The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: What -- for your Phase 2 expansion at the Great Salt Lake or Ogden to go from [350,000-and-above] tons and above, what could you see
you need to see happen to approve that expansion? What could happen to make you not approve it?
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: I know that it's May 14th and it's about two weeks since you reported Q1 results. It's very, very early into bid season. Is there any kind of
commentary anecdotally or anything you could offer on how bid season is shaping up?
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MAY 14, 2013 / 6:00PM, CMP.N - Compass Minerals International, Inc. at BMO Farm to Market Conference
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: Getting back to your Ogden Phase 2 expansion, if you delayed that expansion, you might have incremental capital maybe to reallocate in
terms of what's very popular these days; maybe upping your dividend, having a buyback program. If you go back several years ago, Compass
Minerals was paying out one of the best dividend payout ratios in what we'll call the fertilizer industry, it's sort of a loose up here of your
industry of your company. But and now a lot of that industry has caught up to paying much higher dividends. Is that on the -- when you're
looking at the expansion, approving it, not approving it, delaying it -- is that one of the alternatives that's sort of weighing as well?
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: I have a question from the app. It's a broad question. It's -- any concern that environmental concerns will reduce the market for salt?
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: Late last year, Compass -- or not late last year -- last year, Compass put a small investment into some Chilean salt mining rights. Obviously,
this is a year's type of development, but maybe you could talk about how you see that going, and some timelines, or how you're thinking
on it.
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: A lot of investors will focus on the highway deicing salt business. Of course, you have C&I, Consumer Industrial. It's a whole mishmash of
different types of salts. Talk about some of the trends you're seeing in C&I, sort of the non-consumer, deicing parts of C&I. You know, where
pricing and volume is going, how you're sort of applying your production to some of the better opportunities?
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: And finally, maybe we could talk a bit about on the SOP fertilizer side, some of the SOP over MOP spread expansion. We've seen -- you
alluded to earlier -- we've seen several quarters' expansion, after maybe a year or so before that, we had some contraction. Obviously,
Compass has been production-constrained itself; that maybe helped to boost up that premium. Where do you think is sort of steady-state
for that when you're back and running at normal capacity going forward?
Question: Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst
: Great. Thanks a lot, Fran.
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