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OCI NV
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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the OCI N.V. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, the 25th of February 2021. And I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Hans Zayed, Director, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon and good morning to our audience in the U.S. Thank you for joining the OCI MV Fourth Quarter 2020 Conference Call. With me today are as Ahmed El-Hoshy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Hassan Badrawi, our Chief Financial Officer. As you have seen, we published our results this morning. And on this call, we will review OCI's key operational events and financial highlights for the quarter, followed by a discussion of OCI's outlook.And then as usual, at the end of the call, we will host a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, statements made on today's call contain forward-looking information. These statements are based certain assumptions and involve certain risks and uncertainties. And therefore, I'd like to refer you to our disclaimers about forward-looking statements. Now let me hand over to Ahmed.
Thank you, Hans, and thank you all for joining us today. Let me start by covering our top priority, safety. We are pleased that our safety performance continues to be best-in-class despite the prevalence and challenges of COVID-19. Our recordable 12-month incident rate was 0.23 incidents per 200,000 man hours as of December, a significant improvement from 2019.This continues to be one of the lowest in our global industry. But of course, our goal remains to prioritize process safety and to reduce occupational safety incidents to 0 for all our production facilities across the globe. I would also like to thank our resilient employee base remain positive and kept spirits high during an extremely challenging year.Lastly, I'd like to also commend our Texas-based OCI teams, who dealt with the extreme cold weather conditions in February very admirably, despite challenging unprecedented personal circumstances at home. On to the results. We are pleased that we ended the year with a strong quarter of robust volume growth and healthy cash generation. As a result, we achieved a reduction in net debt of $332 million during 2020, despite selling prices for all our products nearing trough cycle levels during the year and on average at materially lower levels than in 2019. Our sales volume increased 15% during the fourth quarter and increased 23% for the full year 2020. But on a like-for-like basis, our full year sales increased by 10% for the full year 2020 versus 2019. Looking at the underlying drivers of this growth, robust import demand in India, Europe and Lat Am boosted a 24% increase in urea volumes for Q4 2020 as Fertiglobe year-over-year -- as Fertiglobe delivered inventories that were built up during the lower summer season.Our DEF sales in the U.S. were particularly strong and achieved once again record levels during the quarter. And we saw our nitrate volumes in Europe increased during the fourth quarter year-over-year, contributing to an overall increase of 20% for the full year 2020 compared to 2019.Our annual volumes were lower year-over-year -- our annual ammonia volumes were lower year-over-year due to a combination of turnaround activities at one of our ammonia lines at Sorfert in Algeria and some weakness in industrial end markets. These factors offset the increase in ammonia volumes in the U.S. on a good -- on an excellent full demand.We also had another quarter of strong performance in methanol as we recorded an increase of 48% in owned produced methanol sales volumes in Q4 2020 compared to the same period last year.This was driven by a significant step-up in production at OCI Beaumont and BioMCN as both these facilities were running above 95%, OCI B even above 100% on average for the quarter. And despite some production downtime at Natgasoline during the quarter. I'm pleased to say that BioMCN continued its strong performance and reached record production volumes in January 2021. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Hassan to discuss the financial results.
Thank you, Ahmed. I'll briefly cover some key highlights from our financial results for the fourth quarter. Allow me to begin with the income statement where we recorded on -- for our consolidated revenue, an increase of 22% to $1.04 billion, and our adjusted EBITDA rose by 12% to $266 million in the fourth quarter of the year.As mentioned earlier, sales and production volume growth in both the nitrogen and methanol segments contributed to this EBITDA performance. The prices of our key cost input, natural gas were on average slightly higher for the group in Q4 2020 compared to the same quarter last year. Looking at the operating segments of our business, our nitrogen business benefited from higher sales volume offsetting an average -- on average low in selling prices and higher in gas prices in the U.S. and Europe. Fertiglobe, our Middle East business, adjusted EBITDA improvement compared to both the fourth quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020. We continue to benefit from our fixed gas price agreements at Fertiglobe and the increase in higher spot gas pricing and its correlation with product pricing.The Fertiglobe business basically position on the cost curve improves as gas prices have gone up. The methanol group's adjusted EBITDA was higher in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 due to an increase in production volumes, higher methanol prices and insurance proceeds in Natgasoline more than offsetting slightly higher gas prices in the Netherlands and the U.S. compared to a year ago. Turning to the balance sheet and our free cash flow performance. During the quarter, we generated healthy operating free cash flow and as a result, we were able to deleverage a further $187 million during the quarter, resulting in a net debt position of $3.73 billion as at December 31, 2020. Free cash flow before CapEx -- before growth CapEx amounted to $245 million during the fourth quarter, reflecting our operational performance and net operating working capital inflows as we unwound our inventories that we have built up during the summer. This was offset by capital expenditures, semi-annual interest payments and also about $51 million of one-off expenses related to the various refinancing activities during the fourth quarter of 2020, including the early redemption costs for our 2023 bonds. Total cash capital expenditures were $52 million in the quarter at about the same level as the same period last year, and that culminated in $263 million for the full year, which was at the lower end of our guidance. We continue to expect around $260 million total CapEx on a 3-year average basis going forward with our estimate for 2021 expected to be closer to $300 million as we have some carryover capital expenditure activities from 2020 that now will take place in 2021. This year, we will also start to see the benefits from our recent refinancing activities. We expect the bond offering last October in the refinancing at Fertiglobe to generate cash interest savings of more than $32 million per year as we lowered our weighted average cost of gross debt by approximately 60 bps to now below 4.5%. And we continue to see further optimization opportunities going forward as our leverage profile improves as a result of the improved outlook that Ahmed, I'm sure will discuss in a few moments.In February, we also redeemed $147 million of bonds at IFCo, which will result in further recurring cash interest savings. But equally importantly, it's a reduction in subsidiary debt, which is consistent with our policy to consolidate our debt activities at the holding company.We will continue to evaluate opportunities to achieve similar objectives and further simplify our capital structure in 2021 and onwards. And with that, I'd like to hand over back to Ahmed for discussion of our outlook and some concluding remarks. Ahmed?
Thank you, Hassan -- Yes. Thank you, Hasan. I'll discuss our outlook and some exciting recent developments in our ESG efforts. The outlook for our business is undoubtedly looking much more positive than only a few months ago, and we are, therefore, seeing a much better 2021 ahead versus 2020. We are starting to benefit from a significant recovery in selling prices compared to last year as global nitrogen markets enjoy strong tailwinds, and we maintain a solid order book in all our key markets. The outlook for our methanol end markets has also strengthened significantly.I'll start with the outlook for nitrogen markets. Global nitrogen prices have recovered from trough cycle levels reaching 2020 with urea rising 30% so far year-to-date 2021. Ammonia nitrates and U.S. prices were lagging in the fourth quarter of 2020, and we are still lower compared to the same quarter -- and we're still lower compared to the same quarter in 2019, but have also strengthened considerably, increasing by more than 30% in the first 2 months of 2021.These price increases are underpinned by healthy fundamentals. The steady increase in corn prices over the last few months to near 8-year highs, driven by strong corn imports from China and declining global corn stocks to use ratio and rising farmer incomes, are supportive of farm economics, and as a result, nitrogen demand and, of course, pricing. Higher fertilizer demand in China on strong domestic crop prices, combined with the recovery in industrial urea consumption in the country is expected to likely limit urea exports from China in 2021 to a lower level than was experienced in 2020.Our nitrates order book in Europe is healthy going into the second quarter of 2021 and strong demand expected on improved farm incomes and nitrate inventories -- sorry, improved farm incomes and nitrates inventories in Europe are at very low levels in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the prior year, where we, as well as our peers had stock build up.We also expect a favorable spring application season in our core U.S. Midwest market with attractive affordability levels for farmers on the back of rising crop prices more than offsetting recent increases in fertilizer prices.Compounding to the increase in demand or supply shortages in the U.S. where natural gas prices soared in February during a cold weather storm, causing most inland U.S. nitrogen producers to reduce production rates or even idle plants.The lower supply and logistic disruptions have resulted in a significantly tighter balance in the market, which is supportive of higher U.S. nitrogen prices ahead of the start of the spring season. This is particularly the case for UAN, where prices have risen by approximately 70% from trough levels in 2020 and further room to increase on attractive affordability levels as the ratio of corn to UAN prices remains close to decade lows, and UAN is still at a 10% discount to urea on a nitrogen ton basis, which reached historic lows at the end of December. In the case of urea, U.S. is still short of product. And in addition to what has been imported this year -- this fertilizer year, a further 1.4 million tons needs to be imported by June for the spring season in the United States. The latest outages are likely to increase this import requirement by another approximately 150,000 tons. But U.S. urea prices continue to trade at a discount relative to Arab Gulf values plus freight, as we mentioned on the last conference call. We also had some downtime at our U.S. plants in both Iowa and Texas. But the impact of the stoppages has been much more than offset by pre-existing gas hedges as we went into the month of February 100% hedged in the U.S. with physical purchases as well as financial derivatives.On the industrial side, demand remained relatively subdued in Q4 2020. There remains uncertainty on the pace of economic recovery, but we've seen a gradual recovery in global demand and markets have shown resilience to ongoing lockdowns. Ammonia prices lagged the increase in urea prices, but the ammonia market has become extremely tight in the first quarter of 2020, with prices benefiting from higher feedstock costs, our recovery in industrial markets, high cost capacity shutdowns as well as gas supply curtailments in Trinidad and outages just mentioned in the United States. OCI's DEF in the U.S. reached record levels in Q4 2020, which combined with the higher sales prices in the U.S. supports an improving trend going into 2021.Melamine prices have also been going up, driven by reduced supply in the fourth quarter and solid demand in our core European markets continuing into 2021, contributing to an extremely tight market as we complete Q1 as we go into the Q2 contract pricing season. Moving to methanol markets. The outlook for methanol end markets also continue to improve. Spot methanol prices have more than doubled since reaching trough cycle levels in 2020, and the supply and demand balance has remained tight so far in 2021 despite the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in U.S. and Europe.High cost methanol capacity has been shutting down and natural gas shortages in Iran, Trinidad and China have tightened global methanol supplies, which, combined with delayed new supply continues to support prices.Demand from methanol-to-olefin plants in China was strong in 2020, and MTO utilization rates continued to be stable on the back of healthy economics. Downstream demand is also expected to continue to recover -- to continue to improve as the global economy, construction and industrial activity recovers. Turning to natural gas. We are well positioned to benefit from the recent increase in feedstock prices, which has driven up marginal cost of production and supports our product selling prices, particularly ammonia. It also benefits OCI as one of the most efficient producers in the U.S. and Europe and strengthens Fertiglobe's significant competitive advantage as a result of its fixed supply -- gas supply arrangements, as Hassan mentioned.I would like to give an update on our ESG initiatives, as I'm sure you've seen, we will also be holding an ESG Investor Day on March 8.I'm pleased to share that we've made further progress in our effort to grow our green portfolio with some exciting new initiatives that fit well within our strategy to focus on and develop sustainable products.We continuously strive to be a leading environmental steward, especially among our core products, ammonia and methanol are some of the best positioned products to create low carbon and carbon-free foods, fuels and industrial feedstocks and therefore, can decarbonize a wide range of end markets and industries. This creates tremendous growth opportunities for OCI and the use of methanol and/or ammonia as a result -- as a shipping fuel is particularly promising as these products can help this sector decarbonize materially and in a cost-effective way.OCI is one of the largest producers and traders of ammonia globally with our ammonia plants and storage tanks located directly on the major global shipping routes and located in regions with abundant and very cost-competitive renewable resources.We will be participating in the adoption of ammonia as a shipping fuel. And in parallel, we are working on expanding our blue and green portfolio to supply the shipping sector along with a number of other industries and end markets.We are pleased that we recently reached another key milestone in growing our biofuels business as we started supplying Essar oil in the U.K., strengthening our market-leading position in renewable methanol.We will continue to roll out biomethanol as a fuel, which helps reduce the carbon intensity of road transportation fuels in a highly efficient way, and we also see many opportunities in other industrial applications where this versatile product can be used.At the upcoming ESG Day, we intend to announce our 2030 Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reduction targets. We believe that we can achieve these levels based on a differentiated strategy focused on value creation and capital discipline that help enable the world transition to the hydrogen and low-carbon economy. We will outline how we will accelerate our operational excellence programs, which we expect to yield tangible short and medium-term results and how we can grow our existing portfolio of lower carbon products.We will also detail value-enhancing strategic initiatives focused on low carbon technologies where we, together with our partners and customers can leverage our unique geographical and product footprint to capture exciting growth opportunities.Going forward, we will continue to identify, evaluate and develop more initiatives that reduce our environmental impact and grow our green portfolio. Our focus on deleveraging overall is still in place. So we're looking at asset-light opportunities, subsidies, tax incentives and things like offtakes of green feedstocks to help still meet our low CapEx, high free cash flow conversion targets.The valuation of ESG initiatives take sustainability as well as economics into account. To conclude, we are now experiencing nitrogen markets that have not looked as positive since at least 2015 and methanol markets have also strengthened considerably. Against this backdrop, we look forward to delivering another year of robust volume growth in 2021, and we expect methanol business to be a primary driver of this volume growth.Following a solid performance of OCI Beaumont and BioMCN in the second half of last year, normalization of production and improved onstream efficiencies are expected to drive this volume growth in the Methanol segment in 2021.This, in turn, drives earnings growth for the methanol group. Given a significantly more positive outlook for methanol compared to a few years ago with regards to the methanol strategic review, we will continue to explore multiple value creative opportunities for the methanol group, and we'll update you accordingly. We believe that based on current market fundamentals for our selling prices allied with our growth expectations for production sales volumes for 2021, we can deliver improved free cash flow and we expect a drop in net leverage to below 3x by the end of 2021. With that, we will open the line for questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Christian Faitz from Kepler.
Two questions, please. First of all, one for Hassan. Can you please walk us through a free cash flow bridge for 2021? Also given the net debt-to-EBITDA ratios which was mentioned. And then second question would be, what your laudable efforts in ESG also lead to higher CapEx eventually?
Yes, thanks for your question, Christian. I mean, as you all know, we don't give extensive guidance on the constituents of the leverage target that we just shared with you. I would hope that you appreciate that there has to be substantive confidence behind our decision to highlight the acceleration of our deleveraging profile going forward because given the position of our business in terms of the global cost curve, especially with Fertiglobe, with our fixed gas contracts, combined with the step-up in our volumes, which has been a primary area of focus year-on-year. And we've -- as you've seen, we've continued to deliver a step-up in volumes and we continue to see, and we expect to see another step-up next year, driven also by the -- sort of the recovery of our methanol business, combined with the backdrop of robust pricing environment, which Ahmed described as being the best environment we've experienced since 2015. All that together really has given our business a boost in terms of our ability to accelerate towards what we feel is an achievable drop to low 3x leverage by year-end. Obviously, that is a function of, again, prices and volumes, but we're -- this is definitely -- we're definitely feeling good about the start of 2021.
Okay. Great. Fair enough.
I'm happy to address the second question with regards to basically, will CapEx go up given our efforts on ESG. I mean, we'll spend some time going through that during the ESG seminar on March 8. But generally, as we look and approach ESG, we're taking sustainability to be something that is an opportunity for us rather than something that's a burden and a threat. And as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, our focus is on not just achieving sustainability goals, but also focusing on the economics and value. As you know, that's something that OCI, it's part of our culture and DNA to continue to do so.So when you think about just the -- and I mentioned this briefly as well, but when you think about our ambitions to reduce our carbon intensity as OCI, a good portion of that and a good chunk of it comes from certain focus areas on operational excellence. As we mentioned previously, with the consolidation of our operating oversight globally, one of our big focus areas are on improving onstream rates, decreasing start stops and conversion efficiencies.So you can do those with or without CapEx. Without CapEx, obviously, that's a very good returning endeavor. And with some minimal CapEx to be able to improve efficiencies and conversions of -- or decrease the amount of MMBtu per ton, you're using our natural gas per ton, that reduces your footprint, but also generates a lot of returns. So it just makes a lot of sense. And it's not something that's super CapEx intensive. As I said, if it does have some CapEx, it should have a 1 to 1.5 year payback, something that's quite quick on the payback side. When it comes to low-carbon technologies and opportunities, as mentioned, looking at biomethanol, looking at shipping, looking at some of the demand pool that's coming in the downstream customer base, where their focus is on Scope 3, while ours maybe on Scope 1 and 2 because we're close to the hydrocarbon, we're seeing a lot more month-over-month receptivity around being able to pass some of the costs down towards the customer. Something like shipping is very interesting, right, because when you -- if you go to some shipping lines and some have announced focus on ammonia as well as methanol as decarbonization mechanisms, they're very close to the customer base. It's almost like B2C when dealing with them.And customers have shown a willingness to pay to get something that's low carbon in terms of footprint and freight or freight -- the fuel within freight is a very low price -- very low part of the overall product price. So those are opportunities where the downstream customers showed a willingness to pay for that, and that can help allow for great returning projects or great returning endeavors with our existing base. In addition, as I mentioned, subsidies, different programs in the EU as well as the U.S. from a tax incentive perspective and subsidies are ones that we'll be -- continue to become available to allow for a low CapEx approach to some of these projects and helping subsidize them.In addition, we've looked at things like offtakes optics where we're offtaking the renewable feedstock and able to produce renewable ammonia, renewable methanol and downstream products without having spent as much CapEx. So the focus is going to continue to be as we do spend growth CapEx, focusing on NPV, strong NPV positive returning projects. And like I said, a big chunk of it can be on things with either limited CapEx or very quick payback profiles.
Okay, great. Thanks, Ahmed, and congrats to the entire team on having a great asset base in place in a finally solid market environment.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Christian.
And the next question comes from the line of Tom Worth from Citi.
Tom Wrigglesworth from Citi. A couple of questions, if I may. Just if I'm interpreting this correctly, you stated that a 25% -- sorry, $25 ton increase for all products is equivalent to $330 million of incremental group adjusted EBITDA. It looks like to get to your less than 3x net debt EBITDA target for 2021, you're just baking in about a $25 ton increase across all products based on some simple maths. And yet, I noticed that most of your products, current spot run rate are running well ahead of that. Is that just conservatism on your part? Or are you anticipating a significant correction in prices through the second half.Second question, if I may, is on the sequencing. Obviously, we have seen this rapid improvement in nitrogen prices through the first quarter, but sometimes that doesn't realize in the volumes. So can you help us understand just exactly how the prices that we've seen on the screen equate to the kind of volumes that you're selling, you called out specifically that 2Q is looking good for nitrates in Europe. Is that because 1Q won't see much price increase in nitrates? So color on the shape of the 1Q, 2Q split would be very helpful. And the third question, if I may, I'll just add in interest expense for 2021, given that your net debt is falling would be the last thing?
Sure. Thanks, Tom. So going through the numbers there. I'll maybe start with the second question. And then we can jump into the first and the third questions. So the second question was around -- are you saying basically the timing of sales where we said -- we're seeing strong price growth year-to-date, Q1 or year-to-date, sorry, late February. And you're saying the average pricing that we will show in our Q1 results would potentially lag that because of forward sales? Is that what you're asking?
Yes. Is there going to be any lag? Or have you been able to sequence your sales volumes with the spot prices? Yes, exactly that. Is there going to be a substantial lag in this quarter? And I think that part is from a kind of commodity urea perspective, but then also those European nitrate prices.
Sure. So from a commodity urea perspective, from an ammonia perspective and from a nitrates perspective, what we've done, especially when we see -- and we said it in the last conference call, we see an upward momentum in pricing. We try not to sell too far forward. Obviously, you have to sequence some sales several weeks in advance, potentially a month and a bit in advance. But I'd say, on par, if you look at us versus a lot of others in the industry, we tend to be a little bit shorter-dated in terms of forward sales. So we will see obviously, some late Q4 sales entering into Q1, and we'll see some late Q2 sales entering in -- sorry, late Q1 sales entering into Q2.But basically, we've been selling into the rally. Some of it will -- some of that has been achieved for early Q2 sales that we've done in late February, for example, but what I've been kind of very pleased to see and taking ammonia, for example -- as an example, ammonia prices have increased very rapidly. I mean, in June, they were, I think, something in the high $100s and now we're seeing ammonia prices -- we just did a sale earlier this week delivered to the U.S. at $470, $475 delivered into the U.S. Gulf.What we -- what the approach has been is to continue, and I have to commend our sales team on this, continue to sell and set higher prices in the market over and above where the indices are with opportunistic sales and doing a lot more expanding our geographies of focus and doing some trading of product. The focus here has been to get the best value for our business and to go a little bit further downstream in terms of where we're selling. In addition, we are -- we have been buying some lagging price tons in the Black sea and the Baltic and are able to generate additional margins there as well, but obviously, more trading margins versus product margin. In general, we think that there will be a little bit of a lag effect, but we're not talking about a quarter's worth of lag effect, something in the order of, call it, 4 to 6 weeks at times. Is that clear on the second question?
Yes, yes. Understood.
Okay. Thanks. Hassan, do you want to take the first question?
Yes. Of course. Sure. I'm happy to address questions 1 and 3. On your first question, I mean, thank you for pointing that out. I mean, as I said, this sensitivity, which is, of course, applied on the average price assumed for the full year is the -- provides relatively good guidance in terms of the potential upside.And as I mentioned, we feel pretty good about the guidance we've given in terms of this level as target. And depending on price performance and our ability to achieve our step-up volume growth that we will see where we end the year. We are definitely on a much more rapid path towards achieving an investment-grade profile for the company.We hope that in due course on a rating agency -- from a rating agency angle that there would be sort of a catch-up in terms of how the business is positioned, is perceived to be positioned. As you know, we got our ratings reconfirmed in the end of 2020, which preceded some of the strong rallies we've seen in commodity prices. And I think that probably would be revisited, and it's something we remain very engaged on as the profile of the business and our balance sheet continues to improve. Obviously, this also opens a lot new doors in terms of opportunities to revisit some of the existing financing structures that we have and see where we can optimize further. We're fairly comfortable in terms of our sort of amortizations for the next few years, it's up $200 million we mentioned earlier per year. And we're sitting on a pretty strong liquidity base that's getting stronger. So it's a very good backdrop. All -- as I said, it's a very good backdrop for achieving these targets. In terms of the question on interest, as you know, I think last year, in 2020, we estimate that we were $320 million of interest costs. I think our guidance for this year will be sub $250 million, and that's inclusive of interest on loans, bonds, securitization, instruments that we have and lease payments as well. So again, another substantive step down and we hope this will see further reductions past 2021 as well. I hoped I answered your question, Tom. Yes. Yes.
And the next question comes from the line of Henk Veerman from Kempen.
My first question is also on the leverage target, but maybe a little bit different. So I was wondering, I think in the last year's annual report, it was stated that the target that debt-to-EBITDA is still 2x. And I was wondering, is that still the target? And what is the rationale behind this target or any leverage targets? I mean, given that I think you have about $14 billion, $15 billion worth of market value assets in your portfolio. So I guess net debt of, let's say, between $2 billion to $3 billion sounds to be quite reasonable. So why -- is this 2x? Is is still the case? Or is it a bit higher than that? That's my first question.
No. Thanks for your question. It's actually a reasonable question to ask. And we -- I mean, I would say it's a combination of wanting to achieve an investment-grade profile with fairly comfortable parameters. We think that 2x was a reasonable target to set for a company that -- as you know, we were coming out of a very large CapEx drive where we added significant capacity over the last 4, 5 years.And I think we needed to level that to the market in terms of what our priorities are. And our priorities have been and continue to be deploying our free cash flow towards reducing our debt and also resolving existing subordination within our capital structure further as we go along with optimization of our cost of debt. And that journey is now moving quite swiftly along. And ultimately, this is the phase the company is entering -- has entered a phase where we are getting into a mature, stable production flow and -- but we're generating free cash flow, and we hope we get to a steady state where we can also potentially start looking at dividends, cash dividends on a steady basis in combination with our deleveraging path. So I'm not -- it is a destination, but more than is the targets.
Yes. And I'll just add to what Hassan said, which is exactly right, Henk to your question. I mean, from our perspective, obviously, there was a bit of an interruption last year with the advent of COVID and what happened with -- in the markets on industrial markets really slowing down demand growth last year, and we're seeing the catch-up and we talk to the outlook for this year and going forward, which is great. And it was 2x target through the cycle. As we go through, as we've guided to below 3x based on our expectations for price and volumes for this year, this is the point where we start, and we're starting to get some inbound inquiry with regards to returning capital to shareholders. And obviously, we -- if you were to ask us now versus a few quarters from now, one more firm footing now that we have a better outlook going forward. So that's something that could come up as we continue to demonstrate, hopefully, in the rearview mirror, free cash flow generation and sequential deleveraging.
Right. That's clear. Okay. The second question is on the methanol value-enhancing opportunities. Can you remind us what kind of opportunities you're thinking of? And is there any term time frame that you may give? Can we expect any, let's say, further announcements within the next, let's say, 6 to 12 months?And my last question is on the dividend. The Fertiglobe minorities, which was a bit below my expectations in Q4. Can you maybe give me a number for 2021? Like how much cash outflow will there be from the dividend to the minorities?
Maybe I'll start on the methanol one and then Hassan could potentially address the minority leakage. So on methanol side, I mean, not much more to say versus what we have in the press release, but just to kind of elaborate a bit in terms of getting back to the market, we promised getting back in H1 2021 to the market. We continue to look at anything that makes sense from a value perspective with regards to OCI. We'll note that, obviously, our free cash flow profile, our leverage profile, the outlook has materially improved. So there's an opportunity for us to continue to generate the free cash flow staying as is as well as potentially some strategic alternatives. But we're going to be looking with a very discerning eye, just given the volume ramp-up close to 50% in Q4 and continuing to be a big volume driver here in 2021 for our group. It's just a very good context with regards to looking at our options from a strategic perspective. Hassan, do you want to address the minorities question?
Yes, sure. On the minorities question, you're correct. I believe we did -- our previous guidance for minorities was an ordinance of $140 million. And the number was substantially lower than that for 2020. For 2021, because some -- again, some aspects of it is timing, some aspect of sort of financial flows within the group. I would say that we don't adjust the guidance up to be between $150 million to $200 million. There's a bit of an accumulated effect for 2021. Yet despite that, it doesn't affect our ability to generate free cash flow and continue to deleverage going forward. I think we were able to also demonstrate that during the sort of the trough period historically.
The next question comes from the line of Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley.
Congratulations on the results. So first question, I mean, alluding to previous questions, I mean, you've said you've now entered into a mature, stable production flow at OCI. And you've already shed some lines on your capital allocation priorities. But I thinking more holistically, I mean, what are your midterm ambitions for OCI? Where would you like to see OCI over the midterm, let's say, 5 years from now? That's the first question.Then 2, can you provide us with some insight on what you're seeing in the methanol markets? What you're seeing on the demand side for this year? Are there still any demand segments that have yet to recover? Some granularity on that would be great. And then I think regarding Thomas question earlier. I mean, you mentioned on selling more downstream. I mean, what do you really mean? Could you just elaborate what you're selling more downstream and what your strategy is there? Is that something we also see at other nitrogen players? That would be very helpful.
Sure. Thanks, Lisa. And thanks for the question. So with regards to 5-year outlook, kind of I'm hesitant to say what it will look like from now and with a perfect crystal ball, but what I know that's in hand now is that we are and have been focused on the sustainability side of the business with the trends, and we think that we're extremely well positioned with our product slate to take advantage of it and actually be a boost to OCI. Having potential end markets like ammonia as the shipping fuel as well as methanol as the shipping fuel is just one example.But you could see growth in terms of -- in the future, potentially using our locations for storage and infrastructure as very well-located bunkering areas for shipping, an area that several years ago was not on the radar stream for OCI. So we can see probably some tangential benefits of this move towards a low-carbon and hydrogen economy, allowing us to expand into this space with -- as a provider of product, as a provider of infrastructure and as potentially a catalyst or a creator of more low carbon and renewable fuels and feedstocks over the course of the decade.And this relates partly the other question with regards to downstream. I mean, we're going to be looking further and further downstream down -- for example, the chemicals downstream markets when it comes to products like ammonia and methanol because as we said, we're getting more of a demand pull with the sustainability push that we're seeing globally right now, and it's going into new verticals and end markets we haven't seen before.So that's another element of it. Of course, over the course of the next 5 years, we always look for what's the value-creating opportunity for the stakeholders of OCI. So to the extent there's something that makes a lot of sense from a synergies perspective, M&A is always a possibility for us to take advantage of, and I think we're well positioned with our global asset base.There's still synergy potentials in the Middle East following the ADNOC OCI joint venture that we had as well as in a very fragmented European nitrates as well as U.S. nitrogen market as well. So I think the -- in terms of some of that activity could happen with OCI on the nitrogen or methanol side or it could happen outside of OCI. We anticipate that happening because the bid-ask tends to get a bit smaller as you're coming out of a trough and the market could continue to see consolidation and should continue to see consolidation now that you're approaching it, in some cases, piercing mid-cycle levels where people have a bit more cash that they're able to work into the systems and consolidate a very fragmented market. The second question. You were saying new -- you're saying in terms of the methanol markets, what is fully recovered? And are there some areas that just still aren't back at what you would expect to be from a run rate perspective. Was that the question, Lisa?
Yes, just a bit of an outlook on what you're seeing on the demand side. And if there are still any categories that need to recover?
Yes. I mean, we've seen, even from a few quarters ago, we've said that we've seen nominations come up from our existing contractual customer base on the methanol side quite well. So I think the methanol commercial team has done an excellent job of getting a nice diverse set of candidates -- sorry, customers for our business, which, as you know, is primarily selling into the European and U.S. markets, which is a big advantage of the OCI's methanol group. And so we've seen nominations from customers in terms of what they expect month-over-month to continue to stay strong.But there are some areas that just are lagging still. So with road transportation down with the lockdowns and revised lockdowns that we had in the last several months, that's had an effect on demand for methanol as a blend with gasoline or biomethanol as well. And despite that, we've seen reasonably good volume movements as well as a good -- as well as pretty strong price recovery over the last few months.So from a demand perspective, this year, we see it being a good recovery year, something in the mid-single digit, 5-plus percent demand growth. And from a supply perspective really, there's one plant in the U.S. that now looks like it's going to come online later in Q2. And that plant is going to be something less than 1.5% of global supply being added despite the continued demand growth.So products like MTBE, the blending of gasoline DME, those are areas where methanol still hasn't reached that run rate potential because of, like we said, the slowdown in kind of on-road transport, which we anticipate as vaccines are rolled out, and as we get towards the middle of the year and the second half of the year, that's improved.
Okay. That's super helpful.
And you had a third question on going more downstream.
You've answered that one. I mean, I can try another question, but you've answered the downstream one.
And the next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.
Just a couple of questions from my side. Just first, on cash flow in Q4. Is it possible to quantify what was the benefit from the sale of CO2 permits? That would be first. And second question, again, just on numbers. There's a big provision movement between reported and adjusted EBITDA I think of $50 million plus. So can you just throw some light on what those provisions relate to?
Sure. Hassan, do you want me to take the CO2 question, and then you'll cover from that regards.
Yes.
Yes. So basically, on the CO2 side, it's approximately $80 million worth of CO2 credits. As you know, that the EUAs, which is part of the ETS program in Europe, you're allocated carbon units in proportion to your production levels. And we had a surplus, so we're able to monetize that in Q4 and also have locked in that exposure to our continued CO2 exposure as -- instead of producing assets in Europe.Yes. And I think -- I'll just add one other thing, and maybe Hassan can drop in on the provisions. I will also say that when you look at the free cash flow and ex the CO2, you'll also see that Q4 did have a onetime refinancing cost of $51 million, that number for free cash flow is net of.And so that's, as Hassan mentioned, to improve our run rate interest profile going forward. So we spent $51 million really on the retirement of the -- I think it was approximately $1 billion of bonds in euros and dollars to pay the call protection and materially reduce our interest expense. So that's also kind of a one-off on the negative side from a free cash flow perspective.
Yes, that's a very good point, Ahmed, actually, to sort of build the free cash flow bridge for Q4. In terms of the provision, I mean, it's really -- it tends to be a combination of things. We don't delve into the individual components of them because some of them have to do with ongoing events. But it can be a combination of historical litigations, tax disputes and various jurisdictions. We tend to take -- as a company, our policy is to be very conservative in estimating such provisions. As you know -- as you've seen in the past 5 years, there's a lot of reversals that end up taking place as well. So -- but I'll leave it at that.
Yes. I have a follow-up on the CO2 point because clearly, the CO2 prices are going up. So what was the sort of thought process around monetization of CO2 in Q4? And are you substantially net loan CO2 in Europe today, because clearly, with the CO2 prices where they are heading, one would have thought companies would want to bank as much as possible to use in the future?
Sure. So with regards to that, as I mentioned, with the sale of CO2 credits, we have -- we do have hedges in place. And the reason behind doing a transaction like that is that we were able to monetize them and undertake those hedges and still do it well below our cost of funding. So that's one of the rationales to be able to do that as a way to generate additional cash flow without having to pay as much as our interest expense. In terms of our CO2 exposure, it's something we continue to be focused on, but it's a minimal impact despite the higher prices we've seen as of late in the last month or so. We are currently net long, but there's some timing differences because you tend to receive your CO2 credits for the following year, a month or so before you have to pay for CO2 units under the ETS program for the prior year.
And our next question comes from the line of Faisal Al Azmeh.
My first question is regarding the JV with ADNOC. Maybe if you can shed some color on how ADNOC views this JV? Are they just in this -- on the passive side? Or are they looking to grow it over time? How are they viewing the fertilizer markets themselves and where can -- where do you fit in that equation in the long term?And my second question is regarding Natgasoline. I mean, we've been reading a few teething problems that the plant has been taking. Has those been resolved? And what is the current status there?
Thanks, Faisal, for the question. So on the ADNOC JV side, I'll start and maybe Hassan, if he has anything to add, should also mention. But we find that the JV, as you know, is the Chairman of our Board for Fertiglobe is the Head of ADNOC, Dr. Sultan.And there's a lot of focus in ADNOC on Fertiglobe as it is a very good vehicle when we think about the low hydrogen economy, and you've seen some of the announcements out of Abu Dhabi generally and out of ADNOC over the last couple of months around positioning ammonia into Japan, ammonia shipping fuel, various other initiatives that are being looked at by ADNOC, the real vehicle for that is Fertiglobe. So definitely seen as a prime way of taking advantage of the push on sustainability globally we're seeing right now.There are opportunities for Blue ammonia. There's opportunities for green ammonia in the future as you know. Some of the ADNOC Board members are also on the Board of, for example, Masdar, which is the renewable city in Abu Dhabi as well. So access to some of the cheapest renewable electricity feedstocks keeps up pricing globally really positions Fertil, which is the asset that ADNOC contributed to the joint venture very well in that space. And ADNOC is also very excited by the prospects that we have in North Africa where we also sit in areas -- some of the best areas from a wind and solar perspective as well.So very much seen as a strategic partner with us, and very excited about the future, and we continue to have discussions at the Board level for the joint venture regarding Fertiglobe. Hassan, do you want to mention anything further?
No, I think you've covered it comprehensively. Certainly, one of -- it's also one of the first partnerships where ADNOC enters as a minority, albeit a significant stake on minority stakeholders. So we -- as a partner that also was a testament to the opportunities that this platform does provide both from having sort of this strategic seaborne focus, global leader, which has had a substantial impact on the seaborne market, and we've realized a lot of synergies that we've been commenting about since the close of the deal in September '19. But -- and also, as Ahmed mentioned, the positioning within the region with a partner like ADNOC opens a lot of possibilities.
Yes, that's exactly right. Now obviously, Hassan, some other members of the team were instrumental in creating the joint venture with ADNOC and getting it closed in 2019. With regards to the Natgasoline question, Faisal, the plant is, as we mentioned broadly, we had outages in the U.S. and Natgasoline is currently down.We anticipate it coming back online in the first bit of March. And we're addressing some things while the plant is down right now. But one of the offsets we've had in the case of Natgasoline, which is less so than we saw with IFCo and OCI Beaumont is that we're able to monetize some of the prepurchased gas before they run-up in gas prices, and we saw, obviously, some gas reached some pretty high levels in the Texas area. So that's been a reasonable offset to the downtime that we've seen in Natgasoline.Yes. And you saw, obviously, the insurance cash flow should be received here in Q1 as well from what we put in the press release.
Thank you speakers. There are no further questions at this time. Please continue. Thank you.
Great. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining. We look forward to the next conference call. Please tune into the ESG seminar we have on March 8 and stay safe.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you, speakers. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.