production system. So that has led to I would say, a fairly slight inventory buildup, which we believe that -- which we are working hard to, of course, sell the additional tonnages that we get out of our plants now in the spring.
Your next question comes from the line of Bengt Jonassen of ABG Sundal Collier.
I have 2, if I may, both related to Q4. If you take your EBITDA bridge year-over-year, prices had a tailwind of [ 140 ], looking at your nitrate price realization is [ 358 ] versus your own pre-quarter material list prices at [ 370 ]. Could you talk a little bit about the price realization and if it's timing or discounting.
So the prices for fourth quarter realized slightly lower than publication prices, but it actually was last year as well. So we typically -- that's why we typically recommend using the delta for publication prices or delta realized prices, I think you will end up with roughly the same impact in the EBITDA bridge.
But then the other part is also that if you look at the publication prices for CAN, it's not a fully liquid reference in the sense that publications aren't able to capture the exact price that every trade goes. And I'm sure that could expand on that. And also they aren't volume weighted. So it means that you will always have these deviations a bit between publication prices and realized prices, which are also linked to how they make their estimates and not only commercial performance.
So the biggest impact in the price margin compared to the outside in if you use pure publication prices is really related to the NPK premiums that were pressured, especially in Asia, China and Thailand, and that we estimate to be roughly $20 million, $30 million impact this quarter compared to same quarter last year.
And then I think it's fair to say that the impact the risk in Europe is mostly due to timing in the quarter.
Yes. Okay. But let me ask the question the other way around that. If you take your official publication prices, your list prices to your clients, it's much higher than your price realization implies.
And then back to the question, why our realized price is so much lower than the prices that you're actually announces to your client? There seems to be some kind of either increased competition or discounting or timing independent of the EBITDA bridge year-over-year.
The biggest factor in that regard is timing, right? That's -- and in a way, that's difficult to predict from year-to-year for us as well as for you guys, of course, as well. I mean there are -- it depends on a lot of different factors when the markets move, right, when buyers step in to buy, when imports come in and so on. So there are a lot of factors there that impact what -- how we have -- I mean, how our sales team have to determine what's the optimal volume to sell at each point in time.
We can have an idea of where we think prices are going or will go. But if the market moves, you have to move with it to some extent in order to stay a part of the market. So I think of the factors you mentioned, I would say sort of timing is the key one.
Also you're right, when we announce prices, which we do from time to time, but it depends a bit on how often we do it publicly through official announcements and how much do we announce at a certain point in time and ongoing negotiation.
So -- and that's really typically based on Germany and France, right? And then there can be other deviations from that in the other markets, which can then lead us to deviate from those which prices you're correct [indiscernible].
And on that topic, how should we view current publication prices? Are they a reflection of the actual market or is the softness that you are communicating, maybe delaying some purchases on the price realization for the current quarter?
Yes. No, list prices, we have a reflection of the current market.
Here CAN around EUR 350 that we think is pretty close to where it's actually.
Your next question comes from the line of Angelina Glazova of JPMorgan.
I will also have 2. And my first question is on free cash flow dynamics. We have noticed that in the past couple of quarters, there was a sizable working capital buildup. And I'm wondering how you the working capital to develop into 2026?
And we, of course, know that the working capital trend is impacted by seasonality, can be path on a quarterly basis. But I'm just wondering, in general, if you could give us some color on next year? And also because you now have a free cash flow target. So just wondering how you think of working capital as a variable in achieving that target?
And my second question would just be a follow-up on CBAM. Apologies again on this topic, but I just wanted to make sure I understand correctly what you have said earlier in the call. I believe you have mentioned that [ you doubt ] there will be any meaningful changes to CBAM in principle. So I just wanted to understand, is this something that you're seeing based on the discussions that maybe you have had with regulators so far? Or what is this view based on?
Yes. Thank you for your questions. I think on the first one on working capital. So I mean, first half is the -- as you know, the season in the Western Northern Hemisphere, right, and that forget that's the biggest part of the global application as well. So that's where we have higher deliveries. And so that -- in that you see typically see a buildup of inventories somewhat and working capital before season. And then we release indices. So that's kind of the, I would say, the price neutral view.
But then, of course, when prices go up or down, that impacts working capital as well. And when prices go up like they have done through Q4, which is, of course, very good for Yara. But that, of course, also means that the value of receivables and so on is higher, also then working capital goes up. But there's nothing uncommon on credit days or inventory days or anything like that, that will constitute a change.
So this is kind of purely seasonality as such. And then of course, there are, from time to time, some sort of changes on when prepayments happen and so on. So I think as well as season starts and also let's see if prices stabilize at this level, it's fair to think that everything else equal, is the release of working capital.
If prices go up, it will -- there will be a buildup, it also will, of course, be released from sales done in Q4 but nothing uncommon compared to the previous years. And that, of course, also plays a little bit into -- when you talk about improvement or how to sort of think about working capital from a value perspective, then you, of course, think about sort of the average for the year or average towards the season, which is kind of what matters.
That being said, of course, working capital improvement in itself is an important topic, but that's not something we sort of improve by moving things around between the quarters. That's more a question of working on the different aspects of working capital such as reducing credit days, optimizing product flows based on inventory days, obviously, products we sell close to our plants, generally typically tend to have lower working capital and so on. So that's really something that we work on as well. And which, of course, we have to measure against the premiums we achieved for some of these products in markets far away from the plant.
On CBAM, just to be precise because I think I've seen a lot of different comments on this. And I think you sometimes read it as if either CBAM has been suspended, which is absolutely not the case. Or as if it's something that the EU commission or a member state could just decide on their own tomorrow. So what I said was that the commission has proposed a new paragraph, which does not take us today or it's not in part of the legislation today. That allows them to suspend CBAM not only for fertilizer, for any product, temporarily if there are unforeseen negative impact on the single market.
Now for them to even have that possibility, that paragraph needs to be included in the legislation and that will require sort of the full legislative process, including an approval by the European Parliament. And then when it comes to sort of what the likelihood of that happening, that's, of course, anybody's guess. But if you read the media, there have been both several members of the European Parliament who've spoken out against these changes. There have been people from the commission stating that CBAM is the cornerstone of the European decarbonization policy and so on. So I mean there's clearly in all -- in all camps, strong resistance of even contemplating this, even though the proposal is there.
But of course, as we then in politics, it's very difficult to sort of predict what that outcome could be. But I think what's important also to emphasize is that even if that was implemented, then unforeseen consequence, it's very hard to see how a price increase equivalent to a tariff could be unforeseen. That's -- so I mean, at least judging by the letter of the law, even if it was implemented, that shouldn't really open the opportunity for any suspension of CBAM on product fertilizer due to the grounds of being unforeseen. But of course, that's my personal interpretation not necessarily the interpretation of the European Commission.
Your next question comes from the line of Tristan Lamotte of Deutsche Bank.
Kind of CBAM adjacent, but I'm just wondering on proposed changes to ETFs and the phaseouts of free emissions. Can you just remind us of your position there? And I think you mentioned in the past that you have credits that you could start at some point. So could you also talk about your exposure to the need to buy credits over time?
And then second question is, just given whether net debt is now sitting, which I think is below your range, what's your view on kind of capital allocation and buybacks?
Yes. When it comes to ETFs, we have -- we take before around 6 million credits in our bank, so to speak. And then I mean we -- the way it works, of course, is that you -- we get a certain fee allowance per year that matches so far -- has matched or exceeded our need to buy ETF [ quotas ] and then now free allowances will be gradually phased out at least according to the current plan.
And I think -- I mean you can think about the credits that we hold in different ways, but just sort of a measuring it physically, that kind of takes us to 2029 or something like that -- through 2029, kind of where we could cover our need for actually buying credits with what we have in the bank.
And of course, I mean, given that your question was adjacent to CBAM, obviously, we would -- we almost assume that in the event that the EU Commission would take away or suspend CBAM temporarily. I would also almost they were granted that they would suspend or extend free allowances for the same period. Of course, it's not -- it would be treating domestic industry very, very unfavorably compared to imports.
And did you repeat your second question, please?
Can I just add a comment to the -- so if we have then a slower phase out, Tristan, right? So basically, it means that the deficit we expect in 2029 and 2030, that won't increase as much as we would have otherwise done until 2034, right? But whether we use those closes in the bank or whether we sell them, that's a pure financial decision ultimately depending on where prices are and where we think they're going because they have a cost regardless of when we materialize the cash effect related to them.
And yes, the second question was just around your net debt-to-EBITDA level, which I think is below the range and your thoughts around kind of buybacks or what you would do with extra headroom.
Yes. No, I think we outlined our capital allocation policy in our CMD month ago. And our main priority on the investment side or on the growth investment side is clearly U.S. projects and reducing our energy costs or investments into ammonia.
I think that beyond that capital discipline will be very strict. Of course, if we have smaller value very value-accretive opportunities, that's of course, something that we'll always consider. And then we sort of stick to our dividend policy of 50% cash dividend of net income.
Of course, as we also said earlier today, if there is headroom or availability for it, we will always also consider additional buybacks depending on what we believe is the most accretive for the shareholder.
Your next question comes from the line of Magnus Rasmussen of SEB.
I have 2, if I may. Firstly, when you announced the Air Products project, you said that you could do that within your $1.2 billion CapEx frame. I assume that implies you have to be quite a bit below that level towards 2030, still guide for $1.2 billion '26. So I'm just wondering sort of what's your thinking here? And how should we think about that beyond 2026?
And the other question I had was whether you could talk about -- a bit about the factors impacting your earnings, which are not captured in your sensitivities such as NPK premiums, phosphate margins, et cetera? Where are we now relative to '25? And how does '25 compare to sort of historical averages?
I'm not sure I capture your full first question. But I think what we've said is that the Air Products project is within our capital allocation policy. We've also indicated that we see sort of CapEx spend in real terms around $1.2 billion next year -- sorry, in the coming years. And then, of course, if you sort of deduct the maintenance level that we've indicated as well, that there should be within that also sufficient space for the project portfolio that we are looking at towards 2030.
And then -- yes, and then of course, as in the previous question, that also opens up for the dividend policy that we have and, of course, evaluating buybacks versus very accretive opportunities that might arise in addition. But I think, again, U.S. projects will be a priority, and of course, also CapEx discipline is critical.
In terms of variables beyond the one that we've given the sensitivity, I'll give the word to Maria.
Yes. Just to mention, I think the largest one, we have the phosphate upgrading margin which we used to have a sensitivity on but don't have currently, but it has had an impact in 2025 compared to 2024,,in general on the positive side, even though prices have been following for the later half. In the case premiums, for example, it tends to be fairly stable, but we do see some variations like we did in this quarter. So that will also impact us even though not covered in the bridge as such.
And then you could also -- because we have gas exposure mainly to TTF and Henry Hub, but we have some class exposed to other gas costs, which tends to be more stable. But in the degree they vary, they wouldn't typically reflected in our sensitivities. And fixed costs, for example, which obviously has been the impact for the year that to be the main drivers where most of them have contributed positively for '25 as such.
I don't know if it's helpful, but you have this -- the phosphate upgrading depends on sulfur as a raw material for most production processes. And sulfur has been so volatile. So far, let's say, for a phosphoric acid base, which is a normal route phosphate upgrader. There has been a very strong cost increase on the sulfur part, which we don't have with our nitrate phosphate process, that is the NPK plant in Norway. So that may also make it a little bit more complicated for you to make that assessment because phosphate upgrading margins are a little bit different depending on which processing route you are using.
We could also -- since we are talking a lot about CBAM today, for 2026, that will also have an impact. So CBAM costs doesn't impact our EBITDA as long as we're utilizing credits that we have. But the price effect will be there, of course, then dependent on whether it's in Europe or outside Europe, that will have different effects. So as we mentioned in CMD, we will pre-quarter package, we will update sensitivities to reflect that in due course before 1Q '26.
Our final question comes from the line of John Campbell of Bank of America.
I just had 1 or 2 follow-ups, if I could. Could you maybe give us a sense on your view in terms of the potential resumption of Chinese urea exports in '26? How many million tons basically, you're expecting? Number one.
And number two, coming back, I guess, to Air Products, have you -- presumably you've done some sort of levelized cost analysis in terms of delivering that ammonia resuming the project can be built for [ $8 billion or $9 billion ] or whatever it is.
And I thought maybe one way to think about it is how that compares to something like the gray cash cost have delivered U.S. ammonia and maybe what carbon price would be required or sustained to actually kind of make the blue ammonia projects look cost competitive with just importing gray ammonia and just paying for the CBAM? Have you kind of got a view on that? I think I came out to $160. Of course that's just a ballpark figure, but do you have a sense maybe on the longer-term carbon price?
On your first question, I think we don't have a very specific opinion exactly how much that will be exported. We have just said that it's certainly a very important factor in the global balance how much that volume will be, but we are also referring to some external opinions around this in the press, where last year, it was, let's say, it was in second half April, that this was addressed initially by the Chinese Government and NDRC, I think it will be logical for something similar that when it gets to second half April, maybe there will be -- that will be on the agenda of the Chinese government.
We observed that some of the consultants are working on that kind of baseline around 6 million tonnes, maybe a little bit higher than 2025. But of course, nobody knows all that is going to play out.
And I think -- I mean, obviously, that's very difficult to predict exactly what you're going to do, right? But I think more important than the actual number of tons as such is what would it potentially do to the global market and global pricing, right? And then there, I think it's just important to keep in mind that at least so far, it seems that the main policy from the Chinese government has been to keep urea prices low. And obviously, the more you export, the more you impacted the global pricing and if you export to the extent that you impact global pricing.
And of course, it's very likely to assume that it will impact domestic prices as well. And as we've talked about in our Capital Markets Day and as we see there's nothing that would point to sort of a softening to try demand balance outside China, meaning that sort of any opening to exports will sort of face quite high price environment globally. And I think it's sort of safe to assume that they will sort of exports to the extent that it doesn't impact domestic prices very much. And of course, I think it's also logical to assume then that at least from funding perspective, that shouldn't impact global prices too much either. But of course, things are difficult to predict.
And on the Air Products question or the U.S. project question, yes, I mean, we have, of course, our internal views on sort of what different levels of CBAM with due to more in the pricing into Europe and so on and how that impacts the project. But that's not something that we can share publicly. But I think as we have said before, it is -- I mean, it is an ammonia -- it is a regular ammonia plant with very high scale and certain advantages that we talked about in our Capital Markets Day and sort of there's a great sort of price comparison to that.
And then there's added premium, obviously, from CBAM as well. And I think as we've said also that -- just when we see from a total project perspective, sort of the CO2 capture park in itself is more than covered by the 45Q tax credit.
From that perspective, this is something that even without a CBAM premium, should be profitable. But obviously, the CBAM adds that up to the profitability of building a decarbonized plant.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Julian Galliard of PGGM Investments.
I have 2 questions. So first, on your capital allocation framework, you highlighted maintenance and growth CapEx, but there was no explicit mention of sustainability or the transition CapEx. Could you explain how decarbonization investments are reflected and prioritized within the framework?
Well, I think -- as we've said, the U.S. projects would be the lion's share of that growth CapEx, right? And sort of even though they represent lower gas costs, more scale over fixed cost per tonne, they also are key to the carbonization. So I think from that perspective, you can sort of say -- I mean, the benefit that we have, right, is that a project like that and our position in the ammonia market means that we can do the decarbonization profitably and have -- because we have the other benefits as well, right?
So I think that part is fairly sort of, I would say, covering that. And I think when it comes to the maintenance CapEx, part of that go into improvements in our plant that are also related ESG related, such as energy efficiency, which also has a good momentary impact by using less energy and lowering costs. But I think in general, Yara does not do ESG investments unless they are profitable. So there's no separate budgets for that.
Okay. Okay. Okay, that's clear. It would be helpful, though, if you would include a figure that would show that officially because now it's just maintenance and growth.
Also to my second question. It stated that Yara's capital allocation policy is based on maximizing shareholder value. while maintaining a mid-investment grade profile. I'm wondering how do you operationally ensure that capital allocation decisions are still consistent with either a 1.5 degrees line pathway or a well below 2 degrees of pathway?
Yes. No, I think we have set targets for 2025, which we achieved in 2030 that we're working hard to achieve. And these are based on exactly that. And then we -- in our CapEx allocation, we I mean -- or to be different to achieve those targets, like we have done for 2025, we have a portfolio of different projects and of course, the U.S. ammonia investments being by far the biggest one, but also other projects like electrification project, we have our CCS project in Sluiskil that we complete this year and so on.
So we look at our portfolio in totality and then we look at whether our CapEx or sort of the capital investment that we do provide a sufficient return or a strong return to our shareholders as well as how it sort of meets targets such as the ones we've set, right on the ESG side.
But I think what's important to remember is that in order for that to be possible, there needs to be a firm sort of economic value drivers, right? So of course, our investment in [indiscernible] CCS, which contributes significantly to our targets, would not have been possible unless there was a carbon pricing in Europe, right? And I have to say, if the type of uncertainties, even though we believe firmly that CBAM will remain in place, would I think it's safe to say that is this kind of uncertainty would have come exactly when we were to do our investment decision on that project. It's just a guarantee that we would have actually approved that.
So I think that's important to keep in mind as well. However, we do believe that, that project will make us very competitive in the European context. And that's kind of the basis for all the projects. They need to be -- they need -- so basically, what I'm saying is that the regulatory side needs to be in place so that these projects are profitable. Some of them are profitable, no matter what because saving electricity is typically possible. But some others will not be a profit on that -- yes, the regulatory side is in place.
Our next question comes from the line of Mazahir Mammadli of Rothchild.
So my question is on CBAM. Basically, I wanted to ask. So we saw the benchmark values published by the EU on CO2 intensity of mitogen production in various countries. When you compare those benchmarks to the CO2 intensity of your own production. Do you see an advantage? If so, how big is it?
Yes. So for urea, we will have a variation between our plants naturally, some will be very efficient and some will be less efficient. But in general, Yara's plant will be more efficient than the [indiscernible] average European, but more so the global averages and the benchmark for imports. Yes is the short answer.
Absolutely. And I would say, particularly in our nitrate production with the investments that we've done there over a long period of time, we are significantly more advantaged on the carbon footprint side. So that's, of course, a huge advantage on nitrates in Europe, particularly when you compare to imports of urea.
And I think since this was the last question on the CBAM, many questions on CBAM, which, of course, is a very hot topic these days. I think you also sort of in its place to add that we are very concerned about sort of the impact on the farmer, obviously, not only from increased cost of fertilizer, but also on a lot of the other regulation that's put on the particular European farmers.
But I think, it is a very easy way to solve that problem for the EU, particularly when it comes to CBAM, and that would simply be to give that the CBAM revenue as a subsidy back to the farmer who buy the fertilizer. I can see no better use of that money than that sort of the train of thought that you would sort of suspend CBAM. So that 30 imports from outside Europe can outcompete European industry is clearly not the best route of achieving that. So I think there is a very easy way for the EU to help farmers and not negatively impact European industries as well.
We have reached the end of our Q&A session. I'd now like to hand the call back to Maria for final remarks.
Thank you for everyone for joining. No further comments from our side. But our Investor Relations is available for further questions, please feel free to have follow-up. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.
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Yara International — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
Yara International — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Welcome to Yara's fourth quarter results presentation. Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; and our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand. After the presentation, at 1:00 p.m. Oslo time, there will be a conference call where you can dial in and ask questions. You can find log-on details on our web page under Investors.
And with that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether.
Thank you, Maria. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings presentation.
As always, I'm starting with our safety performance. Our license to operate is based on us creating a safe working environment for all our employees and contractors. Our 2025 performance has not been at the level that we want to be at. Our TRI rate increased from 0.9 at the end of fourth quarter 2024 to 1.2 at the end of 2025.
As I talked about in our third quarter presentation and at our Capital Markets Day, we experienced a tragic accident in Rio Grande, leading to the death of one of our employees, [ Amaral ], then this happened in August of last year. We are doing our utmost to prevent this or any serious accident from happening again. A few plants represent a large share of the accidents, meaning that a large share of our plants are still delivering strong performances on safety.
We're strengthening our safety program in order to get back on track as we're not satisfied with our current performance. And last week, we conducted a safety stand-down at all our plants worldwide as we've seen concerning development in accidents also continuing into January of this year. It is our -- it is my responsibility to ensure that we offer a safe place to work. any accident, big or small, is avoidable and our long-term ambition remains 0 accidents.
Looking at the key highlights for the fourth quarter. Yara delivered an EBITDA, excluding special items of $709 million, representing an increase of 37% compared to last year. This increase was driven by higher nitrogen upgrading margins, lower fixed cost and strong volumes. In connection with our second quarter 2024 presentation in July of 2024, we launched a target to reduce our fixed cost by $150 million by the end of 2025. Given our strong progress during 2025, this target was later updated to $180 million. And I'm very pleased to announce that we have more than delivered on this, achieving over $200 million in fixed cost reduction.
And while cutting costs, we have also improved our operational performance, delivering strong premiums and also increased deliveries and historically high production volumes in 2025. Our entire organization has demonstrated strong performance in 2025. We are proposing an annual dividend of NOK 22 per share to the Annual General Meeting. Going forward, Yara is set to further increase cash flow driven by EBITDA expansion initiatives launched at the Capital Markets Day, and this is also supported by constructive market fundamentals.
Taking then a closer look at the EBITDA variance for the quarter. We saw higher deliveries this quarter, particularly in Europe, where there has been a strong start to the season ahead of the implementation of CBAM on January 1. Nitrogen prices remained at high levels in this quarter and above the year before. In addition, we saw lower gas prices in the quarter in Europe, which is also then improving nitrogen upgrading margins. Price margin is impacted somewhat by slightly lower premiums on NPK, mainly in Asia, which is also normal with the development in the underlying commodity price components that we have seen over the last months. Fixed costs are $31 million lower than a year earlier, reflecting a strong conclusion of the cost program.
Other is mainly impacted by a currency impact of negative $42 million as Yara's main currencies strengthened against the U.S. dollar. The remaining $20 million of negative impact in other primarily reflects an insurance compensation that we received in the fourth quarter of 2024. Quarterly return on invested capital is at 11.4%. And for the year in total, we delivered a return on invested capital of 10.7%, both of which are above our through-the-cycle target of 10%.
Yara's capital allocation policy remains firm during 2025, we've delivered strong financial results. And the earnings per share, excluding currency for 2025 is USD 4.25 per share compared to USD 0.93 per share in 2024, reflecting strong underlying performance and our commitment to improve underlying cash flow. Furthermore, we ended the year with a net debt to EBITDA of 1.17, which is below our target range of 1.5 to 2x. On this basis, Yara proposes an annual dividend of NOK 22 per share for 2025. This is in line with our dividend policy and reflects stronger market conditions and significant improvements internally and also a strong balance sheet.
Going forward, the improvement program will be a key driver to increase cash flow. This again sets the basis for profitable growth investments as well as distribution to our shareholders. Yara will maintain a strict capital discipline and sets the bar for growth investments high with improved ammonia position as a key strategic objective. At the same time, we aim to maintain our dividend policy. And depending on market conditions, Yara will consider further distributions in line with our capital allocation policy.
I will then hand over to our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand.
Thank you, Svein Tore. As explained earlier, EBITDA, excluding special items, is up USD 190 million compared to last year, driven by higher operating margins, increased deliveries and strong performance on improvement initiatives and cost reductions. Including special items, EBITDA for the quarter is up from USD 360 million fourth quarter last year to USD 773 million this year, reflecting a significant positive variance on special items year-over-year. This translates into higher earnings per share. Excluding currency and special items, EPS stands at USD 1.17 for the quarter versus USD 0.36 for the quarter last year. Return on invested capital for the quarter increased to 10.7% on a 12-month rolling basis, above our target of 10% ROIC over the cycle.
Looking towards the cash flow. Cash from operations increased by USD 248 million compared to a year earlier, mainly reflecting higher operating income. This was partly offset by an increase in operating capital. A buildup is common in Q4 and with the continued increase in fertilizer prices, we see an increase also in operating capital. The major difference towards last year is lower prepayments in Brazil Q4 this year compared to unusually high prepayments in the fourth quarter last year.
Yara's investing cash outflow decreased by USD 25 million compared to last year, reflecting some phasing and cash impact into 2026. Cost reduction was the first phase of our improvement program and has delivered ahead of plan. Since the launch of the program in second quarter 2024, fixed cost has reduced by more than USD 200 million in nominal terms. Factoring in the underlying inflation in that period, the actual reduction of the fixed cost base is well above USD 300 million. The run rate factoring in the full year effect of savings and adjusting for seasonality stands at USD 2.3 billion or USD 46 million better than the updated target of USD 180 million in savings. This reflects a reduction of more than 10% of the global workforce as well as a significant reduction to external spend.
Looking at CapEx, the strict capital discipline continues, reflected in the CapEx this year, with 2025 CapEx ended at USD 0.95 billion, USD 400 million lower than the original guidance back from 2024. Maintenance CapEx for 2025 is below earlier guiding, reflecting some phasing into 2026. However, the CapEx guiding for 2026 remains unchanged. This reflects a higher turnaround activity level for the year. This will vary from year-to-year depending on which plants go through turnaround in which year. Yara remains restrictive on committing to further growth CapEx until an FID for the U.S. project has been concluded.
Total deliveries for the quarter are 3% higher than the year before, supported by the gains made in our production system. Deliveries were mainly driven by higher Amidas and NPK sales in Europe with a strong start to the season and increased prebuying ahead of CBAM implementation. We also saw higher deliveries in Africa and Asia, mainly related to third-party product sales. Ammonia sales are higher following increased external sales in the Americas, where we have optimized volume flows by replacing them with third-party products in Europe. We are currently experiencing a strong market for all nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphate. This increases Yara's upstream nitrogen margin and phosphate upgrading margins and increases the bar for our premiums, which we measure above the commodity value for those nutrients. That, combined with lower crop prices in general, exercised some pressure on our premiums in certain markets.
For the fourth quarter, strong demand and prebuying in Europe supported European nitrate premiums ahead of the year-end and CBAM implementation contributed as well. NPK premiums are somewhat pressured and primarily driven by Asia, we see a contraction towards more normalized premium levels. Yara has a robust commercial organization and is on a day-to-day assessing the market environment on how to optimize volumes and margins globally. This also underlines the flexibility of our business model and the ability to create value both from the upstream margin as well as the premium side, also limiting the commodity downsides for Yara through the cycle.
The strong cash earnings contributes to a reduction in net debt in a season where we typically see an increase due to the buildup of working capital. Investments are in line with plans with CCS project in Sluiskil and our new YaraVita plant making up the lion's share of the growth investments and maintenance investments according to our planned prioritization framework. Yara's balance sheet remains strong as presented in our Capital Markets Day.
Looking briefly at the income statement for the full year, we find the major variance in revenues and cost of goods sold with a solid increase in the resulting margins. Lower payroll costs reflects the impact from our cost program, however, also impacted by one-off severance costs in both periods. The currency gain is opposite of last year's loss and mainly reflects unrealized gain on U.S. dollar-denominated debt positions and gain on internal positions in other currencies than U.S. dollars. The effective tax rate for 2025 is 22.8%. And finally, the significant increase in net income is also impacted by the fact that 2024 net income included several noncash special items and currency translation losses totaling to approximately $565 million in difference.
Higher noncurrent assets mainly reflects currency translation gain and as most functional currencies in Yara have appreciated against the U.S. dollar. Current assets reflect higher inventory value and trade receivables due to increased prices in addition to higher cash and cash equivalents. Increased equity in 2025 reflects positive net income and the currency translation gain.
Looking to the market, we see that global nitrogen markets remain tight going into 2026 due to a combination of strong seasonal demand as we approach the Northern Hemisphere spring, strong sales in India triggering demand for more imports and lack of Chinese exports due to restrictions in their season. In India, urea sales were record high in December, adding to the import need. Around 5 million tonnes of urea were exported from China in 2025, which were clearly needed to cover the global deficit. The export window is again closed for the Chinese season. Both EU and the U.S. off-season imports are slightly ahead of last year, but more nitrogen is still needed for the upcoming season.
Looking to the supply side, we see that the peak of capacity additions, excluding China, has passed with modest capacity growth in 2025 and capacity additions below historic demand growth for the balance of this decade. Combined with supportive demand fundamentals, this indicates a continued tight global supply and demand balance in the coming years, excluding China, and improved European production margins with forward gas prices lower than current levels. Agriculture, fertilizers and the raw material market that feed them are inherently impacted by global markets and consequently geopolitics. Yara's competitive edges create a unique business model that is positioned to handle changes, create value through the cycle and limit the downside risk of global volatility.
First and foremost, we will continue to build shareholder value through our improvement program announced at our Capital Markets Day, expanding on the cost reductions achieved so far. This will strengthen returns as well as our balance sheet. Yara has demonstrated a strong capital discipline for several years and will continue to do so while prioritizing the most value-accretive opportunities, reducing exposure to European gas costs being a key priority. And for this, we have several pathways to follow as illustrated at our Capital Markets Day.
Finally, our business model contains significant flexibility, both on the energy side and with regards to regulation. Significant attention has been given to the CBAM in recent months. And unsurprisingly, increased cost for carbon increases the cost of products containing carbon, including fertilizers. This must also apply to imported products unless the EU intends to suspend its entire decarbonization plans. However, whether CBAM retains or is suspended, Yara will handle both scenarios. We have the flexibility to import all types of ammonia and the underlying objective of reducing energy costs is valid in all of the scenarios. Even though uncertainty around critical regulations such as CBAM is a clear negative for investments, Yara's business model and scale enables us to diversify our strategy in light of political uncertainty.
Work on our project collaboration with Air Products continues and the 2 companies have complementary business models and Yara's unique import capacity into Europe and not to forget Latin America is a key competitive edge for the combination. This is valid for NEOM, where Yara will distribute against the commission as well as [ Daro ], where the intention is for Yara to acquire the ammonia part of the project. As previously stated, both companies work on establishing the construction cost and commercial negotiations through the first half of 2026 and the target to make a decision mid-2026 remains. And as mentioned by Svein Tore, we believe that CBAM will remain in force, and we are, of course, evaluating developments closely ahead of a potential FID.
With the strong backdrop of delivering on cost reduction and the next phase of our improvement program, Yara will continue to deliver sustainable cash flow expansion. We already have a head start into the USD 350 million target by delivering close to USD 30 million over the targeted USD 180 million cost reduction target on the last 12 months basis. In addition to cost reductions and EBITDA improvements, we are working diligently to also grow cash flow through strict capital prioritization and optimization. And for further information on our improvement program, I refer to our Capital Markets Day presentation, which is available on our web page and further updates on progress will be provided through our quarterly reporting. And finally, the outlook of tight nitrogen markets will provide continued strong fundamentals in the coming years.
And with that, I hand over to Svein Tore.
Thank you, Magnus. I'd like to end the session reflecting on our total 2025 performance. While delivering on our targeted cost and CapEx reductions, we have also delivered a strong operational performance. Deliveries, they have increased with a large share driven by increases in our high-margin premium product output. And as mentioned by Magnus, premiums have remained strong in a high price environment, which is a testament to the strong commercial performance delivered across all of our regions. Production is at all-time high levels, and it's particularly pleasing to see that our flagship NPK plant in Porsgrunn is leading the way with continuously new production records.
This, combined with a strong market fundamentals led to a significant improvement in financial results compared to the year before. Both EBITDA and net income increased significantly compared to 2024. And earnings per share, excluding currency effect, increased from USD 0.93 per share last year to USD 4.25 per share this year. And 2025 free cash flow was at $988 million, which is 80% higher than the year before. Yara's cash flow through the cycle demonstrates the resilience of our business model. And we delivered a strong cash flow from operations also in periods with weaker market prices. This is partly due to the inherent nature of the nitrogen industry, but also partly due to the flexibility of Yara's diversified business.
There is limited downside to our cash flow as such, given the combination of ammonia flexibility and product optimization in an industry where both production levels and maintenance investments can be used to optimize in down cycles. We can, therefore, conclude that 2025 was a strong year, and I would like to thank our entire organization for their continued dedication to deliver on Yara's strategic priorities. And this will be achieved through our strategic priorities as presented in our Capital Markets Day. Our strategic priorities are designed to address global trends and opportunities while at the same time, utilizing the strength of our business model to maximize profitability in our current operations and drive value-accretive growth.
Through global scale and optimization and operational excellence, we will continue to drive asset utilization and improve core profitability while optimizing logistical costs. This is about focusing on our core operations and maximizing capital productivity through strict resource discipline and reallocating capital to priority plants. Our flexible nitrate assets enable us to strengthen our nitrate margins by shifting our position downwards on the ammonia cost curve by improving energy exposure as well as also increasing scale. And this builds resilience in our earnings and increase our long-term competitiveness. Our growth strategy is focused on expanding on what we know best, our core business.
This means monetizing recent growth investments such as CCS at Sluiskil and the new YaraVita plant, while also growing through our differentiated product portfolio and also our knowledge margin. We remain focused on driving long-term shareholder value while staying committed to our capital allocation policy.
To conclude, I would like to reiterate some of our messages from the Capital Markets Day. We have a strong business model, which is committed to sustainable value creation. We're working on our EBITDA improvement targets of USD 200 million and USD 350 million by 2027 and 2030, respectively. These targets are substantiated by concrete actions, and I believe we have demonstrated our ability to deliver. We have flexible pathways to energy diversification, and we have the unique infrastructure to make it happen. And importantly, we have a knowledge base, a team and an approach to provide agriculture with the nutrient use efficiency it will need going forward, irrespective of fluctuations in regulation. And we're solid with a strong balance sheet maintained and a commitment to our credit rating. Yara has the ability to deliver sustainable value creation.
I will now hand back to Maria.
Thank you, Svein Tore. As we're moving towards the end of this presentation, I would just like to take the opportunity to once again remind you about the conference call that starts at 1:00 p.m. Oslo time. If you go to yara.com under Investors, you will find details about log-in details. That concludes today's presentation. Thank you for watching.
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Yara International — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
Yara International — Analyst/Investor Day - Yara International ASA
1. Management Discussion
Good morning to everyone. I am Maria Gabrielsen, I'm the Head of Investor Relations here in Yara. A big welcome to everyone both joining online and especially to you joining us here physically in the auditorium. The event is being streamed live and is also recorded for a later publishing.
Today's agenda, you can see here, it's split into a hybrid event and an all physical event. We will start with the presentation where Svein Tore will start giving an introduction to Yara and our key strategic priorities for the coming years. We will then hand over to our Director for Market Intelligence, Silje Nygaard, who will take you through the nitrogen market fundamentals before giving the word to EVP, Global Production, Johan Labby, to go through our priorities in the production system. Europe EVP, Mónica Andrés Enríquez, will take you through how we work downstream, focusing on our markets and how we generate premiums for both farmers and Yara before handing the word to Magnus, CFO, to take you through the financials and giving the word back to Svein Tore Holsether for closing remarks.
There will be a Q&A afterwards, where participants online can already now submit questions to the e-mail address listed below your webcast window, while persons in the auditorium can ask questions by raising your hand when we get to that. So after that, we will break for lunch for those physically here, and we will have some breakout sessions, which I will come back to explain how it works a bit later.
With that, it's my pleasure to hand the word over to Svein Tore Holsether.
Thank you so much, Maria, and good morning, and welcome to Yara's Capital Markets Day. We're very happy to see so many -- many of you here physically at our headquarter in Oslo, and also a big welcome to those of you joining us online.
Today, we'll give you an update on our strategy for the years ahead. And also how to then strengthen our resilience and also how to grow sustainable returns. We will demonstrate the value of Yara's business model, our key competitive advantages and also our growth opportunities.
Last year, we celebrated our 120-year anniversary as a company. And we are born from the application of science, and it was partly showed in the film already, but this is about solving the biggest challenge of the time if we go 120 years back or so at the turn of the century as we saw significant population growth as a result of the industrial revolution, and farmers were asked to increase food production. However, this proved to be a challenge because when you remove crops from the field, you also remove nutrients. And unless you're able to replace nutrients, that will have an impact on your yield.
So not only were they struggling to keep production, it was actually going down. And a key nutrient here is nitrogen. 78% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. However, it's not available to the majority of the crops from the air. They need it in fixed form. That was a challenge that was sent to scientists across the world, how to sequester nitrogen from the air. That was sold by Professor Birkeland at the University of Oslo through the use of electric power. And then together with industrialist, Sam Eyde, and with funding from the beginning from the Wallenberg family, that was the start of our company in 1905. Then they went on to go from a breakthrough idea, a breakthrough technology, to full-scale production within just a few years.
And from our Norwegian origins, export has been important, really from the very beginning of our company across Europe in the early stages and also all the way to Asia. And I was really pleased to see, I was in Thailand a couple of months ago, and there, I was shown that the importance of our product and the joint history between Thailand and Norway dating back to the -- almost the very start of our company.
In 1907, the King of Thailand actually came to Norway to visit our founders, to visit the location that you just saw on the film, to learn more about fertilizer, and he became one of our very first customers. And we are very honored that -- this is a THB 100 bill from Thailand. That event is actually on the currency in Thailand. And to be a company that produces a product important enough to be on the currency of a country is something that we are very proud of, and we're very honored of that recognition from Thailand. Thailand is still a very important market for Yara.
Today, we are a world-leading crop nutrition company and our global and integrated business model is a core strength, and that is what ensures resilience within the Yara organization. Through our 120 years of history, we have weathered massive geopolitical shifts, but always stayed true to our core, contributing to feeding the world through our crop nutrition knowledge. And in an ever-changing world, we aim to show you today our plan to continue down just that path.
So as always, we will start with safety. And we are committed to providing a safe workspace for our employees and contractors. So we have our Safe by Choice way of working that is truly embedded into our entire organization. Any accident, small or big, can be avoided and our long-term ambition is 0 accidents. And that's what we're working on every day in Yara. And as you see here, we have brought down our numbers significantly over the recent years. We are industry leading in terms of accidents. And also when we compare it to the wider industry group, we are delivering quite well on safety.
However, 2025 has not continued that same positive trend when it comes to accidents. And as you see, we have an increase, taking us to 1.1 TRI rate. So that's the number of accidents per 1 million hours of work. So that is something that we're taking very seriously and that we're working on throughout the organization on how to turn this trend and get back to continued reduction in accidents.
Tragically, we've also had a fatal accident in Yara in 2025 on August 6. We had -- nearly had 7 years without fatal accidents. And tragically, this happened on August 6 at our Rio Grande facility in Brazil. This is a large site in a small community. And at that location, they are colleagues, they are friends, they are families, very often, all 3 things at the same time, and it's making a big impact on that whole organization and indeed the entire Yara family. We are all deeply impacted by this.
We have our Safe by Choice way of working. We have golden rules for how to work. Our colleague who died in that accident, [ Amaral ], he followed all these rules. He worked according to Safe by Choice, yet we had a roof structure that fell down, and that led to the fatal accident. That is -- when our colleagues and our contractors are following our Safe by Choice way of working and our golden rules, it's our responsibility, it's my responsibility to ensure that we have a safe working space. On August 6 last year, we did not. And that is my responsibility, and we take that very seriously, and we're having a thorough investigation to ensure that this never happens again, and we're also working with the entire fertilizer industry to share our learnings on this, to ensure that we all learn from each other, which is the common practice within the fertilizer industry.
We remain committed to our Safe by Choice way of working. This is a very tragic reminder of the importance of that. We go through every accident, every recordable accident, in Yara, in detail. I know each and every one of them. And my commitment to this that on a rolling 12-month basis, I know by heart, every accident that has happened in our organization. Now I don't expect everyone in all of Yara to know all accidents. But through the line organization, we do, and for the ones that are relevant for that line organization. And then this is a joint commitment also with our unions. So every Friday, we go through the accidents, together with line organization, with the union and with myself, to learn and to transfer these learnings across to continue on this journey. We remain committed to achieve our ambition of 0 accidents.
We live in an unpredictable world. And energy and agriculture are among the most impacted industries when it comes to global events that disturb both financial and commodity markets, as we've seen in recent years. Nevertheless, Yara, through our history, and including the last 5 years, we have proven to be resilient. And if I try to briefly go through some of the events that we've been through in the last few years in 2020 with COVID and ammonia markets coming to a complete standstill. That is, of course, a challenge for any company. And -- but with our organization, we managed through that. Utilizing our assets, utilizing our flexibility to deal with this.
Also, as you know, operating our plants takes a high degree of technical expertise. How do you run the plants if you can't bring people into the same room. How do you ensure that you have the capabilities and the capacity to run the plants. Well, this is not something that we could take for granted going into this, but we were very pleased to see how our entire organization stepped up to deal with the uncertainty and to ensure continued operations throughout COVID-19.
In the summer of 2021, energy crisis. Energy prices started to increase in Europe and created a very large energy cost delta compared to other parts of the world. That also made a new operating environment for us, where we had to deal with this kind of energy price volatility. And again, utilizing the flexibility in our system, while we knew that we had flexibility in how to run our ammonia plants, but we took that to the extreme, running our plants up and down to flex with energy prices, importing ammonia when needed in order to ensure that we maximize production and had availability of finished goods.
2022, then the majority of our phosphate, potash and supplies and also our third-party ammonia disappeared pretty much overnight as a result of sanctions on Russia and the Belarusian suppliers. And thanks to an incredible effort by our plant organizations, production organization and our procurement team, they were able to do what I thought would not be possible. And as all of you know, when you're switching raw materials, that's not something that you take lightly. When you switch from one grade of phosphate to another or potash and so on, that's something that you do over a significant time periods.
Test runs, see how it works, fine tuning and so on. Well, we didn't have that luxury at the time. We had to make massive changes overnight, and that kind of commitment made that possible to continue running, well, not without its issues, of course, but the ability of the organization to react to this is not something that you can plan for and not something that you can take for granted, but our organization, our people were able to do that.
Then 2023, 2024, extreme volatility in energy prices and nitrogen prices and global trade flows once again had major shifts. And I think we can say 2025 was not a quiet year either. And the start of 2026 does not seem to be less turbulent. Despite this, Yara's business model has proven to be resilient. And this is due to our global diversification and also the energy flexibility that we have in Europe. And when you combine that with our very competent workforce, I think it's right to say that Yara is a battle-proven organization.
Throughout this, Yara has upheld strong shareholder returns. We have distributed $5.5 billion since 2020. And also, at the same time, we have taken tough measures. And that is to further adapt Yara's business model, to adapt our business model to the new reality. And at the same time, aiming for significant growth in shareholder returns going forward.
Yara is a purpose-driven company. So for those of you that are here physically, I'm sure that as you entered into our building, you can see our mission on the wall in the lobby here. And this -- it's not just a statement on our walls, in our offices and production plants throughout the world, this is how we run our business every day. We spent one year to develop our mission statement following the Paris Agreement in 2015 to ensure that this is a joint effort and one that we all recognize in how we do our business every day. And our mission to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet is sort of -- captures the duality of what we're doing back to our origins 120 years ago, growing enough food, ensuring that there is food for a growing population. But now at the same time, also looking after our -- the planet. And that duality is what drives our organization.
Everyone in Yara knows what our mission is. And I could -- and I do this sometimes. I challenge any company in the world of size on our employees' ability to tell you what our mission is. I think we're quite unique. Everyone knows that. And that has proven to be extremely valuable in times of volatility and uncertainty because we have that North Star. We know why it's important. We know the purpose of our company, and that enables us to do the -- I mean, do what it takes in order to keep our system running and to be delivering on our commitment to society on growing food and looking after the planet. We operate in an essential industry feeding the population. Half of the world's food production is a direct result of fertilizer. That is a strong purpose.
Our vision, a collaborative society, a world without hunger, a planet respected is how we look forward, look ahead as a company. And that is about working across the value chain, realizing the opportunities, ensuring that we're doing our part in overcoming barriers and silos in order to think full value chain to see what can we do upstream to help downstream, first and foremost with the farmers, but also throughout the whole value chain with food companies and also society at large. And for us, these are not just words, these are actions, and I hope that we will be able to demonstrate that also through our presentations today.
And then looking into the future. Yara's taken significant steps to be part of the solution that the world needs. The world needs 50% more food for a growing population. And as I already said, 50% of the food today already is made as a result of mineral fertilizer. However, the food -- that food that the world needs, needs to be produced within planetary boundaries. This means that we have to continue on our path to reduce emissions and also optimizing nutrient use efficiency in the field of the farmers to support a sustainable food system. These are not abstract issues. These issues shape policy, they shape investment decisions and also shift customer demand, and we are well positioned for that.
The fertilizer sector, with the very nature of how we produce our products, is a major contributor to emissions. And we know that. And that also means that it's a responsibility on us to reduce those emissions and do this as efficiently as possible. And Yara has made early efforts to address just that and to reduce our emissions. And here, in front of me, I have a Yara in-house developed catalyst. This was developed by our R&D team in Porsgrunn in Norway. This is an N2O abatement catalyst. Through the utilization of this, it has been a major contributor of Yara, reducing our total greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 50% already by the time of the Paris agreement.
And I should also add that we're licensing out this technology and the catalyst to other parts of the industry. This catalyst reduces nearly 30 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year. So if you put that in context, the combined emissions of all of Norway is 45 million tonnes. So that says something about the value of R&D, product innovation and application of these technologies. We have continued on that path. And I'm really proud, and our entire organization is proud to say that we will reach our greenhouse gas intensity targets for 2025.
And at the same time, it is important to do this in a way that supports profitability as well. And I've been very clear, both with all of you attending here but also with other stakeholders, that there will be no green transition with red numbers. Profitability is also a must. It needs to be profitable to decarbonize in order to do this at scale. And if I reflect on the investments that we made on emission reductions in the last few years and look at the average payback of that, it's about 3 years. So we've been able to do profitable decarbonization in Yara. And this is through ensuring higher energy efficiency. Well, that means that we are consuming less gas to produce our products, and that's also very helpful as we look into this and the way forward.
But it's not only about that. It's also about the downstream part of it. It's about nutrient use efficiency, which is the hallmark of our knowledge and how we work all the way into the field of the farmers to address their opportunities and their challenges as well. And this is not just good for the planet, it's also good business.
Our key competitive advantages have been the drivers of our performance, and we plan to enhance those further to bring additional improvement. And I'll start from the bottom here. Core to our business is global scale and optimization. And this is vital in a capital-intensive industry like ours, it's about optimizing production, it's about optimizing flows. And I would say, nowhere is this more visible than in ammonia, where you need scale in order to justify the cost of the infrastructure, and this is absolutely critical to participate.
Operational excellence is key. And it's about ensuring that our production assets have a maximum uptime. And we're very proud of our track record and how we've driven this forward with our -- the target that we set for 2025 production back in 2019, that target for finished goods production is within reach. And when you put that into the context of what we've been faced in terms of disturbances in the last few years, this is something that we are very proud of that we've been able to achieve.
Then on energy, despite our current exposure to European gas prices, our premium product stronghold in Europe can also operate on imported ammonia. And that is providing flexibility on energy exposure. And we saw that in 2022, we saw it in 2023 on how we're utilizing that to flex our operations to deal with high energy price fluctuations. That very flexibility and how we utilize that, we're now translating that into how we can also get advantage and flex on our energy exposure going forward. And then lastly, our global in the market, in the field presence is key here. Our product portfolio, of course, the agronomic advice, the tools, the services that we yield to ensure farmer profitability, which also supports our premium product portfolio, and that adds value over commodity products.
Our strategic priorities are designed to address global trends and also opportunities while utilizing the strength that we have in our business model. It's about maximizing profitability on our current operations and it's also about driving value-accretive growth. And this is through global scale and optimization. It's about operational excellence. And it's about driving the asset utilization and improving core profitability in our operations.
Our flexible assets mean that we're able to strengthen our nitrate margins and then also shifting our cost position downwards on the ammonia cost curve, and that we will then do through improving our energy exposure. And by investing in U.S. ammonia, we can achieve this with the added benefit then on top of lower emissions through that and further then strengthening our European operations through linking that into that. And in Europe, as a carbon taxed market, this is also enabling us to capture growth opportunities.
In connection with the second quarter '24 report presentation, we launched also a cost and CapEx reduction program, which we expect will deliver -- will be delivered at $30 million above the target by the fourth quarter of 2025. But as we've said also before, our improvement journey does not stop there. Yara continues to seek further improvement opportunities on a broad set of initiatives. And that is why today, we're launching a target to improve our EBITDA by more than $200 million by end of 2027 and $350 million by end of 2030. In total, this will lead to a cash flow expansion of more than $600 million from 2024 to 2030, reflecting then Yara's commitment to continued cash flow improvement. Through targeted improvements, coupled with also supportive market fundamentals, Yara is positioned to deliver strong shareholder returns going forward.
So the combination of delivering on the cost program and new targeted EBITDA improvements, this will lift Yara's return on invested capital. Excluding special items, Yara's return on invested capital through the third quarter 2025 on a rolling 12-month basis, excluding special items, was just about 10%. All else equal, today's announced EBITDA improvements will deliver on an additional 2 percentage points in ROIC, strengthening our returns and supporting us to deliver on our through-the-cycle target of more than 10%.
In addition, our improvement to -- improvement program lowering our energy cost is also a key strategic priority. And in December, we announced our advanced negotiations with Air Products to partner up on low-carbon ammonia and those products in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. And we see a strong strategic fit and synergies between our 2 companies, where we're combining the Air Products industrial gas capabilities and low emission hydrogen with Yara's ammonia production and the ammonia network and the distribution network that we have.
And -- but despite many project announcements, demand for low carbon ammonia is slower than anticipated, but Yara is in a unique position because with the internal demand for ammonia that we have and also the external sales that we have, we have a captive demand that is large enough to ensure a significant offtake tonnage from ammonia projects, which puts us in a unique position. CBAM is obviously important for -- an important element to the business case, and we will closely monitor changes in the coming months, and I will explain a bit more on that on the next slide.
But let me -- before I get to that, just say that we also have a developed terminal system in Europe that represent a significant cost advantage for us and that we are bringing into the partnership here. These projects, they then continue to build on the resilience in our business model and enable us to do profitable decarbonization across Yara, and at the same time, delivering double-digit returns in line with our capital allocation policy. They also show that Yara has great flexibility in terms of decarbonization and on energy cost, both equity position and also on sourcing, and that enables us to make the right decisions at the right time. And our approach to all of this is firm. These projects must be accretive to our shareholders.
As you may have seen, the European -- EU Commission issued some news on fertilizers on Wednesday afternoon. And this causes confusion and it causes uncertainty. But let's start with what was said. The commission suggests that they will suspend the regular import tariffs on fertilizers, which today are 6.5% on urea and 5.5% on ammonia. In addition, the commission open up for mechanisms to enable monitoring of the impact of CBAM on the internal market and also allow for temporary suspension of CBAM in case of unforeseen circumstances.
Our interpretation is that this new proposal has -- will then need to be voted and approved. And the commission also provide a guideline that the suspension could be retroactive once suspension mechanisms were approved. Suspending CBAM while continuing the reduction of EU ETS allowances will reduce the competitiveness of EU producers. And the intention of CBAM was to put a carbon cost on imports into Europe to mirror the cost that the European industry has been subject to for a number of years. So increasing the carbon cost burden on European producers would have a significant negative impact on European industry and also on European strategic autonomy, which goes straight against the intention of CBAM in the first place. And it will harm European fertilizer production and increase depends on imports, especially if CBAM was suspended.
More importantly, I would like to challenge the concept of emergency. It's been crystal clear that carbon cost would be reflected in the cost of the product. The additional carbon cost is based on the commission's own methodology and default values. So this cannot be a surprise or an emergency. It's exactly what it was supposed to do. So the impact that this will have on short-term fertilizer prices is uncertain, but -- and this means risk, and risk normally lead to higher added cost on the product.
For Yara, and I think as we've proven over the last few years, I mean, we are prepared for uncertainty. We have flexibility, and we will be able to utilize that flexibility, which means that we can flex between all types of carbon footprint. We can run on green ammonia, we can run on blue ammonia. We can also run on imported gray ammonia for that matter. So the energy cost component of this is still very valid. So we have a resilient business model.
But clearly, while we're also looking into the opportunities here to decarbonize, any of these decisions will be done if they are financially viable. And we have not taken any large investment decisions in Yara based solely on CBAM. So while we are considering investments in U.S., investments in low-carbon ammonia, we have not taken the financial investment decision, and we'll take our time to closely monitor the developments before we make that final decision. And key for this and any investment decision that we make is a robust financials. And as I already said, no green transition with red numbers. So for any potential investment in the U.S., they need to be profitable also without CBAM. However, if CBAM was to be fully suspended, we would need -- or we'll not be in a position to invest in such projects. So -- but I have to be clear, they have not suspended CBAM. That was not the message.
Then let me conclude this part of my presentation with the organization. We have organized our leadership and organizational structure to deliver on strategic priorities and improvement areas. It's about focus. And as you see on this slide and you will see throughout the presentations today. And for those of you here in Oslo in the break out sessions as well, you will see that we have a very strong and experienced management team in place and we have a highly competent workforce ready to continue to further deliver on enhanced value from Yara's robust business model.
So with that, I'll hand over to Silje Nygaard, who will go through the recent developments in the nitrogen market. Thank you.
Thank you, Svein Tore. So my focus today will be on market developments, and I will focus specifically on the medium to long-term outlook today. But before we start to look forward, let's have a look briefly backwards at how the market developed in 2025.
2025 was a year with demand-driven pricing in the urea market, which is characterized by urea prices being above cash costs for all the key producers. In addition to that, as you can see from the slide here, we have the falling natural gas price in Europe throughout the year, improving margins throughout, which again is something you can typically see in a demand-driven market, a disconnect between energy prices and urea prices.
This strong development came despite the fact that we had good supply in the global market. This was mainly driven by China, adding more than or allowing more than 4.8 million tonnes of urea export for the year compared to only 0.3 million tonnes in 2024. We also had low crop prices for the year, representing another headwind. When it comes to the added supply from China, this was not offset for the year by production issues elsewhere, but we did have that as well. We had production issues in Egypt to the market Egyptian producers due to a lack of natural gas over summer. The conflict in the Middle East also caused supply disruptions in Iran and Egypt. And finally, there was also lower production in India.
When it comes to demand, that was particularly strong in India in 2025. That was driven by a very strong agricultural season in India as well as rebuilding of inventories from unusually low levels in 2024 and also, as mentioned, the loss of domestic production. The strong sales in India persisted throughout the year, and we had -- there was another month of sales records in December, reducing the risk of an inventory overhang going into 2026. This combination of strong urea prices, coupled with an increase in supply, is indicative of a healthy demand for the year.
Let's spend a little bit more time and look at urea demand. And the reason for using a little bit of time on that is that very often, people equate nitrogen demand growth with urea demand growth. So what we're trying to illustrate on this slide is that, that is actually only one of the factors driving the need for additional urea capacity over time. But of course, the underlying nitrogen demand growth, that is the basis, that is driven by things like food demand, growing populations and agricultural practices. So if we look at that for the past 10 years, that growth has averaged 1.1% over time.
But then in addition to that, that growth rate is amplified when we look at urea, because urea is the major fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer product where capacity still be growing, the added capacity. So meaning that urea has had to take market share from other products to compensate for less growth in other products. So that -- in addition, that adds 0.6% to that growth number, meaning that urea demand growth has been 1.7% in this time period.
Then there's the final factor, and that is that there is a need to replace aging capacity in the world. And you see it, we have included an example here. If we look back to this period here back to 2010, urea capacity grew with 50 million tonnes in that period while production only increased 30 million tonnes. If we translate that then into growth rates, that means that over time, 1.2% every year has been lost in output from installed capacity in this period.
When we look at this replacement need, this is driven both by closures and lower utilization rates. In addition to age, lack of maintenance, extortion of feedstock resources, natural gas resources, for example, and scale -- lower scale and efficiency of older plants contribute to this replacement needs over time. And by the way, this is also why capacity lists are an unreliable source for actual production capacity because typically, capacity is not removed from these lists.
Okay. So now looking forward. And what we have done here is that we have made an illustration. The graph to the left here, that is the current urea consumption multiplied with the historical growth rates that you saw on the previous page. If you use those growth rates, you arrive at urea, a need for urea capacity growth of 3.9 million tonnes with the breakdown as you see on the different elements here.
Of course, if you are doing forecasting, you have to mean something about how this will look in the future. And what we have done here is that we've just drawn a couple of illustrations, so that you can kind of see, of course, you can have different views on this depending on what you expect in terms of future demand growth, but also what you expect in terms of output from existing plants going forward.
So -- and how you read this graph then when you compare that supply need growth with the actual capacity in the pipeline. For every year where capacity added is below that supply need, that is indicative of a tightening market balance. Well, in this low case that we have drawn here, you see the market is more or less in balance. So that's in a way how to interpret it.
It's important to note, of course, that this is very difficult when you look year-for-year because, of course, demand can be impacted by things like inventory effect that can fluctuate, output from existing plants can fluctuate. And in addition, you can -- the supply that is added can be delayed. That is very normal to see. And we also see very often that the publications differ in terms of their views on when the different new projects will commission.
If we look forward, another unclarity in the market now is China. China has, over the past couple of years, kept strict control over their domestic urea supply. Their policy has been to ensure available -- ample available urea at a stable and low price. So that's how much is available from China as exports in the coming year will depend on things like their policies, how the domestic market develops as well as how net capacity develops in China.
Switching to another important market topic, European gas prices. We have already, in 2025, seen an easing of the global LNG balance. On the graph to the left here, you see changes in exports and imports of LNG for the year. And what you see from this graph is that in 2025, U.S. had better availability, so they added LNG to the market. And most of that kind of benefit went to Europe. Europe had got access to more LNG partly because of the increase in exports from U.S. but also partly because Asia bought less LNG for the year. That availability led to a fall in gas prices in Europe throughout 2025, as you see in the middle graph. As I mentioned, in a demand-driven market as we were in 2025, falling natural gas prices in Europe leads to expanding margins for European producers.
If we then look forward, and this graph here, you see the capacity growth in LNG capacity over the coming years. And what you can see here is that we are entering into a period with a wave of new LNG capacity coming into the market, dominated by projects in the U.S. and Qatar. So you see on this graph, you see that if we compare it to the last period where we had supply growth in the LNG market, actually, every single year, you have more supply being added than what we have had in the past. In addition to that, FIDs continue to be taken on LNG capacity, which extends this capacity growth period beyond 2030.
Switching topics again. Svein Tore already touched upon it, carbon pricing in Europe is, of course, a factor that is relevant for future prices. The graph on the left here is -- you've seen it before, but it's just as a reminder that Europe remains a net importer of nitrogen mainly in the form of urea, and that is important in setting the European price level.
This graph here shows you that we have already seen an impact from CBAM on the European prices. And you see, we had the period just before this deadline of purchasing urea to arrive at European ports before CBAM, 1st of January towards the end of November, you saw an increase in Egyptian prices. Egypt is one of the key suppliers to Europe, indicating buying activity ahead of the CBAM implementation. Thereafter, you see the Egypt price falling again, lower activity as that deadline passed, but urea prices in Europe stayed at a higher level. And right now, this differential between the price in Egypt and the price in Europe is roughly $100, representing a structural differential of -- from both carbon costs, freight costs and other duties as was expected and intended as Svein Tore mentioned.
And also, as already mentioned, now, of course, there is some uncertainty regarding CBAM. So I think from a market perspective, we will just have to wait and see what happens. However, as long as this uncertainty prevails and as long as carbon remains a part of European production economics, likely carbon is going to continue to be relevant as a pricing factor in Europe.
Final topic, ammonia. And here, focusing only on the long term. What we are illustrating here is a way that one can think of long-term ammonia prices. So the incentive price logic, many of you are familiar with it already. That implies that ammonia prices over time should move to a level high enough in order to cover both operating costs and a fair return on investment for capacity growth to happen to meet demand growth over time. As mentioned there as well, that cost should be, in a way, the places where it makes sense or is optimal to construct new capacity.
The logic of ammonia prices being pulled toward this level is evident in historical data, and we have tried to illustrate that here by showing a couple of examples. So there are 2 examples here. We look back to 2007 when the full cost of building a plant in the Middle East was estimated around $300. And another example, in 2015, we're looking at the U.S. This is around the time we built our Freeport plant together with BASF in Texas when full cost was $450. If we compare those estimates to realized prices in the coming years, what we see when we adjust for inflation is that for this first example, the price ended up roughly $60 above. Well, in this last one, we are approximately $30 below, but of course, it's a relatively short time period. Ammonia plants are typically constructed to be there not for 10 years, but for maybe 30, 40 years, at least.
When it comes to the ammonia market going forward, we are entering now a period with more capacity additions than what we've seen in the past years, which might mean a period of lower prices. However, according to this logic, at some point, there should be a convergence back to a higher level again in order to cover capital costs. And that can be driven by a number of things. It could be closures of all the capacity at the lower end of the cycle. It can be through more ammonia being directed to different downstream uses such as urea, for example, ammonia projects plugged with urea, or it could be through demand growth over time, either from traditional or new users.
That was all I was planning to cover. Happy to hand you over to Johan Labby, our EVP of Global Production.
Thank you, Silje. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to guide you through the way we are working with and strengthening our production system. The production system is really the backbone of Yara business and key driver for value generation. As an order of magnitude, 70% of our invested capital is in our production system. This represents a very large financial exposure, which means that it is critical to ensure safe, reliable and profitable operation. Svein Tore already mentioned very well the way we are working with safety and our commitment towards safety. I'm not going to come back on it. But you should all know that there is no business, no profitable business, no reliable business without safe operation.
Most of our nitrate capacity located in Europe can run on imported ammonia and is running on imported ammonia. It has been detailed that the color of ammonia can be flexed. That is very important prerequisite to keep in mind. And that is key for Yara flexibility. In addition, we have taken significant steps to flex even further the production system. I'm going to come back on it. You will see that we are operating a globally diversified portfolio of assets. We have a systematic way of working, and we are driven by operational excellence.
But first, let's take a look at our production system. We are operating all around the world, 25 high-performing production plants, 7 located in the Americas. We have North America, low gas price and the asset in Belle Plaine, located in the very high premium market for nitrogen. Then Latin America. Yara is holding the entire or near to the entire nitrate and NPK capacity in this part of the world. Europe, 13 high-performing assets, able to flex the ammonia sourcing for the majority of them. Asia and Africa, 5 production assets located to ideally reach the Asian market of ammonia, the growing agricultural market in India and the mining market in Australia. That is our production system, and I'm going to demonstrate how we are going to operate or how we are operating and flex this European system to optimize.
But first, as it has been mentioned by Svein Tore earlier, back in 2019, we have started an improvement program aiming to increase the production capacity from 19.4 million tonnes of finished product back in 2019 to 21.1 million tonnes of finished product in 2025. Today, I am happy to announce that this target is achieved. We are navigating, as you can see, at all-time high level since 5 quarters in a row at approximately 21 million tonnes of Finnish fertilizer. This represents an 8% increase in volumes and USD 250 million has positive impact on our bottom line. This, by operating asset in a better way and performing systematic debottlenecking of our premium plant and future-proof assets.
But at the same time, it has also been mentioned, our GHG carbon intensity target that we set in 2019, aiming to reduce by 10% our GHG emission intensity target that we measure by tonne of CO2 per tonne of nitrogen by 2025. And I'm quite comfortable to announce that this target will be reached. We are consolidating the final number, but the 10% of GHG emission intensity target will be real. This represents a saving or an impact -- positive impact of USD 100 million of our bottom line. And we are not only profitably decarbonized in Europe, but also outside Europe by operating our assets in a more efficient way. At the end of the day, less gas consumed to produce our nitrogen. And this comes on top of significant reduction, which have already been taken, thanks to the catalyst mainly before 2018. This comes on top.
But we can still further improve. We are, as we speak, performing multiple investments, and I would like to focus on 3 of them. The first one, the expansion of Cartagena NPK plant. We are investing USD 50 million, mostly executed. Commissioning of this expansion will start very soon to add 80 kilo tonnes in our portfolio of NPK product. This will represent USD 12 million as margin addition in Cartagena.
In parallel, Porsgrunn. Two years ago, Porsgrunn was producing 2.2 million of NPK per year. By strengthening our operation, by performing systematic debottlenecking of the plant, we are today operating at 2.5 million tonnes of finished product. Our goal by 2030 in Porsgrunn is to continue that journey to reach 2.8 million tonnes of finished product by 2030. We have nearly 400 kilo tonnes added in our portfolio right there.
We have described that our portfolio of assets in Europe, and I will come back on it, can run on imported ammonia, but not all of them. Sluiskil is one of the asset in the need of the ammonia production to be able to fully operate the nitrate part, urea and ammonium nitrate part. Therefore, Sluiskil, the 3 ammonia plants we have there, we have decided to take a significant step of performing a carbon and capture storage project. The first of its kind in Europe. It's a significant commitment to reduce our CO2 emission and to profitably decarbonize Sluiskil.
The first transborder agreement between the Netherlands and Norway, the biggest liquefaction plant of CO2 being built as we speak. Twice as big as the biggest one in operation today. Costs have been mostly taken, and the commissioning is going to start Q2 2026.
In addition, we have established a list of a systematic debottlenecking approach of our future-proof assets. This will bring an addition of 1 million tonnes of premium product by 2030 by growing organically, which means through our existing portfolio of assets, by operating our assets better and performing systematic debottlenecking.
Let me guide you through the way we are utilizing our CapEx. As you know, our business is CapEx intensive. Every year, we are utilizing between USD 700 million and USD 850 million in our asset portfolio. The difference depends on the turnaround cycle of each and every asset. The year where we have concentrated turnaround activities, we might -- we are in the need of more CapEx. And the year where we have less turnaround activities, we need less CapEx.
Two years ago, we have categorized our asset portfolio in 4 different categories. The harvest categories are the one where position has been decided already. We are either closing the asset, hibernating the asset or dismantling the assets. Obviously, the less of our CapEx is going there.
Moving on to the marginal categories, that's the asset sitting there where we are monitoring turnaround per turnaround cycle, and we ensure continuity from a turnaround period to another turnaround period. Then the old categories, that's where we want to operate and strengthen our operation, but we are extremely careful when considering a long-term development in that category of assets. Finally, the future proof. That's where there is no question about potential development of those assets. Porsgrunn and Sluiskil are 2 examples of this, and there are some more.
And you can see the repartition of the CapEx we utilized per category. And this has been a key driver to develop and to increase our production volume, by focusing on where we are generating the most value and accept a bit more flexibility on the asset where we are generating less of the value. And in our business, like I said, it's strongly linked to our turnaround cycle. Typically, 4 years, where the year before and the year of the turnaround, we need the most CapEx. And 2 years after, we can harvest the CapEx invested to run the asset optimally. And that's what we scrutinize carefully and even more so when you are going down into the categories, what are the scope of the turnaround? What do we need to ensure safe and reliable operation for the next turnaround cycle?
Our European system is flexible. There is a notion which is important to understand is that nitrate, ammonium nitrate and NPK are able to run on imported ammonia. You need the ammonia from a storage tank and you can utilize that ammonia. For producing urea, you cannot do that. You need an ammonia plant connected and up and running because you need the CO2, you need the steam in addition to the ammonia. That is the reason why the 3 assets you see on the right-hand side, they cannot be disconnected from their ammonia plants. We need to run the ammonia to run the urea. But they are linked to the industrial part of our business, mainly AdBlue, hence benefiting from the AdBlue premium.
Sluiskil, nitrate capacity and urea capacity. It's an hybrid plant. We need both. But there, for running the urea plant, we need the ammonia and we can flex to a significant extent, the ammonia sourcing for running the nitrate plants. The rest, Porsgrunn has own production but can run either on locally produced or imported ammonia. And all the rest is running, as we speak, on imported ammonia. As it has been mentioned, irrespective of the color of the ammonia, irrespective of the source of ammonia, irrespective of the carbon content, at the end of the day, of the ammonia. Our business is to optimize day-by-day, the flow of ammonia through our production system.
And now I would like to guide you through the way we operate our ammonia system. We handle every year, 4 million tonnes of ammonia. 1.7 million goes to external sales, 2.3 million is optimized through our production system. In total, our production system needs, in Europe, 3.7 million tonnes of ammonia to run and 0.5 million tonnes outside Europe. The difference between the 4 million tonnes and the 2.3 million tonnes is the locally produced ammonia. We have, in total, 18 ammonia terminals and 14 vessels to handle that ammonia and optimize the flow of ammonia all around the world.
And we can still further optimize. Let me take an example. In Sluiskil, the ammonia terminal, we were able to receive handy-sized vessel, meaning small ammonia vessels. By performing an investment of USD 8 million, we have transformed the ammonia terminal being able to receive bigger ammonia vessels. The first one was there a couple of months ago. This has a positive impact of USD 15 million, only by optimizing and make bigger the ammonia terminal we have there. And similar steps is going to be taken in other ammonia terminal in Europe to gain flexibility in Rostock, in Uusikaupunki. In many other plants, we are taking that steps to flex even more the flow of ammonia coming into Europe.
If we take a look at our ammonia system in Europe, it's unique because located on the coast side. It's ideally positioned stretching from France, the West Coast of France, going to the Benelux, the Baltic Sea and the Nordics in the South in Italy, ideally located to receive ammonia to run our own production system, but at the same time, to reach the growing demand expected on ammonia from now until 2030.
We have seen recently ammonia terminals changing hands for an amount of USD 300 million, one single terminal. We have 18 fully operational ammonia terminal in our portfolio today.
Svein Tore has already mentioned and covered quite well the announcement that we made back in December on exploring 2 major projects with Air Products. The first one, the Darrow project. The Darrow project is a combination of the largest hydrogen and ammonia complex being built in the U.S., with the biggest and only scalable import infrastructure in ammonia which exists currently in Europe. That's what it's all about. It's really a strategic fit between 2 companies.
The setup in the Darrow project is such that Air Products is building the entire plant, 3 [indiscernible] units producing hydrogen nitrogen; 2 ammonia loops, 1.4 million tonnes each ammonia loop; and storage tank and harbor facilities, plus the plant is getting ready for CCS, carbon capture and sequestration in order to qualify for the 45Q tax credit. Once the plant will be built and commissioned, Yara will acquire the ammonia part, meaning the ammonia loop, storage and harbor facilities. Getting the nitrogen and the hydrogen based on the long-term agreement with Air Product, while Air Product will operate the hydrogen facilities, and a third party will be onboarded for the carbon capture and sequestration part of the project.
Air Product hydrogen facility produces 20% more hydrogen than what it's needed to run the 2 ammonia trends, which means that adjusting the CapEx for additional hydrogen, we see a CapEx per tonne of this project, which has a significant advantage. Being early start of the project, having a head start, it gives a significant advantage to this project as well. Engineering has been completed. Procurement is completed. Equipments are there already. Grant has been prepared already. This is a head start, which reduces the CapEx risk quite significantly. But this is not a given. A lot of work remains. We know that.
And the construction market in the U.S. is quite challenging for the time being. We are monitoring that closely. We are monitoring the construction market. We are monitoring and working hard to get the final CapEx figure of that project. In addition, the whole geopolitical situation and political situation as described by Svein Tore will also be monitored, aiming to take FID or to be in a position to take FID by mid-2026.
In NEOM in Saudi Arabia, this is a green project power supplied by solar and wind, performed by Air Product together with ACWA Power and NEOM. And Air Products is the offtaker of that part. And Yara will distribute the volume on a commission basis. That is a setup that we are discussing with Air Products today. This is all about the earliest project existing with the biggest infrastructure for handling ammonia currently existing in Europe.
It creates a lot of benefits. Ammonia is so much more than just building a plant. We know that a lot of developers are discovering that as we speak. I can tell you that. We are combining the gas capacity and knowledge of Air Products with our ammonia knowledge together with our infrastructure and midstream position, which makes this project one of the most profitable and most credible project currently being developed.
I would like to conclude by saying that and summarizing that Yara is operated a globally diversified asset of high-performing plants. We have a strict capital allocation policy and strict prioritization amongst our portfolio of assets. We have a world-leading ammonia platform, think it as been clearly demonstrated. And we are all set for value-assertive production growth in premium products and low carbon ammonia.
Thank you. I will now hand it over to my colleague, Monica Andres, EVP Europe, who is going to guide you through the downstream part of our business. Thank you.
Thank you, Johan. Good morning, all. My pleasure to be here. On the strong asset footprint that Johan has described to us and in addition to that, our strong presence in downstream is also remarkable. And it is based on strategic advantages and competitive advantages that generate value for Yara. And the first advantage that we have is the agronomical knowledge. We know that our portfolio works in the field. And we know that works in the field because we have been for decades working with farmers that have provided us with feedback on what the challenges that we had and also how our products were operating.
We have the highest nutrient use efficiency. That means that our product portfolio applied in the field with the right doses works and works by increasing the yields of the harvest, but also increasing the quality of the harvest. And that, in the end, generates value for the farmers. So the value that is generated for Yara is anchored in the value that we generate in farmers because we work hand-in-hand with farmers.
Together with that, the second main competitive advantage that we have is the global and the scale -- the global optimization and the scale. And it's because we have a unique position to drive our business. We can, with that overcome the seasonality of the business and optimize the margins. So with that, we have -- we are, in a way, unbeatable on this. And rather than being a subject of inherit volatility that is linked to our business, we are -- with our value proposition, we are able to defend sustainable margins and sustainable profitability for the company in a market that is as Silje already mentioned, described is in continuous growth.
But we have challenges as well on delivering our fertilizers because Johan is producing 24/7 all the year long, and he is increasing production activity. And we need to sell. We have to move these tonnes that are generated in our production. And the challenge that we have is that we are operating in a system -- in a business that is seasonal because the farmers have a very narrow window to apply fertilizers for most of main crops.
So how can we offset this seasonality? Well, we do that with our global presence. And with our global presence and optimizing the margins and the volumes that we allocated to the different markets, we are able, as you see here, to deliver a fairly stable volumes all along the quarters. And with that, we are able also to improve the profitability. We have presence in more than 140 countries. There will always be a country with demand. And with that, we are confident that we will have market to swallow and deliver all the products that Johan is going to produce now and in the future as well.
As you see here, the seasonality, Americas that is mainly South Hemisphere has a different pattern than Europe, and this is key. So that is the way we work. Africa and Asia provides more stable consumption all along the year because they are more in the cash crop segments. And industrial is very stable as well. Bear with me in industrial because this is part of our integrated business model, industrial products. They are not delivering industrial products to crops because it's about industrial applications for the products that we produce in our assets as well. So they are not exposed to the seasonality that the fertilizer have.
So with that, it provides us with some stability that we need. But also industrial is -- have developed the strategy and the go-to-market by defending the position of the use of the portfolio by also offering reliability and just-in-time supplies. We have a very strong presence with our production sites, but also with the logistical hubs. And this is key in the industrial segment in order to be closer to the customers and be able to supply them with the demand when they need it. So we supply with products when they need that.
With that, we've been able in industrial solutions to increase the commercial EBITDA in more than 160%. And we are able also to defend 25% premium above commodity urea in many cases. So you see the main markets for industrial products are Europe and North and South America, Brazil mainly. So this is a fundamental part of our business because normally, we don't talk that much about industrial, but it's also relevant.
Back also to fertilizers but taking into consideration our global scale and the challenges that we have, we have a responsibility to serve the market. We are in a global business, and we need and we are moving big volumes. For that, it's fundamental to have strong logistical setup that to drive the scale that we need. One example of that is in Henry that is the state-of-the-art production hub of water-soluble fertilizers. It has a capacity of 60 kilotons, is quite big, I can tell you in this range. And we are able to serve high-value crop markets on that being close to farmers, being close to customers and a business that is in continuous growth.
We move now to Canada, Contrecoeur. This is an import terminal with a capacity above 160 kilotons. It's in a port in East Canada and St. Lawrence, and it's able to import product even in winter time, all the year long. And with that, we ensure the supplies to Canada by -- because it's a very important market in our business by receiving the product that we need and to be ready for the campaign and the season when it happens.
And Brazil, Rio Grande. We own a pier there. We own a blending unit. We own a bagging facility there. The capacity is 2.5 million tonnes. We are talking about big volumes because Brazil is a big country as well. With this, in Rio Grande, we are connected with the logistical barges and also railway. And this is a main hub that supplies the small hubs in South Brazil. And with that, we ensure, again, to be closer to the market, closer to the customers and be able to demand with the farmers need the products. This is, I can tell you, unbeatable and it is hard to replicate.
This is one of the main competitive advantages that we have because we are not dealing with commodities, we are dealing with mainly premium products because -- and this is one of the main slides that I would like you to bear in mind, 60% of the production that we do is premiums, 60%. This brings stability to our business and also sustain margins going forward. We are based on the agriculture needs. So we are in constant contact with farmers, with the end consumers, with food companies to understand what their challenges are.
We are leaving a -- working with vegetables and these crops are being grown facing the climate challenges as well and in continuous change. So being close like markets, being close to farmers and having the agility to respond to farmers needs is the fundament part of the business that we thrive in downstream. So it's about having the years open and being ready and flexible to move. As an example of this, we have prepared some proof points and that have been collected in a video.
[Presentation]
Seeing is believing, right? And how we translate the video into numbers that we want to see is on this premiums where we're talking about sustained premiums along the history and the future as well. On the left hand side you can see the -- for NPKs that is the yellow line represents the commodity blend so basin, urea, the APN, MOP and the blue one is the price -- realized price already for NPK to our compounds, the other compounds, the premium ones. And you see that sustainably, this is -- we are able to maintain and keep $200 of premium.
And the same happens with nitrates. And here in the right-hand side, the yellow one is urea and the blue one is Egypt urea, the commodity and the blue one is our nitrate realized prices in Europe. You see sustainably premium above urea. And it is how it happened in the past and will happen in the future, but it's based on the strategy I already showed to you. And because farmers believe in our crop advice and our digital tools and all the information that we get and we provide to them. This is a continuous flow of information back and forth. So seeing is believing. So that farmers see in this way, and we see in our, it is quite relevant.
And this is NPK, so it's for the micronutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but we have also in our business, micronutrients that are the essential mineral fertilizers that improve the crop's health as well. And together with micronutrients, we have biologicals. What is biologicals. Biologicals are -- they have a biological source. And what they do is that they support and enhance the resilience of the crop against frost, against flooding, against drought. That is the reality of farmers. One -- couple of months ago, [indiscernible] in my home country, we were in [indiscernible]. We were visiting 4 farms, almond, pistachio, potato and olive trees.
And it was amazing to see that the farmers were asking for more biologicals. Why? Because they have seen that by application of biologicals, they can test and see already that the crops becomes more resilient. So when a flood happened, and you know that in Spain, we have suffered that, the crop is able to recover faster because when the flood happened, the oxygen in the soil is substantially reduced, but it can recover. And also, it provides resilience against drought. So now that is a reality, water scarcity is a reality. With biologicals, we are confident and we know because we are science-based as well that we can provide the security to farmers because farmers are living in agriculture in general, it's a very uncertain business.
So -- and there's a business for us as well on this because biologicals consist on $10 billion. And it's growing sustainably. It has multiplied by 5 in the last 5 years. And you can see also the revenues have increased by 45% and the gross margin has increased by 50%, which is music for our years. We are -- we have invested already in a new plant to double the capacity of micronutrients and biologicals in Howden, in U.K. And we are ready to start delivering already in '26 in the year we are in. So our sales agronomists know already how to deal with this and how to expand our portfolio and our offering also in this segment that is very profitable. And so we are very confident that we will succeed on this.
Yes, and we are in Europe, right? I'm EVP Europe. Europe is now -- has been in the eye of the storm in the last 5 years and going to continue to be. But it's also the core business for our company. And we have a business model that is very hard to replicate. This is the idea I would like to bring after this presentation. It's very hard to replicate, not only because of the strong site and plant footprint because -- but also because we have the logistical hub and setup to be able to supply the customers and the farmers in a way that is the most efficient.
We have and continue to build in our market share. In average, we are 25% market average in the core markets. Here in Norway and Nordics, we are higher -- our market presence is quite higher. And with that, we get the information we need from the market. So we can move ahead on setting our pricing, and we can move ahead on positioning our products in the logistics warehouses, in the logistical hubs that we have in the warehouses.
And with that, we are growing our nitrate presence, both in straight nitrate applications, but also nitrate NPK based. And also, we are able to provide Johan with the predictability of the products that we are going to sell. So we are in an integrated business. So Johan brings the ammonia and produces the ammonia and also the products that we need that are demanded in the market.
We have -- on top of this, we have decarbonization market opportunities as well. We are ready to deliver already above 1 million tonnes of low-carbon fertilizers already in 2026 that comes out of the CCS project, carbon capture and storage in Sluiskil, as you know. So -- and the potential investment in the U.S. will bring lower carbon fertilizers. So we are ready with our market presence, with our knowledge and the contact that we have with customers and farmers, we are ready to deliver also in the low carbon segment at the moment that demand shows up.
And as mentioned, CBAM is an important driver of this development. I know that you are quite aware of what CBAM is. But here, just a couple of ideas that I want to remark. The average emission of carbon footprint and -- to produce 1 tonne of urea accounts for 1.5 tonnes of CO2. So every tonne of urea produced means 1.5 tonnes of CO2. And this is the production that is the average emissions for those producing outside Europe. Europe imports nitrogen above 25%. So urea produced outside Europe will be imported into Europe. And with CBAM, they have to pay for this carbon. And this carbon, it's a fixed number. It will depend on the carbon cost, but it's fixed because urea cannot be decarbonized. So that urea is going to pay.
What happens with Europe, with Yara. With Europe, we have a lower carbon emission. But in Yara, we are even lower. So we have a competitive advantage because we have invested already in this with the catalyst and we have invested already in reducing our carbon footprint. So our competitive advantage is translated in a further premium that we can build on our portfolio. So because we will -- we can uplift the price of the nitrates that are being sold and delivered in Europe, that are produced in Europe as well by the fact that the urea imported will have to pay for this carbon tax.
So far, CBAM was implemented 1 week ago. There are some doubts. But the message to you is that we are ready to move fast on the premiums on the prices to leverage on this, and we are ready for this. But -- and we are ready for that because Yara has been prepared for this for years with very smart, I would say, investments. The catalyst is one of them. It was a tiny investment that reduces substantially the NOx emissions. So with that, reduces our GHG already.
We have invested already in Sluiskil for the carbon capture and storage and our baseline is lower than the competitors. CBAM is implemented since 1st of January. With that, the importers have to pay, and they will be phased in. But Yara, the producer will face -- we will be charged on the phase out of the free allowances. We have been already working and investing on this. And actually, we have a quota bank of ETS quotas that accounts for 6 million, that translated into dollars is above $500 million that we have in our bank already. And we can use that to pay for the free allowances that are going to phase out or we can sell them in the market depending on our interest.
So there is -- today, there's already business with these free allowances and the quotas that we are able to collect and harvest out of these investments. Sluiskil will mean -- will reduce 800 kilotons of CO2 already and -- this year, it will start this year. And that will add more to the quota bank. So -- and these investments are already done. Will we invest further? Well, it depends on how the CBAM evolves. So far, what we have in our bank is already money. and we will work on that.
In the future, we have -- Svein Tore and Johan already described the flexibility of our business, we are producing ammonia in Europe, we are producing outside, we are bringing the ammonia that we need, and we produce and we sell and distribute according to the needs. Whatever it will stay in Europe or outside Europe, it will depend on the CBAM evolution and the market needs as well. But then we -- as said, we are ready for the future.
So with that, we will increase or improve our portfolio with low carbon fertilizers. We can run our operations with low carbon footprint in Europe, and we have this flexibility. It opens up a new segment, a new business segment that is with the food companies and the food chain. They have expressed and also public very ambitions -- ambitious sustainability pledges and they have to commit to them. And most of that comes from their Scope 3 that are the emissions that come from their suppliers that are the farmers who can contribute to the reduction of the Scope 3, only those that have the lowest fertilizer footprint. Who are the ones that have the lowest in the world is Yara.
So there's a business there. We are already signing of contracts with PepsiCo, Nordzucker and -- PepsiCo worldwide, also in Latin America, Nordzucker also in Germany and many others. So this is a new business opportunity that we are building, and we do not forget our traditional business. That is our base. Our backbone is what I already described so far. This is a new opportunity that comes and that will be incentivized by the CBAM framework.
And with that, I get to the end of my presentation and the summary is, and I would like to remark that we are in a pole position to generate value now, but also for the future. And the other key strength is the global position that we have, the global optimization that we do with our portfolio and our assets and the logistical hub, don't forget that. We are a leading premium product position and knowledge margin. The value-accretive growth in low carbon products and biologicals that is the new segment coming on stream and the value proposition food to serve future requirements of food systems when they come. Thank you very much.
Now I pass the word to our CFO that will go -- Magnus that will go better and deeper in the financials.
Thank you. Thank you, Monica, and good morning, everyone. Very nice to see so many of you here. And as we've seen through the previous sections, these competitive edges that Monica and Johan talked about are very important for us, and they're also very important for our financial results. And how is that? Well, the 2 lower ones, the scale and the global optimization and the operational excellence are really key in any market scenario. It's about lowering the fixed cost per tonne, lowering the CapEx per tonne, and that is, of course, a very important competitive edge in a CapEx-intensive industry.
Moving up, the operational excellence also is important in terms of energy consumption. And obviously, being exposed to energy prices, the less you use per tonne produced matters a lot as well. On the optimization part, also very, very important in terms of making sure that the products go where we get the best netback for them at all times. And that is important in an industry where anything from weather to political decisions can change reality in a very short period of time.
We are flexible on energy. Yes, we have a lot of production base in Europe. But with our ammonia system, our actual gas exposure is different and it's flexible. And last but not least, and probably the most differentiating part is that decades of farm knowledge, decade of application knowledge enables us to add an additional premium above commodity value, which is, of course, a value in itself, but which also means that we have more stability in our results.
And looking at our results, we see both from market implications, but also from the actions taken over the last 12 months that we've seen a significant improvement, and EBITDA last 12 months of end of Q3 of $2.6 billion is among the highest results we've had in our history. That also translates into a very strong increase in earnings per share. But of course, in a capital-intensive industry, we also have a very hard focus on return on that invested capital. We're very happy to see that we are now ex special items above 10%, and we will, of course, continue to work to improve that further.
Free cash flow as well has seen a significant improvement, which is, of course, at the end of the day, what really matters. And then the final number we have up here is gross margin, which is not necessarily a very good measure of profitability development in our industry, but it is worth noting that we do have a gross margin, which is quite stable and it was almost remarkable stable considering the volatility of the industry that we have. And that, of course, reflects the flexibility in the system that we've talked about earlier today.
Improvements both from the market as well as internal improvements, of course, and with a focus on strict capital allocation provides strategic flexibility, and a strong balance sheet is very important for us. We are strongly committed to an investment-grade rating, and we have an unbroken record of maintaining this since the IPO in 2004. But maintaining a strong balance sheet not only secures our rating, but also ensures that we have flexibility and capacity both for value-accretive growth as well as shareholder return through the cycle.
Taking a short pause looking at our scorecard from 2020. The world has, of course, changed a lot since then and so has the relevance of some of the KPIs, but I think it's still worthwhile to have a look at how we've done. And starting with some of the ones that we are very happy with, of course, happy to see that return on invested capital is above 10%. And of course, this is a key focus to improve even further going forward. As Johan mentioned as well, finished fertilizer production will achieve the target set. That represents a significant increase in volume, but also significant value in margin as was illustrated. And that's something that's come through years of hard work and also importantly, lays the foundation to grow that even further going forward.
And on the ammonia side, you will see that we are short of our target despite having a 500 million tonnes increase on the target. And that is from the fact that we prioritize value over volumes for ammonia as we talked about many times. If we can import more profitably than producing, then that is what we do, and that, of course, impacts the number as well. On fixed cost and greenhouse gas emission intensity, we also reached our target. And as both Monica and Johan talked about, we've done that in a profitable way.
Operating capital is one of the areas that we're not completely happy with yet. It has been impacted since that target was set by a dramatic change in product flows, obviously, since whatever -- what has happened since both 2020 and 2022. So this is an area that we'll focus on going forward. And we are, of course, not happy with our TRI, our safety numbers plateauing, even though they're industry-leading, and that's, of course, an area that we'll continue to work on going forward as well. And the KPIs that we've had in our KPI sheet will still be continue to be reported in our integrated reporting annually.
Digging a little bit more into the cost side, we are happy to report that we are ahead of our original target of USD 150 million. And by the end of Q3, we had realized $180 million, also when you adjust for a little bit of a help that we get from the currency. And this comes primarily from overhead cost reduction, but also a significant portion ties to portfolio optimization of lower performing assets. And even though we lost some volumes from that, obviously, the margin loss was quite small. And so the EBITDA effect is almost full from those actions.
Maintaining strong discipline and strong CapEx discipline will, of course, remain a key focus going forward. But also in terms of really increasing shareholder value, we cannot unilaterally focus on cost. We have to play on all the strengths that we have in our system. Looking a bit at productivity, obviously, reducing fixed costs also delivers productivity increase, closing down less efficient assets delivers a productivity increase. But I think it's worth stopping here a little bit and look at some of these numbers as well. FTE per tonne, as an example, is not necessarily a very good measure of productivity and the impact it has on profitability.
Salary costs differ a lot between different locations, but also value of tonne differ a lot. And also, for instance, when we sold our QAFCO assets, that had a lot of tonnes attached to it, but no FTEs. So for us, we look more at fixed cost per tonne, and we do see that with the reduction in fixed costs that we've had, we've had an improvement over the last years. And also looking at it in real terms, we are roughly at the same level where we were in 2015.
But I think what's important to remember here is that there are 2 sides of this equation. And going forward, we, of course, will continue working on fixed cost. But what is also important for here is to actually increase volumes and increase, of course, the profitability and the margin per tonne of volumes. And that is what we'll do going forward at the same time as maintaining control of cost and CapEx. And that's kind of what leads us into our improvement program. And Johan and Monica have talked about the different measures that we do.
If we try to summarize it, we've categorized it into 4 fairly broad categories, but I think specific enough to give an idea of what we're trying to achieve. The first one, maximizing asset utilization. That's what Johan talked about. That's about getting more tonnes and more profitable tonnes out of the CapEx, out of the assets that we already have. And that we will do through reliability improvements, through debottlenecking at fairly reasonable investment levels. And from a value creation perspective, increasing production through the assets we already have is obviously what makes the absolute most value for the shareholder.
On the logistics side, it's also a lot about scale. We talked about the ammonia example. And if we sort of scale up that example, we see a significant improvement potential in reducing cost per tonne shipped ammonia, and we ship a lot of ammonia. This comes about from all the changes that we've had over the recent years in the ammonia system. But basically, it's about bigger vessels. And with the ammonia infrastructure we already have, we can expand that to take larger vessels at a very, very reasonable investment as Johan demonstrated with one example from Porsgrunn.
But as Monica also talked about, on the logistics side, on finished fertilizer, scale matters a lot as well. The bigger the facility you have, the lower your logistic cost per tonne. And there also, we see an improvement potential through growing more through our existing assets using better utilization of the CapEx that we have. On the market side, which is, of course, also a very, very important aspect for Yara, we have a lot of different initiatives.
Growing our market share in Europe is one important element. And of course, after the turmoil that we've had over the recent years, we now have a strengthened position. We've done a lot of changes and adaptions, both on the asset side as well as on the market side. And we have a clear aim and we have regained significant market share in Europe. And of course, we always benefit more from selling close to our chimney. At the same time, as we use our global system, both to generate significant premiums outside Europe as well as having the flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions, both in Europe as well as in other markets as well.
We talked about adjacent offerings and Monica talked about that, YaraVita, YaraAmplix. Here, we have a growth opportunity in a market that we're already in and already delivered significant growth, which, of course, is tightly linked to our core, but also represents a different revenue stream than the traditional fertilizer as well. And this also ties very much into the smaller to medium-sized investments that we have prioritized over the last years, such as the YaraVita plant in the U.K., such as the NPK expansion in Cartagena, which are now more or less complete. And now, of course, it's the time to harvest the synergies from that as well.
And then, of course, finally, we will maintain a very strict focus on cost and a strict focus on CapEx allocation. And with this, we've set a target of increasing our EBITDA from improvements by $200 million by the end of 2027 and $350 million by the end of 2030. And these improvements, we believe will increase shareholder value creation, but also increase our earnings resilience, which -- and robustness further, which is, of course, important.
We do have a robust business model. We have stated that and demonstrated that it is more robust through the volatility that we have in the markets. But we are, of course, also naturally impacted by shifts in the global commodity markets. And it's important for us to also be -- have transparency on this and making sure that the improvement targets we set are sort of separate from how markets develop, even though, of course, we -- a big part of the job we do is also to adapt to that market development.
We have outlined some earnings scenarios. The 2 main drivers for Yara's profitability from an external perspective. is urea and TTF. Of course, there are others as well. But I think looking at this matrix gives you -- and this is in line with the sensitivities that we post on our website as well, gives you an impression of where the market can take us. And I think adding to that, what Silje presented a scenario with tightening supply-demand scenarios on the urea side, also a lowering gas price environment in Europe sets an outlook for improved earnings going forward. But of course, the improvement program will nevertheless go its course, and we will follow these targets irrespective of how the market develops.
On the CapEx side, we have for several years, guided at an average level of approximately USD 1.2 billion in real terms. Investments in Yara are strictly scrutinized, and we have also been below that level in nominal terms several years when that made sense. And I think at the end of the day, what matters for us is to making sure that both the fixed cost and the CapEx that we deploy has the best possible shareholder return, but also applying capital discipline, not only in terms of making sure that our balance sheet is strong, but also making sure that we don't take on more than what we can handle.
We have put a lot of emphasis on maintenance CapEx, making sure that also the maintenance CapEx goes where the return is the highest. And we've stabilized that around the levels you see. Johan talked about the natural variations there is. And also looking -- but looking at our assets, also investing in cash-generating assets is always a good investment as well because those are the cheapest expansion funds that we get. On the total CapEx spend, also including the potential investments in the U.S., we do believe that the guidance that we've given on average is a fair estimate going forward as well. So that guidance is kept.
And in the case of positive FID, that project will, of course, be a priority. There will be flexibility for other smaller investments or other investments into our capacity that makes sense as well. But rest assured that capital discipline will definitely apply. And this is also one of the main reasons why the project with Air Project -- with Air Products that we are evaluating fits well. It represents a value-accretive opportunity for both parties, but it also represents a lower CapEx for Yara compared to a lot of other alternatives.
Project economics in total for both parties, of course, is reflected by the underlying project. And we do believe that both the scale and the early adoption or the early start that this project has, having come as far as it has, gives it a specific advantage compared to other projects. It is also a model that we know quite well. We have the exact same setup in our Freeport plant where we buy hydrogen over the fence.
And so this is in line with sort of the industrial gas business model as well. And it reflects the 45Q tax credits, which then the carbon capture takes place on the Air Products side, and they are responsible for capturing this. But of course, that reflects the overall project economics and the price for the hydrogen and the nitrogen that we buy. And it does give us the same gas to nitrogen exposure as we have in our ammonia plant, which is what we see, which is the sort of the hallmark of the Yara share as well.
And then, of course, from a business case perspective, everybody obviously wonders what about CBAM. Well, I think, first of all, it's important to remember that to do a successful project for Yara, lowering the gas cost and having the right CapEx are the 2 most important factors for a project with strong return. Then in addition, there's a 45Q tax credit. And then obviously, building a plant that can capture CO2 with the carbonized ammonia, the CBAM or the price you get for decarbonizing obviously plays a big role as well. And as Svein Tore said, CBAM is not canceled. Carbon pricing in Europe is definitely not canceled.
We will, alongside other metrics such as construction costs and other factors that go into the business case before FID, monitor that very, very closely up until the final investment decision together with AP, which is slated somewhere mid this year. But as we've stated all along, Yara will only make investment decision if we believe it's profitable for our shareholders. We have the flexibility. We have a lot of options. And I think comparing this project to all the other projects that we have seen, we do see that it does offer a more attractive EBIT profile, a more attractive cash flow profile looking at the entire investment period.
And I think also it fits very well into our system, which ultimately benefits both parties. Also the U.S. project, but let's not also forget the NEOM project as well. And I think it's also important when you think about this project compared to other projects, to actually get to the market in Europe, you need to get in and you need to have the ammonia import tank infrastructure to get there. And Johan referenced some of the acquisitions that have taken place. I think we believe that at sort of a $300 million level, that kind of reflects pretty well what it costs to build ammonia infrastructure in Europe as well.
And to have a decent return on that, it means that the cost of bringing ammonia into Europe, whether you build the capacity or rent the capacity will be somewhere between $60 to $80, perhaps even more depending on the scale of the assets. And this is infrastructure that we already have. But again, we will scrutinize this very carefully, look at all the parameters. And we do realize that sort of our -- I wouldn't say dragging our feet, but that this, of course, is some frustration to the market. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we take our time and make the right decision for the shareholders.
And from a capital allocation perspective, it is also, I think, which is a question that a lot of you have, good to think about this potential acquisition CapEx of the Finnish plant as evenly distributed over the period through 2030. From a capital allocation perspective and our capacity, that is at the end of the day, what matters. There is some -- there will be a milestone payment plan, even though we take over the plant only when it's finished. Exactly how that looked like is not commercially fully finalized yet. But I think from a capital allocation perspective, it doesn't really matter from -- we plan several years ahead at any rate.
But looking at that and just taking our most recent last 12 months CapEx -- excuse me, cash flow as a starting point, deducting our sort of average maintenance CapEx level as well, slating in sort of a distributed split of the potential acquisition costs with Air Products, also factoring in improvements, we do see that there is flexibility both for dividends as well as potential other opportunities going forward. I think what's important to remember in this context is that if there are great, very value-accretive short-term opportunities that we can take, it always makes sense for Yara to take it. But I think what's important to remember is that even though we have the cash to do so, we will still apply very strict capital discipline and I think very much making sure that we don't take on anything more than what we can handle.
And for sure, if we do an investment here, that will be our priority. And this is also in line with our dividend policy through the period and also, of course, in line with our commitment to an investment-grade rating. We have and we maintain a policy of distributing 50% of net income subject to our capital structure. When the capital structure allows, we have also distributed extraordinary dividends in the past, as demonstrated here by distribution more than 50% of our adjusted net income and EPS.
So I think our main message is that capital discipline will remain strong. Dividend and shareholder distributions remain a priority. And in a cyclical industry with the uncertainty there are in this industry, of course, ensuring a strong balance sheet through the cycle, also through a downturn in the cycle is important. That keeps our flexibility, but also keeps predictability for distributions in the longer term.
So to conclude, we now launch on a continued and broadened improvement program for Yara in the short to medium term. This will build on the successful $180 million cost program that we've done, but it will be widened and address much more factors than just cost. Meanwhile, work to deaverage our energy cost, lowering our energy cost will remain a priority. We have significant flexibility. We have flexibility on timing on how to do that. And we also believe we have the best overview of which projects that can succeed. And combining that with what we believe will be a tighter nitrogen market in the medium term as well as a lower gas price environment in Europe, we do believe that Yara is set for substantial value creation going forward. And with that, I give the word back to Svein Tore.
[Presentation]
Thank you, Magnus. And I'll have a few concluding remarks and slides before we hand over to the Q&A session. And as you've seen throughout this morning's presentation, Yara has a proven business model, and it's well positioned and it's demonstrated its resiliency over a number of years, and we're strongly positioned to increase the shareholder value further. And this -- since the very start of our company in 1905, we built that, and it's to respond to the global food needs. We've built on that industrial strength. We created a global reach throughout the globe and with a deep agronomic knowledge and competence that we've talked about this morning as well. These remain our competitive edges.
Today, we support food production in 140 countries across the world. Our diversified footprint and also this -- the integrated value chain, this is really what has helped us to navigate volatility in our markets. It's helped us through energy crisis. It's helped us through geopolitical shocks while still continuing to create strong returns. Yara is a really critical player in the food system. With our products, we are enabling the production of 193 billion meals a year, 193 billion meals a year because of Yara's products. That is a strong purpose, and it says something about the scale of our operations, but also the importance of Yara in the global food system.
Looking forward, global food system is set to go through some significant changes driven by sustainability, it's driven by technology, it's driven by efficiency. The Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, did a study back in 2024, where they analyzed the totality of the food system and also looked at the hidden cost of the food system. And what do I mean by hidden cost? Well, it's the impact of emissions. It's on land use, it's on water use. It's on unhealthy dietary patterns, on poverty, under nourishment, runoffs, all of this, that has a cost that is not really captured in the food system. Today, the totality of that is $12 trillion a year. That needs to be addressed.
And as we talked about and Monica dug deep into it, how do you balance the nutrition for plants? How do you ensure that you have the right combination of that to ensure that they grow and that they are strong? Well, it's the same thing for us humans. We also need balanced diets. And if you look behind it and look at the food that we're eating, is it as nutritious as it should be. And the reality is that it is not. And what's the best way to influence that? Well, it's through the crops. And we're able to do something about that. And we're utilizing that in how the plants grow.
Monica talked about our trip to Spain and how it's utilized by the farmers to grow food in conditions that they're not really set to grow in. But if you give the right, call it, diet to the plants, they are more resilient. They are able to grow even in more challenging places. And if there's one profession that is the most impacted by climate change, well, I think it's hard to think of any profession more impacted than farmers. They're working out in nature.
And if -- with our solutions, we can help them to be more resilient and to grow more efficient crops and to deal with the challenges. So whether that's drought, flooding, heat, cold and so on, it's about the crop nutrition opportunity here. So just like in 1905 when we were well positioned to deliver on one of the biggest challenges faced in the world at that time, well, we are also positioned on top of that to support some of the biggest challenges that the world is facing today. And that is something that comes on top of what we're already doing today, and we are set to grow that further.
Then summarizing our presentation, the key to Yara's resilience and also the value creation that can be simplified into these 4 categories. And I hope that through the presentations this morning, we've been able to dig further into each and every one of those and how we're delivering on that. Then you may view Yara as a complex company operating in a complicated world. And to some degree, that's right. But if we allow ourselves to zoom out a bit and look at this, I think we've proven over the last years and throughout our history that our business model is well positioned to deal with this and that these 4 competitive edges, they give us the resilience and also the flexibility to deal with these challenges.
And it all boils down to this on operating at scale, it's about operating with excellence, high productivity. It's about flexible sourcing, flexible sales and on top of that, the knowledge margin. Not more complicated than that really. So these are the key drivers of our success to date. They will be the key drivers for our success going forward as well.
So final slide. We have a strong starting point. And we have a business model that still has significant untapped potential, and we're committed to drive further sustainable value creation and to increase shareholder returns. We aim for concrete EBITDA improvements of $200 million and $350 million for 2027 and 2030, respectively. And these targets are substantiated by concrete actions behind them, and I believe that we have demonstrated our ability to deliver. We have flexible ways of -- and flexible pathways for energy flexibility and diversification. And we have -- and both -- all my colleagues really talked about it, we have the infrastructure in order to make it happen as well.
So you need that full integrated value chain and flexibility to get this done and physical assets to do that. We have that. And we have prepared our company step-by-step to make this possible. And importantly, we use that knowledge base also to approach how we support agriculture through nutrient use efficiency, and that's irrespective of any regulation. So -- and on top of that, we have a strong balance sheet, as Magnus just showed and a strong commitment to our credit rating, and we have the ability to deliver. So on that note, I want to thank all of you for listening, and I'll hand back to Maria and -- who will then coordinate our Q&A part of this session. Thank you.
Thank you, Svein Tore. I will now ask all presenters back on stage so we can move to the Q&A part of this session. If you are joining the CMD online, I'll remind you that you can ask questions by sending them to the e-mail address [email protected], and for people in the audience, you can just raise your hand and my colleagues, Fredrik and Viktoriia will come with a microphone. So please wait until you have the microphone in hand before speaking so that everyone can hear.
I can start quickly with a question from -- received online, and that is regarding the EU regulatory development. Bear with me, it's a bit of a long question. I'll try to shorten it. It's regarding the discussions from the EU Commission on Wednesday. And the question is with what impact has the suspension of the ammonia and urea import tariffs? What impact does that have on Yara's earnings? And also how does Yara expect the regulatory landscape to evolve around CBAM? And what implications could it have for the company's strategy, particularly the prospective U.S. blue ammonia project?
That's quite a bit. But I'll try to focus in on some of the elements, and then I'll get some support from my colleagues here. First and foremost, the communication creates a lot of uncertainty and confusion at a time when that is absolutely not needed. And if you take a step back, what was the intention here? It's about creating a level playing field. It's about Europe staying the course on decarbonization and yet supporting the industry so that if we are to produce 1 additional tonne of fertilizer in Europe, we have to pay a carbon tax for that, right?
So the idea -- and if you think about Europe then, if you need an additional tonne of fertilizer, either you produce it internally or you import it. And the idea is then that it shouldn't be a disadvantage to produce it in Europe so that the emitter pays for the emissions so that you pay the same cost when you're importing that into Europe, creating a level playing field. That's what we're aiming for. That's the intention. That's the methodology that EU has developed over 7 years. And it took quite a bit of time to create a clarity on this, and this has probably added to some of the confusion going into this. It went into effect on January 1, and then we had a communication around this on Wednesday this week.
So -- then there are 2 components of it. One is the import tariffs that really have nothing to do with CBAM, but it's communicated in that context. So that remains to be seen how that's really shifting anything in Europe in terms of price levels. Then on CBAM, they have not suspended it or they haven't canceled CBAM right now. What they've said is that they will monitor it to see if there are unforeseen events or if there are emergency events that are unexpected. This is not unexpected. This is exactly what CBAM is supposed to do. So from that point, there shouldn't be any change at all.
But clearly -- and we also need to analyze this and fully understand how this will impact and what will happen in the market as a result of this. But we have to step back and also analyze why was this put in, in the first place. It's about Europe's commitment to lowering emissions. It's to create a level playing field. It's about strategic autonomy. That's what it's intended to do. So now then 7 days after implementing it to do anything that undermines that would be highly surprising. But of course, we will communicate clearly around this, and then we also share the concerns among the farmers on profitability and so on.
But the quick way to have fixed this would be to take the revenue from CBAM and create incentives to pay that to the farmers, emitter pays and the farmers are compensated in some way. So creating this kind of confusion at this point in time is not very constructive, and we'll be very clear on that. So how this will continue to impact regulatory development, that's something that we will continue to work on. But again, I have to emphasize, it has not been suspended. CBAM is still in force. Then how does it impact our U.S. blue ammonia projects or -- and we touched on it on a number of our projects. None of them are entirely based on CBAM.
But if CBAM is suspended or canceled, obviously, that will have an impact where we wouldn't likely have the required return on a U.S. blue project. And again, as I said in my presentation as well, no green transition with red numbers, then we will not proceed. So it's about profitability at the end of the day, and we're committed to that. But the infrastructure that we have in place, that was not set up for green or blue. We're building on the structure that we have, so that we'll be able to operate on gray as well, and we have that flexibility and then we'll go in that direction. So we maintain that flexibility in our system.
Yes. And maybe just to add in terms of the earnings part of the question, which I guess was related to the regular most of the nation closed tariffs. I think -- I mean, the tariff on urea, I mean, Yara is long on urea and nitrates in Europe. So obviously, any price impact in Europe has a direct impact. I mean, it's 6.5% so at $400, take example, that's around $25 per tonne, but on the nitrate, it is around $15. So I mean it's an impact. It's not a massive impact as such.
And I think for reasons probably better described by Silje, maybe in the breakout, it's not a given that taking that tariff away actually will reduce the price either the way that the market is structured and where that product comes from, but I think that will be a little bit lengthy to take here and now. We're, as you know, short on ammonia into Europe. So that have a slightly positive impact. So I think it's hard to say.
I think on the CBAM part, it's important to remember that CBAM is still enforced. Nobody has taken away CBAM. So I would like to see the trader who would want to import knocking off CBAM of the price when they sell because there might be a retroactive reimbursement of that cost, which, by the way, wouldn't go to the farmer, it would go to the trader. So I think there are a lot of unanswered questions here, whether this has been properly thought through. But as of now, I can't foresee that anybody in Q1 would sort of disregard the fact that you actually have to pay CBAM for every tonne you import into the European Union today.
Okay. Questions from the audience there, Christian?
2. Question Answer
Christian Faitz, Kepler Cheuvreux. A couple of questions, please. First, on your specialties. Can you talk about the opportunities and challenges maybe of your P and K sourcing and particularly on the K side and whether it would make sense for you to, at some point, to build a more sizable K position? I know you had plans in the past, but they went somewhere nowhere, I guess. And then the second question would be on the carbon sequestration. Can you talk about the cost dynamics there? For example, how much does the sequestration of a tonne of CO2 cost you here offshore Norway?
I would start by then. So for the P and K position, it has been explained during the presentation that we had a system very well established before all this geopolitical turmoil, right? So overnight, all of this has more or less disappeared. And it has been explained that in theory, it took some time to be able to reshuffle the whole logistics system. That's what we had to do within an extreme short time frame.
And today, where are we today? After several years, we have built 2 things. First, we have diversified our sourcing approach. For P and K, we are much more global than what we used to be, having a straight line in the past from specific countries, first. Second, we have learned a lot on our production processes. It was clearly designed for the specific origin of the P and K. Today, we managed to get a production system significantly much more flexible than what it used to be. In that sense, we are in a much better position because we have been forced to than in the past. And we are constantly monitoring the position related to P and K globally day by day, month by month in order to take the best possible position when it comes to sourcing our raw material.
And in addition to that, we have our phosphate mine in Siilinjärvi in Finland as well, and we will continue to invest in that. And just given our size in the market, we are also an attractive partner. Of course, when we make as massive shifts as we had to do in 2022, it takes a bit of time to reshuffle and get that in place. But the size of phosphate volumes that we're buying or potash volumes is so large that we're a very attractive partner to many players in the industry. And given our global footprint, we can also utilize that to source in the most optimal way to support our operations.
And I think on your question on the CCS, obviously, we can't go into the commercial details between us and Northern Lights. But what I can say is that there is a -- in the current market environment on the ETS and the free allowances you get for that sequestration, there's clearly a positive per tonne cash flow. And that's the core of the business case that is accretive, is the difference between the ETS and expectation going forward and the cost of actually doing the sequestration, of course, then discount to then compare to the investment decision. And then as -- on top of that comes whatever money he can sell or can get a premiums for that product. But the base case is the money you save on -- or the free allowances you get on the sequestration itself.
And here, scale is important as well. And this is the biggest industrial decarbonization project with CCS in Europe, 800,000 tonnes. And through that, we're able to do and also the location of the asset is such that it is possible to do CCS at this scale and at the economics that Magnus just indicated.
Okay. Questions?
Yes, Bengt Jonassen, ABG. I think I have 3 questions. I just wanted to follow up on the regulatory. Sorry for that, but we have -- Obviously, you are planning for different scenarios. If one scenario where that CBAM was taken out of the equation. How would you -- let's say, you still be exposure to ETS and increasing carbon cost? How would you think strategically into such a scenario? The second question goes to Silje. You mentioned that nitrate demand was down annually in the last 10 years. How do you explain that? That's one thing. And could you also talk a little bit about the consolidation that has happened in Europe nitrates capacity in the last years and how the market shares are now? And the final question would probably go into the downstream, and that would be how would AI fit into your business model?
I'll start on the first one and Ben I'm not surprised that regulatory questions will be heading our way several times today. So let's say, CBAM is canceled. It isn't, but if it was, then it would be extremely surprising if ETS is still -- and the phasing out of free allowances would still be in place for the industry. I mean if there's one region in the world that has -- should have learned a lesson on what it means to be dependent, it's Europe. And look what happened on energy, where depending on imports from Russia, in particular, made sense you had cheaper energy for some time until you didn't, and then we paid an enormous cost of that for households and industry.
So then to go straight from that to significantly harming the production of fertilizer within Europe that is vital for food security, that would be -- I'm trying to find right surprising that's politically correct. I'll be clear next week when I'm in Brussels on this one, but that doesn't make sense at all. Should it happen, well, then we're back to the flexibility. Well, we can still import. So then we would bring in ammonia from other parts of the world, likely with carbon.
So Europe is not supporting the decarbonization either. But if CBAM is canceled, then we can bring it in, and we'll do that. So that's back to the resilience that we have in our business model. And -- but it will hurt other players much harder in Europe. And hopefully, this will be understood once we start to dig further into the consequences of the communication around this should we get to the conclusion that CBAM is canceled, but I don't see how both of those can happen at the same time where we phase out and then cancel at the same time. So I don't see that as a realistic scenario. It has to be one or the other, it will be detrimental to food security and strategic autonomy in Europe.
And just to add from a financial perspective, in that, hopefully, a hypothetical scenario where the EU would say, okay, we slam a carbon cost on our domestic producers and everybody else can just import freely. Of course, I mean, the price level would reflect that carbon cost and our production in Europe as long as there's production, and we can import gray ammonia. So we're the same, but it would, of course, be detrimental to ammonia production in Europe, but perhaps they would probably realize that when there's one plant left.
Hopefully, before...
And yes, on your second question, I think thank you for asking because that's a very important clarification. The reason why nitrates show a declining trend in that illustration is because there has been no additional capacity being built within nitrates of Canary in that period, meaning that when nitrogen total demand growth, it's basically the product that has been growing that has had to cover for that shortfall. But it's not to say that underlying demand for nitrates necessarily has changed. That is still a very key product in the market as you touched on as well, especially in Europe and a product that commands a premium in the market. So it's a reflection basically that no one is adding capacity on those products.
And then I think when it comes to this development within the European industry, of course, it's been a volatile couple of years that has impacted everyone, us included. Of course, we have been in a good position as both Johan and Monica has shown that we have some advantages that has enabled us to continue to produce while some others might not have had that opportunity. But I think in terms of kind of developments on market shares, et cetera, I don't have much comment. I don't know if you want to add to that.
No, no, you explained quite well. Yes. Well, we see that demand is growing, and then we are ready to supply them. But no, we see that demand is growing also because there is a need for autonomy of food production as well in the region. Region Europe is self-sufficient in food production. That is -- I think it's the only sector where we are self-sufficient in Europe. And for that, the application of fertilizers and access to fertilizers is critical and the population keeps on growing. So not at the speed that we would like, but at this point...
AI is our favorite -- one of our favorite projects and topics. The big advantage of AI is the chance and the possibility to develop predictive models. And for downstream, in particular, that would be a great help for farmers. Actually, we have a couple of projects. One is in green grass that we have not finished concluded and the other in grain. So to predict the yield will help the farmer in the end because we are helping the farmer to reduce the grade of uncertainty to predict the estimated yield will help the farmer to take decisions on the application rate. And with that, we can also benefit out of it because that will predict our sales as well as forecast and can make our supply chain operations and decisions in the logistical hubs that we have more efficient. That is in a nutshell.
And to add on that, I mean, data is important and utilizing science to make the right decisions. And if we think about our product portfolio, the types of product that we're producing, the competence that we have, the more data-driven the decisions are and the more data that goes into regulation, the more data that goes in throughout the whole food system, that's very supportive of our business model and the products that we have there.
There's huge untapped potential. And that's not strange given the complexity of agriculture and all the variables and you're out in nature, right? So how do you combine weather with and soil health, ensuring that you have the right nutrients in the soil, how does that translate into the food system? What can you do in terms of when you fertilize in order to ensure that you have the right yield, the right quality, even time to market. All of that combined will make a very good or a much better decision-making tool for the farmers.
And when they have that decision-making tool that will, in turn, create a demand for fertilizer products, and they will be more specialized and advanced and that's the majority of our product portfolio. So we'll be able to tap into new areas as well. And we were also -- I mentioned I was in Thailand to see now how drone technologies used satellite mapping on the fields of the farmers to analyze what do they need, where even drone application of fertilizer and then weight is an issue as well, and you want to have the most effective fertilizer per unit of weight as well and to see how they're completely automated. That's sort of a trip into the future for us. And in the future, that might not be that distant.
Bray, can you get the microphone there?
Sebastian Bray of Berenberg Bank. I have 2 questions, please. The first is on the development of nitrate premium or nitrogen -- Specialty Premium that were assumed for the next 4, 5 years. The prices of urea have been quite nice. The prices of the premium have been quite nice. I can understand why the market for urea might remain tight, but why would the specialty premium continue to perform as they have? Is there something supply or demand led in that assumption?
And my second question is on the NEOM project. If I look at the tonnage not allocated to Total of clean ammonia for this project, it's something like 0.7 million tonnes. And if I assume the commission is applied to that by Yara, it could be quite nice mid-double-digit million dollar figure. Is this deal signed and concluded? Or is it, well, everything is up for negotiation as part of the discussions with Darrow with Air Products over Darrow at this stage? And does Yara have a right to all of those volumes? Or is it something more minor? If I might squeeze in a third as well. You mentioned the EU ETS emissions war chest, the $400 million to $500 million. Is your base case assumption that remains flat? Or is it slightly depleted over the next 4 to 5 years?
So I will start with the nitrate premium. Question, if I understood correctly, how we can guarantee foresee that it's sustainable in the time. And there are several reasons. One is that our strong footprint in Europe and because nitrate businesses and market is in Europe, they're main one, that it works at farmer level. So the nutrient use efficiency at farm level is substantially better than the effect of urea. There are less losses as well and less leakage applied in the right rates.
Yara has a footprint has also the reputation. The farmer has the access to agronomical advice when it is needed, has access to digital tools that support them on deciding the application rate on nitrates and that works especially well for nitrates instead of urea because of there are less losses as well. Also, we are improving our product portfolio in nitrates as well with nitrogen plus sulfur. That is one of the main products that we have in our portfolio. And sometimes we don't talk about this enough. There is the deficiency of sulfur in Europe, and there is a need for nitrogen and sulfur. And we combine both in several grades that we have as well. So that also builds on sustainable margins going on premiums going ahead.
On NEOM, we have announced that we are in advanced negotiation with Air Products on 2 projects, NEOM and Darrow. It is quite clear that advanced negotiation means that the deal is not done. And we are also clear that we look at the totality of both projects and more generally speaking, of the whole ammonia strategy. In addition, the progress of the 2 projects are at a different stage. NEOM is supposed to come online in 2027, while Darrow would come online by 2030.
So in terms of negotiation, we also have to respect the fact that the 2 projects are not at the same stage, and there is an urgency on concluding on one compared to the other, but to grow on our clean ammonia segments, we also need to have credibility and to have access and to confirm that we have access to this clean ammonia source is also vital in order to gain credibility to get to the customers and to be able to sell and to develop the market related to clean ammonia.
And I think maybe important to add that even though, of course, let's say, enthusiasm for clean ammonia has been going in waves, it's important to keep in mind that this is a combination of almost one of the only few projects that there is and particularly on renewable ammonia with NEOM and it's close to being completed, combined with the only player who can really import ammonia into what's the main market for ammonia and certainly that type of ammonia, which is Europe.
And I think I mean, we don't have an ownership stake in NEOM, obviously, and the commission model is kind of the model that we've outlined, but I think what does that imply that imply also that there's a netback back to Air Products, right? And I think what's often overlooked in the market is that it's not for free to get ammonia ashore, right? That's -- we've seen that with acquisitions lately, and we know you can estimate what that cost is. So -- I mean, the point being that there are clearly strong synergies in this partnership, right? And which, of course, benefits both parties.
And then on the last one on the EU ETS question and our bank and as we show, we have 6 million tonnes in the bank, and that's really the result of what we've done over a number of years now to increase our energy efficiency, lowering our emissions so that we've been able to be below the allowances and put that into the bank and then we'll further help on that now with the CCS project in Sluiskil. But as Magnus said, here, that's how we monetize in a way that we're then paying for carbon capture and storage, but then we have allowances that we can use to offset that going forward, where it's flat or improving, it depends a bit on our production as well because with the trajectory now there will be a phase out, but we can choose to produce or not and then import as well. So that's always an evaluation that we do based on economics, whether it makes sense to produce or import or actually go ahead and sell allowances. So we can't really predict that. That's more utilizing the flexibility that we have in our system to make the most profitable decision for referring out.
We're slightly behind schedule. So I'll take a quick question from online and then luckily, physical participants can join the breakout session and ask lots of more questions there. And final question is on Darrow project as well. So how do you see CapEx inflation risk? And also what is your plan B if you don't go through with the Air Products project?
As I mentioned, this project is benefiting from a head start. So a part of the risk has already been reduced by having a head start, engineering, construction of equipment's and procurement and several activities like that. But we all know the construction market in the U.S., how it is today is quite heated, right? So that is clear that the main task from now on is to get the CapEx right? And to have the precise information about the CapEx it will take to bring the project to the finish line.
We will work hard supporting Air Products with our ammonia expertise and the expertise we have gained over the past years on developing our own projects in order to have all the chance for this project to succeed. When it comes to potential alternatives, we have always been doing that. We have always monitored the entire landscape of projects being developed there, and we will still continue doing that. But so far, it has been explained by myself, by Magnus that this is as of today, the best option based on the whole market intelligence we have developed that we have identified, and we are going to pursue from now on.
And this is a project that -- I mean, there are strong synergies between Air Products and the Island, so that is our primary path. But of course, for any project, and I think this is what we see across right now, offtake is key to have that captive demand that we have as one part, but also the physical infrastructure in order to move ammonia. So we're bringing in a very valuable part of enabling a project like that to happen, and that remains regardless of what, but this is our primary path, and we're working very well together with the Air Products to develop that.
And I think from a CapEx perspective, I mean, we want to do this project. The projects want to do this project and because we believe it will be shareholder very accretive at the circumstances and the assumptions they are. But part of CapEx discipline is to consistently view all those assumptions and also make the right decisions if it turns out not to be the case. I mean there's no other driving force behind any companies than profitability in this. And as mentioned, we're not driven by the fact that we have to do anything by a certain date. We have multiple alternatives with the infrastructure that we have.
Thank you to everyone. That marks the end of this hybrid session. So for online participants, we hope you enjoyed today's presentation, and thank you for watching.
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Yara International — Analyst/Investor Day - Yara International ASA
Yara International — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Yara's Third Quarter Results 2025 Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand the call over to Maria Gabrielsen, Head of Investor Relations. You may now go ahead, please.
Thank you, and a big welcome to everyone from me as well. I'm here in the room together with representatives from Yara's management. We have our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand; and the Head of Market Intelligence, Dag Tore Mo. We're not planning to give a presentation, but we hope you all just watched our webcast. So we will dive straight into questions. So operator, you could open the first line, that would be great.
Your first question comes from the line of Christian Faitz of Kepler Cheuvreux.
2. Question Answer
First of all, can you talk about the current demand conditions in Brazil? I noted that you talked about improved NPK sales in Q3 there. Is that also a trend we should expect to see in Q4? And my second question would be, how long will be the Belle Plaine maintenance last and which quarters in 2026 according to your current schedule are affected?
On the Brazil market in general, we feel that it's relatively stable this year compared to last year, particularly on the nitrogen side, it's -- there is a stable imports of nitrogen in total with a little bit of a switch towards ammonium sulfate because of the increased availability of ammonium sulfate from China. So urea imports is a little bit down, but the total nitrogen is stable. And I think that it's not very different elsewhere. I don't know exactly on our side on the NPKs, but...
Yes. No I think -- yes, nothing to add on that. I think as to your question around Belle Plaine, we typically do our turnarounds there after the season is over. They have a very comprised season. And that typically is -- yes, that takes place in the early third quarter.
Next question comes from the line of Lisa De Neve of Morgan Stanley.
I have 3, if I may. So one, I would like to come back to your presentation, and I would love for you to speak a little bit more about how we should think about urea prices or nitrogen prices, also nitrate and NPK prices in the European market, both into 2026 and midterm in the lights of currently European duties on nitrogen fertilizers from Russia being in place, which seem to have caused a level of inflation in the internal European market as well as the expected implementation of CBAM from the start of 2026?
And maybe following on from that, what do you hear from farmers on this? Because they faced quite significant price inflation on their inputs this year. And I wonder what their stance on CBAM is? So anything you have on that would be very helpful. Secondly, on the clean ammonia projects, I recall over the summer, you sort of put aside the clean ammonia projects, you would potentially pursue in collaboration with BASF.
But I would love for you to sort of remind us a little bit of how many U.S. clean ammonia projects are being under consideration. I'm aware of the collab with Enbridge, but it would be great to sort of make sure that we have a good overview of what you're actually considering in the U.S. And lastly, I mean, very strong EBITDA in the third quarter. How should we think about the free cash flow generation into the end of the year given the net working capital outflow was quite meaningful in the third quarter?
If we start with the European nitrogen prices and as you say, all the legislation and political around that, I think it's a bit early to call. I think if you look at the current nitrogen price level in Europe, it's fairly logical and consistent with the global level with the same kind of premiums that we've had historically. And on the Russian duty that you mentioned, the EUR 40 on nitrogen products, EUR 45 on phosphate products that was put in place from July 1. So far, I don't think we've seen any major effects on that. First, what happened is that Russia pushed a lot of products into EU ahead of July 1, very strong numbers in May and June, particularly.
Now, we had -- Eurostat announced their August numbers today, and you can see that July and August numbers are low, but that's from a position where there probably were quite a lot of inventories. So I think if you look at a nitrate or an NPK or even a urea price in Europe now, it's not very different compared to global values as we've seen in the past. It's a bit early to conclude on that. And you've also seen that -- probably seen that there are consultants out there stating that this duty will not have a major impact on the price level in Europe because of alternatives that Europe has when it comes to the nitrogen sourcing.
As to CBAM, of course, there are lots of unknowns, but there will be an additional cost on imports of nitrogen into Europe that you would think to a larger degree will have to be reflected in the price, as Magnus also explained during the conference call. And it remains to be seen, of course, exactly how that plays out. I don't know Magnus...
I could add. It's Svein Tore here, and I had a similar question on CNBC this morning as well when it comes to the farmers. And clearly, we need to listen to the messages that they're sending and the burden on the shoulders of farmers. At the same time and in the long term, the CBAM will support a stable supply of sustainable fertilizers. It's about strengthening Europe's food security. It's about helping the whole agri food chain, including farmers to have sustainable solutions.
But clearly, we need to listen to farmers. This is also for policymakers, making sure that we have support and incentives in place to help them as well. And it's about creating a level playing field in Europe and reflecting carbon prices into the price of fertilizers as well, and that's what CBAM is designed to do. So this is being implemented. It will have an impact, but it's important that the entire impact is not put on the shoulders of farmers.
Yes. And I can continue a bit on the other question. So in terms of our ammonia investments, in the U.S. And we will return with more details on that when we have more details to share and when things have matured. And I think from a timing perspective, we still communicate the plan that we communicated earlier, which is first half next year. But I think the way to think around it, as we also said in our presentation today and in the Q2 presentation as well, is that we will -- we aim to size the equity portion in a manner that enables us to uphold our capital allocation policy, and we will not seek to, for instance, do an equity issuance in connection with the project in the U.S.
And then beyond that, of course, the investment itself needs to be at the double-digit return investments. In terms of the strategic fit, I think that kind of goes without saying, but the economics need to work as well. On free cash flow, obviously, with this pricing and price level in the market has a significant impact on our operating capital, all-in-all, that's, of course, good news when prices go up and market goes up like it has in the recent months and this year.
When we -- particularly when we build a little bit more inventory outside the main season, that also -- the combination of the 2 leads to an increase in operating capital, which then obviously is released if price levels flatten or even soften a bit. So I think we are not concerned about that per se. I think strong price environment is a good thing for Yara. And I think our focus, as we also said, is to make sure that volumes flow out like they did in Q3.
Question comes from the line of Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Markets.
I ask a couple of questions, but maybe in order. The first question I'd ask is just on the U.S. potential blue ammonia plant. Can you -- you said you're going to give updates soon when you have some more information, but maybe if you can go through some of the rationale or drivers in that decision? What's changed in the last 6 months, positive, neutral, negative to that decision? And then also, are you seeing a blue premium in the market right now? Unrelated to 45Q, are you seeing like a blue nitrogen and blue ammonia premium for products that are coming out lower carbon, some of your competitors starting to put products into the market?
Yes. No, I think the -- I mean the main strategic drivers and also the ones that can drive value creation for our shareholders in such a project is, of course, the strong synergies that we have with our global ammonia system. As a starting point, as an ammonia producer, obviously, access to low-cost gas, which will contribute to EBIT margin improvement for us, increased scale, which will lower fixed cost and CapEx per tonne. All of these are the fundamental underlying drivers that need to be in place for such an investment.
And then, in addition, of course, in the U.S., you have 45Q. And in terms of what's changed, I think with the Big Beautiful Bill, 45Q has been confirmed there. So of course, some change, but of course, it removes some uncertainty maybe that was introduced around that in connection with the shift of the U.S. administration. So I think that's a clear positive in that regard. And I think -- and again, I mean, in addition to the strategic levers I just mentioned, obviously, the return -- the expected return for us would have to be at a double-digit stage. And then it's a matter of finding the just the best approach given a risk-reward perspective for us and for our shareholders, and that's what we're doing as we see.
When it comes to blue premiums, I think, as Dag Tore just mentioned and as we also talked about today, I mean, we have with CBAM now being implemented in Europe from next year, that in itself constitutes a premium on top of gray ammonia in Europe. And in addition to that, we continue to see development in new segments for ammonia as well, such as shipping, although slower than perhaps what many had anticipated a couple of years ago.
But I think the real sort of value driver for us in this regard is that we are able to take significant amounts of ammonia into our own system, both ammonia that we consume for our own production, but also that we sell into other markets already today. And that's really the unique part of this for us and in connection with any project that we have that ability to offtake, which, of course, is the Achilles heel for most projects these days...
Just to add on that and what Magnus pointed out in terms of offtake and to have a stable and predictable offtake for an ammonia plant is, of course, key. And as we touched upon in the presentation earlier today as well, we're consuming 3 million tonnes of ammonia for our nitrates and NPK production in Europe now and already half of that is imported, and we have the flexibility to produce all our nitrates and NPKs with imported ammonia. So that is a unique position that Yara has that creates a significant value to any project.
Just following up on Brazil. I think you said the market is stable. I was looking at some of the inventory data, I think this week and I was saying when you talk about stable nitrogen markets, I look at some of the inventory data. It seemed like potash inventories are pretty good, like [ snug ] and not too much, where phosphate inventories are getting kind of high. Can you maybe talk about the different kind of fertilizer markets or dynamics you're seeing in Brazil, not just nitrogen, but the whole sort of complex?
Yes. I think on the potash side, I think it's the whole potash market globally, but also including in Brazil has seen a very strong growth over the last few years due to relatively high affordability at relatively low prices, $350. It's not a high potash price. So deliveries have been running very well on the potash side, and there has been record deliveries on the global scene with ramp-up both in Russia, Belarus and Canada. So I think that market is doing fine from a demand perspective.
It's more a question that there has been quite a lot of supply additions as well. Of course, phosphate is quite different at $800 DAP, that's a very high phosphate price. And you are seeing demand disruptions in many places, right? And now the prices are coming under pressure. And I think that is understandable for a farmer that has seldom seen so poor affordability ratios on phosphates as there has been recently. So I can understand what you're saying there that there might be some inventory buildup around due to the fact that the farmers maybe are not taking quite as much as many of the distribution system would have expected.
Next question comes from the line of Elliott Jones of Danske Bank.
Just a couple here. Just going back to the farmer affordability side. I think you said in the presentation, it's been a good achievement to deliver these results given farmer economics. So I'm just kind of wondering, is it fair to assume that if prices do go up from here, do you see a point whereby we will start to see this really bite and farmers having to kind of revert to wait-and-see modes for the remainder of the year? Or are you just not really seeing that around these levels? I'll let you answer that first, and I'll come back to the questions.
Yes. No, I mean that is the inherent nature of a demand-driven market, right, that you have -- it's not -- prices are not set by costs. It's set by the demand side basically and how much they are willing and able to pay, and that is the situation we have. It creates quite a lot of volatility short term logically as demand is coming in, going out. So then this becomes the topic as you raised.
And of course, as we now mentioned that the European market for third quarter was pretty stable compared to last year. That is a relatively slow quarter in a historic context. In the U.S., we don't have that much data due to the shutdown. We only have July import numbers, and they were 0. They were basically a net export. So the way we read the market in the U.S. is that we have another season where we will have very concentrated demand in Q1. So yes...
Yes. And I think -- I mean as we, of course, mentioned affordability on -- and then on P&K and of course, also applies to nitrogen. On the other side, particular as it comes to Europe with CBAM being implemented from January 1, which, of course, will come at a cost on imports, right? I mean you would think that just from a pure economics perspective, obviously, buying your nitrogen before that happens is better than after. So that also, of course, may have an impact on the market as well. But then of course, there are other constraints such as storage, credit and so on. So yes...
Got it. That's helpful. And then just again on CBAM, just to kind of confirm that, like you said, in theory, the cost should be reflected in the European prices. But again, it just seems impossible that the farmers can then take all of the -- put that on their shoulders. So I'm just wondering if policy doesn't step in to help is your stance that -- who would then have to pay for the extra CBAM cost if policy doesn't come in to help farmers?
I think sort of classic microeconomics would kind of tell you that eventually would be reflected in the food prices. But I think if there are sort of schemes or things in place to help the farmer bear this cost, we don't have any overview of that, of course. But as far as we can see from a regulation perspective, there are no intentions to not implement this as communicated from January 1. But of course, as the EU has communicated when they updated this earlier this year is that the actual cash payment will be deferred to 2027.
Got it. That's very helpful. And then sorry, last question just on CapEx on your 2026 guidance, I think that included $200 million of uncommitted growth CapEx. Is it fair for us to kind of read into that, that could include the equity CapEx of the U.S. projects? Or is this a completely separate bucket to any potential U.S. project and that would actually come on top of the $200 million uncommitted?
Yes. No, I am on this money, so it's -- I think what we have as it says, is that there are $200 million that we, as for now, do not have any specific project assigned to that. But I think we would -- as we said earlier, and of course, also depending on when potential CapEx for U.S. project would come, we want to maintain this within our policy. And I think most importantly is that, of course, we will have very strict capital discipline. So if we go ahead and do a project or spend money in that area, obviously, that will restrict other spend -- other CapEx spend as well.
Next question comes from the line of Angelina Glazova of JPMorgan.
I would like to ask 2 questions, please. One is a follow-up on CBAM. As we know, this mechanism is intended to level the playing field in Europe, but it doesn't do much to help the competitiveness of exports of products made in Europe with carbon tax paid in it and then exported subsequently. Now we have seen some headlines out of the Fertilizers Europe conference yesterday suggesting that the EU might consider some CBAM export support. And I was wondering do you have any more color on that? Like would you expect this to translate into some tangible support measures?
And if so, how do you see Yara potentially benefiting from that? And then secondly, I would like to ask on your Capital Markets Day. So obviously, this is preliminary at this stage, but you have mentioned that strategy will be the key focus point at that event. But the time line for the final investment decision on the U.S. project potentially is possibly further than the CMD in January. So I was wondering if you're expecting to give us some more clarity on that project or it's not necessarily the case at the CMD?
Yes. I can talk briefly around CBAM first. I mean there are today in the European Union inward processing mechanisms on customs and then -- so which already exists. That cover exports made by -- or that allows you to avoid taxes and customs on intermediate goods and raw materials used for reexport. So that we believe will, to quite some extent, apply also for us. And then this is a fairly complicated scheme and sort of exactly sort of how it plays out, it's difficult to give a very clear picture on here now.
But I think we, for the large [Technical Difficulty] will have benefits from that. And on top of that, a lot of the exports that we do out of Europe comes out of Norway from our plant there, so in Porsgrunn. So yes, more than 90% of what we produce there, which is our second largest plant in the system is exported. And Norway will not implement CBAM in 2026. So there, we can categorically say that there's no impact in this year. As it pertains to the Capital Markets Day, we don't have any additional details around the agenda yet, but we will, of course, talk about all of the important strategic topics for Yara and ammonia is, of course, certainly a part of that. And yes, I think we'll leave it at that.
Next question comes from the line of Marcus Gavelli of Pareto.
So I wonder if you could provide us some color on the cost potential to see outside the USD 180 million, if you do? And also, if you could try to put some more idea of the portfolio optimization measures you're talking about. You have mentioned those a couple of times and Tertre is fairly a good example. But is this more of a potentially further restructurings? Or are you actually looking at potential divestments and so on of the portfolio? Just to give you an idea of how you think about that? That would be very much appreciated.
Could you repeat your first question, please?
Yes. On the cost potential outside the USD 180 millions that you've mentioned in your presentation, if you see any further potential and what that could be?
First, I think, I can start. When we first launched the cost reduction program a little bit more than a year ago in connection with the second quarter results in '24, we set a target for $150 million. And we did spend a lot of time internally through the line organization together with the unions to define that program and to have a thorough process on that. It meant that when we entered the execution phase that we were able to move faster on that and that we're hitting that target now, and we've seen further potential for this that we've increased our target to $180 million by year-end.
We're not going to stop reducing costs because of that. But then I think you should see it more in a continuous improvement as a normal ongoing part of business rather than one-off programs. So we're not planning to launch anything specific to that. But again, as I said, we will continue to focus on cost. And when we find opportunities, we'll take those and reduce our cost base further.
In terms of on the portfolio side, the way -- I mean as we talk about that in terms of our improvement programs, it's really a focus around making sure that we get the sufficient return from all our assets, including the maintenance CapEx we spend and so on and ensuring that the assets that we have generate a good return on investment also in the longer term. So it's not sort of a scheme to -- or a plan to look at sort of divestitures from a strategic perspective if you sort of understand the difference.
I think when it comes to the asset portfolio, we have taken quite significant steps, not only in the last year, also before that are the closures we've done in France, the closure we've done in Brazil, the closure of the ammonia plant in -- hibernation of the ammonia plant in Belgium are all very significant changes to the portfolio, and then we continue to monitor this.
And of course, those decisions also depend on timing. It depends on where we see prices going, both in the short and the medium term. And of course, importantly, what improvement measures we can do as well, anything there. But we've also done in parallel, as we talked about earlier today, is to increase productivity in our assets as well, which, of course, in a high CapEx industry is tremendously important for the return on investment as well.
Yes. Sure. Just one last question. Not something we used to discuss too much on this call, but it would also be nice just to hear your opinion on what sort of measures you're doing on reducing operating capital days because it's something that has been fairly flat since 2023. But also clearly something that would -- or could change your cash flow assumptions a fair bit if you actually reach further targets. So yes, could you elaborate some on that what you're actually actively doing right now?
Yes, I mean, we are quite -- I mean when we monitor performance across different markets, we calculate the cost of operating capital per tonne and sort of deduct that from the margins when we evaluate and compare. And of course, we try to optimize flows accordingly as well. But I think what's important to keep in mind is that one of the strong advantages that Yara has is the ability to distribute worldwide, which shields us from a lot of seasonality variation, which allows us to optimize the markets better.
But obviously, that also comes with somewhat higher operating capital as these products ship relatively far and yes -- and so that's in a way, you always have to look at the operating capital in connection with that flexibility that we have and which many others do not. But of course, we are looking at operating capital every day and looking to how we can optimize that and increase cash flow.
Your next question comes from the line of Tristan Lamotte of Deutsche Bank.
The first one is just following up on CapEx. You talked about elevated maintenance CapEx. What do you see as a normalized maintenance CapEx level stand? And then second, there were some one-offs in other in Q3 that you mentioned in the bridge as a headwind. I'm just wondering if there's anything similar to think about in Q4?
Yes. No, I think on the maintenance CapEx, we communicated a range of USD 700 million to USD 850 million in Q2 and per year. And the range simply comes from the fact that -- I mean the way maintenance is done in our industry that we typically have turnarounds of the plant with 3 or 4 years in between and then the plants run more or less 24/7 in between those.
So even though we sort of have an annual average CapEx, the actual CapEx per site varies significantly, where it's very high in the turnaround year and significantly lower in the other years. So -- and of course, different plants have different -- well, different sizes and so on. So sometimes the turnaround budgets are higher and some years, it's lower. And as we said in 2026, we will be in the higher end of that scale because some of the larger but also most profitable plants that we have in our system will have a turnaround.
The other bucket [ in the bridge. ]
Yes, exactly. The other bucket. And so no -- so that's largely -- I mean something you can think of as real one-offs. A portion of that gap came from positive other effects last year, such as the divestment of our business in Ivory Coast as an example. And then we have a few sort of negative one-offs in this quarter. So there's nothing particular to sort of see a continuation of in Q4.
The next question comes from the line of John Campbell of Bank of America.
First one I had was when do you expect to basically have clarity on the EU ETS and the CBAM benchmark emissions level? Because if we think about it, it's nearly roughly 2.5 months before the 1st of Jan 2026. And as far as I understand, we do not have an emissions benchmark yet for ammonia. My second question basically had around CBAM and NPK et cetera. If I sort of follow the logic, I think you presented previously was that urea prices will be naturally higher in Europe under CBAM and under ETS, particularly.
That they are major inputs, I guess, into nitrates and NPKs, therefore, NPK prices in Europe should be higher. But also if we think about it a lot of your footprint for producing NPKs is located within Europe or Norway, which I guess will have CBAM from 2027. And you sell a lot of products of NPKs outside of Europe, where presumably there wouldn't be as much of a price premium because they wouldn't have CBAM and ETS. How should we think about this? And does this come back to the point that Angelina raised related to some sort of CBAM export allowance, et cetera, re-export allowance?
Yes. Now to your first question, we don't know when we will have clarity. And as you say, even though it's only 2.5 months, there are information suggesting that there will be -- these benchmarks will not be known until March, April, the earliest. I've even heard that they might not be released until 2027 when the actual payment is going to be made. So this is, of course, going to create a lot of uncertainty around these issues and how this is going to -- because when you import a tonne of nitrogen, you -- as you say, and in that, you don't actually know the precise cost of that tonne but you have to allow for it and pay it in 2027.
And I think, of course, when it comes to EU ETS, there we have, I mean, a very good overview of -- I mean, that scheme has been in place for quite some time. And of course, we've received free allowances, which also then goes against CO2 emissions and so on. And of course, we have a good -- very good control of sort of the -- how that -- how the free allowances are reduced and sort of the surplus of free allowances that we have in our bank and so on. So that side of the equation is relatively straightforward, I would say.
I think when it comes to the import side, it's important to add that, I mean, we are not to a very limited degree, importing urea into Europe ourselves. Of course, we do import ammonia. And as we said earlier, there is an inward processing scheme there for ammonia and -- or any intermediary that used into reexports. And as mentioned, for 2026, our production in Norway that imports around 0.5 million tonnes of ammonia so that's more than 40% of our current imports into Europe, there will be no CBAM in 2026, and it will be in '27 at the earliest. So I appreciate that. This topic is quite confusing. But I think at least from -- I mean we are as prepared as we can be, I would say, given the uncertainties that still remain.
Your next question comes from the line of Magnus Rasmussen of SEB.
Firstly, I wonder if you can explain what impact you've seen from, I assume, improving phosphate economics year-on-year this quarter. And also, we have seen a bit higher both interest costs and depreciation today than we've seen in the past couple of quarters. So just a comment on whether that is temporary or whether we should expect that to continue? And finally, the USD 35 million special items labeled as other in Europe, what that is?
I start on the phosphate, and -- of course, we benefit from high phosphate prices through our captive phosphate operations in Finland as a large part of our -- all of the phosphate raw materials we need, we produce ourselves in Finland, and we benefit from a very tight and strong phosphate market. And as you also probably are alluding to, while phosphate prices -- Finland phosphate prices have increased quite sharply, a little bit under pressure recently, but at a very high level, the rock prices have been very stable.
So although, of course, we buy rock on different contracts and then there's a lot of price differentiation in the rock market between quality and grades, it's not the kind of -- you cannot just find -- easily find a benchmark for our average purchase rock price, but we do benefit also when that difference between the rock and the finished fertilizer is increasing. So yes, now -- particularly now in the third quarter, we have had expanded margins because of the phosphate situation as well on top of the nitrogen. I don't know if you want to give more details.
Yes. No. And maybe just also to remind that's the way we sort of present this right that we talk about our NPK premiums, that's sort of the -- I mean, the realized prices that we have above a global commodity blend. And then when we talk about the P upgrading margin, that's of course, the difference between our rock purchases and sort of commodity reference on DAP.
Yes, and I think that could explain the rest. In terms of depreciation, there's nothing particular to say around that or nothing out of the extraordinary there. When it comes to your question around Europe, that pertains to a couple of items. One is a recognition of future commitments in terms of environmental work that's needed to be -- that we are mandatory to do in our plant in Siilinjärvi in Finland.
So it's simply an accrual of running costs that we already have today, but which we, from an accounting perspective, accrue for now. So it's not a cash effect this year per se. Then there's also some provisions linked to another site that we closed in 2008, where we expect to sort of finish off our connection to that site in a few years' time. And yes, and those were the 2 main elements when it comes to the provisions for Europe.
Our final question for today comes from the line of Bengt Jonassen of ABG Sundal Collier.
Maybe a bit on the side of the previous questions, but I'm interested to hear your thinking. Maybe the first one to Dag Tore Mo and that's the difference between the politics from China on the urea and ammonium sulfate. We have seen that ammonium sulfate export has skyrocketed in the last years, whereas there has been several restrictions on the urea. Do you have any theory or good explanations behind that?
Yes, it would be a little bit speculative maybe, but I don't think they really regard ammonium sulfate as a critical fertilizer in China. It's kind of a byproduct of industrial production. It could, of course, be used as a fertilizer and they also do sometimes, but not now much because, of course, when the urea price is so depressed in China, while the global urea price is almost double, it gives all incentives to try to export all the ammonium sulfate they can because it's not controlled and then consume urea locally. And I think that given that the government feels that urea supply is adequate in China, they have no kind of interest in stopping ammonium sulfate exports just to stop it when they really don't need more nitrogen domestically.
So that's why they probably have done it this way. They give priority to urea for their domestic consumption and sees ammonium sulfate as a kind of a different animal. Whether there are some agronomic issues as well into this, I don't know because I mean, ammonium sulfate is quite acidifying for soils, et cetera, et cetera. So there could be a kind of a limit to how much you want to use of that and so on. But now I'm kind of speculating. But you're totally right they have -- there is absolutely no controls of ammonium sulfate, which I think you can find logical given that they have more than sufficient urea supply for the domestic market.
Yes. Very good answer. The second question would be on the industrial side of Yara. If we look at volumes on a 12-month rolling basis, they are down close to 5%. Maybe some explanation behind -- the drivers behind that. I understand that there are several products in that portfolio, but also if there are any changes in demand going into 2026?
Yes. No and I think if you refer to our Industrial segment as an -- so it's basically 2 things. I think the major reason is we had a stop in one of our plants that predominantly serves the industrial markets in this quarter. So that reduced production levels there. In addition, we have made, as we also communicated today, a small change in our segment reporting where our assets in Australia, ammonia plant and the technical ammonium nitrate plant have been moved from Yara Asia and Africa to Yara Global Production and Yara Industrial Solutions, respectively.
So -- and in the nitrate plant there that's now part of it, we also had some small production losses. And then the last point is that we have hibernated some of our assets in Brazil, specifically one producing sulfuric acid as part of the asset portfolio optimization. Yes, so that -- those 3 factors explain that difference. But there's no changes on the demand side.
A follow-up question from David Symonds of BNP Paribas.
Just a couple to finish from me. You mentioned, obviously, NPK margins came down in Q3 versus Q2. And you said this is pretty common with higher commodity prices, which we did see sequentially. But with nitrogen prices coming down again into the fourth quarter, can I just ask, are you currently seeing higher NPK margins in Q4 as those nitrogen prices come down? Or are those remaining a bit lower as a result of farmer weak economics essentially?
And then the second question on Brazil is clearly a growing credit issue for farmers in Brazil, but your -- there's no real sign of that in your deliveries, even your deliveries of higher-value NPKs to Brazil. So can I just ask what your distributor margins were in Brazil in Q3? And how were you able to sort of sidestep a pretty tough environment there?
Yes. No, I think to -- I mean to answer your last question, I think -- I mean what we can say around margins for Q3 was that they were pretty stable and at the levels that we usually have had them. I think when it comes to the volumes in Brazil and the issues that you raised, there -- I think our commercial teams, they have done a very, very good job in positioning our volumes.
I think also, I mean, the value that our products create in particularly the cash crop segment is still significant for the farmer and enables them to choose that as opposed to alternatives. And then of course, we -- when it comes to credit, we manage that, obviously, very, very closely, but we've not seen any significant issues per se. But if you want to say -- I mean we don't guide on premiums going forward, but we talk a little bit about the market right now, of course.
Yes. And I think also when it comes to, let's say, the European situation [ rather than ] back to the CBAM issue again [ right about what ] Magnus talked about earlier, that could lead to a phasing where, let's say, the market now in the rest of Q4 will be quite stronger than without that CBAM effect. You may have seen that we issued a new nitrate price yesterday for Germany at EUR 335, while that is kind of -- it is lower than the list price that we came out with earlier, but it's significantly higher than what the current recent pricing has been more like EUR 300. So I think it's a little bit of a -- yes, it -- I don't think we would like to give any precise guiding on exactly how this plays out now for the rest of the year.
No, but I think -- and again, it's very difficult to predict, particularly with the moving parts we have around CBAM as well. But again, of course, 45% of nitrogen into Europe is imported with the carbon adjustment tax on that -- the cost of those imports will go up. So I mean, from that perspective, obviously, buying before Christmas makes sense in that regard, and then we'll see what happens.
Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call back to Maria for final remarks.
So thank you to everyone for good questions. And if there are any further questions, feel free to contact IR. Thank you.
Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.
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Yara International — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
Yara International — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Welcome to Yara's Third Quarter Results Presentation. The presentation today will be held by our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; and our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand. At 1:00 p.m. after the presentation, there will be a conference call where you can dial in and ask questions to management. You can find log-in details under yara.com and Investors.
With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether.
Thank you, Maria. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you're dialing in from, and thank you for joining our third quarter results presentation.
As always, we start by looking at our safety performance. Yara must be a safe place to work for our colleagues and contractors. This is, has been and will continue to be our main priority. However, our safety performance so far in 2025 has not continued the positive trend we've seen in the last years. And in August, we experienced a tragic loss of a colleague following a serious accident at the Rio Grande plant in Brazil. This accident is unacceptable, and we express our deepest condolences to the family, to friends and to all colleagues.
In Yara, we have our Safe by Choice way of working, and we have golden rules for safety behavior to protect us. [ Amaral ], our colleague who died in the accident, followed all our rules. In fact, he was on his way back to his workstation when he was struck by a roof structure that collapsed. When our colleagues follow the Safe by Choice way of working, accidents should not happen. It is my responsibility to ensure that we offer a safe place to work. On August 6, for [ Amaral ], we did not do that, and that is my responsibility. A comprehensive investigation is underway, and Yara is fully committed to implementing all necessary measures to prevent such event from happening again.
We must never compromise on safety, and targeted initiatives are also underway to strengthen the Safe by Choice program, including enhanced training, deeper learning from accident investigations and regular safety reviews. We have addressed this immediately within the organization, and we have taken action to strengthen our focus and execution on Safe by Choice, making sure that the basics and that the routines are in place. Safety requires continuous focus, and we will improve our performance. We remain committed to achieve our ambition of 0 accidents.
Moving to the key elements of our third quarter. With the continued improvements in operational performance, we're pleased to deliver another strong quarter. Yara delivered an EBITDA, excluding special items, of $804 million, reflecting an increase of 38% compared to the same quarter last year. Margins increased this quarter, driven by supportive market fundamentals, but also strong commercial performance. In addition, we continue to deliver strong progress on our cost reduction program, and we're already ahead of our original program target, and we're now targeting $180 million cost reduction to be achieved by fourth quarter 2025. Underlying production performance is at record levels again this quarter, breaking the previous record, which was set just 1 quarter ago.
Increasing asset utilization is the most value-accretive growth we have and the most effective way to increase capital returns. Adjusted earnings for first half of 2025 are USD 3.25 per share compared to USD 1.37 a year ago. And this clearly demonstrates our commitment to increase profitability through strong and consistent focus on improving our core operations.
Turning now to the EBITDA variance for the quarter. Volumes were stable this quarter as slightly higher crop nutrition and ammonia deliveries were offset by lower industrial deliveries. Underlying market fundamentals remain supported with stable gas prices and increased nitrogen pricing. And our commercial teams have been able to position our portfolio well in the market. Price margin is impacted somewhat by slightly lower premiums on nitrates and NPK as pressured farmer affordability puts an additional pressure on premiums, especially in the pre-buying season.
Fixed costs are $40 million lower than a year earlier, reflecting continued progress on the cost program. We have a larger-than-normal impact from Other this quarter beyond $17 million in currency. And this is mainly driven by positive one-offs last year that we did not have this year, such as the divestment of our operations in the Ivory Coast and insurance compensation in Belle Plaine. In addition, we had write-downs linked to smaller projects.
Quarterly return on invested capital, or ROIC, is at 12.6% and above our through-the-cycle target of 10%. And this marks a solid increase from 1 year ago and is a testament to the work we're doing to improve underlying returns. And I would like to thank all my colleagues for their strong contributions to make this possible.
Let's then take a closer look at return on invested capital. Since the launch of the cost and CapEx reduction program, we have seen a steady ROIC improvement driven by structural improvements such as closure of assets that are not yielding sufficient returns. And in addition, we have been supported by favorable market conditions. ROIC for the quarter is at 12.6%, and results over the last 12 months have been impacted by a settlement loss on Dutch pension fund of approximately $100 million in fourth quarter last year and in addition to restructuring provisions related to our cost program. Excluding these special items, the ROIC in the last 12 months is at 10.3%, and this is in line with our target of 10% through the cycle.
The cost and CapEx reductions are having a significant effect, and they represent 2 percentage points of that increase compared to second quarter 2024. Going forward, increased capacity utilization, continued strict capital discipline and portfolio optimization will support further underlying ROIC improvement, and we remain committed to deliver a 10% ROIC through the cycle.
Nitrogen prices are currently demand-driven and at high levels compared to historical averages. This is driven by a continued tightening of the supply/demand balance, which we expect to continue. The increase in nitrogen pricing is well reflected in our results and drives increased margins despite the compression on premiums.
But also in a higher price environment, the market values the premium attributes of yield, quality, but also the supply certainty that Yara provides worldwide. But it is typical to see lower premiums in a high price environment while overall margins expand. As such, the regions have delivered a strong commercial performance this quarter while upholding deliveries. We are, however, concerned for farmer profitability going forward with softer crop prices, trade disruptions and a high regulatory burden on farmers.
We continue to deliver a strong production performance, and I'm very pleased to see that yet again, we're setting new records, closing in on the 2025 target that we set back in 2019. Production of finished products has increased with 1.6 million tonnes since 2019, excluding portfolio effects. And this translates into an implied annual EBITDA increase of almost $250 million since 2019 using 2025 margins. And the positive EBITDA impact is mainly driven by premium products from our most profitable and future-proof plants. I note that these volumes reflect underlying production, not necessarily matching actual production as we adjust for any market-driven curtailments. The continued strong trend in production performance demonstrates that our sharpened focus on core operations is consistent and sustainable.
We continue our progress on reducing our greenhouse gas emission intensity as well, and we are on track to reach the 2025 target. Reduced greenhouse gas intensity is an important driver for sustainable market improvement, as higher efficiency leads to both lower gas costs and lower ETS costs. Combined, this represents an annual EBITDA improvement of over $100 million compared to 2018, our baseline year.
Our portfolio of more than 80 executed greenhouse gas emission reduction investments has contributed to profitably decarbonize Yara's operations. During 2025, the total investments for the combined portfolio were already paid back. Increasing our asset productivity is the most capital-efficient growth for Yara and drives higher returns.
I'll now hand over to our CFO, Magnus Ankarstrand.
Thank you, Svein Tore. As explained earlier, EBITDA, excluding special items, is up USD 230 million compared to last year, mainly reflecting improved margins and lower fixed cost. Following that strong underlying performance, earnings per share, excluding currency and special items, almost doubled to $1.33 for the quarter.
As we have already touched upon, the return on invested capital increased by 1.1 percentage points to 8% on a 12-month rolling basis, whereas the quarter in isolation was at 12.6%. That means that our run rate takes us above our target 10% ROIC over the cycle. However, we remain committed to further improvements to ensure we can sustainably stay at this level.
Looking to the cash flow. Cash from operations increased by USD 32 million compared to a year earlier as the higher operating income was offset by a buildup of operating capital in the quarter. Seasonal buildup of operating capital is common in the third quarter and fourth quarter, and the actual net change in operating capital depends on volume, but also price environment. The increase in net operating capital in the third quarter compared to last year partly reflects our improved production levels, but mostly the general increase in nitrogen and phosphate values through the quarter. On the investment side, our cash outflow decreased by USD 26 million compared to last year, reflecting our strict capital discipline.
Turning to the segment results. We saw improved EBITDA and return on invested capital across all segments, except for Global Production, which had a slight decline in ROIC. Rolling 12 months ROIC for Global Production is impacted by the fourth quarter settlement of a Dutch pension fund, which was a noncash event last year. Excluding this, the YGP ROIC would have been 7.8% and improved since last year.
Europe saw a strong increase in EBITDA following higher margin on nitrogen and phosphate and lower fixed costs. Returns in Europe the last 12 months are impacted by restructuring costs and environmental provisions. Looking at European ROIC for the last 12 months, excluding special items, we end up at 7.1%, reflecting the effects of the underlying improvements. However, this is still not at a satisfactory level, and core to increase this is to continue improving resource efficiency, optimize the asset portfolio and seek further margin expansion opportunities.
The Americas EBITDA increased by 33%, driven by higher margins and increased sales of premium products. And the region continues to deliver strong return on capital. Asia and Africa continued to deliver strong results with a 10% increase in EBITDA and a ROIC above 20% as strong commercial margins more than compensated for lower deliveries. The strong commercial performance and premiums in Asia continued this quarter and was a key contributor to the results. Please also note that the Pilbara plants no longer are reported as part of Yara Africa and Asia. And Pilbara Ammonia is now reported as part of Global Production, whereas Pilbara Nitrates is in the Industrial Solutions P&L.
And turning to YGP, we see a significant EBITDA improvement of more than 70%, reflecting record production levels, increased ammonia and urea prices, as well as improved phosphate upgrading margins. Industrial Solutions EBITDA increased by 8%, mainly reflecting one-off costs in Brunsbüttel last year. Lastly, Clean Ammonia delivered higher results following increased ammonia prices, higher deliveries and lower fixed costs. While returns are improving, we maintain our focus on increasing returns further to ensure delivery of our 10% through-the-cycle target.
Looking at deliveries for the quarter, they are in line with the year before as slightly higher Crop Nutrition and ammonia deliveries were offset by lower Industrial Solutions deliveries. Deliveries were mainly driven by higher nitrogen deliveries in Europe and higher NPK deliveries in Brazil. Maintaining deliveries during off-season in Europe and difficult farm economy environment is a significant achievement for this market.
Africa and Asia deliveries were down, driven by lower sales of nitrates in Africa and NPK in China, however, maintaining total margin in both markets. The lower industrial deliveries mainly reflect the hibernation of nonprofitable assets in Brazil and has limited EBITDA impact. The improvement program continues to deliver ahead of plan with a further reduction of USD 38 million in the last 12 months. This means that we are ahead and targeting to deliver a USD 180 million end of year run rate, excluding currency impact.
Through rigorous program management, we have streamlined our organizational setup and reduced activities in lower return areas without reducing the top line. In total, we have reduced our workforce with more than 1,650 FTEs compared to when we started the program. As we move into the fourth quarter, we expect additional cost reductions, with the full year effect of implemented measures materializing in addition to remaining measures, which will be partly offset by inflation, but we are confident that we will deliver beyond our target.
Looking at CapEx, the strict capital discipline continues, and we uphold the 2025 guidance of USD 1.1 billion. For 2026, we expect a CapEx level of USD 1.2 billion, in line with previous guidance, of which roughly USD 200 million is uncommitted and reserved for potential value-accretive growth projects. Strict discipline will ensure only projects with core strategic fit and double-digit returns are prioritized. Other growth for 2026 relates to ongoing high-return projects, mainly Sluiskil CCS, the new YaraVita plant in the U.K. and upgrade of sulfuric acid production in Finland.
In 2026, we will be at the higher end of our maintenance CapEx range due to major turnarounds in two of our largest ammonia plants, namely Belle Plaine and Pilbara. The improvement program remains a top priority for the organization and crucial to improving our EBIT margin and returns going forward. While we have delivered on our original targets, we will continue with strict resource discipline and evaluate further optimization opportunities continuously.
Looking at our net debt, we see a stable development as strong cash earnings were offset by seasonal operating capital build, driven mainly by a higher price environment. The Other category mainly reflects noncash items from new leases and currency translations.
Turning then our attention to the markets. We continue to see strong nitrogen fundamentals ahead. The urea market is demand-driven despite some softening over the last months. Price levels remain firmly above last year despite an expectation of around 4.2 million tonnes of Chinese export. As we anticipate the Chinese export window to close as they turn focus to the upcoming domestic season, India's fresh tender is supportive of global supply and demand balances. With the European season approaching and the trend of modest preseason imports in the U.S. over the last years, there are signs that Q1 2026 could become significantly tighter than this year.
Farmer economy, however, remain a concern with softening prices on most crops. This is driven by strong crop production and yields, which partially alleviate lower prices for the farmer. There is, however, a contango in the market with forward prices for 1 year ahead 10% to 15% above current crop prices, indicating some support for improving farmer economics. On a medium-term basis, we see that new urea capacity coming on stream looks to stay well below historic consumption growth. And given the lead time to get new urea projects to completion, the supply outlook looks increasingly firm towards 2030, suggesting a strong ammonia to urea operating margin in the medium term.
Adding to the farmers -- adding to the European farmers' burden is carbon taxation on imports, the so-called Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will be implemented in 2026. Today, 45% of EU's nitrogen consumption is imported, predominantly by urea, which makes up the marginal cost for European nitrogen imports. As a molecule, urea contains CO2. The carbon footprint is, therefore, inherent to urea as opposed to nitrates, which can be decarbonized through low-carbon ammonia. The inherent carbon content on imported urea, combined with CBAM, is likely to introduce a further spread on European nitrogen prices above global prices.
CBAM mirrors the European trading scheme on carbon and is an inseparable part of the scheme, as it levels the playing field between European producers and producers of imports to Europe, who so far have been able to compete without paying the same carbon cost as domestic production. The exact impact on nitrogen will depend on several factors such as carbon intensity, ETS prices and the benchmarks defined by the European Commission.
Yara has prepared for this implementation for several years and made adoptions where it has made financial sense. As an example, we have made investments to abate N2O emissions from our nitric acid plants and energy efficiency improvements, among others. These have been relatively minor investments where we now see the financial benefits. Being below emission benchmarks has allowed us to build a bank of free allowances valued at around USD 500 million at current ETS prices. These allowances can be utilized against ETS payments in plants where emissions exceed free allowances for the year or sold in the market, depending on what is more financially attractive.
In addition, our CCS investment in Sluiskil will be commissioned in 2026 and reduce our CO2 emissions by up to 800,000 tonnes annually. This reduction frees up quotas from the bank that can also be used against emissions elsewhere or sold. This demonstrates that Yara's investments in decarbonization have a clear financial return requirement which now can be monetized, and this policy will continue going forward.
With respect to CBAM, Yara's ammonia import system is set up with high flexibility. As we expect nitrogen prices in Europe to reflect the marginal import cost of urea, Yara will benefit from the adjustments made to our system over years. These benefits include duty suspension or duty voiding options for ammonia going into products re-export via in-boarding processing procedures, thus reducing our exposure. In addition, our largest export plant is located in Norway, which will not incur CBAM until this is implemented in 2027 at the earliest.
Going beyond next year, Yara's unrivaled ammonia import infrastructure in Europe positions us well for incorporation of decarbonized ammonia, underlying Yara's proactive yet cautious and disciplined approach to decarbonization. And with that, I give the word back to Svein Tore.
Thank you, Magnus. Our global ammonia system underlines our flexibility and opportunity space with regards to renewing our ammonia production. Yara has the largest import infrastructure for ammonia in Europe. And out of the 3 million tonnes that we consume for nitrate and NPK production, 50% is already imported. All of our European nitrate and NPK production capacity is fully flexible on where the ammonia is sourced from. And with structurally higher gas cost in Europe and increasing carbon taxation, capitalizing on this operational flexibility is key to unlock value and to increase margins.
Taking an equity stake in new U.S. ammonia production is still expected to be highly value accretive as it enables us to access low-cost gas and production economies of scale, lowering fixed cost and maintenance cost per tonne. This has always been a core part of Yara's success, and the latest example being our investment in Freeport, Texas, which has generated significant returns for Yara and our shareholders. Any investment in new production capacity must be profitable in itself, meaning that the attractiveness of an investment would be assessed based on the fundamental attractiveness of ammonia production itself. In addition, we expect synergies with our European premium production assets, first and foremost, through increased margins of nitrate-based products. And secondly, it would enable us to reduce our European carbon cost exposure.
With Yara being an attractive partner for any ammonia project, our key focus is to mature potential partnerships where we can match Yara's risk/reward appetite with that of a partner, considering CapEx exposure, price exposure, commercial exposure and volume offtake. This means that more importantly than defining whether we pursue one or two projects is maximizing returns through an optimal risk/reward exposure while staying committed to our capital allocation policy. Potential investments in the U.S. remain our key growth priority and our time lines remain unchanged, with the first half 2026 as a decision point.
I will also reiterate the message from the second quarter. Yara will size a potential equity investment to our capital allocation policy, aiming at maintaining shareholder returns also in an investment period where we do not plan for any equity raise as part of a final investment decision. We believe Yara has the value drivers in place to create significant shareholder value from an upstream equity position, but we need to be confident in the robustness of returns. Stress testing key assumptions is critical in addition to evaluating Yara's optimal risk/reward profile in such a project and to match this to a partner's risk/reward appetite. Double-digit returns remain a requirement for a potential final investment decision, which is planned for first half of 2026.
To wrap up the presentation, I would like to highlight the following points. The key focus of the whole organization is to ensure a safe working place, while at the same time, optimizing our core operations, increasing free cash flow and generating higher returns to fund improved shareholder returns and value-accretive growth. We continue to deliver increased returns to shareholders with increased resource efficiency through lower fixed cost and CapEx, and then also increased asset utilization and progressing on our portfolio optimization. Through strict prioritization and capital discipline, we have already over-delivered on the fixed cost and CapEx reductions that we targeted in the second quarter of 2024.
We're also progressing on our portfolio optimization and have taken the decision to mothball our ammonia asset in Tertre in Belgium, strengthening the long-term competitiveness of the premium product production at this plant. Ensuring a future-proof asset base is core to strengthening Yara's position and increasing our long-term competitiveness. Through strong commercial performance, we continue delivering strong premiums on our nitrate and NPKs in a high price environment with pressured farmer affordability. Both ammonia and premium product growth are key opportunities where we see potential for high returns and excellent strategic fit.
Through disciplined capital allocation and a strong focus on resource efficiency, Yara is enhancing returns. Going forward, we continue to take steps to expand margins by diversifying energy cost and leveraging scale and operational efficiencies across our global network. This will enable increased returns for shareholders.
I'll now hand back to Maria.
Thank you, Svein Tore. I would then like to announce that Yara will host the Capital Markets Day on January 9, 2026. This will be hosted as a hybrid event with the possibility to both participate digitally or physically in Oslo. The CMD agenda will focus on Yara's strategic priorities and value creation agenda. More information and details will come later. So for now, please save the date.
That concludes today's presentation. The Q&A will start at 1:00 p.m. Oslo time, and log-in details are found on our website under Investors. Thank you for watching.
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Yara International — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
Yara International — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hello, and welcome to Yara's Second Quarter Results Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Maria Gabrielsen, Head of Investor Relations in Yara. Please go ahead.
Hello, and welcome to everyone for this conference call for our second quarter results. We hoped you all watch today's presentation. So, I'm going to go straight into Q&A, but I'm here in the room together with our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; our CFO; Mr. Magnus Ankarstrand; Head of Market Intelligence, Dag Tore Mo and other representatives from Yara.
So with that, please operator, could you open the first slide, I will give...
Your first question comes from the line of Christian Faitz of Kepler Cheuvreux.
2. Question Answer
Yes. I hope you can hear me. Thanks for taking my, 2 questions, please. First of all, can you please share some thoughts on the Yara blue ammonia project planning in the U.S., particularly in the context of the “"Big Beautiful Bill." And my second question would be, would you attribute any demand destruction in Europe in Q2 to adverse weather conditions, i.e., the extended drought or is it simply the prebuying effect on the back of an early spring last year?
Yes, could you just repeat the second part of your first question here, [indiscernible]
So yes, I mean, your blue ammonia project where you still have to do an FID at some point, my understanding is either late this year or early next year. But with the IRA kind of being phased out with a big beautiful bill by Mr. Trump. How is your thinking around that blue ammonia project or these blue ammonia projects going forward?
Yes. Okay. I understood. I think first of all, the project when we make project decisions, of course, we look at the fundamentals for ammonia production and whether those are in place and give a profitable project, that's one. Number two, of course, which is that we point to are the tax credit. And specifically for the projects that we are looking at is Section 45Q of the general revenue cost. That you say tax credit that was present long before the Inflation Reduction Act, it was increased by the IRA. And it was continued with the new budget or the new bill that was passed in Congress signed by the President now a few weeks ago. 45Q is maintained and actually expanded a little bit as well. So our thinking around that has not changed per se. It has -- if anything, it's been confirmed or improved. But of course, we watch that and all other geopolitical assumptions very closely. And for the second question, I hand over to Dag Tore.
As we mentioned, we think that the season deliveries in Europe is up a little bit compared to last season, 1% to 2% per ounce or something as still estimates, so fairly normal development and so most of them are facing as we indicated between the second and the first quarter also the fourth quarter was relatively strong last year. So on the weather issues, the initial problems improved quite a bit. Yes, across, let's say, Germany, Sweden and Poland, et cetera. So that looks quite good. So the latest estimate I've seen from the European Union, for instance, is a rather positive yield outlook in Europe and definitely much better than last year, but even above average. This current heat wave, I have not seen or picked up anything specific as to serious problems at least nothing that I have observed on that.
Your next question comes from the line of Lisa De Neve of Morgan Stanley.
I have 2. The first question is the EU has all put in place, import duties on nitrogen-based fertilizers from Russia. I mean how do you see the shaping the European market from here, especially as it relates to nitrates and NPKs. And what do you think it means for your European farmers? That's my first question. And then secondly, can you share what you're seeing on current demand dynamics, especially in Brazil, given the expectation for a strong U.S. corn crop?
Yes, as we indicated, there is over EUR 40 average import duty on Russian nitrogen products from July 1, and EUR 45 on phosphate products. We haven't seen much kind of shift yet. Russians are still active in the European market, of course, then taking a bit of a hit on the netbacks compared to earlier. But of course, large markets they have. But more a question for the Russian of optimizing their exports by market anyway. So that -- so far no huge effect on this. One interesting element that we have yet to see is this threshold of figuring out a much lighter duty, if that is 1.8 million tonnes across all products as many, seem to believe, then there will be a reduction eventually in the Russian exports into Europe. We will probably see that later in the season in that case.
As to nitrogen in particular, there are, of course, a lot of other sources of imports into Europe that is not far away. Egypt and Algeria are duty-free and are already seeing Europe as almost like their home market and Nigeria as well. So there's no lack of sources of securing nitrogen into Europe. But maybe a little bit higher prices would be logical to assume in order to shift those trade flows accordingly.
And just to add on the Russian exports to Europe, what we seen and I'm pleased to see that European Commission has addressed that is that not only the exports of Russian urea into Europe continue, but it's increased compared to prewar levels. And return this one is level of playing field when it comes to competition and the other markets who are independent. And that's a lesson that Europe has learned the hard way when it comes to energy, and natural gas, and it could be avoided in the future on other sectors as well. And that's what is now recognized and then with the tariffs in place from July 1, that's one step.
And then as we mentioned there are some voluntaries, but there are also some calendar triggers here as well. So it starts now at one level, and then it will gradually increase in the years to to come, of course, there are other import sources as well. And so the price impact is limited. But at the same time, this is also European -- Europe protecting us against dependencies from Russia as well. And it remains to be seen how it's interpreted in terms of the volume triggers, but there is a volume trigger as well, as said, if the import continues or increase.
On the Brazilian side, as you mentioned, I mean, U.S. corn, large U.S. corn acreage is more element top seed and as Magnus mentioned in the presentation also that we are seeing quite supportive conditions for crop protection in general in the world. Now there are fewer issues around than what we normally see in a year. It's my impression from the latest outlooks from USDA and others.
So yes, that is kind of putting a little bit of a limit on grain prices, which are kind of most other price commodities or food commodities. Then what we observe in Brazil is relatively flat, I would say. They have been importing roughly the same amount of nitrogen so far as they did last year. A shift away from urea towards ammonium sulfate from China, but the total nitrogen around the same and on phosphate similarly. So it seems like it's running fairly smoothly and quite normal, and they are actually quite active buyers. Today, you may have observed that the CFR prices to Brazil on urea pick up a little bit recently. So nothing dramatic, I would say, fairly normal. This is like the most focus this week. It's on this coffee -- coffee-ish. Trying to get as much Brazilian coffee in the U.S. market before there is potential delivery...
Your next question comes from the line of Aron Ceccarelli of Berenberg.
The first one is on your volume mix. What is the main reason for the lack of positive contribution on your EBITDA from volume and mix in Q2? And when you look at your Q3 order book, how should we be thinking about volume and mix going into the next quarter? The second question is around your blue ammonia projects in the U.S. In your call earlier today, if I understood correctly, you mentioned that you are not evaluating any equity issuance. Perhaps can you elaborate a little bit around that, please?
Yes. Thank you. On the volume side, the main drivers behind that being flat on the EBITDA level is that we had a strong Q1,particularly in Europe on the volume side, less now in Q2, but overall for the season up. And last year was a little bit the other way around. So that's basically the main difference there.
So the increase in volumes in Brazil little bit lower margin volume, it's on the higher margin making [indiscernible]
Right. With regards for the third quarter, I mean, John said in the presentation, we don't guide specifically on the mix as such. On the blue ammonia project, as I said in the presentation, when we evaluate those in addition, of course, that we need to expect double-digit return. We're also not planning to invest a level -- in the CapEx at the level where we would plan for doing an equity raise. That is correct.
What would you say is the best setup or structure for these type of deals?
I think as we also pointed to in the presentation, all of our ammonia projects historically have been partnerships. So we believe that, that is the best structure. I mean, obviously, I mean sharing equity with others. It means complementary skills with others as an example in all of our ammonia joint venture, Yara's off-taker and our capabilities and strong synergies or strong infrastructure in that area brings a lot of synergies to a project that increases Iran value of the project.
So really partnerships and complementary skills that is able to increase the underlying value and return of the project and also then share -- equity and share risk and those are sort of the main businesses that we follow and we -- as we have done in the past, most recently with our Freeport ammonia plant that we completed in 2018.
Your next question comes from the line of Elliott Geoffrey Jones of Danske Bank.
The first one is just on the market. So kind of -- how are you viewing volumes and deliveries kind of going forward? There's obviously been some supply-side shocks that have driven urea prices up. So I'm just kind of wondering what you're seeing in terms of the volume side of things?
And then secondly, a question just on CapEx. So yes, I know the decrease in growth CapEx projection for this year, just any color as to what sort of project that was? And if we should expect that project to maybe return to next year, for example? And then kind of a more general question in terms of CapEx of blue ammonia facilities. I'm just wondering how much CapEx inflation you've seen from other kind of blue ammonia plants in the last couple of years? Any kind of color on that would be very helpful.
On the supply outlook, it's, of course, not possible for us to get on the utilization rate in general. As you mentioned, there are a lot of events that happened that are foreseen like how much we reproduced in Egypt, one thing was the gas curtailment from Israel during the conflict then they're there. You also have their power needs, which they are prioritizing their gas quorum. And we'd also had Iran and you have even had some drown effects on Russia that stopped a couple of Russian plants for some while. So of course, all of these events scheduling, no maintenance of things that are not possible to forecast.
What you can see is that with a limited number of plants in the in the pipeline, the new capacities of course, the utilization rate and the Chinese export levels are from, in a way, the 2 most important supply side factors. What we see now for 2025 is that it will be surprising if the world ex China managed to produce anything more than 2024 based on what has happened so far in the year, which means that if China exports around 3 million, 4 million tonnes, that is pretty much where the supply growth will come from.
Offsetting that is worth a stronger need for Indian imports. So you don't really need that much demand growth in order to balance the market. And I think that is what we are seeing that the prices are at $450 to $500 because the market is tight and you actually need some demand rushing in order to balance. So that seems to be how 2025 looks. 2026, there are still not many plants in the pipeline, new capacity. So it is still also, I think, depends on your assumptions for what the global utilization rate is able to do and how much will export.
On the question on CapEx, if you go a year back, I mean, what we were looking at for the year was a CapEx of $1.35 billion, which we now committed to taking down through the growth projects. Now we think that people have pilot taking down further. There's a mix of things here. As you have seen, we've done changes to our asset portfolio as a fixed cost effect. But of course, it also has an impact on maintenance cost. We have also looked at our growth project portfolio. There was some uncommitted CapEx there that we do not plan to spend this year. And then there are also some project that we canceled given profitability not being strong enough or expected profitability not being strong enough. But there are also a few minor things that have started to a very high return and a very short or return in the short time frame as well, such as some key expansions for ammonia -- receiving ammonia vessels, as an example, that are very small investments with a very, very high return.
I think -- all in all, it reflects a strict capital discipline where we plan to prioritize the CapEx that we reinvest for the paying projects and progress very strictly according to that.
With regards to the blue ammonia project, yes, we've seen CapEx inflation. I think that's also have been quite clear in the market based on other projects out there and other announcements as well. I think -- but it's very important for us in that context -- I mean, in addition, of course, to have a CapEx level that the -- to our capital structure balance sheet is, of course, also to look at the CapEx per tonne, which is, of course, crucial for the profitability of the project and trying to find solutions and opportunities where we are at the competitive level there in addition to other synergies as well that will enhance project value.
Your next question comes from the line of Bengt Jonassen of ABG Sundal Collier.
I have 3, if I may. Two questions on the operations. Quite weak volumes within the Industrial segment, any high-level comments on that? The second question would be on clean ammonia division, which seems to have a weak quarter, any comments there? And the third question would be, if I remember correctly, you got quite significant boost from improved margins on third-party distribution, particularly in Brazil last year. Could you give some high-level comments on current profitability compared to that quarter?
Yes. Thank you for your question. On the volumes in industrial that mostly pertains to volumes in our assets in Brazil that we closed. And those -- the impact, the EBITDA impact of that is very minor. Otherwise, industrial has performed quite well. There's been a size reduction as well due to an outage in Brazil, but the main impact comes from the closure of the Brazilian assets.
With regards to Clean Ammonia, was a particular, of the $1.5 cost events on the project side this quarter, which explains that -- I mean that's a one-off as we see it.
When it comes to the DTC margins in Brazil, those being roughly at the same level as last year and slightly higher than our average.
Your next question comes from the line of Angelina Glazova of JPM.
I have 2, please. The first one is regarding the market share in Europe, it was good to see that you were reporting market share gains both in the first and the second quarter this year. And I'm just wondering how you've seen a set up there for the rest of the year with regards to maintaining those market share gains? Or maybe you see scope for additional gains and what measures you would need to take to achieve that? And in case you see such a scenario?
And then the second question is a follow-up on the CapEx guidance comment for this year. So you have mentioned that the reduction in guidance effectively came from removing a project -- a growth project where CapEx was not committed. So could you confirm if out of the remaining growth portion in the CapEx guidance if all of that is committed for this year? Or there is still some uncommitted portion in that?
I think I'll start with the last question first. So our guidance on CapEx for this year is our guidance. So I mean that's -- as we stand now, that's what we expect to spend. When it comes to the changes now the growth capital side now from past guidance that one particular project, it's a great project that's before different reasons and then mostly sort of not testing enough or not making the profitability pressure that we have that we're not going to proceed with in this quarter. So it's not something that we expect to move into the next year as such.
When it comes to the market share question, you're correct that the leasing out, even though we were slightly down in the second quarter. I think it's difficult to sort of predict the expectations for the next season. I mean, obviously, we look at European market but also opportunities overseas and of course, optimize as much as we can. But of course, Europe is a core market for us, and this market is pretty important for us to be strong and have a role, and we're very focused on that as well.
The last part of your question is that there is around $50 million uncommitted as of now on the growth side.
Your next question comes from the line of Magnus Rasmussen of SEB.
I have a question on the NPK margins. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like they are now for a year or 2 have been about twice as high as they have been historically. Can you explain a bit what's going on there? And whether you think this is a new normal that we can expect also going forward?
Yes. I think you're correct on your observation. I think that's partly driven by strong commercial work also prioritizing the highest paying market, the premiums that are open of the margins and certainly that that important, the things you need to keep in mind. There is, of course, also some fluctuation depending on how commodity values go, but we have seen a very strong commercial effort in particularly Asia last 3 quarters, but also in Nordics as an example. So from that perspective, the commercial job that's done the underlying performance there is strong. And then of course, premiums do are, to some extent, impacted by the loss of the size.
Your next question comes from the line of Tristan Lamotte of Deutsche Bank.
Two, please. The first is, could you please talk about the kind of levers that you can still do to improve costs and where you are in that cost-cutting journey. And to what extent that's likely to support 2026 to at this point? And then secondly, you mentioned strong premium products for the quarter. What do you think is driving this? And could you comment on how long that's likely to last?
I think on your first question on cost, as we pointed out in the presentation, we believe that we will be ahead of our result target by around $30 million as communicated. Of course, and we also give a number of where we believe sort of the actual cost for 2025 will be. And then we have measures that have been implemented in 2025, and we still have measures that are under implementation. And of course, the full year effect of those you typically don't see before we have 12-months after. So that's why we say that the run rate is lower than the cost for 2025 will be an additional effect in that 2026 as well.
And if I may add there, and we're very pleased with the engagement across the whole organization, and we spent a lot of time on detailing out and anchoring cost improvement program. And the organization has set up and moved faster than we expected. So we're setting new and higher target, but it does mean that we're going to end focusing on cost, but that is more continuous improvement that goes on the cost side, but also what we're seeing in terms of productivity as well. But when we set the program, that was like what we needed to achieve in the next 18 months in terms of the step change in the cost base, and we're pleased to see that progressing and how the organization has progressed.
And your second question is that to be always behind the growth in premium product volumes, there are generally 2 drivers to that. I think the first one, important one is high asset utilization. And there are 2 drivers for that. I think, number one, is what we pointed to in the presentation today that we have through our improvement program in production increased production -- I mean our production of premium products or finished fertilizer, in our assets, very close to our 2025 target now. And that is kind of how we measure that is sort of operational performance. So that doesn't include sort of market curtailments things like that.
But in addition to that, we have during the last 12 months had a very strong focus and also maximizing utilization of our assets in addition to sort of the operational uptime they provide, particularly going into this season we get that it's running in Q4, which gave us more product to sell in particularly Q1 but also Q2. And that's, of course, key focus area for us in addition to the operational performance, also on the commercial performance side, so that we can maximize utilization of our assets. And that's, of course, the cheapest way of increasing our ROIC and making sure that the capital create volume.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Noel of Chemical ESG.
I've got a couple, please. I just wanted to get your feedback on ammonium nitrate. I understand there's -- I understand there's sort of some pull from the defense side, and that's affecting market supplies. So I just wondered if you are having to sort of adjust for that. And yes, I don't suppose -- I think the answer is probably going to be no , but is there a way for you to get on the bandwagon by producing military-grade products. I understand there's quite a lot of interest in making that conversion. Yes, any feedback on that? And then just an update on the asset footprint optimization plans that you have and in some of the areas where there seems to be quite a lot of appetite among your peers to asset swap and so on. So if there's any sort of what the outlook for that is?
Yes. On the first one, I think we don't see sort of a particular growth for technical ammonium nitrate for the defense industry as such. I'm not sure it's the right product per se, but that's more due to the traditional areas of mining operations -- and for those purposes. But in general, of course, defense industry, the demand, a lot of different industrial projects where our base chemicals is a component to intermediary chemicals that is also requested by the defense industry. So I think if I could say that the growth we see on the defense industry side helps the industrial demand in general, even though specifically, you'll directly consuming our products.
It's growing, but not to a level that will have a meaningful or a big impact to the industry.
On the asset footprint, we have, as we talked about earlier this quarter, done quite a lot of measures, some larger closures that have been performed, the hibernation of our assets in Brazil. We're also in the process of restructuring in most of our and our most advanced in France. On top of that, we also are doing quite a lot of smaller changes that when you have it added up, it becomes meaningful contribution as well. And people continue to do that and optimize as we go forward.
We didn't bring in this call, but last quarter we did show an overview of our European asset base and quite a significant portion of that asset base is actually quite well positioned going forward with high or sorry, with the ability to import ammonia, and our ammonia exposure in Europe is predominantly in our larger plant, which is high scale, and from that perspective, on the European cost curve, quite competitive. But I think as we alluded to in the previous quarter, we have those assets that equates to around $70 million of annual CapEx avoidance from [ 2026 ].
I'd now like to hand the call back to Maria for final remarks.
Thank you to everyone for listening in, and have a good weekend.
Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.
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Yara International — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
Yara International — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Welcome to Yara's second quarter results presentation. Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether; and our CFO, Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand.
There will be a conference call at 1 p.m. Oslo time where you can dial in and ask questions.
With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Svein Tore Holsether.
Thank you, Maria, and good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you're dialing in from, and thank you for joining our second quarter earnings presentation.
As always, we start by looking at our safety performance. Yara must be a safe place to work for our colleagues and contractors. Unfortunately, the start of the year has not shown the continued strong improvement that we aim for. We saw an increase in recordable accidents across our sites in the first quarter and also at the start of the second quarter, as I mentioned in the first quarter presentation.
In May, there was a fatal accident at Tapojarvi, the contractor working at our mine in Siilinjarvi. Technically, this is not part of our statistics shown in the graph here, but that has no bearing on how we handle this very tragic accident. Emergency services were immediately alerted when the accident happened, but the person could not be saved.
This is a deeply tragic accident, and we express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and to all colleagues.
I take the safety development in 2025 very personally, and I'm not satisfied with my performance on safety. It's critical that we must never compromise on safety. We have addressed this immediately within the organization, and we've taken action on this to strengthen our focus and execution on Safe by Choice, making sure that the basics and the routines are in place.
Safety requires continuous focus. We need to avoid accidents that could and should have been avoided. We remain committed to achieve our ambition of 0 accidents, and we have all the tools in place and the way of working through Safe by Choice.
Moving then to the key elements of the second quarter results. Yara reports a solid second quarter with strong operational performance with EBITDA, excluding special items, of $652 million. This reflects an EBITDA increase of 27% compared to the same quarter last year.
We saw increased margins this quarter, driven by a combination of strong commercial performance through sustaining both strong volumes and premiums in the quarter and also supportive market fundamentals. This is a solid achievement, considering that Europe had an early spring this year. Underlying production performance is at record levels this quarter, continuing to build on the production records that we set last year.
We continue to execute and deliver on our cost and CapEx reduction program, both of which are ahead of schedule.
Adjusted earnings for the first half of 2025 are at $1.92 per share compared to $0.64 a year ago, meaning that this has more than tripled from the last year. This clearly demonstrates our commitment to increase profitability through strong and consistent focus on improving our core operations.
Turning now to the EBITDA variance for the quarter. While volumes are slightly up for the quarter, the impact in the EBITDA bridge is 0, reflecting a change in product mix. Underlying market fundamentals have been supportive with the expanded gas-to-nitrogen margins for Yara in addition to a strong commercial performance that enables sustained high premiums on both nitrates and NPKs.
Price/margin is impacted by somewhat lower realized nitrate prices, reflecting the early spring that we saw in Europe this season, which are offset by strong P upgrading margins.
Fixed costs are $46 million lower than a year earlier, reflecting continued progress on the cost program.
The progress we are seeing in the case that we will over-deliver on our fourth quarter run rate target, and this is a strong performance from the organization, which continues to demonstrate its ability to deliver also when it's facing geopolitical volatility and also stricter capital discipline.
And I want to thank my colleagues across Yara for being resilient and for continuing to deliver strong operational results.
The quarterly return on invested capital is at 9.9%. And this marks a solid increase from 1 year ago, but also demonstrates the need to sustain our focus on improving returns and achieve through-the-cycle return at 10%.
Since the launch of our Yara Improvement Program, we have steadily increased production from our existing asset base, and this is really the most value-accretive growth that we have. Of the 1.5 million tonnes increase in finished fertilizers since 2019, approximately 50% is attributed to premium products in Europe.
And if we're then using the average margin for 2025, this translates into an implied annual EBITDA increase of more than $140 million since 2019. And I do note that these volumes reflect underlying production, not necessarily matching actual production as we adjust for turnaround volumes and any potential market-driven curtailments.
The continued strong trend demonstrates that the improvements are consistent and that they are sustainable.
We're also continuing our good progress on reducing greenhouse gas emission intensity to reach our target for 2025. Reducing our greenhouse gas intensity also improves margins as higher efficiency leads to both lower gas costs and also lower ETS cost. And combined, this represents an annual EBITDA improvement of over $100 million compared to 2019.
So increasing our asset productivity is the most capital efficient growth for Yara and drives sustainable margin expansion.
With that, I will now hand over to Magnus.
Thank you, Svein Tore. As explained earlier, EBITDA is up USD 140 million, excluding special items, compared to last year reflecting improved margins and lower fixed costs.
Following that strong underlying performance, earnings per share excluding currency and special items more than doubled to $0.91 for the quarter. This brings a total EPS for first half to USD 1.92, and our efforts on the cost program have contributed to around 25% of that improvement so far.
Return on invested capital increased by 2.4 percentage points (sic) [ 1.4 percentage points ] to 7% on a 12-month rolling basis.
For the quarter in isolation, return on invested capital was 9.9%, close to our through-the-cycle target of 10%. This is, of course, driven by the same factors as EPS, but we will also continue our improvement program to ensure high asset utilization and optimize our portfolio to increase our return on invested capital.
Looking at the cash flow. Cash from operations increased USD 56 million compared to a year earlier. The seasonal release of operating capital contributed less than last year. This reflects an increase in inventory values of USD 75 million due to higher nitrogen prices. And higher nitrogen prices, of course, is a positive development for share exposed between gas and nitrogen.
On the investment side, our cash outflow decreased by USD 70 million compared to last year, reflecting our strict capital discipline and maintenance CapEx reduction through our portfolio program.
Adding these together, we see a net increase in free cash flow of USD 126 million, which is a significant improvement considering increasing inventory values this quarter.
Turning then to the segment results. We saw improved returns for the quarter across all segments, except for Global Plants. However, the rolling 12 months ROIC for Global Plants is impacted by fourth quarter settlement of the Dutch pension fund, which was a noncash event. Adjusted for this, YGP ROIC will be over 7% and an improvement from previous quarters.
Europe saw an increase in EBITDA with continued good premium product deliveries, strong margins and lower fixed costs. Returns in Europe for the last 12 months is impacted by the restructuring cost of USD 43 million.
Looking at European ROIC for the first half, excluding special items, we end up at 7.8%, reflecting the effects of the underlying improvements. However, this is still not at a satisfactory level and core to increase this is to optimize the asset portfolio and seek further margin expansion opportunities.
In the Americas, a strong underlying EBITDA increase in North America and Latin America improved results. In addition, we have had a normalization in Brazil, which took a significant loss last year due to flooding.
Global Plants saw improved production margins on the basis of very strong production performance. Commercial performance provided strong premiums in Asia for this quarter and was a key contributor to the improved results for Africa and Asia.
Lastly, Industrial Solutions results were lifted by strong commercial performance and higher nitrogen prices.
While we have had a solid EBITDA increase, the ROIC is impacted by the impairments of Brazilian assets in fourth quarter '24 and also restructuring costs. While the returns are improving, we maintain laser-focused on further increasing our returns through our improvement work to generate a return through-the-cycle ROIC above 10%.
Our improvement program is the pivotal part of exactly that. It is now a year since we launched our improvement program, and I can report that we are progressing ahead of plan to deliver beyond our target of USD 150 million.
Looking at fixed cost last 12 months, we are down USD 188 million. We have had some help from the weakening U.S. dollar, but looking at firm cost reductions, this then equates to $144 million as realized savings.
In total, our workforce has been reduced by 1,400 full-time equivalents or 9% compared to a year ago. Rigorous program management has delivered solid progress on the cost program, and we are nearing completion of the underlying initiatives, meaning that there are additional savings that will arise both from the full year effects of implemented measures as well as remaining measures.
We, therefore, believe that we will hit at least USD 30 million beyond our original fixed cost target for the end year run rate, excluding currency impacts, also considering the inflation on our cost base between now and the end of the year.
Excluding any further currency changes, we believe then that our fixed cost for the year 2025 will be closer to USD 2.35 billion, although there could be some variations due to phasing. The run rate, however, going into 2026 will be lower than this before accounting for 2026 inflation.
And during the quarter, restructuring costs were around USD 6 million and those are classified as special items, bringing the total of restructuring cost to $80 million for the current scope of improvements. We expect limited additional restructuring costs for this scope to be expensed.
Strict capital discipline is also yielding results, and we have lowered our 2025 CapEx guidance by $100 million to USD 1.1 billion for the full year. This is in addition to the $150 million reduction we said in second quarter 2024. So CapEx guidance for 2025 has in total been reduced from USD 1.35 billion to $1.1 billion since second quarter '24.
The improvement program is the top priority for the organization and crucial to improving our EBIT margin and returns going forward. With these results and the achievements on our production target that Svein Tore presented a few minutes ago, we have demonstrated our ability to drive focused improvement, and we will continue to identify additional opportunities to structurally improve shareholder returns.
Looking to volumes. Total deliveries for the quarter are roughly in line with the year before as slightly higher Crop Nutrition deliveries were partly offset by lower Industrial Solutions deliveries.
The higher Crop Nutrition deliveries were mainly driven by higher deliveries of both third-party products and premium products in Brazil, reflecting both the recovery of lost volumes due to flooding during the second quarter last year and stronger sales.
The lower Industrial deliveries mainly reflect impact from hibernation of assets in Brazil and has limited EBITDA impact.
European deliveries are down in the quarter, mainly as we had late spring with strong volumes in second quarter 2024 versus an early spring and strong first quarter deliveries in 2025. But as we can see, full season volumes for Europe are up compared to last year and almost back to 2021 level -- or '20 and '21 levels.
Meanwhile, the total nitrogen market in core European countries is up only 1%. This reflects a strong commercial performance in Europe and Yara gaining market share. The majority of the increase comes from premium products driven by increased capacity utilization in production and strong order book management balancing volume growth with margin optimization.
The dynamic of the European order book is typically a buildup during the second quarter following the new season pricing. This typically peaks at the start of the third quarter with approximately 2 months' length in the order book. This was also the case last year and suggests a 2-month lag on nitrate prices for Q3 as Yara is currently selling September volume for key markets.
Premiums remained strong during the quarter, both for nitrates and NPK. The new season price for nitrates were launched mid-May with strong premiums at the time of order taking. The launch of the new season prices, that is the 2025 and 2026 season, usually represents a reset of European nitrate prices to incentivize prebuying, explaining the declining trend in realized pricing during the quarter.
However, since the initial launch, Yara has increased its nitrate list prices in several rounds, paying close attention to market fundamentals.
NPK prices increased from already strong levels during the quarter, driven by strong commercial performance across all regions.
Yara saw a significant strengthening of the balance sheet compared to the end of last year. Strong cash earnings were the main contributor to the strengthening, and the seasonal release of operating capital more than offset investments and dividend payments.
The other category mainly reflects noncash effects from leases and currency translations.
And then turning our attention to the markets. We continue to see strong fundamentals ahead. Urea prices appear to be fundamentally demand driven for the time being, and the global supply-and-demand balances indicate a continuation both on a short- and a medium-term basis.
Looking at balances outside China, there appears to be a need for Chinese supply to cover demand driven by lower and lagging stocks in India, but obviously also the outages in Egypt and Iran a month ago has an impact here.
Looking at China, the export quota of 2 million tonnes announced earlier this year has been absorbed by the market as the market remains tight and demand driven. On top of the initially sold tonnes, it is now expected by the market that another 1 million to 2 million tonnes is in the process of being allocated, making Chinese exports still a key supply factor to watch out for in the second half of 2025.
Looking to the farming fundamentals, we have seen unusually few issues in crop production globally, softening the supply-demand balances for the year. In addition, Chinese grain imports are down from 60 million to 30 million tonnes, contributing to softer global prices.
On the other hand, this is the likely drive behind Chinese nitrogen consumption, which may suggest a continued conservative approach to exports going forward.
And on a medium-term basis, we see that new urea capacity coming on stream looks to stay well below historic consumption growth. And given the lead time to get new urea projects to completion, the supply outlook looks increasingly firm towards 2030 suggesting very strong ammonia to urea upgrading margins in the medium term.
And with that, I give the word back to Svein Tore.
Thank you, Magnus. Yara has the largest import infrastructure for ammonia in Europe. And out of the 3 million tonnes of ammonia that we consume for nitrate and NPK production, 50% is already imported today.
So all of our European nitrate and NPK production capacity is fully flexible on where the ammonia is sourced from. And this was clearly demonstrated during the energy crisis when Yara curtailed European ammonia production due to high gas cost, but we could maintain the production of finished goods by importing cheaper ammonia from outside Europe.
With the new normal now being structurally higher gas cost in Europe, capitalizing on this operational flexibility is key to unlock value and also to increase margins. Consequently, new ammonia assets are not only about lower gas costs and lower fixed cost per tonnes, but also about safeguarding our nitrate and NPK asset base. And this will be a significant margin advantage in the future. This gives us flexibility in how we approach a potential equity investment into U.S. ammonia projects.
Having access to our own ammonia is important to secure the scale and the flexibility to maximize synergies from the system. But an investment into new production capacity must be profitable in itself.
As a starting point, we need to believe that a project can create a value based on the fundamentals of ammonia production, competitive CapEx per tonne and competitive gas price. And in addition, there are benefits from 45Q and ETS/CBAM in Europe.
We believe that Yara has the value drivers in place to create significant shareholder value from an upstream equity position. But we will, of course, make careful consideration before taking any decision. Double-digit returns remain a requirement for a potential final investment decision.
And Yara is targeting an equity participation that would uphold shareholder distributions in line with our capital allocation policy, also through a potential investment period. This also means that equity issuance is not part of our potential funding levers. Final investment decision remains planned for first half of 2026.
So then to summarize. The key focus of the whole organization is to ensure a safe working place, to optimize our core operations, to increase free cash flow and generate higher returns in order to fund -- improve shareholder returns and value-accretive growth.
We're progressing on our -- on improving our returns with improved results this quarter.
The cost reduction program and portfolio optimization are delivering ahead of target, and we continuously assess further improvement opportunities.
Ensuring a future-proof asset base is core to strengthening Yara's position. We're, therefore, working diligently on executing announced portfolio changes. In Brazil, all 3 production units in scope for hibernation at Cubatão have been taken out of service. While in Europe, we're making good progress, both in Tertre and in Montoir, reaching important milestones in the social plans related to the transformation. These processes are never straightforward, but we are making good progress.
Both ammonia and premium product growth are key opportunities where we see potential for high returns and excellent strategic fit.
Through disciplined capital allocation and strong focus on resource efficiency, Yara is enhancing returns.
Going forward, we continue to take steps to expand margins by diversifying our energy cost and leveraging scale and operational efficiencies across our global network. This will enable increased returns for shareholders.
So with that, I will now hand back to Maria.
Thank you, Svein Tore. I would just like to take the opportunity to remind everyone about the conference call starting at 1 p.m. Oslo time. You can find log-in details on our page under Investors.
That concludes today's presentation. Thank you for watching.
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Yara International — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
Finanzdaten von Yara International
Umsatz
Der Umsatz stellt die Summe aller Einnahmen eines Unternehmens z. B. für dessen Produkte oder Dienstleistungen dar.
Umsatz (TTM) einfach erklärtDirekte Kosten
Direkte Kosten sind die Kosten, die direkt im Zusammenhang mit der Herstellung des Produkts oder der Dienstleistung entstehen.
Bruttoertrag
Der Bruttoertrag gibt an, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug der direkten Herstellkosten im Unternehmen verbleibt. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von der Bruttomarge (engl. Gross Margin).
Brutto Marge einfach erklärtVertriebs- und Verwaltungskosten
Die Vertriebs- & Verwaltungskosten (engl. Selling, General & Administrative expenses, kurz SG&A) beinhalten alle Aufwände für Marketing und den Verkauf sowie die allgemeine Verwaltung des Unternehmens.
Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten
Die Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten (engl. research & development costs, kurz R&D) geben Auskunft darüber, wie viel das Unternehmen in die Forschung und die Entwicklung seiner Produkte investiert. Vor allem prozentual vom Umsatz und im Vergleich zu direkten Wettbewerbern sind die Kosten interessant.
EBITDA
Das EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) ist der Gewinn des Unternehmens vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von der EBITDA-Marge.
Abschreibungen
Abschreibungen stellen Wertminderungen von Vermögensgegenständen des Unternehmens dar (z.B. durch Abnutzung von Maschinen).
EBIT (Operatives Ergebnis)
Das EBIT (engl. Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) ist der Gewinn des Unternehmens vor Zinsen und Steuern, das auch als operatives Ergebnis bezeichnet wird. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von
der EBIT-Marge.
Nettogewinn
Der Nettogewinn stellt den Gewinn oder Verlust nach Abzug aller Kosten dar.
Nettogewinn einfach erklärtaktien.guide Premium
| Mär '26 |
+/-
%
|
||
| Umsatz | 159.838 159.838 |
14 %
14 %
100 %
|
|
| - Direkte Kosten | 113.574 113.574 |
12 %
12 %
71 %
|
|
| Bruttoertrag | 46.265 46.265 |
21 %
21 %
29 %
|
|
| - Vertriebs- und Verwaltungskosten | 13.655 13.655 |
1 %
1 %
9 %
|
|
| - Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten | - - |
-
-
|
|
| EBITDA | 29.625 29.625 |
39 %
39 %
19 %
|
|
| - Abschreibungen | 10.965 10.965 |
7 %
7 %
7 %
|
|
| EBIT (Operatives Ergebnis) EBIT | 18.660 18.660 |
69 %
69 %
12 %
|
|
| Nettogewinn | 13.793 13.793 |
383 %
383 %
9 %
|
|
Angaben in Millionen NOK.
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| Hauptsitz | Norwegen |
| CEO | Mr. Holsether |
| Mitarbeiter | 15.543 |
| Gegründet | 1905 |
| Webseite | www.yara.com |


