Good morning, and welcome to the Compass Minerals’ Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, instructions will be provided during that time. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Douglas Kris, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Compass Minerals’ second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today, we will discuss our recent results and our outlook for the balance of 2021. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Kevin Crutchfield; and our CFO, Jamie Standen. Joining in for the Q&A session are Brad Griffith, our Chief Commercial Officer; as well as George Schuller, our Chief Operations Officer. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that the remarks we make today represent our view of our financial and operational outlook as of today's date, August 16, 2021. These expectations 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. The results in our earnings release, issued Friday, August 13, and presented during this call reflect only the continuing operations of the business, unless otherwise noted. The results also restate historic amounts for comparative purposes, and reflect adjustments to information presented in the company's previously filed Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021. As previously announced, the nine month 2021 fiscal year reflects the change in fiscal year end from December 31 to September 30. I will now turn the call over to Kevin Crutchfield, our President and CEO.

Good morning, and thanks for taking the time to participate today. While I'll kick off my comments with a brief overview of our financial performance for the second quarter, I also want to take a few minutes to review where we stand as a company in light of our leadership teams previously communicated strategic priorities. As reported, we maintained solid momentum in the second quarter, controlling what we could control in pricing and salt sales volumes. Ultimately, that work resulted in strong consolidated revenue growth of 14% compared to the prior year period, because meaningful contributions from both salt and plant nutrition enabled us to exceed our top-line revenue expectations for the quarter. We continue to work through our previously reported sulfate of potash feedstock inconsistencies, and managing around supply chain disruption and inflated shipping costs, which are not unique to our industry. While both our consolidated operating earnings and adjusted EBITDA saw second quarter declines compared to the prior year, largely due to margin compression during the quarter, year-to-date, we've seen measured growth in these categories of 20% and 13%, respectively. I'm pleased with the way our team continues to navigate this challenging environment, staying laser-focused on execution in our core businesses. In fact, during the first-half of 2021, we generated strong positive free cash flow of $220 million, an increase of approximately 23% versus the prior year. On the cost management side, we've taken prudent steps to control our selling, general and administrative expenses compared to the prior year. We also continued to actively manage our capital plan, and spending in that category coming in at approximately $34 million year-to-date. Focusing on our salt segment for a moment, second quarter revenues were better than expectations at over $142 million, while operating earnings of approximately $19 million, and EBITDA…

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a few comments regarding our consolidated results before moving on to our segment specific performance, and then finishing with our rest of year outlook. On a consolidated basis for second quarter 2021, the company achieved strong year-over-year sales volume growth in our salt segment, and increased pricing in our plant nutrition segment compared to prior year results. Despite this top-line revenue uplift, our consolidated operating income was below the prior year period by approximately $9 million, while our consolidated adjusted EBITDA fell 21% compared to 2020. Over the same period, we saw both operating margins and EBITDA margins compress. This compression is primarily related to unit costs associated with the feedstock inconsistencies for our SOP production that we've highlighted over the last two quarters, as well as elevated shipping and handling costs in the salt segment. We are pleased to report that during the first six months of the year, we generated about $255 million in cash flow from continuing operations, and approximately $222 million of free cash flow. As announced in June, our Board of Directors approved the change in our fiscal year-end to September 30 from December 31. We're optimistic this change will improve our full year forecasting accuracy going forward, as we will have the benefit of embedding complete highway deicing bid season results within our full year forecast at the beginning of each fiscal year. From an accounting perspective, the shorter nine month year in 2021 impacts our results in a couple of different ways. First, it temporarily increased our expected effective tax rates of 40%, and therefore, increased our year-to-date tax expense to $17.7 million. However, this is not expected to impact our effective tax rate for cash taxes over the typical 12-month period. Similarly, changing…

Your first question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. Good morning. Kevin, just on the bid season pricing lack any pricing, is that due to you couldn't get pricing or you didn't try get pricing in order to maximize some of your volume gains?

I'm not sure I caught all of that question, David. Would you mind repeating that? I apologize.

Yeah. On the lack of any pricing and if highway deicing is that a function of you couldn't get the pricing because of given competitive dynamics in marketplace, or [you’re showing that to push pricing in order to focus on volume and market share?

No, I mean, look, we always take -- I mean first thing I'd say is every bid season is different. Our focus is to take a holistic, comprehensive review and match our production plan with what we anticipate the demand side to be. So, when you think about the winter rather than February, I guess I’d probably characterize it as generally unremarkable to inventories to deal with. But, I think on ballots ending up the year kind of flattish, and having the ability to grow our volumes by roughly 7%, turned out pretty good for us. And as you look back from sort of 2017 to now, we're still in a sort of a 4% compound annual growth rate on the price side. So, I consider the season at least thus far we’re 80% through. I consider it a very successful season having picked up some market share and grown our footprint on a modest basis.

Understood. And just on the lithium asset in the Great Salt Lake, can you discuss some of the risks and challenges you see with daily technology for that resource?

Yeah. Look, as we announced I guess it was about a month ago, when our plan is to conduct a deep, thorough strategic assessment of both the resource and the technologies, as well as the type of structure we think would be appropriate to allow this asset to realize its maximum value. And I think, obviously, the first bridge we have to cross is the direct lithium extraction technology. And as we discussed during that previous period, we're well on our way to making a choice there. We've evaluated a handful of technologies. We're down to a couple that we want to make sure that we make a good selection, but we're very long into that process, would expect to be able to make an announcement pretty soon. But everything that we've seen thus far in terms of lithium recovery and rejection of non-lithium materials, contaminants, if you will, has been very positive. But we want to take our time and make a good selection. And we're getting pretty close and look forward to updating the market more.

Thank you.

Thanks, David.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Connelly with Stephens.

Thanks. Kevin, can you remind us whether the new or continuous miners are fully ramped and what your operating plan is for the second-half? And could you give us rundown of which CMs are doing what at this point?

Yeah. So George is here and I’ll let him add some color. The units are running well, specifically the two newer units, they are bigger, stronger. As I mentioned during the first question, we’ve kind of calibrated our volumes based on what we see the demand as being, so we are not producing at the level that we can, because we felt like the market we want to develop our supply with what anticipated market side was. But in terms of how the units are running, very, very well. I’ll let George provide some additional color, but the two bigger units they are running, overall, very, very well.

Yeah and just a couple comments on that. Mark, thanks. Again, looking at those units as Kevin said, they are performing extremely well. I’m overall pleased with those units. As Kevin highlighted our new mine plan our new maintenance development would take some of the, I’ll call it, older miners. And keep in mind, we are continuing to develop in those areas with those miners. So again, as Kevin highlighted, we still have a lot of upside. Our workforce there, our management team still believes there is a lot of upside in both in the new equipment and plus that we have our 36 joined miners as well. So again, as we go through the next couple of years, as we start to finish off that new mine development, it will give us some continual opportunity to improve our productivity and our cost at that location. Thanks.

Okay. One more question, on the SOP quality issues, clearly this sort of thing comes and goes. When will you have visibility into when you are past this?

Yeah. Maybe I'll start on that, and Jamie will kind of weigh in. Look, as Kevin highlighted there, we've continued to make some real good progress, both operationally and from a maintenance improvements over the last couple of quarters that at our site at Ogden. Again, you’ve heard from both [indiscernible] testing some cyclical major in regards to this. And we see it, it's kind of hard to put a finger on it, but I'll call it maybe every five to seven, eight years, we'll actually see this phenomenon. But we've taken a very methodical approach over the last I'd say quarter and a half, two quarters, at Ogden, to take a look at our feedstock to harvest methods, sampling and our operating practice not only allow us deliver what we expect to deliver in 2021, but also as we encounter this in the future as we go through there. So I feel – again, it’s one that you don’t have year in year out, where you actually have exposure to kind of keep working on it, again with this phenomenon happen in every, I’d say five to seven years, we have got to take everything you possibly can during this period of time. We try to learn from it, so we see it again. Jamie?

Yeah. And I’d just add that, obviously, we're coming up on the end of this evaporation season, so we'll have the fresh raw material feedstock, which as George alluded to, we're doing a lot more testing and monitoring. And we’ve really learned a lot over the last six months in terms of how to manage through this in terms of our mixing and prepping. And so with more data icon, by section upon, it enables us to mix and blend to optimize the plant given the sub-optimal quality of last year's harvest.

It's really helpful. Thank you.

Hey, Mark, I want to just go back for a sec on your first question. There's an image in our prepared materials on Page 14, it's an illustrative view of the Goderich mine. And as George pointed out, we pulled off some of the older units to develop these new roadways. So, we continue to be implementing a new mine plan, putting a new mine basically in place, while at the same time continuing to produce and broken a couple of internal records here, even this year. So, I think it's important to note that that's occurring in a way that you really can't see from the outside looking in, we're incurring a fair amount of cost as we develop this new mine plan and put these new bypass roadways in. But once we get those in, as we've talked about before, I think we'll see a step function change both in terms of productivity and cost, et cetera. So we still have a couple more years to go on that. But, it's progressing nicely. And I thought that would be some nice added context.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Seth Goldstein with Morningstar.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. With prices flat, how do you think about the profit per ton next year? And how do you view unit production costs? Have you hit the first step change and we should stay flat until the new mine plan is complete?

Yeah, go ahead and I’ll add some color.

Yeah. So we're not going to talk specifically about profitability in the upcoming year. So I can tell you we will see our soft costs fall in the third quarter relative to both sequentially and year-over-year. And they're still, as George and Kevin were alluding to the step change has not yet occurred. That is still down the road as we complete the new mine plan and finish our bypass roads and, ultimately shut down old mine works that are expensive to maintain, and a long way to travel through. So you'll have to wait for our full year guidance that we roll out in November for the full year, beginning October 1 through September 30, 2022.

Okay, I appreciate that. And then just a quick follow-up on lithium. Once you select DLE partner, what are the next couple development steps as you move forward in the process?

Well, I think once we make the DLE selection, and we're doing the on-site pilot testing now, then the strategy will be to how do we set those modules up in a way from a logistic standpoint, location standpoint, pumping standpoint, et cetera, to start the production of chloride. So that would be the key next step. So, I don't want to put a time limit on the DLE technology provider selection, but I think in the relatively near-term. But, also during the strategic assessment, we've indicated that we're open to discussions and it's been very active, I would say, at least thus far, and we think that will inform how we think about this project going forward.

I appreciate the details. Thank you.

Thanks, Seth.

Your next question comes from the line of Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets.

Good morning, gentlemen. Jamie, Kevin, I think you talked about being able to get maybe $1, or $2 of lower sell costs. I think that was kind of looking in the future year now, if you think of the template of fiscal year, and you try to comp it, so right come, September 20, fiscal year, what can you do on cost here in salt, considering, the improvements trying to Goderich, but obviously, the multiple buckets of inflation and cost and shipping that you laid out earlier in the call? Thanks.

So, I think that we still got good opportunities there. Joel, I think one thing to remember about our business is, we're extracting minerals, many of our labor costs are set, we've got multiple collective bargaining agreements. Within our C&I business, we've obviously got some direct inputs, bags and other things that drive that business. But I would say, overall, we're going to see lower costs. If you just look at the nine month over nine months, salt costs are going to be down significantly, order of magnitude 10%. And then, as we get into 2022, we're not going to talk much about that, we continue to work on our long-term mine plan. That step change is forthcoming. We haven't said exactly when that will be, as we progress through that. And then you're going to see another -- that's when you're going to see that next step down when we complete that mine plan. So I think that's all we really have to say. We're not giving any outlook or any information around 2022 just yet, but we do expect to continue to see improvement for the reasons of our limited exposure in many instances to inflation. Obviously, we'll continue to see shipping and handling inflation on that side. But as I said in my prepared remarks, we'll also look to recapture those costs as we go into our next bid season next year. And then we do it dynamically constantly within our C&I business.

So my follow-up on that is then, so your salt netbacks for fiscal ‘22 should be lower, what do you just said. And then just following-up on that, I think it's important because you've talked about your strategy, you've come in and what your bid season strategy, about your mine production planning strategy, you're very clear what you want to do, and really try to optimize Goderich. That has led to a lot of production and a lot of competitive response, cheerio with flat pricing and inflationary environment. It would really be helpful if you can explain the entire picture. What does running more volume, flat pricing, and inflationary environment? Meaning, does that mean lower netbacks for you next fiscal year? Does that make you want to reassess your strategy within Goderich down the road, when you look at what the market size is and what competitors did?

Joel, I would say I would answer that not specifically, but just that we've recaptured some shares that we have historically had. And our commitments are up the 7%, pricings flat. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, prices on a CAGR basis up 4% since 2017. So prices went up high when supply was not available, supply is now available, they've come back down. We feel like there's an equilibrium now. I don't think there's any difference in strategy or how we run the business. I think now that we've set our market share where it is now we're going to be disciplined and operate that way going forward. Kevin?

Yeah. It allows us to focus on execution, Joel because again, like I mentioned before, we've calibrated our volumes to match what we anticipate to be the market demand. We could do more, but we made the election not to so that we can regain some of the market share. As Jamie said it was ours originally anyway, and grew our footprint just a tad, but with that on the commitment side, it allows us to focus on execution both at Goderich and our other facilities and run them as a portfolio, and then attempt to optimize the resulting margins as a consequence of that holistic approach.

I was going to make one comment just on the Kevin's a lots of times from an operational perspective is Jamie and Kevin referenced. There's always about tons in production. But I can assure you, there's a real cost and financial acumen across our site leaders that is going to continue to -- as we start to look at our cost, as we go into 2022 and ‘23, that I think is extremely important and recognized cost of our business. Thanks.

As with your question, obviously, SOP is not potash and it doesn't see the same ranges of highs and lows. And we're seeing that, I guess here in pricing, you've been very good, you're getting very good price SOP. But it's interesting that, in one of the better years for ag in a decade, maybe not so good for California with drought, but you're achieving some of the lowest earnings in June, simple quarters for SOP in like 14-years, any quarterly earnings. And you're probably going to achieve the lowest SOP premiums to Midwest potash prices in forever. Can you talk about that? Is that where the Midwest potash prices are just out to launch? They're not liquid, they're not real. There's some other things operationally you talked about. But how do you think about this business? Is this become now the child you have to really focus on the business? You've got some stuff at Goderich and now it's really about trying to make Ogden try to be the asset Compass has talked about for well over a decade?

Yeah, that's a good one, Joel. I think let me make a couple of comments. I think, Brad, as a couple of comments, you hit on a couple of good points. But it's not good timing, obviously, for insurance. When you look at our net our profitability in this quarter, we've got these feedstock in consistencies, and that's absolutely unfortunate. I think on the spread side, as you refer to SOP versus MOP, not a lot of MOP has traded at some of those prices you've seen. There's not a lot of MOP even available. So that remains to be seen. Brad, do you want to add some color on the general market?

Yeah. Thanks, Jamie. Hey, Joel, your question on Midwest potash, are those prices real? What I would say and I think you're probably referring to the $570 Corn Belt price for KCL. In our discussions with producers and with our distribution customers, they don't feel like transactions are occurring rapidly at that dollar figure. Farmers are kind of pushing back the crop economics don't make a lot of sense. And in some cases, crops who have been “fluoride tolerant” like potatoes have migrated to KCL. Those same crops now, there's a renewed interest in SOP, simply because of the price delta between KCL and sulfate of potash. I’d make one more comment, Joel. We took our third price lift on August 1 in the market, our prices vary by region. And given current market dynamics that you're referring to, we do anticipate further ton appreciation of our Protassium+ products. We're in active discussions right now with our customers, and I would expect us to announce specifics to them in the coming days.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Shaw. Mr. Shaw, please state your company name and proceed with your question.

Yeah, that’s Crespi & Hardt. Hey, everyone, how you doing?

Good morning.

Just quick ones on the bid season the pricing and I was curious the higher shipping and freight costs. Did they start coming about too late for you to start planning that into your bid season? I know bid season they start with like March or maybe in February for some. But even in some of the later bids, you weren't able to sort of budget that into the some of your bids.

Well, we monitor it very closely. As it relates to the highway business, a lot of what we're doing right now is vessel and barge. We were expecting higher rates, we built that into our bidding process and so now we're kind of booking these bids and last mile freight still remains to be seen. We'll deliver these tons through the December quarter and the March quarter as we always do. And we've got an estimate around those things. And then on the C&I side, truck just got real expensive more than we thought so. So while unit cost for shipping and handling in salt is up kind of $6 or so a ton year-over-year, we were expecting $4, $4.50. So most of it we were planning on, we really just got hit on truck, and some fuel was a bit higher than we expected.

Got it. That's helpful. And then, I guess the guidance for SOP volumes for third quarter similar to last year or somewhere that sort of 50,000 to 60,000 tons. You're saying that sort of not normal, but in the past, I always thought that'd be a really sort of weak quarter and I know it's similar to last year. Is there increased seasonality that I am not aware of or don't remember? Or is that some evidence of the drought impacting volumes already?

You want to take that Brad or?

Thanks, Jamie. I don't think there is any kind of seasonality change, Chris. I think right now, our distribution customers just want to get product in place, so that they can position it adequately for applications. And I think there's still a significant amount of demand, by nut growers, by citrus, berries, these chloride sensitive crops for sulfate of potash. So I don't see any changes in seasonality. I think, I've been surprised at the southwest fertilizer conference, our team heard fairly optimistic reports from our distribution customers and some of our larger end user producers. So it's a very resilient group of people. And so, I would expect to see things relatively consistent, Chris.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks a lot guys.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of David Silver with CL King.

Yeah. Hi. Good morning. I think I'd like to start with a question on your salt volumes. So in the second quarter, I mean, from a historical perspective, both your deicing volumes and your C&I volumes, were both kind of at the very upper-end or even above the upper-end of maybe the last 10-years. And the combination, I think, is highest in more than a decade. So I'm just wondering, why you found incremental demand for salt in the seasonally slow second quarter. And in particular, I'm kind of scratching my head and I'm wondering if this is an Avery Island effect. In other words, are you capturing some incremental share that may be used to go to a competitor? Thank you.

I would say generally hitting C&I first, the business has done a really good job. Those volumes are solid. Last year was obviously depressed from the pandemic. But we did see some modestly higher volumes, when you look back over the last five years or so for sure. On the highway deicing side, we were able to book some nice business in the chemical franchise there, that could be a little bit of timing. Sometimes those ebb and flow, whether you get some of those contracts in the second quarter or the third quarter in terms of deliveries. And then, you had a combination of a little bit of hangover weather. April, you remember how weak march was, April picked up, we saw a little bit of sales from that. And then we really saw as Kevin alluded to the overall market, the overall season, outside of the really strong February, there were a number of our customers that just didn't take their minimums during the season. So those were really flowing through the quarter as well. So, it's combination of things and that's kind of the summary.

Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I was just kind of scratching my head, especially last year, I think there was a benefit from some contract minimum shipments in the second quarter. Okay. I have a couple of follow-ups.

But remember, we did increase our commitments last year as well. So, that kind of builds from year-to-year. And I think David, with freight it's kind of constraining imports, and while I think some inventories acted as a little bit of a buffer as it relates to Avery Island. I mean, there could be some of that effect flowing through, it's kind of hard to tell. But we do think just kind of given where seaborne freight rates are, it's going to be more challenging for the more traditional importers.

Weaker dollar higher freights, right, that gives you a little extra advantage. Okay. I'm going to switch over to the lithium thing. So I know it's very early days, and there are a number of decisions and options to consider, probably in a sequential manner. But I guess one option would be to partner with another company. And I guess I'm just wondering if you could maybe discuss what you would consider an ideal partner to bring to the table. So in other words, you're going to have a separate technology provider. I'm guessing, the partner has to bring some capital to the table. But anything beyond that, that you would consider especially attractive in considering choosing the partner or joint venture route, as opposed to a go with alone strategy? Thank you.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would just reemphasize what I said the last time is, we haven't decided that anything is definitely on the table, or off the table. We're really trying to think this through. And as we think about the bookends the options could be go with alone. We developed the expertise internally. We’ve got a market strategy, we fully capitalize it, which we think we could do, or, the other extreme would be to sever that estate out there and just sit sell that asset as a mistake. And it would be co-producers on site there at Ogden, and then everything in between. And then, as it relates to the partner, I think unlike a lot of the folks that are trying to get into this space, capital is not a big concern for us. I mean, look, capital is always a concern, but it's not the kind of concern for us that it would be for some lithium type startups. So I think what we'd be looking for, yeah, I mean, capital is certainly among them, but I think a higher priority would be expertise in the space, whether that's on the technical side, or the commercial side, that's probably how the lens through which we would evaluate a partnership, is we have the resource and all the rights necessary to develop it. And I think from an operating standpoint, I don't want to underplay the difficulty. But it is a co-product. We're good at extracting products from the Great Salt Lakes, but there's aspects of this business that are new to us, and we want to be intellectually honest about that. So I think a partner that has expertise in the space in areas that we don't, would be something that we would view very favorably.

Okay. And I'm just going to squeeze in one last one, but also on lithium. I was wondering if you could maybe give us your early read on the labor outlook there. So in other words, you're going to need a surge of construction workers at a certain point, and then a smaller, but long lasting workforce to operate the facility once the construction is done. And I apologize, not an expert on the labor situation out there. But any idea just rough house what a construction crew size might be? And then, how do you assess that availability, the regional availability for the type of labor that you need? Thank you.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to speculate on headcount. At this point, what I would say is, probably consistent with the rest of extractive businesses, labor is tight. It's creating some inflation on the price of labor to create an inducement for people to go take a new job, so we're fully aware of that. But everything we've seen thus far, we're convinced that we can fill the slots that we want to fill. And then, as it relates to construction of ultimately what the project looks like, we will need to decide that first. But I think I would just say right now we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, and wouldn’t want to speculate too much on how fast we get it done.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas. Mr. Zekauskas, please state your company name and proceed with your question.

Hi. JP Morgan. Thanks very much. Given that the Avery Island plant was, I don't know, one 2 million tons that got knocked out. Are you surprised that salt prices are likely to be flat in the bid season this year? Wouldn't you have expected them to be higher? And you can talk about what the dynamics were? Why the closing of that plant didn't make any difference?

Look, I guess what I'd say, Jeff, it's a good question. And, I think, as I mentioned earlier, there were some inventories were a little elevated. So I think that probably acted as a bit of a buffer. And I think in this business, sometimes it moves a little slower than businesses that we're used to on the full commodity side that it might take another bid season for the full effects of Avery Island to kind of flow through, something that we're watching carefully. And, like, I'm sure that the folks that closed Avery Island did everything that they could to replenish their own sources of supply, so as to maintain their economics to the extent possible. But I would say that it'll take another sort of bid season for that full effect to plug through. Any color you'd add to that, Brad?

I think that's good, Kevin. Just to reiterate a comment you made earlier, which is that there's 20% of the season in front of us. And so there are a number of tons that would have historically been served from that Avery Island location that we’re yet to bid.

Okay. On the lithium, you've spoken about what your resources are. In general, how much lithium carbonate equivalent tons can you produce annually? And in the production of those lithium tons, will that affect your SOP output or your output of any other mineral? Or, do they remain unchanged?

So we spoke when we announced the resource production target of 20,000 to 25,000 tons a year of LCE. Based on early pilot testing, we don't believe that pulling the lithium ions out of the existing stream there impacts the SOP stream, the mag chloride stream, salt, et cetera. We just view it as a co-product. We're just taking the lithium ions out of existing streams and don't think that process will compromise the production rates or costs of any of our other products.

Great. And then lastly, in the change in your fiscal year, can you state a little bit more clearly what you know at September 30, that you don't know at June 30? Because, you have an idea of what your bid season is going to be like or 80% of the volume. You have an idea of what your prices like. And September 30 is still before the snow fall, so what incrementally do you know? What do you really get from changing your fiscal year?

Jeff it's actually not relative to 6/30, but instead to January 1. So when we announced our historically our full year guidance for the year, like we did this year in February, we are estimating how the winter was going to unfold through March, how the entire bid season would go through September, and then winter weather activity in the fourth quarter. Now, we will have the full bid season under our belt as of 9/30, and so we will have a price for the season for our portfolio. Now the only variable becomes winter weather activity. So we'll announce our full year guidance in November with the benefit of the full bid season knowledge, so we can now more accurately predict our full year expected outcome. Always impacted by weather, we cannot do anything differently around weather.

There are no further questions. I will now turn the call over to Kevin Crutchfield for any closing remarks.

We appreciate you tuning in today and appreciate your interest in Compass Minerals, and look forward to keeping you updated as we move forward. Thank you, again, for attending. Have a good day.

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