Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Stuart, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OCI N.V. third quarter 2021 results conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, remember star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Hans Zayed, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon and good morning to our audience in the U.S. Thank you for joining the OCI N.V. third quarter 2021 conference call. With me today are Ahmed El-Hoshy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Hassan Badrawi, our Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will review OCI's key operational events and financial highlights for the quarter, followed by a discussion of OCI's outlook. As usual, at the end of the call, we will host a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, statements made on today's call contain forward-looking information. These statements are based on certain assumptions and involve certain risks and uncertainties, and therefore, I'd like to refer you to our disclaimer about forward-looking statements. Let me hand over to Ahmed. Thanks, Hans, and thank you all for joining us today. This quarter has been highly eventful with many corporate developments, including the recent listing of Fertiglobe in Abu Dhabi and some exciting ESG growth initiatives. We've also seen the positive momentum of our products continue, which has accelerated our goals to achieve a strong balance sheet as we capture the fruits of our expansion over the last decade. We can now fully focus on future transformational value-accretive growth opportunities and on returning capital to our shareholders. Our competitive business model, diversified exposure, and state-of-the-art production platform are really starting to show how we are differentiated from our competitors. I'll touch upon these topics, but I would like to start by covering our top priority, safety, as we want all our employees and contractors to go home safe every day. Our 12-month rolling recordable incident rate at the end of September was 0.83 incidents per 200,000 man-hours, well below industry averages. This is still not where we would like to be, and I'd like to reiterate that our goal remains to prioritize process safety and to reduce occupational safety incidents to zero at all our production facilities across the board. I think I mentioned 0.83. I meant 0.38 incidents, sorry, per 200,000 man-hours. I'd like to give some highlights of our performance during the quarter. Despite multiple large turnarounds during the quarter, namely IFCo full plant, Natgasoline full plant, ESE, one of the two lines, ammonia and the melamine line turnarounds and lower volumes, as well as the shutdown of our European methanol operations since middle of the year and significantly higher feedstock price in Europe, our EBITDA and cash flow from operations improved significantly year-over-year. Our business model showed its effectiveness during the quarter as we continued to operate and maximize our downstream production in Europe by sourcing ammonia from multiple locations, including from Fertiglobe and the United States. By doing so, we are able to weather volatility and feedstock pricing and help agricultural markets by addressing product shortages and food security concerns. We also continue to enhance our ammonia logistics with the addition of a dedicated fourth charter vessel and increasing throughput capabilities at our ammonia import terminal in Rotterdam, further strengthening our world-leading ammonia production and trading platform. Our own product sales volumes were down 11% to 2.5 million metric tons during the Q3 2021 period compared to Q3 2020 period. Total owned nitrogen product volumes were relatively flat year-over-year as a 21% increase in volumes at Fertiglobe were offset by the IFCo shutdown I mentioned earlier. IFCo is now back to running at high levels, which bodes well for in-season sales in Q4 and next year. Methanol volumes were down substantially as very good performance at our OCI Beaumont plant was offset by the turnaround at Natgasoline, the first one since starting up the plant in 2018. Before I hand it over to Hassan to discuss the financial results in more detail, I'd like to thank all our employees for making this another excellent quarter and for their strong commitment to improving and growing our business. A lot of hard work has gone into bringing us to this point, and I'm excited about what our team, assets, and aspirations can accomplish with this balance sheet and market backdrop. Hassan? Thank you, Ahmed. Firstly, I echo Ahmed's gratitude to our employees for the resilience and commitment that has been instrumental in achieving the results that we have here. Turning to the results, our third quarter showed strong financial performance despite, as Ahmed mentioned earlier, the sizable turnarounds at several of our facilities. Our consolidated revenue increased by 104% to $1.5 billion, and our adjusted EBITDA rose by 161% to $501 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin also improved considerably from 23% in the third quarter of 2020 to 34% in the third quarter of 2021. We continued to benefit from the increasing prices for our products. Selling prices improved across the board in the third quarter of, i n this third quarter compared to the same period last year, with increases ranging from anywhere between 80%-200%. Prices of our key cost input, natural gas, was on average higher for the group in the third quarter of 2021 compared to last year, especially in Europe, which resulted in a total consolidated negative impact, which we quantified to be around $103 million. Our consolidated net income line saw significant improvement with a return to profitability. Our reported net income after minorities for the quarter turned from -$37 million last year to $53 million. Adjusted net income was at a similar level as the reported net income at $66 million with an impairment of our European methanol facility, BioMCN, of $162 million, offset by a couple of factors, including the recognition of a deferred tax asset at our Iowa plant, IFCo, of $97 million. Turning to the group's balance sheet and cash flow performance. Ahmed described this year as a transformational year for OCI, and this could not be more true for our strong balance sheet as we reach another milestone by dropping to a net leverage of 1.7x. The positive trajectory continues into the fourth quarter as we expect to drop below one time during the first quarter based on our outlook and subject to market conditions of course. This continued improvement in the company's leverage profile has translated into a BB+ rating up from BB by S&P, which we hope is the start of a series of similar improvements as we maintain our path towards a stronger balance sheet. As a result of higher EBITDA, we achieved significant increases in cash from operations from $56 million in the third quarter of last year to around $400 million in the third quarter of 2021. The operating cash flows were offset by a payment of $43 million resulting from the acquisition of a 15% stake from minority shareholders in our Egyptian ammonia EBIC facility, and $237 million of dividends paid to minority interests primarily related to minorities in Algeria and leakage from upstreaming dividends to OCI from Fertiglobe. Total cash expenditures were $76 million in the third quarter of 2021, and $164 million in the first nine months of 2021 or year to date. We continue to expect to achieve our guidance of $300 million of total capital expenditure for the year, as per our earlier guidance. Maybe just to cover some recent developments as well in some detail. OCI and Fertiglobe have been active with a number of transactions during the past few months. During the third quarter of this year, Fertiglobe reset its capital structure and obtained a $1.4 billion financing, which consists of a $1.1 billion bridge loan at LIBOR + 105 basis points with an 18-month maturity extendable to, in total, 30 months. A $300 million revolver facility maturing in 2026 at an interest rate of LIBOR + 175 bps. Subsequently in October, Fertiglobe repaid the current EFC and Fertiglobe outstanding loans and dividends and returned dividends of $1.165 billion to its two shareholders, OCI and ADNOC, with OCI's share of proceeds standing at $676 million. This sort of this reset was done in the lead up to the IPO. As you all should be aware by now, on the 27th of October 2021, OCI and ADNOC successfully listed a 13.8% stake in Fertiglobe on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, known as the ADX, which generated further proceeds to OCI of around $461 million. Following this IPO, OCI continues to own just over 50% of Fertiglobe's shares, and we will continue to fully consolidate the company, just for clarity's sake. Given all these movements in October, which came after the close of the financial quarter, we have added a table to our press release showing OCI's pro forma net debt, adjusted for the resetting of the Fertiglobe capital structure, the IPO and the ensuing dividend distributions as of 30th of December. On that basis, consolidated net debt was around $3.1 billion. I would also like a chance to highlight the progression of our cash interest, which continues to drop. During the third quarter, we reduced recurring interest expense, excluding debt restructuring costs, by $53 million in the year to date versus the same period last year. We continued these efforts in the fourth quarter, and we have redeemed $540 million of our 5.25% Senior Secured Notes and another EUR 400 million of our 3.125% Senior Secured Notes. Almost $1 billion of redemptions. These will further provide benefits in terms of recurring interest expense reduction in excess of $40 million per annum from 2022 onwards. Finally, to the additional commentary that we provided in our earnings release on dividend policy. We've already indicated in our previous conference call and earnings release, if you recall, that we expect to begin paying cash dividends from 2022 onwards. Now we've added that this will be with the first semi-annual dividend to be announced in February at the time of our annual results, expected to be paid in April 2022. We see this as a very exciting development as we have not been in a position to return capital to shareholders since we've been listed in the Netherlands in early 2013. Going forward, our dividend policy states that we intend to maintain a robust and disciplined capital allocation policy designed to balance the availability of funds and excess free cash flow for dividend distribution while pursuing the value accretive ESG and other exciting growth opportunities that we see before us. Of course, while maintaining a disciplined commitment to a target of 2x net leverage through the cycle and an investment grade profile. With that, I'd like to hand back to Ahmed for additional commentary on the markets, and our outlook and group strategy. Ahmed? Thanks, Hassan. The outlook for OCI remains positive for the balance of 2021, at least into 2023, supported by strong underlying demand for nitrogen fertilizers driven by low grain inventories and healthy farm economics. We also see continued good demand in our industrial markets for ammonia, methanol, melamine, DEF, and other industrial area products. We have good visibility into Q4 2021 and on the first half of 2022 with a healthy order book across our core markets and are benefiting from further increases in selling prices compared to Q3. If I start with the outlook for nitrogen markets, low grain inventory levels and stocks-to-use ratios globally will take at least 2 years to replenish. Together with the higher demand for feed and ethanol use, this is supportive of sustaining crop prices at current levels, which amplifies the need for the application of nitrogen fertilizers to protect crop yields and ease food security concerns. OCI, with its low-cost global platform, world-scale young assets and strong logistics, can help address these grain shortfalls by delivering essential nitrogen products to the food supply chain. Current crop prices are supportive of farm incomes in key grain exporting regions, even with the higher input prices, incentivizing farmers to expand crop area and maximize yields. USDA highlights tighter global grain markets in 2022 versus 2021, with forward corn futures in the range of $5 per bushel to the end of 2024. We are seeing robust fertilizer demand in key import markets with U.S., Europe, Latin America and India all competing for product ahead of the spring season in Q2 2022. The U.S. nitrogen outlook remains solid, strong, supported by low inventories and strong demand, with high grain prices driving expanding crop area in the next two seasons. We are seeing a good start to the fall ammonia season, which began last week, around our IFCo plant, with current ammonia prices in the Midwest over $1,200 a ton, and the system is expected to be empty going into the spring season, providing more upside for Q1 2021. Brazil still needs to import an additional 1 million tons before the start of the Safrinha season in February of next year. In Europe, we maintain a healthy order book as nitrates demand is very strong, with limited pre-buying this season and low inventories across the system. Sustained production curtailments due to high gas prices could lead to further market tightness in the spring. The UAN market balance also remains extremely tight in Europe for the 2022 season, with lower imports due to less supply from Belarus, Russia and Trinidad, with more product being shipped to the U.S. as U.S. UAN prices have been strong on the back of reduced domestic supply. This is likely to lead to increased substitution to our main product in Europe, which is CAN. India, a key urea import market, needs to import at least an additional 3 million tons before the end of Q1 2022, which means at least three more tenders. This is expected to continue to drive urea price strength east of Suez with the absence of Chinese participation in future upcoming tenders. At the same time, the medium-term supply outlook is tightening as projected new urea capacities are below the level seen over the past 5 years, below projected demand growth and startups are currently being delayed. In the short term, global supply has been severely curtailed in 2021 and is expected to remain at a lower level at least until H2 2022. Higher feedstock prices have significantly raised E.U. ammonia import demand due to capacity being shut in on the ammonia plant side. Urea export bans from China at least until the end of their domestic season in H2 2022, and Russia also recently placing export quotas on urea nitrates until June 2022 altogether tighten global balances further. These factors suggest that strong fertilizer demand could last beyond 2022, as some regions may be unable to secure enough product, lowering yields and deferring demand into future planting seasons. India is a prime example of where a lack of available product has hampered demand in 2021, as domestic production is around 850,000 tons lower year-to-date October, and imports have been limited by peak buying in most other markets. Significant rebound is expected in 2022 in Indian demand, with continued expansion in crop area and government subsidies supporting urea. We expect markets such as Africa and Asia to step up in H2 2022 with the end of the season in the Western Hemisphere, and purchase large quantities of urea to cover their needs into these markets. On the industrial side, we're also benefiting from a strong rebound in all major global economies and in many sectors. This gives us good visibility on our end markets and will boost demand for methanol, melamine, DEF, and ammonia, which are used in many downstream products across various end markets including transport, healthcare, construction, automotive, textiles, among others. Furthermore, and specifically on the transport side, we're seeing increased and bolstered demand for our products, keeping the markets quite tight. Ammonia markets have been buoyed by a structural tightening this year, and merchant ammonia availability is expected to decline with minimal net capacity additions between 2021 and 2024, whereas merchant demand is expected to grow by over 5 million tons over that same period, supporting sustained price increases over the medium term. Melamine markets, sorry, have continued to be tight, driven by strong demand from home renovation and construction markets, melamine markets, tight supply in Europe and low global inventories across the supply chain. Quarterly contract prices in Q3 2021 increased by 20%. In Q4, in the beginning of Q4, we announced an additional EUR 750 per ton increase in October and another further increase of EUR 250 per ton in the month of November. DEF now represents more than 30% of our sales volumes from IFCo, and DEF prices have been highly supported by the recovery in transportation demand and higher urea benchmark prices as well. The higher net backs for this product enable us to continue to enhance our returns for our U.S. nitrogen operations going forward and provide a very good playing field to generate significant free cash flow out of our IFCo plant and direct product towards what we see to be a very high margin product. Methanol market fundamentals remain positive. U.S. spot and contract prices have been supported by low global inventories. Demand continues to recover and new supply has been delayed and is slow to ramp up. Strong demand is set to continue as operating rates for major derivative segments, including formaldehyde, acetic acid, MTBE, and MMA, are reported at high rates in the U.S. and provide good visibility on our sales and prices in Q4 and into the beginning of 2022. Oil-linked demand for methanol is strong and olefins prices are holding near $1,100 a ton, supported by the strength in oil and related feedstocks and boding well for an increase in capacity utilization rates of the MTO sector, which has been very highly muted following a significant turnaround season in Q3 on the methanol side. In the long term, supply and demand fundamentals are tightening, with new capacity additions of about 2% per annum needed to meet the expected demand growth of 4% per annum from 2021 to 2026. This, like in the case of ammonia, doesn't consider the additional upside from clean fuel demand. For example, Maersk has ordered up to, Maersk, the shipping company, has ordered up to 12 methanol-consuming container ships, which alone are expected to consume north of 1 million tons per year of methanol, if run for the entire year on methanol. Long-term demand growth for methanol marine fuels represents meaningful upside for this market. Higher marginal costs are also providing support to all our markets. TTF futures are currently pointing to $16 MMBtu for 2022, which is lower than today's price, and are around $10 MMBtu for 2023 and 2024, which is 2x higher than the levels we saw on average from 2016 - 2020, which raises the cost floor and lowers the utilization rates for marginal producers, providing support for selling prices over the medium-term period. I'd like to also give an update on our ESG initiatives. We continue to make good progress in our efforts to capture value-creative opportunities from emerging demand for clean ammonia and methanol as we evaluate blue and green projects across our platform which fit well with our ESG strategy. Fertiglobe recently announced a 70,000-ton scale-up of blue ammonia capacity through a low-cost debottlenecking program in Abu Dhabi and partner with ADNOC to sell blue ammonia from the U.A.E. to customers in East Asia. Fertiglobe will join ADNOC and ADQ as a partner in a new world-scale 1 million-ton-per-year plant that is a producer of blue ammonia at the TA'ZIZ project in Ruwais in the U.A.E. In October, we entered into an agreement with Scatec and The Sovereign Fund of Egypt to develop an electrolyzer project of up to 100 MW to produce green hydrogen as a feedstock at EBIC in Egypt for up to 90,000 tons of additional green ammonia production. Egypt is an ideal location, giving it one of the best solar and wind corridors in the world, which allows for robust future growth of hydrogen production using attractive renewable energy and supported by abundant land to place that renewable energy. Its location rests near the Suez Canal, which is ideal given future bunkering potential with the ability to go east to Asian destination markets and west to European markets to serve key importing regions for ammonia. To conclude, before we go into Q&A, we are excited about the prospects of the company. Shorter term, we expect a meaningful step-up in adjusted EBITDA in Q4 compared to Q3 2021, driven by higher selling prices, managed feedstock costs in MENA and the United States, as well as additional volumes. We expect to drop the net leverage to below 1.3x by year-end 2021 and to below 1x during the first quarter of 2022, which positions us well to start returning capital to shareholders and focus on ESG and other product projects across the group. Our end markets are looking positive into 2023 and potentially longer, and nitrogen and industrial markets continue to be the strongest that we've experienced in years, with robust underlying demand-driven fundamentals supporting our medium to long-term outlook. We also see large upside from additional demand in a range of new applications and sectors as a result of the energy transition, where ammonia and methanol are ideally positioned as the two major hydrogen uses. We're ideally positioned as we leverage our low-cost global platform, world-scale young assets, and strong commercial and logistics asset base, and harmonize our ambitious sustainability agenda with our relentless focus on shareholder value. With that, we'll open the floor for questions. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift a handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Christian Faitz from Kepler. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you very much. Good afternoon, Ahmed, Hassan, Hans, and team. Three questions, if I may. First, can you please give us an idea of how much of your current capacity is idled, particularly in Europe? Would we see any shutdowns still in the course of this year or early next year? Additional shutdowns, that is. Second, also on pretty much on that European plant shutdown topic, could you please share with us how much of your North African capacity is geared to European demand, and how has that shifted considering the recent European shutdowns? Third, question and final question, can you remind us of the payment schedules for the dividends to Sonatrach? When is the next payment due? Thank you very much. Sure. Thanks, Christian, for the question. I'll try to take them here one by one, Hassan and myself. This is Ahmed. Current capacity in Europe that is idled, we are currently idled on our methanol capacity in Europe, and you can see that in the lower volumes that were there in Q3. Just given where gas pricing is at right now and the replacement cost for methanol, we're okay with that continuing to be idled until gas comes down and/or methanol rises. As you know, that's been kind of more of a swing plant for us when you have these higher feedstock pricing environments. On the nitrogen side, OCI Nitrogen has significant downstream capacity, right? It produces UAN, CAN, and melamine, which are enjoying very strong margins right now. It has two ammonia lines, so it has the flexibility to turn down or turn off one of both lines or turn off one of those lines. Kind of the view has been to the extent we can import ammonia for lower than the price of procuring natural gas to continue to run our downstream operations and feed our customers, we're doing so. We definitely have reduced production on the ammonia side, given, you know, the north of $20 per MMBtu gas costs we see today. What the OCI Nitrogen's been able to do well on is basically buy that ammonia at pricing that is much less than the replacement cost and generate additional margin versus running those lines and keeps the downstream lines operational. That's the approach that we've been looking at, and we've expanded the logistics capabilities significantly. We're in a very unique position being an inland plant that can sell to customers with the position of southern Netherlands, with a proper supply chain, enjoying the only ammonia terminal in Rotterdam, which is one of the, as you know, one of the most liquid hubs globally. The team's done an excellent job of moving record amounts of ammonia into that plant and also going to feed its customer base. Kind of that's how we look at the overall European landscape for production. To your second question, which is regarding how much of the North African production is geared towards Europe? I mean, that question, I think the simple answer is we do have some contractual customers in Europe for ammonia, right? But when it comes to urea and some of our spot ammonia, we're fully flexible. We're fully agnostic at Fertiglobe. On the Fertiglobe side, our view is go where the highest priced product market is. Today, for example, you see NOLA Urea's finally caught a bid going just above $800 a short ton, which is $880-$890 a metric ton. That's a delivered price into a nitrogen importing market. We would not sell any Middle Eastern product into the U.S. and get a lower netback than we can get, for example, in India, like we just participated heavily in this last tender. Similarly, IFCo, with its flexible production, would rather produce DEF at a premium to urea and UAN, which is at a much bigger premium to urea than granular urea in and of itself, and also capitalize on the ability to not have to sell into that low price market for urea right now, which we're seeing in the United States, besides being a deficit market. When it comes to our allocations and how we think about capacity, we do have some contractual customers that are in Europe that we're feeding, but we've also been increasing our trading capabilities to be able to buy from the Baltics, to be able to buy from the Black Sea, to buy from the Arab Gulf ammonia and service the European markets. We've also even moved some tons from the U.S. into Europe, which we saw were underpriced when the Tampa market was well below the price of natural gas replacement to produce that in Europe for the marginal cost producer. Is that clear? Yes, that's okay. Thanks, Ahmed. Okay. The third question, which is with regards to, I think. Can you repeat the third question again? The Sonatrach dividends. Oh, dividend. Dividends schedule, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. There's, um- The Sonatrach dividend schedule. Maybe, Hassan, do you wanna discuss. I think you're asking about when's the next dividend and how that all works. Exactly. Because you had a relatively high payment. Yeah. We had a little bit of lumpiness in terms of, minority leakage as we approached the IPO of Fertiglobe. There was, we wanted to clear some of the backlog there, which was done, efficiently. The leakage that you see of $237 million represents effectively, the majority, the vast majority of that relates to dividends from Algeria attributable to previous years, not yet to 2021. That gets paid, annually, so it will show up in 2022. Of course, any upstreaming leakage from Fertiglobe to OCI as now we have minorities representing, ADNOC and the free float. This is gonna be a consistent. It's a little bit lumpy. That's not how big the numbers will be in the future. It might be nominally big because of the results that you're seeing now, but as a percentage, that changes. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks. Next question is from the line of Mubasher Chaudhry from Citi. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my questions. Just coming back to your comments around the European market, can you talk about the overall European market please, and just how much of the capacity do you see currently shut down? At what point do you think that capacity can kind of restart? Just a couple of comments around your dividend policy. I think Hassan mentioned it's going to be focused around capital availability. I mean, market conditions are quite supportive to say the least. Going forward, if the market were to turn and the balance sheet were to look a little bit tougher, would the dividend go as far as being suspended or would you kind of go to a bare minimum and kind of carry on paying out? So I guess the question is there a payout ratio that you're working towards? That's the second question. On the green ammonia, can you just provide some comments around the timelines and kind of what kind of end market or kind of customers you'll be targeting? Are you already in conversation with customers for the offtake there, or is that kind of too early at the moment, are you still trying to figure out the feasibility and whether it actually works or not? Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Chaudhry. The three questions there, maybe I'll take the first question with regards to how much has been idled, and the third question with regards to green ammonia, then I'll hand it over to Hassan to discuss the second question, which you said regarding dividend policy. In terms of what we believe to be idle, we believe approximately 11 million tons or so of ammonia has been idled in Europe, given the pricing and where it's at right now for natural gas. On kind of downstream products, a little bit more difficult to ascertain, because downstream products are making a margin right now in terms of just where pricing is for urea and nitrates. We think potentially over 6 million tons are offline, maybe 7 million tons or 8 million tons, on the downstream product side, depending on where you are, overall in Europe. Those who have the flexibility like OCI Nitrogen to import ammonia, which is what we're doing, and continue to generate good margins on melamine, UAN and CAN, you know, they'll try to do so. Some of the other ones that are landlocked that don't have the ability to import ammonia could have a bit more difficulty or just have to stomach the higher gas pricing and eat into their margins on the downstream side and may still continue to operate. I'd say definitely the ammonia is gonna be more of the story of what's offline right now on the nitrates and urea side, probably not as much offline, and it's a little bit more difficult to see, and the market does feel despite that quite tight. On the timeline for the green ammonia, you know, this is one of the projects that we announced recently with Scatec. Our goal is to move extremely quickly on this one. We see an opportunity, you know, just given, you know, our development history in the Middle East, as well as ADNOC's development history as well, and our relationships with the key players on the construction side, on the government authority side, and now this new partnership with Scatec and The Sovereign Fund of Egypt. A lot of good alignment. I mean, COP27 is gonna be in Egypt next year. So a year from today. There's a big focus on the hydrogen economy out of Egypt and we're looking to move and get into a position where we're in a competitively priced hydrogen over the medium to long term, not kind of taking, you know, build it and they will come mentality. All of the above is being worked on right now. We hope to come back to the market with further developments on the project, but we're highly focused on it and are happy to be participating with you know, the involvement of the Norwegians, as well as the Egyptian government. If there are no further questions on those questions one and three, I'll maybe hand it over to Hassan. I will say one thing that's kind of an interesting one, and that's why we were thanking the team, both Hassan and I earlier, is that we've been very busy looking at projects, looking at opportunities, you know, ways to decarbonize given the positioning of our U.S., European, as well as our Middle Eastern assets. You know, one of the question marks is not just how the pricing of the product is, but just what's the growth CapEx look like. You know, we're looking for the right return opportunities and hope to have more developments and share that with the market over time because there are a lot of interesting developments, you know, in the U.S. that we've been seeing recently with the recent bills that have been passed, as well as in Europe with the positioning of some of our assets that can take advantage of very strong downstream capabilities and bring on renewable hydrogen as a feedstock, and generate a good return. Hassan? No, that's very true, and that kind of feeds well into the response because as we've designed the dividend policy, which we've yet to flesh out further with the February results in terms of quantifying what that would look like, and takes a bit more shape. We do believe that this year has been extremely transformational for us in terms of our gross debt reduction and leverage improvements. There's a bit of a catch-up game, as you can see, with all our being able to reduce our interest expense and restructure our debt. We still have some opportunities that lay ahead in that regard. Having said that, we believe we have sufficient capacity and firepower to pursue the growth opportunities that will be extremely disciplined in approach. Of course, they take time in terms of deploying that growth CapEx. Balance that against where we have been very, disciplined and committed in terms of optimizing our balance sheet. I think that will continue, and you'll see another drop in our interest expense in the coming years, as we continue to improve. But we also have, because of our free cash flow conversion, capacity to return capital to shareholders, next year and onwards. Because we haven't announced the amount, so I can't really answer your question very, specifically, but we will be looking to create a baseline going forward, for our returning capital to shareholders and not at any point be sitting on a lazy balance sheet. We wanna be efficient in how we allocate capital, and that also includes being able to manage our cash flows accordingly, including returning capital to shareholders. The unique feature of our business allows us to feel even if you look at our performance in a completely different set of environments, which is not what we believe the market environment is quite robust for looking going into 2023, but we can't really forecast too much beyond that. Even in a downside scenario, where our EBITDA as a business gets significantly reduced, I believe we still have the capability to continue to pursue the key opportunities we're looking at and balance that with our other goals, including a dividend policy. That's very helpful. If I could squeeze in one follow-up from your comments. Just on the growth CapEx, what should I be thinking about for the 2022 CapEx? That's a bit of a moving target, because that's a function of the opportunities that we're evaluating today. Some projects are on the runway, like our participation in the TA'ZIZ project alongside ADNOC and ADQ, but the Scatec project in Egypt, the partnership with Scatec and The Sovereign Fund of Egypt, right, as well. Yeah. Our blue ammonia project in Fertial, which we talked about there as well. I will say maybe to kind of give a high level of guidance before actually giving numerical guidance. At the end of the day, these projects, they take engineering in the beginning, and you know, you order some long lead items after you've reached FID. I wouldn't imagine kind of a very material step up in growth CapEx, where we're talking about a very significant number in terms of modeling that out. We hope to provide further clarity to the market as we continue to kinda make progress on some of the various initiatives we're working on both those that are announced and those that are unannounced. That's helpful. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch- tone telephone. Next question is from the line of Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Lisa De Neve. I have three questions. First is, you talked about strong demand outlook, supported by low grain stocks-to-use ratios, high farmer profitability are still healthy and sort of a rebound in GDP levels. Now, my question to you is, I mean, where do you actually see the possibility for potentially lower demand next year or normalization? That's the first question. Secondly, I mean, the maritime fuel opportunity seems like one of the more sizable alternative revenue routes for methanol ammonia. And as you're a producer of both, it seems to me that so far, there's somewhat more announcements related to methanol, particularly as it relates to dual fuel engines. And I understand that both chemicals have different market sizes, but how do you see the adoption of methanol as a maritime fuel versus ammonia? How do you see that developing? Specifically, what is the appetite you're seeing from shipping companies and sort of engine builders? What are their sort of opportunities and reservations around that? Lastly, sorry for the long speaking. What are your thoughts on the Russian fertilizer export controls, specifically as it relates to nitrates? Simply because the most prominent players in the market are Europe and Russia. How do you think that will impact the Americas and European markets? Thank you. Thanks, Lisa, and good to hear these questions. All very relevant. On the grain stocks-to-use side in terms of demand and, you know, where we can see reduced demand, we discussed this a bit on the Fertiglobe earnings as well. I mean, the farmer incomes are still strong, from what we can see despite the higher inputs. You know, there could be those marginal acres in certain locations where they say, "Okay, I'm gonna plant, you know, a lower intensity soybean rather than, you know, the corn acre," for example. We still see, from what we can see on this next upcoming spring, strong demand in the U.S., in Brazil, in Europe. There may be some marginal acres in some of those locations that don't, you know, apply. It may be a function of actually not being able to receive product like we were talking about with a lot of the underbuying that's in a lot of the markets and just getting the markets to the product to the markets there. Potentially, there could be some in Europe. Nitrates prices are very high, but we're seeing switching into urea to some extent. But overall, like we said, it's a delay, not a disruption in demand, because you're gonna have to make up that inventory of grains to be able to support the global markets. I think the big wild card that's really come up heavily in the last couple of months, particularly in the last month, has been ethanol, which we've seen really take off in terms of demand, with what's happening in the oil markets. Now that's relevant moving to kind of your next question, which is methanol. I mean, as you know, we are the largest producer of biomethanol, and marketer of biomethanol globally. We use biomethanol as a blend, for example, into the U.K. fuel market with petrol, both as a blend directly with petrol, also a blend in an alcohol mix with ethanol. It's an ethanol biomethanol mix, and that bioethanol is a second generation biofuel that's not based on crops but actually based on waste. We're seeing a lot of demand in the outlook for road transportation on methanol there. We see, you know, that recovery in transportation demand that we've talked about the last few quarters being lagging. It's finally started to take effect in some of the key markets we go into. Now, moving from the road transportation to the sea transportation, you know, we're having very interesting discussions with, you know, multiple players in the market. As you know, we announced earlier this year development of a methanol and an ammonia fueled ships with MAN engines with Eastern Pacific out of Singapore and the Hartmann Group out of Hamburg, Germany. You know, those are progressing quite well. To look at that kind of as a microcosm for what we see in the markets, you know, methanol ships are already in the markets and are on the water today, and we've seen the order from Maersk with potentially 2024, a significant amount of demand starting to hit that market. I'd say that similarly, we see for low carbon and lower emission fuels, methanol being, you know, the first winner and then ammonia to follow that kind of towards the middle of the decade as we see the ammonia-driven engines for shipping kind of in the middle of the decade time period and capitalizing on that going forward. Both, you said dual fuel. Both are kind of looking at, for example, LPG and ammonia together or methanol and other more traditional fuels, together as kind of a shipping engine driver. We think that the market for heavy fuel is so big that there's space for both to grow significantly. I'd put methanol a little bit ahead of ammonia, just given the development of the engine, around that. This is a, you know, very significant demand, right? When you think about 1 million tons from Maersk alone for eight plus ships, that 1 million tons of demand is 1% of the global methanol market today. Right? Anyway, we will continue to see developments on that front and our global footprint, between Fertiglobe as well as the Rotterdam. Hello? Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding. The conference will continue shortly. Hi. Okay. Please go ahead. Yeah, I think we got disconnected. Lisa, where did I leave off? I don't know about. We were in the middle of the maritime fuel opportunity and that ammonia will apply, likely lag methanol a little bit, just before my third question. Sure. Okay. I think we covered that. Yes. What I was just ending with on that was the price of CO2 can help equalize and actually make green ammonia more attractive than heavy fuel when you price in CO2 depending on that price of CO2 and also low carbon methanol for overall product costs. The third question was with regards to. Can you remind me? Nitrates. What about nitrates? Basically, I just want to get your thoughts on potential Russian fertilizer export controls and specifically on the nitrate market because they're such a big player and specifically feed the European market and secondly, the Americas market. What could be the impact of that? Yeah, I mean, it's something that we have an eye out on. I mean, we're on the nitrate side, particularly AN, which, you know, it's a product we don't produce, solid AN. We do expect to see less of that entering the European market, which means that that supports UAN and CAN and even urea indirectly in terms of just a further tightening of that market. We could see additional demand come out of it. We get- Do you think that means that there's some substitution potential? Yeah. I mean, generally, they're not as substitutable. Yeah. What we've seen actually is that urea demand has really picked up a bit. You know, we're continuing to build an order book on nitrates for UAN and CAN in Europe at the you know these very attractive pricing. There might be some marginal acres in the U.K. and the kind of Western European markets that can take on a little bit more urea because it's still priced on a bit of a nitrogen discount versus the nitrates. Generally, there's not that much substitution on that front. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. Next question is from the line of Adrien Tamagno from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hello. Good afternoon. I have two questions, please. The first is that one of your peers have mentioned having locked in sales for the next couple of months. Since you are talking about order book, I was curious to see how much of your production volumes are sort of agreed as of today for Q4 and Q1 next year, especially in the U.S. The second question to me is that during your ESG Day in March this year, you mentioned around $75 million of EBITDA improvement, and that was when urea was at around $350 per ton. Is it fair to expect an increase in this contribution by the same magnitude as prices go up? Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's you know, relevant questions. With regards to our order book, you know, we say we expected quite a strong Q4, you know, and that applies in the Fertiglobe markets, but as well as the non-Fertiglobe parts of the business. For example, the U.S., you know, the ammonia season is going on right now for our IFCo plants. In terms of order book, we don't guide in terms of, you know, how forward sold we are. Say that as we've seen the pricing, you know, as it's kind of evolved, we have looked to, you know, book out some of this this higher pricing we've seen on the way up here for UAN, CAN, and some of the other products. The one thing I can point to that we said publicly is, you know, back in the Fertiglobe side, because we had to participate in a public India tender. You know, we put in over 300,000 tons of $295 million sale for November and early December deliveries at $890+ a ton from Egypt and U.A.E. With that, obviously we'd had some extra inventory ending the quarter and kind of were able to sell and benefit from the pricing that we've seen now in those markets and have additional tons to sell at these higher urea prices. On the nitrate side, on the DEF side and some of the ammonia market side, we don't provide good visibility or we don't provide the actual order books, but we do say that we have pretty strong visibility on our performance for Q4 being very robust relative to Q3. And it bodes well for the early part of next year on what we're seeing in potential sales during that period. On the second question, yes. The answer in short is yes. Obviously the operational excellence guidance of $75 million was on much lower pricing than what we're seeing today. We didn't update that number, but the focus continues to be on improvements. This very significant turnaround schedule that we had, particularly in the U.S. with Natgasoline and IFCo getting a significant reduction in volumes is around getting that higher reliability going forward. Post-turnaround, we've continued to experience, after turnarounds, replacements of catalysts, adjusting kind of known bad actors in the plants, etc., experience better performance and utilization rates going forward and energy efficiency rates to consume less natural gas per ton. Sir Tamagno, are you finished with your questions? Sorry. Next question is from the line of Vijay Singh from Fiera Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Just one question from my end. The previous one, I mean, you can answer the previous questions previously. In terms of the U.S. plants, could you kindly throw more light on the utilization and the shutdown periods in the third quarter? What is the expected sort of a utilization given where we are, for the fourth quarter? Yeah, Vijay, good. I mean, good question. For Q3, we have this U.S. segment that we segment out, and you can see much lower DEF volumes, much lower UAN volumes, which are the only, the only plant that produces that is the IFCo plant in the U.S. when you think about the U.S. segment. On the U.S. side, utilization rates were, you know, quite low for the nitrogen business, and we see much, much stronger rates with the rates we're running at right now and see, you know, much stronger rates post-turnaround, to allow and capitalize on these, this higher price period we're seeing now here in Q4. On the OCI Beaumont side, that performed very well as we said, and you can see that in the figures for methanol, but you don't have the volumes from Natgasoline, because that had a major turnaround as well. We anticipate, you know, stronger volumes overall on the methanol side in the U.S., you know, relative to Q3. Sure. Was IFCo down for close to two months in for the third quarter? Yes. Is it now running? Is it now operating fully? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and I would like to hand back to Hans Zayed, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. I will read some of my questions that we have received. The first one will be: Why not buy back stock instead of paying dividends? Dividends are very tax inefficient. Thank you for the question. We anticipate the discussion, of course. I think, as I mentioned, we've yet to give more guidance and explicit plan, which we will announce to the market as part of our year-end results, which are typically in February. That will include, for sure, a cash dividend, but we will also study all other avenues that are available to us. Noting, of course, that as we now will be benefiting from a semi-annual dividend from Fertiglobe, where the policy there is clear to distribute excess cash flow and then upstream it to OCI, our partner, ADNOC, and of course, the free float. I think that's a foundation to build on, but we will explore, as I mentioned, all avenues for returning capital to shareholders. The next question comes from Mr. [Backhaus]: Are there currently any developments in the methanol business regarding the decisions about the strategic review earlier this year? Yeah. Nothing to report at this time. Obviously, if there's anything that changes, we would come back to the market. Ahmed, I think we have clarified in our previous call that the result of our thinking and the fact that there's such a strong clean fuels angle now being looked at in terms of the methanol segment, in terms of new opportunities for methanol to be deployed that provides potential growth. I think if we explore anything in the future, I think we believe we mentioned that it will be in the form of partnerships that add value. These partnerships will come in many forms, but that's something that continues to be the foundation of any thinking we do for the methanol segment going forward. As a reminder, if anybody would like to ask a telephone question, please press star followed by one on your touch- tone telephone. Next question is: What will be the publication date of the fourth quarter results, and is it possible to communicate this earlier than one week before? The answer is, yes, we will be publishing a calendar, and we will also have a target to publish within 45 days of the end of the quarter. The next question is: Can you please elaborate on your plans for your capital structure? Are you planning to keep bonds in the capital structure in the future? I mean, as we mentioned earlier, we've done almost $1 billion of redemptions in terms of existing bonds, which resulted in the $40 million run rate savings. We do believe that going forward, the bonds would provide the bulk of our core debt structure as we look to a more sort of permanent capital structure base to work from. We still have some work cut out for us ahead in order to get there. The next question is: You have given the impact of higher natural gas prices for Q3 2021. Are you able to guide for the impact for Q4 2021, assuming the natural gas prices do not change from the current levels? I think that one, I think, probably, you know, that investor potentially or the research analyst could potentially try to use the public information around historical gas prices and current gas prices we're seeing in Q4 and the projections and the forward curve for the balance of this year. I will say that our goal has been to try to get a better benefit and offset it by buying ammonia below the price of production. Mind you know, to produce a ton of ammonia is in kind of the mid to high $30 /MMBtu on average. Where gas prices are today, plus the cost of CO2, you're really at various points seeing that we can buy ammonia at a cheaper price if we can, you know, grab some of these lower priced products, for example, in the Arab Gulf right now and where they trade. As you know, when you think about our overall business, between the U.S. and the Middle East, we have significant implicit hedging in place. We have guided that we've had significant hedging in Texas in our Natgasoline plant and our OCI Beaumont plant with caps at $3.50. In Fertiglobe, we have the low-cost feedstock with some profit sharing with the government. You know, despite that profit sharing, getting a benefit, an outside benefit on the EBITDA margins when we participate. Overall, there's kind of an implicit hedge when you think about the blended business, including our European nitrogen business. Yeah. The next question is, can you describe the benefit of DEF? It is based on more efficient use of fuel, so as fuel prices rise, DEF is more valuable or just a function of rising demand means a tighter market and price increases? It would be a function of both. I mean, it's a mandated product for DEF. DEF is a mandated product in the U.S. and in Europe and in other markets for diesel consumption for new engines as they come out. Consumers of that DEF are looking to increase dosing rates because it actually improves the fuel economy of diesel. When you improve the fuel economy of diesel, then at higher prices of diesel, you're more incentivized to try to dose at a higher rate of DEF. To your question, yes, you would like to use more DEF when it's a higher price environment, but also the higher price environment is a result of more transportation demands and less supply. We're also seeing just volume growth year-over-year continuing very robust levels. Being one of the largest DEF producers and marketers in the U.S., you know, we're looking to serve customers. I think the team did an excellent job with the four-plant network between Dakota Gasification's plant, the Iowa Fertilizer plant, two Dyno Nobel plants that we market for, to not skip a beat in terms of delivering that DEF to the customer, not calling force majeure, delivering it to that customer in the July-August period in the times where that has to be there. Because you have to realize on the trucking side, if a trucker stops to fill diesel and wants to refuel DEF, and DEF is not available there, that really damages the relationship of that truck stop with the trucking fleet or that trucking customer. For us, our focus is on making sure that the customer has that, and we think that we've built, I'll call it brownie points over and above, you know, our positioning in the market, given that we are a reliable supplier despite having a turnaround at Iowa Fertilizer Company. Okay. We have one more telephone question from Kenny King from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hello. Thanks for your presentation, and thanks for the opportunity for asking question. I want to ask about, like, if there is any potential target for acquisition in the pipeline. The fact that you emphasize on dividend distribution and also debt payment, does it mean you don't see a sufficiently good target so that you would rather allocate the capital other ways? I mean, it's a good question. I think when we think about growth CapEx, we're thinking about not just organic growth, but inorganic growth. We always keep our ear to the ground. I mean, that's something that we would look at. Now, what we do is we would look and see how does that compare to where we're trading? How does that compare in terms of what type of synergies we can get out of, you know, something that comes up? We're always open to it. Generally, if we provide CapEx guidance, it's not gonna be part of our CapEx guidance because it'll be more lumpy around something like that from an acquisition perspective if we were to do so. That includes also, you know, potentially logistics assets and things like that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? There are no further questions on the telephone lines, and I would like to hand back to the speakers if there are any closing comments. Thank you. No. Thanks all for joining this call. Look forward to seeing the next one. On behalf of Hassan Badrawi and myself and the OCI team, you know, thanks for your continued interest. Okay. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.