Compass Minerals International Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Plant Nutrition outperformed expectations: Ogden Adjusted EBITDA rose 32% to $15 million, prompting the company to raise full-year segment guidance to $49 million–$57 million. A dryer project expected to be completed by the end of next fiscal year is intended to further improve yields, product quality and costs.
  • Positive Sentiment: Salt pricing and demand remain strong. Highway de-icing prices increased substantially in the current bid season, with overall increases around double digits in many markets, supported by low industry inventories and tight North American supply.
  • Negative Sentiment: Salt profitability was pressured by lower highway volumes and higher production and distribution costs, particularly at Goderich. The company is adding labor and maintenance spending to improve output and reliability, but expects a reduced mine production profile for fiscal 2027 under normalized weather assumptions.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company raised consolidated fiscal 2026 Adjusted EBITDA guidance to a midpoint of $230 million, while narrowing Salt guidance to $225 million–$236 million; capital expenditure guidance remains $90 million–$110 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Balance-sheet metrics improved materially: net debt declined 13% year over year to $660.3 million and net leverage fell to 2.8 times from 4.3 times. Management plans to prioritize asset investment and further debt reduction before considering other capital-allocation options.
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Earnings Conference Call
Compass Minerals International Q3 2026
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Operator

Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Compass Minerals' Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Tripp Sullivan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tripp Sullivan
Investor Relations and Financial Communications Advisory at SCR Partners

Thank you, operator. Good morning. Welcome to the Compass Minerals Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today, we will discuss our most recent quarterly results. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Edward Dowling, and our CFO, Peter Fjellman. Joining in for the question and answer portion of the call will be Ben Nichols, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that the remarks we make today reflect financial and operational outlooks as of today's date, August 6, 2026. These outlooks entail assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. A discussion of these risks can be found in our SEC filings located online at investors.compassminerals.com. Our remarks today also include certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Tripp Sullivan
Investor Relations and Financial Communications Advisory at SCR Partners

You can find reconciliations of these items in our earnings release or in our presentation, both of which are also available online. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ed.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Thank you, Tripp. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the Plant Nutrition business because it's earned the lead. At Ogden, we produced segment Adjusted EBITDA of $15 million in the quarter on improved pricing and lower per-unit costs. We've again raised our full-year guidance for this business. Operational improvements we put in place two years ago are compounding. The team was determined to restore the business to the $40 million-$50 million Adjusted EBITDA range per year and have now exceeded that level. We continue to invest in Ogden with the dryer project underway that we expect to complete by the end of next fiscal year. That investment will allow us to improve product yield, further improve production volume and cost profile of this operation, as well as finished good product quality.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We're excited about the continued momentum at our Ogden site and solidifying our position as the leading North American producer of sulfate of potash. In our Salt business, the commercial story is strong. We realized meaningful price gains in the highway de-icing during the quarter and beginning to see a constructive pricing environment in our C&I product line as well. These are encouraging, and I want to put them into context. When comparing the salt costs in our P&L between periods, there are a number of factors that must be considered, including production cost, logistics cost, regional and product mix. As the winter unfolds, where we sell our products, where they are produced, how to ship to the customer, and our production costs all have various levels of impact, particularly in a season like this past one where inventory levels became very tight.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Production tons at our mine are up year-over-year. That's a positive. Costs, while lower than last year as our original guidance had anticipated, have not come down the way we expected, and I want to address that directly. There are three factors driving higher than anticipated production costs. First, despite the above, we're not hoisting enough tons out of Goderich at the cost we had planned. Second, we've increased our maintenance spending at both U.S. mines to improve operational uptime and stability, which has been guided by the implementation of a preventative maintenance system. Lastly, we've increased the headcount to maximize every opportunity to produce more tons out of the mines. In terms of logistics, our total cost metric was burdened by global fuel costs and increased rates due to tightening of truck capacity.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We have three accelerator teams working at Goderich focused on specific operational improvements and working on improving our cut times and rates and investing in training required to sustain those improvements, as well as overall mine design and sequencing. Our maintenance program is delivering results focused on quicker turnarounds and improved equipment availability. Let me be direct about the trade-off that we're making. We're spending incremental dollars on labor and maintenance in the current period costs for longer-term operational stability, production volumes, and profitability. This is the right decision for the business, but also means that our cost metrics have not yet reflected the efficiency gains we're targeting. In addition, we have other accelerator teams working on logistics and enterprise-wide improvements, including network optimization, procurement efficiency, contract management. All of these are focused on sustainable cost improvement and risk mitigation.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

As we think about the future of the company and the sustainable improvement, we have made an operational leadership change. Patrick Merrin is no longer with the company, and I'd like to thank Pat for his service and wish him the best. Brandon Risner has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. He's led impressive operational improvements in our Plant Nutrition segment and in the operational leadership of our C&I product line. A combination of prior mining experience and a track record of leading positive outcomes make him a natural fit to lead our operations. Turning to the bid season, the 2026-2027 highway de-icing bid season has been very constructive. In our core U.S. markets, we're seeing substantial price improvement year-over-year, in some cases, well into the double digits with consistent growth in demand tenders. North American highway de-icing markets remain structurally tight.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Inventories across the industry are low following the past winter, and it is supporting both pricing and tender sizes. As we look forward into fiscal 2027, let me give a sense of what we are thinking about volume. The 2025/2026 winter season trended ahead of seasonal averages with snowfall events in our key markets higher than the recent past. That strong demand, coupled with our disciplined approach to working capital and the current production constraints at Goderich, has left us and the industry with historically low inventories across the system. Given those realities, along with an assumption of more normalized winter weather, we expect to commit to a reduced mine profile for fiscal 2027 relative to the past seasons.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We will provide tighter guidance when we report fourth quarter results. Pricing gains we have secured for the business, combined with continued focus on production increases and cost per ton improvement, should position us to improve our per unit margins headed into next year. Let me address tariffs briefly. As you're aware, tariffs on Canadian goods shipped to the U.S. are set to take effect on August 19th. The large majority of the gross annualized exposure relates to the highway de-icing salt shipped from our Goderich mine into the U.S.. Through proactive measures within our commercial agreements, including pass-through provisions that are now standard in several of our key contracts, we believe we meaningfully reduce our exposure to those risks. The situation remains fluid and we're closely monitoring it.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We believe that we're in a stronger position to manage this than a year ago, given our proactive measures, constructive pricing environment, and our improved balance sheet. In addition to potential impact of tariffs, we're closely monitoring the variability within the fuel market, which is incorporated into our 2026 guidance. We expect to provide clearer understanding of the anticipated fuel impact and sensitivity within our detailed 2027 guidance when we report Q4. We wanted to note our current focus on mitigation efforts moving into next year. On capital projects, as part of our ongoing investment in the future of Goderich, we have been planning to construct a new mill. Given the complexity of executing a project of this scale within an operating underground mine, we're taking additional time to evaluate the engineering, sequencing, and timing, as well as establishing appropriate project governance.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We cannot afford disruption to the production during a period where we're focused on improving output and rebuilding inventory. We expect to provide a more detailed update on the project timeline early next year. I'd like to take a quick moment to clarify some news that was issued earlier in the quarter about a potential Utah lithium project. To be clear, we have no plans to get back into the lithium market. This announcement that EnergyX was a non-binding MoU where we're evaluating leasing them land and brine used in our Utah operations. We would have no capital commitment or operational expenses. Nothing in these negotiations has been finalized. Turning to the balance sheet. Net leverage has declined to 2.8x from 4.3x a year ago. Total net debt is down 13% year-over-year.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

A recent credit upgrade from S&P is a direct reflection of the work we've done to reduce debt and strengthen the business. I know there are questions about how we plan to allocate capital going forward, and I want to signal how we're thinking about it. Our near-term priorities are clear. Investment in our assets, continued debt reduction where it makes sense. As our balance sheet strengthens and our operations stabilize, the opportunity to consider other uses of capital become more real. The board is engaged in this discussion, and we expect to share more on this topic when we report full year results. Before I hand it over to Peter, let me step back for a moment. Two years ago, we laid out a back to basics framework on what we're going to improve this company. At Ogden, the process of delivering the results then speak for themselves.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

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

Peter Fjellman
Peter Fjellman
CFO at Compass Minerals

Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone. I'll walk through our third quarter results and the updated outlook. All comparisons are to the prior year quarter, unless otherwise noted. For the third quarter, total company Adjusted EBITDA was $39.9 million, compared with $41 million in the prior year. We reported a net loss of $5.7 million, compared to a net loss of $17 million in the prior year. In salt, third quarter revenue increased 5% year-over-year to $173.9 million. Segment pricing was up 9% overall, and highway pricing was up 8%, and C&I pricing was up 6%. Highway sales volumes declined 6%, while C&I volumes increased 3%. Salt Adjusted EBITDA was $38.9 million for the quarter, down 15%, and operating earnings decreased 25% to $21.2 million. The decline reflects lower highway sales volumes and higher per unit production and distribution costs within the segment, partially offset by the pricing gains.

Peter Fjellman
Peter Fjellman
CFO at Compass Minerals

In Plant Nutrition, revenue was $37.6 million for the quarter, down 16% compared to the prior year period. The decrease is primarily driven by a 19% decrease in sales volumes attributable to the Wynyard SOP asset sale in March 2026, partially offset by a 4% increase in average sales prices. Excluding the impacts of the Wynyard sales volumes increased approximately 4% year-over-year. Despite the sale, operating earnings were $7.8 million, up 50% from $5.2 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA improved 32% to $15 million from $11.4 million. Both product costs and distribution costs declined on a per unit basis year-over-year, driving the margin expansion at Ogden that Ed described earlier. Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, operating cash flow for the first nine months was $162.8 million, compared to $204.6 million in the prior year period.

Peter Fjellman
Peter Fjellman
CFO at Compass Minerals

Capital expenditures for nine months totaled $62.1 million, compared to the $53.8 million in the prior year, reflecting planned investments across our operations. Total debt as of June 30th was $716.6 million, down from $825.3 million a year ago. Net debt was $660.3 million, a reduction of $85.6 million year-over-year. Total liquidity was $328.1 million, consisting of $56.3 million in cash and $271.8 million of availability under our revolving credit facility. As Ed noted, our net leverage ratio improved to 2.8x from 4.3x a year ago. Let me walk you through our updated fiscal 2026 outlay. We are raising our full-year consolidated Adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint to $230 million, with a range of $218 million-$242 million.

Peter Fjellman
Peter Fjellman
CFO at Compass Minerals

In Plant Nutrition, we're raising segment Adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $49 million-$57 million, up from $43 million-$47 million previously, primarily reflecting the continued strength in our pricing and cost performance at Ogden. In salt, our current Adjusted EBITDA guidance range is $225 million-$236 million, narrowed from $225 million-$240 million previously to reflect the mix dynamic, inflationary pressures, and the pace of operational improvements that Ed previously discussed. Our expectations for corporate and other costs remain unchanged in the range of $51 million-$56 million for the full year, along with full-year capital expenditures in the range of $90 million-$110 million. In closing, I'd like to note that we are in a stronger financial position and Plant Nutrition is outperforming our expectations.

Peter Fjellman
Peter Fjellman
CFO at Compass Minerals

Salt pricing and demand remain very constructive. We are laser-focused on converting operational work at Goderich and sustainable cost improvement across the platform. We are also continuing to deploy capital with discipline, including reducing leverage where it makes sense. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we're ready to take some questions.

Operator

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

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson
Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets

Sorry, I was muted. Thanks. Thanks for my question. Just thinking about your guidance around bid season early in 2027 here. When you think about how well salt bid season's going, rock salt bid season's going here, does that imply when you think about your entire business, maybe high single-digit price growth next year, maybe mid to high? It seems like you're saying that base volumes might be a little bit lower if you get normalized weather, what you're actually going to sell. What are costs looking like in 2027? Should we see costs up a little? It's really thinking about more net back expansions here when you think about price versus cost. Thanks.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Good morning, Joel. Nice to hear your voice when you're unmuted. Appreciate your question. The bid season's been really great, really based on the previous winter and really the inventory management discipline that has been established in the market. Most of the bids, of course, are transparent and we see a wide range of outcomes depending on where you are. Our focus has really been to really dive in and really try to serve those markets who we maximize our margin with and not trying to serve everything everywhere, albeit we do try to spread it out just because you never know exactly where winter's going to be. It would be safe to say that overall, we're around double digits in price increase. Okay. With regard to looking at costs, et cetera, going forward, this is an important point. We're working really hard on our mine costs.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We've got this fantastic mine in Goderich mine, the world's largest underground salt mine. The production is up. Costs are down. These are unit costs down. On the logistics side, we're battling fuel and truck carrier a bit, we're laser-focused on this. We'll provide guidance in the fourth quarter.

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson
Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets

Okay. It seemed like in your prepared remarks, you were speaking about you would expect with normal weather that 2027 volume could be lower based on the reasons you gave. Just also Ed, there's been a lot of churn at the CEO level at Compass Minerals the last number of years, you have a lot of objectives that you came in with, right? Lower costs. You had a lot of things that you working capital management, inventory management. Things weren't great when you took over a few years ago, and you've got some aggressive targets on costs. Like I said, you've had a lot of churn at the CEO level, you're talking about delaying some of the decisions on the mill project and not getting the cost as fast as you wanted. I can't help but think it's all tied together.

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson
Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets

Can you sort of speak about your journey here and what has to get done to achieve what you want to do?

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Yeah. Look, appreciate the question. First of all, let me just say, we're very grateful for Pat and the service and wish him the best in the future. We're really pushing hard, and we need to have an organization that's really fit for purpose. We're really focused on our costs. Brandon Risner, Joel, I don't know whether you've had a chance to meet him yet, but we'll make sure you do. Brandon has been leading the efforts with Plant Nutrition, which is a fantastic story for the company. In addition, he's been our operational leader in our C&I product line and also done a really good job in increasing the earnings from that part of our business. Even before, he brings a history of success, whether it was in Compass.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

He's the guy that started, really, the way we look at capital allocation for capital investments, project capital investment, even before that with Peabody. He has a great track record of operational improvements, and that's what we need right now. As much as I like Pat, the needs of the company are more important than any individual. That's what we're doing. With regard to the project, it'd be one thing if we were building this mill in a parking lot, and it'd be pretty easy. Given the fact that we're doing this in an operating underground mine and with all materials, everything coming down the same shaft as our operating people and our operating materials, it's very complex.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

We need to make sure that we have a very high degree of front-end loading in terms of our engineering, our project execution plan, all of the logistics that go around that. We have a rock-solid owners team, and we really need to put this all in place before I'm ready to take it to the board of directors.

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson
Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets

Okay.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

I think I hit your points, Joel.

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson
Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets

Thank you.

Operator

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

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Questions here. Maybe let's just start with the progress at Plant Nutrition. First of all, congratulations. Especially most recently, there's been a significant kind of step down in cash costs, I'll call it. To achieve those, I had a couple of questions. To what extent is the plan there to just rely on pond-based tons? And how much of maybe the bottom line progress to date has been from supplementing with purchased potash? And then maybe bigger picture, again, my models go back more than a decade here, but is the progress to date maybe, would you say, reflects kind of getting back to the operating environment that was in effect, let's say, in the late 2010s or very early 2020s, or is there something qualitatively different being done to kind of significantly boost the per-ton economics, production economics?

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Okay. David, thanks. Great question. Look, it's been a fantastic story for the company in terms of the restoration of that business to where it really should be. Recognize that before when we reported Plant Nutrition also included our Wynyard mine up in Canada.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Wynyard.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

These results are without it. It's really a great story for our Utah partners and our colleagues out there in terms of restoring this business. There's more to go because as you know, we're executing the dryer compaction plant where we have a lot of yield loss there. We're executing a project there, which will be done about this time next year, to really make a better product. We'll see additional yield come from that. Well, that'll happen at a lower cost. Basically, it's an incremental cost. We either put the product into what we sell or it blows away as dust, and that's not quite the right way to say it. We lose it. Well, we'll capture that going forward, and we'll produce a much higher quality product for our customer base.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

The improvement, we expect that to continue to improve. We should start seeing that about this time next year. Let's see. In terms of the last part of your question, I wasn't here 10 years ago, we restored the outcomes to that. The answer to that is, if that got that back to where it was, the answer to that is yes. Are you doing anything different? The answer to that is yes, too. It's the way that we manage our harvest, the tons, and Brandon, for example, led that. It's the way that we manage that from a stockpile into the plant, really reducing variability in the plant. It's some things that we've done within the plant itself to improve recovery beyond historical levels.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

It's really a number of things that we've done to make this improvement over and above the success the company had in the past.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Maybe just a comment on the plan to supplement pond-based tons with purchased-

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Oh, yeah. Sorry

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

biomass or just Yeah. Thank you.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Thanks, David. Thanks for reminding me of that we are supplementing this year with KCL. We've never really guided on this, but I think from your thinking, our plan is to do about the same amount next year. Okay?

Ben Nichols
Ben Nichols
Chief Commercial Officer at Compass Minerals

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

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay, great. I'd like to ask you, I guess maybe more of a, I don't know, philosophical question about the bid season results to date. I always assume that your company probably has pretty much encyclopedic knowledge of your marketing areas and bid histories and competitor tendencies and things like that. Based on the mostly qualitative discussion thus far, it seems like you've identified some pockets where either volume or price or both can be pushed a little more. Further, last point, my assumption is that to a certain extent, you are responding to what you see in the bid season results to date. In other words, competitor behavior. For the balance of the bid season, which should be mostly done, I guess, by September, is this the case where you'll be able to bid a little more aggressively for the balance of the season?

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Are you maybe altering or, what's the word, structuring your bidding profile, both tons and price, based on your mining plan? In other words, what's going into your virtual or in season kind of bidding strategy?

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Okay. Let me try to field that, and I'll have Ben help me out as well. We do have a deep understanding of our markets and really the distribution network, really looking at our focus in terms of every year we come up with a bid strategy. Part of our strategy this year was to really maximize the margins, recognizing that the market was really tight. Where do we really want to serve that we can maximize our margins? That's really what we've been doing. That's delivered cost subtracted from the price. That's worked out well. We'll see what winter does and how we're able to bring that home, as you know that we have the variability due to mix and regional sales.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Our focus at this point, we're largely through our big state contracts, albeit there's still some states that are coming back and rebidding areas that they weren't able to fill. There shouldn't be any surprise about that. Largely our focus right now are really our commercial customers, which we should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. Ben, you want to add something to that?

Ben Nichols
Ben Nichols
Chief Commercial Officer at Compass Minerals

No. Yeah, thanks, Ed, and David, thanks for the question. I think, going into this bid season, our overwhelming focus was the value of our product in the market. Coming off of a big winter like the last season, we were excited to see the market had a renewed understanding of how important our product is relative to public safety. Focus number 1 was value of every ton that we sell. In addition to that, we've spent a lot of time working with our key customers on our terms and ensuring that the way we operate our business fits the terms that we need, specifically around minimum takes and having a higher level of confidence in what we commit and what's going to move through the pipeline. We're really excited about the results we've seen.

Ben Nichols
Ben Nichols
Chief Commercial Officer at Compass Minerals

The market has a lot of momentum. We're looking forward to the next season.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Okay. One last one, maybe kind of a clarification on how you're thinking about the looming tariffs on Canadian shipments to the U.S. I don't know. I guess a little over a year ago, there was another round of tariffs that were going to impact cross-border trade, Canada and the U.S. It turned out, I guess because of the essential nature of the products or other steps that you or others took, those tariffs were kind of negated. They didn't apply to Goderich shipments to the U.S. Is there something qualitatively different about this round of tariffs? In other words, what has to happen for a repeat? In other words, the cross-border trade from Goderich not being impacted by this latest announced round of tariffs.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Yeah. The real difference from a year ago to today, from the tariff standpoint, is the USMCA, the United States-mexico-canada Agreement, where certain cross-border materials, et cetera, were exempted from tariffs and things like that. Once that was clarified a year ago, or more than a year ago, a year and a quarter ago, we really just started up the ramp-up at Goderich mine. What's also different is recognize that potential exposure our commercial team and the company here has been working on, how do we minimize the impact on the company if something like that happens again? Ben and his team have been really looking at contract terms. You just mentioned terms of the market, how we're trying to tighten up min-maxes and those sort of things, and having success on that.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Really being able to pass through costs like this to customers has really been the focus. We understand the exposure. We've looked at ways to mitigate that, and a big part of that has been mitigated. We continue to work to try to really underscore the message to the government about, we have this great, amazing asset in Ontario, which is critical to interstate commerce and public safety in the U.S. That the market in the U.S. cannot be fully served without Goderich mine. That it is a truly essential and critical mineral for our economies. We're highly engaged in that effort right now.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

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

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Yeah.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

Just a comment on that, please.

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

What we're doing is, remember our warehousing, many of them were scraped clean last year. Been a long time since that's happening. We're really part of the normal course of business here. We're working very hard to reestablish inventories where they need to be to serve the contracts that we've committed to. There's really nothing unusual about that in our plan here.

David Silver
Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets

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

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

Yeah. You too, David.

Operator

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

Edward Dowling Jr
Edward Dowling Jr
President and CEO at Compass Minerals

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

Operator

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

Analysts
    • Tripp Sullivan
      Investor Relations and Financial Communications Advisory at SCR Partners
    • Edward Dowling Jr
      President and CEO at Compass Minerals
    • Peter Fjellman
      CFO at Compass Minerals
    • Joel Jackson
      Managing Director of Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets
    • David Silver
      Senior Analyst at Freedom Capital Markets
    • Ben Nichols
      Chief Commercial Officer at Compass Minerals
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