Good day, and welcome to the Compass Minerals' First Quarter Earnings Conference. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Theresa Womble, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alicia. Today, our CFO (sic) [CEO] (00:13), Fran Malecha; and our CFO, Matthew Foulston will be reviewing first quarter results. Before I turn the call over to them, let me remind you that today's discussions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the company's expectations as of today's date, April 28, 2015, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. The differences could be caused by a number of factors, including those identified in Compass Minerals' most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made today to reflect future events or developments. And you can find reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial information that we discuss today in our earnings release, which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at compassminerals.com. And with that, I will turn the call over to Fran. Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Theresa, and good morning to everyone joining us today. I'll begin with a high level overview of the results and then move to some strategic thoughts on the remainder of 2015 and our future plans. I'm pleased to report that our earnings significant improved this quarter despite lower revenue. The increase in profitability was largely driven by improved pricing in both of our key segments. Our results though are about more than just price, we are also proving that our margin optimization strategies are working, so even though our sales volumes dipped year-over-year, our profitability grew and we achieved these results despite some short-term challenges, which impacted our costs in both businesses. So let's start with the salt business. Our salt EBITDA margin…

Thanks, Fran, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with a brief review of our consolidated results. Adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margin were up 22% and 6 points respectively on 7% lower revenue. This improvement resulted from strong performance in both businesses and I'll start with salt. If you're following along with our investor presentation, the salt segment results can be found on slide nine. Operating earnings were up 20% on 10% lower revenue. Strong highway deicing pricing in addition to lower per-unit shipping and handling costs more than offset the impact of higher per-unit salt costs and lower sales volumes. It's probably not surprising that we sold fewer tons of salt this quarter compared to last year when strong winter weather throughout North America drove extremely robust demand. On a year-over-year basis, highway deicing volumes were 19% lower, while consumer and industrial sales volumes fell 21%. Some of the weakness was offset by higher sales in the UK where winter was average compared to a mild prior winter. While volumes were lower year-over-year, they were essentially in line with our expectations given the tenor of the winter we had. I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss the ebbs and flows of the North American winter, because I think it will give you some insight into our results and our evaluation of the winter weather impact. As the chart earlier in the presentation showed, winter kicked off with a flurry in November. In addition, our sales volumes were driven higher by our customers' need to restock after the prior winter. This was followed by a very mild December, which resulted in a mild fourth quarter in terms of total snow events. More snow events in the first quarter offset that mild fourth quarter and actually resulted in an…

Thank you. We'll go first to Chris Parkinson of Credit Suisse. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Perfect. Thank you. Given your commentary about the normalization of inventories in your key markets, but the likelihood of lower inventories in some North East markets, could you quantify any potential opportunity you have in these? Or going forward, should it be more as the status quo? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. This is Fran. I think it is going to be an interesting bid season coming up and if you look at kind of the average winter as we've described and some of the variability that was in it, it was probably slightly below average in the West and above average in the East. So we would expect as the bid season starts, that on average our served area is probably at normal inventory levels. But there will be a pull, I think, across the North American producers for more demand in the East and may give us an opportunity to pick up some market share in the western side of our served area, which is really the best business and we talk about being more freight logical to improve our margins. So I would say that we're thinking it's going to be average, but optimistic that we may end up with a bit better result. Christopher S. Parkinson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Perfect. Thank you. And just a quick follow-up. Given your commentary about the plant nutrition business, in the past, it's my understanding that the California drought hasn't really affected everything. But given the intensity and the, let's say, the intensified scrutiny on the agricultural water usage although hasn't been curtailed yet, are you hearing anything different from customers even versus last year? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I mean at this point, we really aren't hearing a different story than a year ago. The groundwater quality, we think, is decreasing, so the chlorides are increasing and that's a benefit for our SOP product, which doesn't have the chloride. I think some crops are coming out of production and those are largely crops like rice, corn, and cotton that can be grown in areas outside of California, and more permanent crops are going in, things like almonds were – they are primarily grown in California. So that's a benefit to our business. And the longer – I think as we talked over the course of the last number of calls, the longer the drought grows, the more uncertain it is I think for everybody. So we'd love to see some increase in both the rainfall and snowpack and get back to a more normal situation out there. But at this point, we aren't seeing a negative from the California drought.

We'll go next to Ivan Marcuse from KeyBanc.

All right. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the 3% impact to margins in the salt business from the higher costs. Was that just for – was that a first quarter or was that for the full winter or what's the timeframe?

That's just the first quarter answer, Ivan.

Okay. And that was all in the salt segment, right.

Yes.

Got you. And then second follow-up question I have is, on your projects that you outlined and relative to your 2018 goals, how much is each of those two projects responsible for the $90 million improvement in salt and $60 million to $70 million improvement in plant nutrition? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think the Goderich continuous mining program, that's all cost savings. And I think as we described in the past, there would be about a total of $16 million of cost savings in the salt business over the plan and the Goderich mining would be roughly about half of that. On the plant nutrition side, that increase in the Ogden capacity takes us up from – we're making about 400,000 tons today of – combination of pond-based and KCL takes us to 550,000 tons, and that will be about 325,000 tons of pond-based and about 225,000 tons of KCL at the time. So we're expecting the majority of the increase in plant nutrition to come from that expansion.

We'll go next to David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. Fran, looking at the upcoming bid season from a pricing perspective, given the volatility you've seen in energy prices and the average inventories right now, would you expect pricing to trend to normalized levels of maybe 2%, 3% or what could be a more reasonable expectation? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's just too early for us to comment on the pricing. We are just getting into the bid season with some of the major states underway or to be underway shortly and from a competitive standpoint, it's just difficult for us to comment specifically on our thoughts until we get deeper into the season here and we usually report on that kind of mid-summer or closer to the next earnings call. But I think if you look at history, coming off of a very severe winter and significant price increase, as we look back over the last 15 years or so, there is usually a carryon effect that we see in the pricing. Will that happen this year? We hope so. Obviously as I talked earlier, there is going to be a pull to the East and we'll just have to see kind of how that takes out for us in our served market. But we're optimistic that it would be, I would say, a more normal pricing coming off last year. And last year, there was quite a disparity of pricing from the start of the year to the end of the year. So we'd expect some consolidation around the middle as we kind of go through the bid season.

And Fran, just on salt production costs, looking longer term in 2016 and 2017, how would you expect those production costs to decline on a per-ton basis given some of the unusuals in 2015?

This is Matthew. I think obviously the unusuals in the first quarter of this year, we expect to behind us. Both mines are running at capacity now and very smoothly, and we do anticipate that through the balance of the year. And then I think the next big step function is really around the investment in the continuous mining, which will allow us to have a much less labor intensive mining operation there. So I think that's going to be the next step function down. I don't think we've actually quantified that in the past in terms of a per-ton number, but that will be the next step down for sure.

We'll go next to Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Markets.

Hi. Good morning. How do you want us to model some of your salt volume guidance. If you take the midpoint, your Q2 would be basically the least amount of salt sales you've ever done in a Q2 pretty much, since you've been a public company. If you take the midpoint of your full-year guidance still at 12 million tons to 12 million tons. It would be for the second half of the year, probably the strongest second half you've ever done before. Can you tell us – give us a little more guidance?

Yeah, I think that's a good question, Joel. And generally, we think of these ranges more as goalposts and they do give us some commercial flexibility between the quarters. I think maybe a different way to comment this is, if you think about us reaffirming the full year, I think it's sending a signal that we think Q2 is actually going to be pretty strong. There are some other factors moving around in here. Chemical is going to be down in Q2 and it's actually going to be up quite significantly in the second half. So that's giving us a slightly different tenor to the normal year. If we do end up Q2 around the high end of our guidance and the second half of the year is average, we'll be at the bottom end of our range. And I think as Fran mentioned earlier, with this very intense weather season that we're coming off on the East Coast, we're hoping to pick up a little more of our business in our core area, as people travel less West Woods and it may actually help us penetrate further East. So there could be some share opportunities in the second half of the year which will get us right into the middle of that full-year range.

Okay. So just following on that, what is Goderich capacity right now, there's been a lot of things going on there in terms of equipment and some of the shaft relining? And then, what would the capacity be in 2017-2018 post the relining? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. We're running in that 7.5 million ton to 8 million ton range at capacity today. So I would say 8 million tons is the high end of our current capacity. Then once we complete the shaft relining, which will be complete in early 2017 and in place to produce for the 2017-2018 winter, our production capacity will be closer to 9 million tons, so at least an additional million tons of capacity.

We'll go next to Jeff Zekauskas of JPMorgan.

Thanks very much. Could you review again the reasons why volume in consumer and industrial was down so much in the quarter? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think it was primarily just a reduction in the deicing side of the business. If you go back to the prior winter, we had a heavier – lighter fourth quarter and then on the retail side kind of they loaded up and served the real harsh winter really in the first quarter. What we saw this winter was maybe a load up in the fourth quarter so last quarter and a lighter first quarter despite a reason like good snow events through the winter. So that's really the main difference on the volume on the package side.

Okay. And I think on slide six, you laid out of your capital plans, and I think you have these dotted lines around some of the plans, which I guess I understand that you haven't fully resolved to spend the money. And if that's correct, what are the probabilities that you will spend the money? Are they greater than 50% or less than 50% or how do you assess that? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think historically, we have found return projects to improve our assets and create capacity become more efficient over time. And so we're basically in that chart saying that we're going to continue to look for those opportunities; and if they're there and the investments meet our hurdle rates, we will proceed with those, but I would say that as we look at the capital that's going into our major facilities today, Goderich and Ogden, some of that's MOB and some of that's investment capital, and I would expect that those opportunities are going to become less and less. We have other assets that may have capabilities for things like continuous mining and as we look at Cote Blanche, maybe there's opportunities there. So to put a percentage on it, I would say probably a little less than 50% versus over 50%, but we're going to keep on looking for ways to invest capital in our business and earn kind of the high teens of returns on those projects that the business is delivering today.

We'll go next to Bob Koort of Goldman Sachs. Robert A. Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you very much. Fran, I was wondering could you talk about what you've seen historically on the consumer and industrial pricing dynamics when you've seen such a nice move in highway deicing? Would that normally lead to some uplift in the subsequent periods for consumer and industrial? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I mean we have seen a price increase through last year on the consumer and industrial side on deicing. The non-deicing has been essentially flat both in terms of volume and in terms of price. So I think we probably need some different type of a game changer on the non-deicing side and we're looking at ways that we can – and also earlier we talked about the capital investments, so we are looking at ways that we could convert our rock salt mechanically to some of these non-deicing products and significantly change the cost side of those products, which would help the profitability there. But I would say generally, the deicing business we'll take the price increase and if the winter is there, the non-deicing is pretty flat. Robert A. Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. And when you go to the bid season this year, I mean you give those bids on a delivered basis, obviously some of your logistics costs have started to trend down. Would you expect some of that to get passed through or is that something you can retain? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We'd like to retain obviously all we can and that really is the competitive dynamic of the bids. And as we look at pricing and where we earn…

We'll go next to Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Markets.

Thanks. I just had a follow-up question. You had a presentation from December that showed that 2016 CapEx would be about $150 million. Your update today says about $250 million. It seems like, it could be a pull forward of CapEx from years after 2016, into 2016 or can you talk about of what's going on there, please? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think we've been consistent in how we've described the capital, Joel. I think you may have been looking at a chart back then for 2016 that didn't include any investment capital. That would have just been the MOB, whether it's going – would have been the normal kind of ongoing MOB of about $75 million a year, plus kind of the one-time, which would have been mainly the shaft relining at Goderich at that time. And I think what we've talked about is roughly about $250 million in 2015, $250 million in 2016 and then getting down to more normal levels in 2017. And as we have – as Matthew talked, as we've kind of been working through and starting these larger projects, we're going to see slightly less in 2015 and a bit of that that would probably hit the first part of 2017, but the projects haven't grown in capital and the timing is within a quarter of kind of what we have been talking about. So no difference kind of in the overall numbers from what we've been talking about for the last couple of quarters.

So in that presentation, you showed $75 million of average sustaining capital, about $75 million of special sustaining and no payback capital, so now the $250 million is adding – so the $100 million delta to that is payback capital? Francis J. Malecha - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's roughly – that's correct. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

And at this time, we have no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Theresa for any closing or additional comments.

Thank you, Alicia. We appreciate your interest in Compass Minerals today. Feel free to contact the Investor Relations department with any follow-up questions you may have. Have a great day.

That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.