Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the ICL Analyst Conference Call. Our presentation today will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I must advise that this call is being recorded today. I'd like to hand the call over to our first speaker today, Peggy Reilly Tharp, Vice President of Global Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma’am.

Thank you. Hello everyone. I'm Peggy Reilly Tharp, Vice President of Global Investor Relations. I'd like to welcome you and thank you for joining us today for our quarterly earnings call. The event is being webcast live on our website at icl-group.com. Earlier today, we filed our reports with the securities authorities and the stock exchanges in the U.S. and in Israel. Those reports as well as the press release are available on our website. There will be a replay of the webcast available after the meeting, and a transcript will be available shortly thereafter. The presentation, which will be reviewed today, was also filed with the securities authorities and is available on our website. Please be sure to review the disclaimer on Slide 2. 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. The company undertakes no obligation to update any financial information discussed on this call at any time. We will begin with the presentation by our CEO, Mr. Raviv Zoller; followed by Mr. Aviram Lahav, our CFO. Following the presentation, we will open the line for the Q&A session. Raviv, please.

Thanks, Peggy, and welcome, everyone. I'd like to begin with a brief update on the situation in Israel. While we continued to face various operational challenges in the fourth quarter which were caused by the war, our efforts to minimize disruption and maintain good production levels were successful. Additionally, the majority of our employees who had been called up for service have now returned to full time work at ICL. Going forward, we expect the situation in the Red Sea to remain challenging, not only for ICL and other fertilizer and chemical companies, but also for some of the world's largest shipping and oil companies. Annually, almost 15% of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea. However, major shipping companies are now using a much longer route around Southern Africa instead, which is [Technical Difficulty] likely to result in higher costs and higher prices. Throughout 2023, but especially in the fourth quarter, we were able to manage the areas under our control effectively while swiftly reacting to a changing external environment. The team did an excellent job of managing our supply chain despite war, political tensions and market volatility. In addition, we continued to gain efficiencies and drive down costs across the business, so overall, we were able to deliver solid performance in 2023 after a record 2022. Now, if you will please turn to Slide 3 for a brief overview of 2023. For the full year, we reported sales of $7.5 billion with adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 billion. Throughout 2023, we continued to focus on cash flow and generated operating cash flow of more than $1.6 billion and $818 million of free cash flow. We prioritized cash flow and agility throughout the year, and these efforts became even more critical after October 7 as we navigated production and…

Thank you, Raviv and to all of you for joining us today. Let us get started on Slide 13 with the external macro environment. Inflation rates have declined from recent peaks in 2022 and are now generally stable. Interest rates remain elevated but are also generally stable. The expectation is that there will be a gradual return to global growth beginning this year. The construction market is forecasted to begin rebounding, but as Raviv mentioned earlier, it is going to take time before we see full recovery. With the exception of rice it has remained relatively stable in the fourth quarter and farmer sentiment improved as well. While potash and phosphate prices diverged a bit in the fourth quarter, both were down from the high prices we saw in 2022. Not surprisingly, freight rates have been increasing with disruptions in the Red Sea and in Panama. Suez Canal shipments have plummeted and in the first six weeks of 2024 more than 620 container vessels have been rerouted around Southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. In total, container tonnage crossing the Suez Canal fell by 82% since December 1. Meanwhile, the Panama Canal is navigating a historic water crisis. Thus far the solution has been to limit the number of ships that make the crossing each day, but that comes with a cost. If you will turn to Slides 14 and 15, you will see some of the [Technical Difficulty] on Slide 16, you can once again see the expected trend for electric vehicles over roughly the next decade. In addition, this quarter increase in demand for white phosphoric acid, technical MAP and for global LFP phosphate through 2028. ICL is well positioned to benefit from these long-term trends as we expand into commercial solutions for the energy storage system market.…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Ben Theurer of Barclays. Please go ahead. Ben, are you able to unmute yourself?

All right, this should work now. Thank you very much and hope you can hear me. So two quick ones. So first of all, congrats on the results that clearly came in I guess a little better even than what you expected. But if we look into the Growing Solutions business, and you've obviously talked about the puts and takes here and the impact, and it feels like that the fourth quarter 2023 was very challenging and also obviously 2023, even in context to 2021 and prior years on a full year basis, has been meaningfully impacted. So as you look around and if you consider your guidance and your outlook, what do you think Growing Solutions is going to be able to contribute within the broader context of ICL's splitted guidance? And where do you see, let's say, call it upside risk? So where are still certain risks to the downside prevailing in that segment? That would be my first question, and I have a very quick follow-up. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for your question. Growing Solutions in most of this year went through a significant destocking process, given the inventory situation and raw material prices going down in conjunction with product prices going down. And actually towards the end of the year, the situation was better. We had a headwind in the fourth quarter coming from two places. One, the war in Israel caused delay of local application of fertilizers in the fourth quarter. That's not big numbers, but it affected production schedules. And in the same time in Europe, also because of bad weather, for a different reason, the window of application got delayed. And what we did, the division reacted by pulling up maintenance schedules – planned maintenance schedules. So the bad news is we had a worse fourth quarter than we expected. The good news is we're in better shape for the beginning of 2024 because we have some of that maintenance completed and demand is back and we have a good start for this year. I think that Growing Solutions is in a good place in terms of its current inventory position. It had, by the way, record cash flow year for 2023. So that destocking didn't contribute too much to our P&L results, but it contributed nicely to cash flow. And I'm glad that we went through the destocking and not delayed it further. And for 2024, we expect significant improvement from the division. We see potential upside in Europe, another potential upside in Brazil, where we actually grew market share this year. Things are going well in China, where also we're very small, but we're still growing market share. And we have two new production facilities in China, which will help us grow further. We're also growing nicely in India. So once results improve in Europe and the war is, I can't say it's over, but we're back to the usual course of business in Israel pretty much. So we're in a different position in 2024. So I actually expect a dramatic improvement in Growing Solutions results for this year, for 2024, back to 2021 and above like margins.

Okay, perfect. That was very complete. Thank you very much. And then just to clarify a little bit on what you're seeing in terms of the demand on potash for your products and some of the implications on shipments through the Red Sea, have you seen the situation easening, or are there still issues similar to what we've talked about back in November during the last conference call, just to understand how the trade flow is going currently through the region for your products that go out of Israel? Thank you.

Okay, thanks again. Like we said in a recent call, we had two issues – two main issues from this war. One was many people being on reserve duty, which stretched us, especially on the maintenance side, and caused us to lose even some production. So that's over because most of the folks are back from reserve duty, and we're not stretched anymore. In terms of the Red situation, the situation still hasn't cleared itself up. It's become a global issue, not just a local issue. And there are forces from both sides and there are forces protecting ships going through the Red Sea. But still most shipping companies don't want to sail through the Red Sea. So what that is doing effectively, we still got all of our product in the fourth quarter and all of our product in the first quarter that we wanted to go through the Red Sea. But there's definitely pressure on shipping companies not to go through the Red Sea, by the way, the pressure is not only on us, of course. And I don't think that the situation will get better in the next few weeks until the war settles in one way or the other, of course, shipping costs are going up both in the Red Sea and beyond. There's the Panama canal issue, there's the Black Sea issue and the overall result is hike in transportation costs. I think that if it continues in the next few weeks, we will see that being transferred to customers because I know that to some destinations it's not as economical to ship products and that will take a toll on customers in the East. For example, if you look at Eastern European shipments coming out of former Soviet Union to India, then they have to go around Europe and around Africa at tremendous costs. And when that becomes non-economical, then of course prices will have to come up in order to induce those supplies to come to the East. So in the short run – in the short term, it's still an issue. It raises transportation costs. If it continues, then these transportation costs will translate into higher product costs. In the long term, obviously it has to go away one way or the other. So it's not clear what the long run implications will be at this point.

Okay, very good. Thank you very much for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] You have no further questions. Please proceed.

Okay, that was a short one. Okay, so thanks to those of you who joined. We appreciate your taking the call and listening to our report, and we look forward to reporting again. Thanks again to all ICL managers and employees and have a great rest of the day.