Compass Minerals' CEO Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made today to reflect future events or developments. You can find reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial information that we discuss today in our earnings release, which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at compassminerals.com.

Now I'll turn the call over to Angelo.

Angelo Brisimitzakis

Thanks, Peggy. Good Monday morning everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. As you know from our earnings release our results this quarter were very consistent with the outlook we provided last quarter. But some of you may have been surprised to read that we expect our highway deicing sales volume to be about averaged this coming winter, if the winter weather is more typical than this season last year. And that the average price we’ve achieved during the bid season so far has been approximately flat.

I know there is generally a lot of interest in the highway deicing bid season, so I will begin my remarks by explaining the dynamics that are playing out in our served markets this summer.

First, keep in mind that the bid seasons are a lot like winter weather seasons. They develop over the course of many weeks and months. Governments generally don’t consult with one another on deicing purchases because each one is trying to make the best decision for its own constituents. So, trends generally don’t emerge until about this time in the summer when the bid season is at least half over.

And we sometimes see trends shift as the season progresses from this point to early fall. This bid season is highly unusual because of the record breaking warm and mild weather we experienced in North America this past winter. A lot of our customers salt storage facilities are already filled full of carryover inventory that they bought over the past six months to meet the minimum purchase requirements specified in the contracts we signed with them last year.

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