Earnings Labs

ICL Group Ltd (ICL)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, May 18, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ICL Analyst Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] I must advise you the call is being recorded today, Wednesday, the 18th of May, 2016. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Limor Gruber, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Limor Gruber

Analyst

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining our first quarter 2016 analyst conference call. Earlier today, we filed our first quarter 2016 reports to the Securities Authorities and the stock exchanges in the U.S. and in Israel. The reports as well as the press release are available on our website. For your reference, this meeting is being webcast live at www.icl-group.com. There will be a replay available a few hours after the meeting and a transcript will be available within 48 hours. The presentation that will be reviewed today was also filed to the Securities Authorities and is available on our website. Please don’t forget to review Slide number two with a disclaimer. Our comments today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations, and are not guarantees of future performance. Today, we will start with a presentation by Stefan Borgas, our President and CEO; followed by Kobi Altman, our CFO. In addition, ICL’s executive committee members are on the line or here, and we will all be happy to answer your questions after the call. Stefan, please.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Thank you, Limor. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all of you listening to us. Thank you for dialing in. In the past few years, ICL has been executing the Next Step Forward strategy. We have constantly achieved the milestones on our way to fulfill our growth and to fulfill our efficiency targets. Of course, our people, the great professional men and women in ICL all over the world have accomplished this. In the past years, we have strengthened the market orientation of the Company. We have created fully accountable business units who actually run the P&Ls of the Company. And we have built up global functions, who support these business units at very competitive cost. In the beginning of this year – in the beginning of this quarter, of the second quarter, we have therefore changed the structure of ICL to adapt to the Next Step Forward strategy after having prepared it for quite a long drive – the time. This new structure will allow ICL to better drive organic growth and to better drive cost improvements while, at the same time, continuously improve our governance and create administrative synergies in procurement, in IT, in HR, in finance, in legal, between all of our businesses, and to improve our overall innovation and business development in the Company. These changes were just implemented. You see the new organizational chart here on Slide 3 of the presentation. The business units will concentrate on their respective value drivers. The essential minerals division will be led by Nissim Adar and include our commodity potash and phosphate business units. The specialty solutions division will be led by Mark Volmer and include our specialty fertilizers, advanced additives, which are the industrial phosphates, and food specialty business units. All of these three are phosphate downstream…

Kobi Altman

Analyst

Thank you, Stefan. Good day, everyone. The first quarter of 2016 highlighted, we believe, the importance of our backward-integrated value chain strategy, as the downstream specialty businesses showed a much better resilience, partially compensating the significant slowdown in the essential mineral businesses, which was driven, as Stefan explained, by depressed global market. Our continued operational excellence program initiatives contributed to a stronger operating base. Let’s take a look into this quarter main results. Please note that, in these two bridges as well as in the following bridges of the potash and industrial product segment, we separated the 2015 strike impact on sales and operating profit in order to simplify your analysis, make the picture maybe a little bit clearer, but also from our perspective to show you an even more challenging comparison because you would see the impact of the quantities on – and the prices, not versus what was the real actual results of Q1 of last year, but more comparing to kind of a normal quarter in the 2016 view. Our financial results mostly suffered from the lower sales volume. You see here the numbers, especially in the potash and the phosphate fertilizers and adjusted operating income, again mainly impacted by the lower sales volume and the prices – all the numbers goes to the bottom line, and on the quantities more or less 50% of that goes directly to the bottom line. I would just like to note that we still don’t see the full contribution of the lower raw material prices. And this will help to offset some of the negative impact from the prices in the following quarters on the green side. The high operating cash flow is largely due to decrease in working capital, mainly as a result of collections, strong collections we had…

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] The first question we have today comes from the line of Stephanie Bothwell. Please go ahead.

Stephanie Bothwell

Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my two questions. Just firstly on your China phosphate JV, which reported a loss in the quarter, you commented earlier on the call that you are taking remedial actions there to address that. But, I wonder if you could give us perhaps a sense of your expectations for the full year. If we don’t see any improvement in China domestic demand and prices continue to be relatively low, can you give us a sense of what we should expect for the rest of the year. I’ll start with that one. Thanks.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, thanks for the questions, Stephanie. We expect the prices in China not to improve for the rest of the year. On that basis, we have drafted or put in place an accelerated improvement plan. We would expect to turn slightly profitable in the third quarter and then more or less come out with a black zero or a red zero, depends a little bit how the last quarter goes until the end of the year. But, we want to be profitable with this joint venture point in time at the end of this year.

Stephanie Bothwell

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. That’s helpful. And my second question was on your costs for the remainder of the year. So, your operating margin in Q1 was obviously negatively impacted by the fact that you had lower shipments from the Dead Sea. If we look ahead to Q2, and assuming that we don’t have higher sales volumes going to China, given that the contract is yet to be settled, should we anticipate that unit costs in potash in the second quarter should be at a similar run rate to what we had in Q1?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, you’re absolutely correct because China and India are still closed in potash. Q2 will look very similar to Q1. And then of course, it will turn completely in the opposite direction once the markets ship because the product’s there. It’s sitting there. It’s valued now at production cost inventory, variable production cost inventory. That’s why you don’t see a dramatic increase in working capital. So, as soon as it ships, you will see all of the impact of the cost improvement that we have done.

Stephanie Bothwell

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. I think that’s my two questions. So, I’ll stop there. Thank you.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

All right.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Sophie Jourdier from Liberum Capital. Please go ahead.

Sophie Jourdier

Analyst

Afternoon. First question I had was just on the potash industry. Obviously, you’ve got a lot of customers out in China that you’re not shipping to at the moment. But, presumably, you’re still in contact with them. I just wondered what intelligence you’re picking up from them as to their need for potash and as to your view on how the year’s likely to progress in terms of China’s shipments. That’s the first question. And I’ll ask the second question now. You mentioned in the press release that there’s new European fertilizer legislation coming in with regards to polymer coatings on controlled-release fertilizers. I just wondered whether you could give us a bit more detail on that and also whether you can quantify how much affected fertilizers – I guess, how much controlled-release fertilizers are as part of your specialty fertilizers business. Thanks.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, okay. So, the expectations we have for China are around what I said before. We would expect the price settlement between the big producers and the big importers to happen in June because the – and we expect that because one level further down in the market, companies are starting to run very, very low on inventory. So, I think the country’s ready to move forward. Nobody apparently has an interest now on delaying this much more. That’s how we see it. But, again, we’re a little guy in the market. So, we only have the overview that we have. Therefore, we think that the second half will be in the catch up mode. The polymer coating issue in Europe is an issue around environmental sustainability of the coating material. Actually, it’s good news for us because it – we are developing products that are going to help to fulfill this new regulation. This is very early on in the discussion. There’s no real solution. There’s not really even a definition in detail. What actually does it mean, biodegradable polymers? There’s no technical way to measure it at this point in time. This is the level of the discussion right now, so not very meaningful to talk about quantification now. We are just launching E-Max technology in Europe, which will give us significant cost reduction. And we see very nice uptake of this technology. We’re launching this in Europe. And we will launch it in China later this year as well. So, this is a part of the business that we’re actually pretty excited about because we have a world-leading position here from the technology perspective as well as from a market perspective.

Sophie Jourdier

Analyst

Okay. Thank you

Operator

Operator

Okay thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Matthew Korn from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Matthew Korn

Analyst

Hi, good day, everyone. Thanks so much for the time. Let me ask a little bit on industrial products. It seems as though everything outside of brine fluid is trending quite well. I’m wondering whether this quarter shows already most of the full negative hit on brine fluid sales that you’d expected or whether there’s still some downside sale to risk quarter to quarter from here.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Well, one – to take one quarter as a normalized average of the year in a business segment that’s part of a business unit is very dangerous because two, three orders of a customer can always change the quarterly result. It’s not that large of a business. It’s 15% [ph] of our bromine business. Bromine business is about two-thirds of this division. And there’s a significant reduction compared to last year. We would think now that we’re at the reduced level. But, it could very well be that, next quarter, we have a 10% increase or a 10% decrease, but that this is more due to the volatility of one quarter to another.

Matthew Korn

Analyst

Got it. Very fair. Please.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Well go ahead.

Matthew Korn

Analyst

Okay. All right. Then let me ask this. And I’m very interested in your plans on the efficiency measures there with the Chinese JV which are going to push through which are causing it to accelerate. The question is whether – if you’re planning any kind of job reductions, if there are any type of pushbacks or limits on your ability to actually make those happen. And then if you could spend maybe a little bit more time on explaining what the creation of this new marketing organization will actually entail. Thanks.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, we have actually about 450 FTE reduction planned in this joint venture. This is fully supported by our partners. We have a plan on how to do this. This is not a radical cut from one moment to another. We will do this slowly month by month, very well supported. It’s going with very little noise. So, we’re very happy about the support that we have here. But, people reduction is only one part of it. A much bigger part of the efficiency improvement is the actual operational improvements, eliminate truck transportation from the mine to the plant, replace it with a pipeline, improve the throughput of some of the plants, improve the quality of some of the plants so that we can get better pricing in the market. So, there’s a whole series of these kinds of measures. And we’re accelerating this as much as possible. But, I must say the support from our partner is just outstanding. It continues to be really, really great. They follow our lead. And they’re actually trying to learn from us for their own operations as well. The creation of the marketing organization, as you can imagine, of course, takes more time because we need to hire people. We’re at a level of about 60 commercial professionals now in this organization. We started from pretty much zero in October last year. And then those people need to be trained, they need to learn the products, they need to go to the customers, the customers need to make trials. So until the specialty products really make it into sales, then takes the trial cycle of the customer. So, we will not see very much of a sales effect until probably the middle of next year because of the buildup of this commercial organization. And therefore, in the meantime, we have added a work track to go to what we call semi-specialty products is to – which are not agronomically so difficult to sell, but they add a little bit of value compared to the pure commodities that have been proved – that have been sold from this site in the past. We’re also having a branding initiative here because we’re adding the ICL quality image to the portfolio of these sales. We have to be careful with this of course, because we can only add the quality stamp for those products that really have ICL quality. This is not yet every product that is produced there. But, that’s another activity.

Matthew Korn

Analyst

Great. That’s very helpful. Good luck to you.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Vincent Andrews [Morgan Stanley]. Please go ahead.

Neel Kumar

Analyst

Hi, good morning. This is Neel Kumar calling in for Vincent. I had a couple of questions about potash. Can you first talk about how the transition of your UK mine from potash to polysulfate has been progressing? And then also, what are your expectations for potash global demand for the full year?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Okay. Global demand for the full year, demand from farmers should be pretty much the same than last year, maybe even a little bit better because, last year, the big disappointment on the demand side, on the usage side, was India because of the weak monsoon triggered by El Nino in the Pacific. So, actually consumption, potash consumption, should be better than last year. And now, if you look at shipments and only the calendar year because of the weak first half, we might be a little bit lowered shipments. But, I think this is scheduling. So, nothing – I’m not so worried about this. The UK transformation is moving quite nicely. We’re planning to double our sales again in the UK this year for polysulfate. We’re nicely on track to do this. Last year, we sold about 120,000 tons. So, this year, we should double this. Hopefully, we could do a little bit more even than that. The product is very well taken up. Of course, it is also impacted by the potash pricing. So, pricing, of course, on polysulfate also is down because the nutrients are valued at the individual nutrient degrees. The cost reduction, which is the other part of the transformation in the UK, the first phase of this cost reduction has been completed. All of the people who we had to let go have left in the meantime. This is tough times. And the mine in the meantime is back into a stable operation. Actually, from an output perspective, this mine was above budget in the first four months of this year, which shows us that, operationally this is well managed now.

Neel Kumar

Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Yonah Weisz [HSBC]. Please go ahead.

Yonah Weisz

Analyst

Hi there. It’s Yonah Weisz from HSBC.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Hi, Yonah.

Yonah Weisz

Analyst

A question – hi there, Stefan. A question perhaps on your dividend, which you have reduced to a maximum payout of 50%. I’m wondering what the decision dynamic wise between cutting the absolute cap and just stating for one or two years that, instead of 70%, we’ll pay 50%. And what is the potential for that 50% cap to return back to 70% in the future?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, hi, Yonah. The way we looked at that is we were trying to balance the approach toward the dividend in a period or in a quarter where still the market uncertainty is quite big before the market opens in China and India. So, the approach that we were taking is to continue to link it to earnings. We choose the 50% as we believe that this amount over the next this amount over the next few quarters will be sufficient, on one hand, to maintain our debt level, so that the debt level will start to at least not go up by – toward the end of the year and continue with a very good dividend payout. So this is why we took the 50%. Again, we said that we will relook at that once the market conditions will start to stabilize. And we will examine that in the next few quarters again, following market conditions.

Yonah Weisz

Analyst

Okay. And the second question, if I may, would be about current markets. With China and India silence during the first quarter and probably into the second quarter as well, you probably sold I assume most of your product into Europe and Brazil. And I’m wondering if you could share some current color on how you see both markets, which are actually very divergent. Brazilian price is very low, Europe maintaining fairly high premium at the moment. How do you see that at the moment and developing throughout the second quarter?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Europe is relatively stable. It’s calm. But, as you said, it’s very diversified market. And of course, we’re kind of a local supplier. So, we’re adding – in addition to the commodity potash, we’re adding a lot of either services or other products to this. So we feel pretty good about stability in Europe. In Brazil, we’ve had a very tough environment very early in the year, which then recovered in March, April timeframe. And instead of an additional recovery after that, it’s kind of flattish somewhere in the $2.35 to $40 per ton range. We have also sold a little bit to the U.S., like in the past years as well. And in the U.S., we’ve had – we came from a much stronger pricing, but also now reaching these Brazilian levels over the course of the last weeks, maybe it’s $5 to $10 higher than in Brazil.

Yonah Weisz

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Andrew Benson [Citi]. Please go ahead.

Andrew Benson

Analyst

Yes, thanks very much. Just on the potash situation in China, you write on page 6 that imports are effectively – in the first quarter are effectively flat on the prior year at nearly 2 million tons. You have made perhaps – tell me if I’m wrong here – you have a contract in which your – which is about 1 million tons a year. And you haven’t sold anything to them because the Russians and the Canadians haven’t agreed a price. And yet everybody else in – certainly someone is selling 2 million tons into China. So, I don’t really understand why you’re not selling anything when 2 million tons have gone into China in the first quarter. On the phosphate situation, can you just give some more detail there? You – in your preamble to start off with dynamic Morocco and China if I can be a bit sneak in a third question Canada is that a significant event for you second quarter?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Okay. Let me start with the potash situation in China falling into the trap of the timing of customs statistic because a big portion of these 2 million tons falling in the first two months and they are imports from last year so the actual imports are really, really significantly down. As far as we know the only people importing into China right now are the Russians to the rail but this is a limited quantity. So inventories really are significantly down as far as we can and what we hear. Our Head of Sales is in China this week and I spoke to him, and he said he confirmed this so there is pressure now on inventory in China. What’s happening on phosphate is the following. The Chinese phosphate producers have traditionally exported something around 5 million tons of commodity fertilizers DAP, MAP, TSP on average over the course of the last years if you go back to 2007 something like this. A big part of this to Brazil, a big part to India and then a little bit to other places around Southeast Asia as well. So – and then in 2014, suddenly these quantities went from 5 million tons to 8 million tons in 2015 to almost 12 million and this took market share away, of course, from the Moroccans. The reason why the Chinese did this is because the growth inside China has come a stop because of the agricultural policies that have changed in the last two years in China, no more increase of nutrient consumption. So, they redirected these volumes. And the Moroccans are just fed up to put it bluntly, and have reduced the prices. So, exports now of Chinese DAP, MAP and TSP in the first quarter was less than 1 million tons if you calculate that for the year 4 million would be 4 million tons for the year basically nothing to Brazil and just very small quantities to India. So that’s the situation on the phosphate and we’ve had these kind of events before. The question is what will the Moroccans and Chinese do? And if they continue this skirmish, the pains will continue for a while if everybody learns their lesson, then there’s an opportunity for a slight decrease of the pressure but I wouldn’t dare to forecast when this will happen at this point at least. In Canada, the forest fires shocking pictures actually but we’re doing everything we possibly can in order to help we are – we have three service sites around this fire. We are – our people are working day and night. One of our sites actually was almost caught by a fire as well. We had to extinguish the fire at our site, which we managed to successfully do. So, the site’s back in operation. Yes we’re very heavily engaged there and hopefully in the next few weeks we can help to extinguish this. But, it’s a noticeable event for us.

Yonah Weisz

Analyst

Sorry, but can I just go back to the first question? And perhaps I was asking from a wrong point of view. And thanks for clarifying that that 2 million was actually I guess orders placed in – it must’ve been in the end of 2015. So, that’s clear. But, you do have your own contract to supply. So, why are you – is it simply that you don’t want to agree price until other people have agreed price?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

No, there’s an import stop by the Chinese authorities, a still centrally controlled country. And as long as there’s no centrally agreed price, nobody can import. Simply, we don’t get an import license. The contracts are in place. Our customers need the material eventually. They have the full commitment to take it. That’s why we’re very – relatively relaxed for the second half of the year. But, we can just not legally import.

Andrew Benson

Analyst

Okay. Understood. Thanks.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question comes from Nina Dergunova [Goldman Sachs]. Please go ahead.

Nina Dergunova

Analyst

Hi, everyone. Thank you for the call. Well, most of my questions have been answered already. Just a short follow up on the dividend policy. You mentioned that the new dividend implies payment of up to 50% of adjusted net income. What adjustment does this imply? What items could be eliminated? Thank you.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Kobi.

Kobi Altman

Analyst

Yes, this is Kobi. We will adjust the regular adjustments that we have done historically, so noncash provisions, impairment of assets, and those type of things, the regular adjusted that we are presenting you every quarter. And the payout will be out of the adjusted net income. And we believe that this will provide you an enhanced ability to predict our results and to calculate the actual dividend payout.

Nina Dergunova

Analyst

That is perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Gilad [indiscernible]. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thanks for taking my call. I hope my question hasn’t been asked before. But, I am – I don’t think you spoke in your comments about any kind of developments in Israel because there’s a lot of outstanding issues with the burial field, with the concession in 2030, maybe other issues. Is it that the – this in the potash market is so bad that you don’t even deal with those issues at the moment, or is it just nothing is happening, and there are no ongoing negotiations with the state at the moment? Thanks.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Gilad, I very much appreciate the question. No news is good news actually in this case. A lot of work is being done on the concession topic, on the burial topic, on some of the others as well. But, it’s happening on a professional level. A lot of data is being exchanged. A lot of understanding is being looked for. And this actually is really the way it should be done because these issues have to be solved. It’s moving forward slowly, slowly, but steadily, and on a professional level and not through public discussion anymore. And once there’s a resolution, you can rest assured that we will let you know.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Rosemarie Morbelli [Gabelli & Company Inc.]. Please go ahead.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Stefan, I was wondering if you could go a little bit more in depth on the bromine side of the business. There have been some price increases in China recently, as you know. But, there is also a return to production. And do you think that these particular price increases can hold on, can actually go higher? And at the same time, if you could talk about the markets, I know mercury removal is supposed to be using a little more. But, if you could quantify that and give us a feel for the electronics industry as well?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Okay. Let me summarize it. And then maybe, when we meet, we can go more into detail. The prices that were increased, you can see it on Slide 7 of the presentation that we have on the website. The prices that went up in China for elemental bromine, we expected them actually to weaken in the second half because that’s what always happens in the spring and in the summertime because production rates go up in China. It didn’t happen. Why did it not happen? We are not 100% sure because this is just a recent event. But, it looks like there are environmental pressures and sustainability topics in China from the enforcement perspective that give Chinese producers an incentive to keep prices where they are so that they can pay for all of this probably on an ongoing basis. So, we are carefully optimistic that these price levels currently will be able to be maintained. They’re, by the way, higher than we expected. The – making it’s way through now into the bromine compounds here, because of higher volumes, we might see a bit of a softening in some of the large products in the third or fourth quarter because inventories have moved up. But, that shouldn’t be a dramatic effect. Then we have sales of new products, such mostly driven by the flame retardant FR-122 by construction – in the construction side. We have a smaller product also launching, but it doesn’t have a big sales impact yet. Electronic sales are relatively stable. Oil drilling sales are very, very weak. And mercurial sales are stable at the level of, let’s say, run rate second half of last year.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Okay. And when we look at FR-122, what kind of a demand do you see in that particular market? At the moment, everyone is replacing HBCD by the polymerized – however you pronounce that – flame retardant. But, once all of the producers of the insulation have caught up and have transformed their operations, what kind of a long-term growth rate do you see for that demand?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

So, that isn’t expected to happen until the end of 2017 probably. And remember, this is only Europe because the regulations are only in effect in Europe. We’re starting to get the first inquiries for this product from Asia, where there’s also a big styrene foam insulation market and where HBCD is still used to a large extent. This should then be the next frontier, to put it that way. And some countries are starting to catch up. We’re selling small quantities to Asia already because some of these producers are exporting to Europe. And so, I think we’ll have some positive development there once we are able to convince customers that this is really a great product.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Thank you. And if I could ask a question on the food side, what are the main applications on the protein side, protein drinks? Are we talking about liquid yogurt, or are we talking about other kind of protein drinks?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

No, protein drinks, the protein drink applications, the new ones that we’re working on are mostly liquid – mostly clear drinks. On the sports drink, this is pretty commoditized. This is not so interesting. But, then it’s still very, very small. It just shows our innovation capability.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question today comes from the line of Kevin Whyte [VTB]. Please go ahead.

Kevin Whyte

Analyst

Hi, yes. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask if you could put some kind of quantification, some numbers and targets, in terms of your leverage, and considering if you have to adjust your business plans, how – when you would start to affect either CapEx plans or further change your dividends. So, if you have any leverage targets, for example, that would be good. Thank you.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Let me turn it to a more detailed answer to Kobi. But, just from a general perspective, we have – if you go to the last slide in this presentation, we are trying to balance three factors here. This is the leverage, the loans. It is the growth of the Company, which is reflected in CapEx, of course. And is the debt level. We have already addressed the CapEx by reducing actually from last year to this year. And then we put an emergency plan in February when we saw the Chinese situation and put an additional cash flow optimization that Kobi mentioned in his presentation. We have already also addressed the debt level by announcing after the first quarter that we were not going to increase debt in absolute terms in 2016. And now, we have addressed the third portion, which is the dividend. And with this, we should hopefully sail into the next six or eight quarters. Kobi, anything else?

Kobi Altman

Analyst

Yes, maybe just to add a few more points, I think that the operational excellence, the cash flow optimization programs, and the CapEx cut that we did demonstrate our ability that we developed along the last few quarters to quickly adapt ourselves to the changing market conditions. And I think that this starts to bear fruit that starts to be visible. Under our current plans and the forecast that we have, we don’t currently see a need to do something in addition to the plans that we are already executing, as we speak. And again, with our target to contain the debt level at the level that you saw in slide 18 around 3.5 toward the end of the year, to maintain it, currently, we don’t need to do something in addition to what we’re already doing. But, we’re obviously monitoring the situation on a weekly basis. And we will adapt as needed.

Kevin Whyte

Analyst

And so, this basically comes on the assumption of market conditions and potash and phosphate, for example, remaining at the level of the first quarter, or what underlying assumption do you have?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Well, the underlying assumptions are that prices will not recover very much from where they are, but potash volumes in the second half of the year will.

Kevin Whyte

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. The last question we have today comes from the line Chris Kapsch. Please go ahead.

Chris Kapsch

Analyst

Yes, hi, Chris Kapsch at BB&T Capital Markets in New York. I had a follow up on the industrial products business. Given the magnitude of the decline in the clear brine fluids, just wondering if you could elaborate how that decline affects the overall absorption variances or the cost accounting and therefore the mix of the broader bromine portfolio, if it does at all.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

It’s not a major issue because we have a growth in the flame retardants, which are reason – equally profitable.

Chris Kapsch

Analyst

Okay. Is – are the clear brines relative to the other products, like, comparable or above average in terms of margin or profitability?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

No, they’re a little bit more commoditized.

Chris Kapsch

Analyst

Okay. And then also following up on the – in your formal press release, you mentioned that, subsequent to the end of the first quarter, it sounds like there’s been another leg up in bromine prices. And just wondering – and this notion that you’d talked about also the migration into the derivative compounds. Just wondering if you could quantify the order of magnitude of the most recent price increase as it plays out in your product portfolio and if you could talk about how much pricing you actually are seeing in the bromine derivative product at this point.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Boy, you want me to make a quantification difference between what we have already seen in the first quarter and now the next step up. I can’t tell you this. I have to go back. But, it’s not dramatic as is reflected in the first quarter. It’s not – the numbers are not so dramatic.

Chris Kapsch

Analyst

Okay. I’m just trying to get a feel for how much of this shifting from the pricing, just from elemental bromine is actually happening into more of the derivative products. Is that something that’s just happening more recently, or is it – has it benefited the results over the last couple quarters?

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Yes, last year, it has already started. We’ve already started to see it. So, it affects the derivative products that are produced in China, but already happened last year. And then that spills over to the rest of the world. But, the Chinese derivative prices were substantially below European and U.S. derivative prices. So, the impact you see in these two large markets, which make up the bulk of our business, are not that dramatic. But, we’ve seen it already in – since the fourth quarter of last year.

Chris Kapsch

Analyst

I see. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. That is the end of the Q&A session. Please continue.

Limor Gruber

Analyst

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We will be happy to discuss further if you need. And we look forward to talk to you. And see you soon. Have a good day.

Stefan Borgas

Analyst

Thank you for listening.