Compass Minerals Intl (NYSE:CMP) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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The full earnings call is available at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/590084912

Summary

Compass Minerals Intl reported a third-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $39.9 million, slightly down from $41 million in the prior year, with a net loss reduced to $5.7 million from $17 million.

The company raised full-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint to $230 million, with notable strength in the Plant Nutrition segment leading to revised guidance of $49 million to $57 million.

Operational improvements at the Ogden site drove a $15 million adjusted EBITDA for Plant Nutrition, and the company plans further investments in a dryer project to enhance product yield.

Salt revenue increased by 5%, driven by a 9% pricing increase, although higher production and logistics costs impacted EBITDA, which decreased by 15%.

Management highlighted strategic efforts to improve operational efficiency at Goderich mine, including maintenance investments and workforce expansion.

The company is proactive in mitigating potential tariff impacts on Canadian goods and is leveraging commercial agreements to minimize exposure.

Debt reduction remains a priority, with net leverage improved to 2.8 times from 4.3 times, supported by a 13% reduction in total net debt year over year.

Leadership changes were announced, with Brandon Reisner promoted to Chief Operating Officer, emphasizing a focus on operational improvements.

Future salt pricing is expected to improve, with strong bid season results indicating double-digit price increases in some markets.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Compass Minerals Intl fiscal third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Trip Sullivan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Trip Sullivan, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to the Compass Minerals Intl fiscal third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today we will discuss our most recent quarterly results. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Edward Dowling, and our CFO, Peter Feldman. Joining in for the question and answer portion of the call will be Ben Nichol, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that the remarks we make today reflect financial and operational outlooks as of today's date, August 6, 2026.

These outlooks entail assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. A discussion of these risks can be found in our SEC filings located online at investors.compassminerals.com. Our remarks today also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliations of these items in our earnings release or in our presentation, both of which are also available online.

And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Ed.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Thank you, Tripp. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the plant nutrition business because it's earned the lead. At Ogden we produced segment adjusted EBITDA of $15 million in the quarter on improved pricing and lower per unit costs. We've again raised our full year guidance for this business. Operational improvements we put in place two years ago are compounding. The team was determined to restore the business to the $40 to $50 million adjusted EBITDA range per year and have now exceeded that level.

We continue to invest in Ogden with the dryer project underway that we expect to complete by the end of next fiscal year. That investment will allow us to improve product yield, further improve production volume and cost profile of this operation, as well as finished good product quality. We're excited about the continued momentum at our Ogden site and solidifying our position as the leading North American producer of sulfate of potash. In our salt business, the commercial story is strong.

We realized meaningful price gains in highway de-icing during the quarter and are beginning to see a constructive pricing environment in our C&I product line as well. These are encouraging, and I want to put them into context. When comparing the salt costs in our P&L between periods, there are a number of factors that must be considered, including production cost, logistics cost, regional and product mix. As the winter unfolds, where we sell our products, where they are produced, how they are shipped to the customer, and our production costs all have various levels of impact, particularly in a season like this past one where inventory levels became very tight. Production tons from our mines are up year over year. That's a positive. But costs, while lower than last year as original guidance had anticipated, have not come down the way we expected, and I want to address that directly. There are three factors driving higher than anticipated production costs. First, despite the above, we're not hoisting enough tons out of Goderich at the cost we had planned. Second, we've increased our maintenance spending at both U.S. mines to improve operational uptime and stability, which has been guided by the implementation of a preventative maintenance system. Lastly, we've increased headcount to maximize every opportunity to produce more tons out of the mines. In terms of logistics, our total cost metric was burdened by global fuel costs and increased rates due to tightening of truck capacity. We have three accelerator teams working at Goderich focused on specific operational improvements.

We're working on improving our cut times and rates and investing in training required to sustain those improvements, as well as overall mine design and sequencing. Our maintenance program is delivering results focused on quicker turnarounds and improved equipment availability. Let me be direct about the trade-off that we're making. We're spending incremental dollars on labor and maintenance in the current period, costs for longer-term operational stability, production volumes, and profitability.

This is the right decision for the business, but it also means that our cost metrics have not yet reflected the efficiency gains we're targeting. In addition, we have other accelerator teams working on logistics and enterprise-wide improvements, including network optimization, procurement efficiency, and contract management. All of these are focused on sustainable cost improvement and risk mitigation. As we think about the future of the company and the sustainable improvement, we have made an operational leadership change.

Patrick Marin is no longer with the company, and I'd like to thank Pat for his service and wish him the best. Brandon Reisner has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. He's led impressive operational improvements in our plant nutrition segment and in the operational leadership of our C&I product line. The combination of prior mining experience and a track record of leading positive outcomes make him a natural fit to lead our operations. Turning to the bid season, the 26–27 highway de-icing bid season has been very constructive in our core U.S. markets. We're seeing substantial price improvement year over year, in some cases well into the double digits. With consistent growth in demand tenders, North American highway de-icing markets remain structurally tight. Inventories across the industry are low following the past winter, and it is supporting both pricing and tender sizes as we look forward into fiscal 2027. Let me give a sense of what we are thinking about volume. The 2025–26 winter season trended ahead of seasonal averages, with snowfall events in our key markets higher than the recent past.

Strong demand, coupled with our disciplined approach to working capital and the current production constraints at Goderich, has left us and the industry with historically low inventories across the system. Given those realities, along with an assumption of more normalized winter weather, we expect to commit to a reduced volume profile for fiscal 2027 relative to the past seasons. We will provide tighter guidance when we report fourth quarter results.

The pricing gains we have secured for the business, combined with continued focus on production increases and cost-per-ton improvement, should position us to improve our per-unit margins headed into next year. Let me address tariffs briefly. As you are aware, tariffs on Canadian goods shipped into the United States are set to take effect on August 19. A large majority of the gross annualized exposure relates to the highway de-icing salt shipped from our Goderich mine into the United States.

Through proactive measures within our commercial agreements, including pass-through provisions that are now standard in several of our key contracts, we believe we meaningfully reduce our exposure to those risks. The situation remains fluid, and we're closely monitoring it. We believe that we're in a stronger position to manage this than a year ago given our proactive measures, constructive pricing environment, and our improved balance sheet. In addition to the potential impact of tariffs, we're closely monitoring the variability within the fuel market, which is incorporated into our 2026 guidance.

We expect to provide a clearer understanding of the anticipated fuel impact and sensitivity within our detailed 2027 guidance when we report Q4, but we wanted to note our current focus on mitigation efforts moving into next year. On capital projects, as part of our ongoing investment in the future of Goderich, we have been planning to construct a new mill. Given the complexity of executing a project of this scale within an operating underground mine, we're taking additional time to evaluate the engineering, sequencing, and timing, as well as establishing appropriate project governance.

We cannot afford disruption to production during a period where we're focused on improving output and rebuilding inventory. We expect to provide a more detailed update on the project timeline early next year. I'd like to take a quick moment to clarify some news that was issued earlier in the quarter about a potential Utah lithium project. To be clear, we have no plans to get back into the lithium market. This announcement with EnergyX was a non-binding MOU where we're evaluating leasing them land and brine used in our Utah operations.

We would have no capital commitment or operational expenses. Nothing in these negotiations has been finalized. Turning to the balance sheet, net leverage has declined to 2.8 times from 4.3 times a year ago. Total net debt is down 13% year over year. A recent credit upgrade from S&P is a direct reflection of the work we've done to reduce debt and strengthen the business. I know there are questions about how we plan to allocate capital going forward, and I want to signal how we're thinking about it.

Our near-term priorities are clear: investment in our assets and continued debt reduction where it makes sense. As our balance sheet strengthens and our operations stabilize, the opportunity to consider other uses of capital becomes more real. The Board is engaged in this discussion. We expect to share more on this topic when we report full-year results. Before I hand it over to Peter, let me step back for a moment. Two years ago we laid out a back-to-basics framework on how we're going to improve this company.

At Ogden, the process is delivering; the results speak for themselves. In salt, commercial execution is strong. The market is constructive. The balance sheet is in a very different position than it was even a year ago. The work in our mining operations is taking longer than planned, and we are being direct about that. But the process is the same. The team is engaged. The work will continue. We are really excited about the future of this business and the organic opportunities this work has created.

Peter Fjellman, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone. I'll walk through our third quarter results and the updated outlook. All comparisons are to the prior year quarter unless otherwise noted. For the third quarter, total company adjusted EBITDA was $39.9 million compared with $41 million in the prior year. We reported a net loss of $5.7 million compared to a net loss of $17 million in the prior year. In Salt, third quarter revenue increased 5% year over year to $173.9 million.

Segment pricing was up 9% overall and highway pricing was up 8% and C&I pricing was up 6%. Highway sales volumes declined 6% while C&I volumes increased 3%. Salt adjusted EBITDA was $38.9 million for the quarter, down 15%, and operating earnings decreased 25% to $21.2 million. The decline reflects lower highway sales volumes and higher per-unit production and distribution costs within the segment, partially offset by the pricing gains. In Plant Nutrition, revenue was $37.6 million for the quarter, down 16% compared to the prior year period.

The decrease is primarily driven by a 19% decrease in sales volumes attributable to the Windward SOP asset sale in March 2026, partially offset by a 4% increase in average sales prices. Excluding the impacts of the Windward, sales volumes increased approximately 4% year over year. Despite the sale, operating earnings were $7.8 million, up 50% from $5.2 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA improved 32% to $15 million from $11.4 million. Both product costs and distribution costs declined on a per-unit basis year over year, driving the margin expansion at Ogden that Ed described earlier.

Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, operating cash flow for the first nine months was $162.8 million compared to $204.6 million in the prior year period. Capital expenditures for nine months totaled $62.1 million compared to $53.8 million in the prior year, reflecting planned investments across our operations. Total debt as of June 30 was $716.6 million, down from $825.3 million a year ago. Net debt was $660.3 million, a reduction of $85.6 million year over year.

Total liquidity was $328.1 million, consisting of $56.3 million in cash and $271.8 million of availability under our revolving credit facility. As Ed noted, our net leverage ratio improved to 2.8 times from 4.3 times a year ago. Now let me walk you through our updated fiscal 2026 outlook. We are raising our full-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint to $230 million, with a range of $218 million to $242 million. In Plant Nutrition, we're raising segment adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $49 million to $57 million, up from $43 million to $47 million previously, primarily reflecting the continued strength in our pricing and cost performance at Ogden. In Salt, our current adjusted EBITDA guidance range is $225 million to $236 million, narrowed from $225 million to $240 million previously to reflect the mixed dynamics, inflationary pressures, and the pace of operational improvements that Ed previously discussed. Our expectations for corporate and other costs remain unchanged in the range of $51 million to $56 million for the full year, along with full-year capital expenditures in the range of $90 million to $110 million.

In closing, I'd like to note that we are in a stronger financial position and Plant Nutrition is outperforming our expectations. Salt pricing and demand remain very constructive, and we are laser-focused on converting operational work at Goderich into sustainable cost improvement across the platform. We are also continuing to deploy capital with discipline, including reducing leverage where it makes sense. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we're ready to take some questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Please go ahead. A gentle reminder to unmute locally.

Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Sorry, I was muted. Thanks for taking my question. Just thinking about your guidance around bid season early in '27 here, we think about how well this season is going. Rock salt bid season is going here. Does that imply, when you think about your entire business, maybe high-single-digit price growth next year, maybe mid to high? It seems like you're saying that volumes might be a little bit lower if you get normalized weather—what you're actually going to sell.

And then what are costs looking like in '27? Like, should we see costs up a little? It's really speaking about more, you know, netback expansions here when you think about price versus cost things.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Good morning, Joel. Nice to hear your voice when you're unmuted. Appreciate the question. You know, the bid season has been really great, really based on the previous winter and really the inventory management discipline that has been established in the market. Most of the bids, of course, are transparent, and we see a wide range of outcomes depending on where you are. Our focus has really been to dive in and try to serve those markets where we maximize our margin and not try to serve everything everywhere, albeit we do try to spread it out just because you never know exactly where winter is going to be.

You know, it'd be safe to say overall we're kind of around double digits in price increase. With regard to looking at cost, etc., going forward, this is an important point. We're working really hard on our mine costs. You know, we've got this fantastic Goderich mine, the world's largest underground salt mine, and production is up, costs are down—unit costs are down. On the logistics side, we're battling fuel and truck carrier a bit. But we're laser-focused on this.

We'll provide guidance in the fourth quarter.

Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Okay. But it seemed like in your prepared remarks you were speaking about you would expect, with normal weather, that '27 volume could be lower based on the reasons you gave. And then just also, you know, Ed, there's been a lot of churn at the CEO level at Compass the last number of years. And you have a lot of objectives that you came in with, right? Lower costs. You had a lot of things—you work in capital management, inventory management. Things weren't great when you took over a few years ago and you've got some aggressive targets on cost.

But like I said, you've had a lot of churn at the CEO level and you're talking about delaying some of the decision on the mill project, not getting the costs as fast as you wanted. I can't help but think it's all tied together. Can you sort of speak about your journey here and what has to get done to achieve what you want to do?

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Yeah, look, appreciate the question. First of all, let me just say we're very grateful for Pat and his service and wish him the best in the future. This is Pat Marino. But we're really pushing hard, and we need to have an organization that's really fit for purpose, and we're really focused on our costs. Brandon Reisner—Joel, I don't know whether you've had a chance to meet him yet, but we'll make sure you do—has been leading the efforts with Plant Nutrition, which is a fantastic story for the company.

In addition, he's been our operational leader in our C&I product line and also done a really good job in increasing the earnings from that part of our business. He brings a history of success, whether it was within Compass—he's the guy that started really the way we look at capital allocation for capital investment, project capital investment—and even before that with Peabody, with a great track record of operational improvements, and that's what we need right now.

And so, as much as I like Pat, the needs of the company are more important than the individual. So that's what we're doing. With regard to the project, it'd be one thing if we were building this mill in a parking lot and it'd be pretty easy, but given the fact that we're doing this in an operating underground mine, and with all materials—everything—coming down the same shaft as our operating people and our operating materials, it's very complex. And so we need to make sure that we have a very high degree of front-end loading in terms of our engineering, our project execution plan, all of the logistics that go around that, that we have a rock-solid owners team, and we really need to put this all in place before I'm ready to take it to the Board of Directors. I think I hit your points, Joel.

Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Thank you.

OPERATOR

As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We'll now go to David Silver of Freedom Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Questions here. Maybe let's just start with the progress at Plant Nutrition. So, first of all, I mean, congratulations. I mean, especially most recently there's been a significant kind of step down in cash costs, I'll call it. But, you know, to achieve those, I had a couple of questions. To what extent is the plan there to just rely on pond-based tons, and how much of maybe the bottom-line progress to date has been from supplementing with purchased potash?

And then maybe bigger picture—again, my models go back more than a decade here—but is the progress to date, would you say, it reflects kind of getting back to the operating environment that was in effect, let's say, in the late 2010s or very early 2020s? Or, you know, is there something qualitatively different being done to kind of significantly boost the per-ton economics, production economics?

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Okay, David, thanks. Great question. Look, it's been a fantastic story for the company in terms of the restoration of that business to where it really should be. And recognize that before, when we reported Plant Nutrition, it also included our Winyard mine up in Canada. Results are without. And so it's really a great story for our Utah partners and our colleagues out there in terms of restoring this business. And there's more to go because, as you know, we're executing the dryer compaction plant where we have a lot of yield loss.

We're executing a project there which will be done about this time next year to really make a better product. So we'll see additional yield come from that. That will happen at a lower cost. Basically, it's an incremental cost. We either put the product into what we sell today or it blows away as dust—and that's not quite the right way to say it, but we lose it. But we'll capture that going forward and we'll produce a much higher-quality product for our customer base.

So the improvement—we expect that to continue to improve at least through, and we should start seeing that about this time next year. Let's see—in terms of the last part of your question, you know, I wasn't here 10 years ago, but we restored the outcomes to that. But are you doing anything different? The answer to that's yes, too. And it's the way that we manage our harvest—the tons—and Brandon, for example, led that. It's the way that we manage that from a stockpile into the plant, really reducing variability in the plant.

It's some things that we've done within the plant itself to improve recovery beyond sort of historical levels. So it's really a number of things that we've done to make this improvement over and above the success the company had in the past.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

And then maybe just a comment on, you know, the plan to supplement pond-based tons with purchase. Oh yeah, that's right. Or just. Yeah. Thank you.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Thanks. Thanks. David, we are. Thanks for reminding me that we are supplementing this year with KCl, and we never really guided on this, but I think from your thinking, you know, we'll be. Our plan is to do about the same amount next year. Okay.

Ben Nichol (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah. David, this is Ben. And just to add to what Ed said, the utilization of MOP in our process is always going to be a part of what we do. To Ed's point, what we're doing differently is we better understand the leading indicators on the chemistry of the pond. And so our ability to flex that utilization and that cost profile is much tighter than it has been historically. And so that, you know, hence the confidence in where we're headed.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay, great. I'd like to ask you, I guess maybe more of a, I don't know, philosophical question about the bid season results to date. But, you know, I always assume that, you know, your company probably has pretty much, you know, encyclopedic knowledge of, you know, your marketing areas and bid histories and, you know, competitor tendencies and things like that and, you know, based on the, you know, mostly qualitative, you know, discussion thus far, I mean it seems like, you know, you've identified some pockets where either volume or price or both, you know, can be pushed a little more and further.

Last point. My assumption is that to a certain extent you are responding to what you see, you know, in the bid season results to date. In other words, competitor behavior. So for the balance of the bid season, you know, which should be mostly done, I guess next by September, you know, is this the case where, you know, you'll be able to bid a little more aggressively for the balance of the season or, you know, are you maybe altering or what's the word?

Structuring your bidding profile, both tons and price, you know, based on your mining plan. In other words, what's going into, you know, your kind of virtual or, you know, in-season kind of bidding strategy.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Okay, let me try to field that, and I'll have Ben help me out as well. You know, we do have a deep understanding of our markets and really the distribution network. Really looking at our focus in terms of our. Every year we come up with a bid strategy. Part of our strategy this year was to really maximize the margins focus, recognizing that the market was really tight. Where do we really want to serve that we can maximize our margins. And that's really what we've been.

That's what we've really been doing. So that's sort of, you know, delivered cost, you know, subtracted from, you know, the price. And so, you know, that's worked out well, and, you know, we'll see what winter does and how we're able to bring that home. As you know, we have the variability due to mix and regional sales. But our focus at this point, we're largely through our big state contracts, albeit there's still some states that are coming back and rebidding areas that they weren't able to fill.

There shouldn't be any surprise about that. And largely our focus right now are really our commercial customers, which we should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. Ben, you want to add something to that?

Ben Nichol (Chief Commercial Officer)

No. Yeah, thanks, Ed, and David, thanks for the question. I think, you know, going into this bid season, our overwhelming focus was the value of our product in the market. And coming off of a big winter like the last season, we were excited to see the market, you know, had a renewed understanding of how important our product is relative to public safety. And so, you know, focus number one was value of every ton that we sell. In addition to that, you know, we've spent a lot of time working with our key customers on our terms and ensuring that the way we operate our business fits the terms that we need, specifically around minimum takes and having a higher level of confidence in what we commit and what's going to move through the pipeline. So we're really excited about the results. We've seen the market has a lot of momentum, and we're looking forward to the next season.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay, and then one last one, maybe kind of a clarification on how you're thinking about the looming tariffs on Canadian shipments to the U.S. But I don't know, I guess a little over a year ago there was another round of tariffs that were going to impact, you know, cross-border trade Canada and the U.S., and it turned out, I guess because of the essential nature of the products or other steps that you or others took, you know, those tariffs were kind of negated.

They didn't apply to Goderich shipments to the U.S. Is there something qualitatively different about this round of tariffs? You know, in other words, what has to happen for, you know, a repeat? In other words, the cross-border trade from Goderich not being impacted by this latest announced round of tariffs?

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Yeah, the real difference from a year ago to today from the tariff standpoint is the USMCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, where certain cross-border materials, et cetera, were exempted from tariffs and things like that. So once that was clarified a year ago, or like more than a year ago, a year and a quarter ago, you know, we really just started up the ramp up at Goderich Mine. What's also different is, recognizing that potential exposure, our commercial team and the company here has been working on how do we minimize the impact on the company if something like that happens again.

And so, you know, Ben and his team have been really looking at contract terms you just mentioned in terms of the market, how, you know, we're trying to tighten up min/maxes and those sort of things and having success on that. But really being able to pass through costs like this to customers has really been the focus. And so we understand exposure. We've looked at ways to mitigate that, and, you know, a big part of that has been mitigated. We continue to work to try to really underscore the message to the government about we have this great, amazing asset in Ontario which is critical to interstate commerce and public safety in the United States, and that the market in the United States cannot be fully served without Goderich Mine, and that it is a truly essential and critical mineral for our economies. And, you know, we're highly engaged in that effort right now.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay, great. And I'm just going to sneak one last one in, if that's okay. But this relates to the outlook and guidance for the salt segment in particular for 2026. And, you know, I'll just say for the highway de-icing volumes, you did bump up the low end of your guidance range by 150,000 tons. Should I assume that that's all just going to be pre-buy or pre, you know, pre-season shipment increases from your bid season customers, or is there some chemical volume in there or something else?

But just, you know, kind of unusual for the salt volume, the highway salt volumes to move up, you know, third quarter to fourth quarter. Just a comment on that, please.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

You know, we don't really talk about that sort of stuff generally. But, you know, what we're doing is, remember our warehousing—many of them were scraped clean last year. You know, been a long time since that's happening. And so we're really, part of normal course of business here, working very hard to reestablish inventories where they need to be to serve the contracts that we've committed to. And so there's really nothing unusual about that in our plan here.

David Silver, Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

You too, David.

OPERATOR

There appear to be no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Ed Dowling for closing remarks.

Edward Dowling, President and CEO

Okay, thank you all for joining us, and we're excited about the future here at Compass Minerals Intl, and we look forward to speaking to you again, you know, when we have a chance to catch up. And we have a number of investor calls coming up. I'm sure we'll be chatting with many of you here over the next couple of days. Thanks very much.

OPERATOR

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.