ICL Group Ltd (ICL) 2016 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ICL analysts' conference call. Before we begin, I must advise you that today's Web seminar is being recorded. (Operator Instructions). Now, without any further delay, I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today Limor Gruber, Head of IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2016 conference call. Earlier today, we filed our press release to the securities authorities and the stock exchanges in the US and in Israel. The press release is available on our Website.

For your reference, this meeting is being Webcast live at wwwicl-group.com. There will be a replay available a few hours after the meeting, and a transcript will be available within 48 hours. The presentation that will be reviewed today was also filed to the authorities and is available on our Website.

Please don't forget to review slide number 2 with the disclaimer. Our comments today contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance.

Today, we will start with the presentation by our Acting CEO Asher Grinbaum, followed by Kobi Altman, our CFO. In addition, ICL executives are either here on the line and will be available for questions following the presentation. Asher, please.

Thank you, Limor. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you around the world. Starting from slide 3 and looking back at 2016, this has definitely been a challenging year for ICL. The business environment in commodity fertilizers has been under significant pressure, which require us to make tough decisions. We adjusted our spending investments to these changing conditions and focused on the variables we could control.

I'm proud of the ICL team for the progress we made under difficult circumstances. And we closed 2016 in a stronger competitive position as a result of these efforts. Our annual and quarterly results reflect our unique business model, where our specialty business provide a balancing effect to the commodity downturn and helps us achieve better performance compared to many of our peers.

The significant negative pricing impact on our operating profit for the year, which amounted to $580 million, was mitigated by operational and commercial excellence initiatives, which helped us to improve our production and sales volumes to reduce our cost and increase the value from our products and services. These initiatives contributed more than $100 million compared to 2015. Cash flow optimization measures contributed to yet another quarter of strongly positive operating and free cash flow.

The breakdown of slide 4 demonstrated the diversification of our business and highlights why ICL is in a unique position compared to most of our commodity-based competitors. Our business diversification is a big advantage, especially during downturns and volatility that characterizes the agricultural cycle. We believe that our specialty solutions businesses will continue to act as a stabilizing sector.

Results of the growth in our specialty solutions during the downturn in the potash and phosphate fertilizers markets are clearly demonstrated on slide 5. In 2016, more than 60% of the operating income came from the specialty businesses. We will continue to build the Company for a sustainable balance between our essential minerals division serving the agriculture market and our specialty division serving a wide [area] of diversified and (inaudible).

We put a lot of focus on innovation. And as a result, most of our R&D investments are directed to our specialty businesses, increasing the contribution of new and usually more profitable products to our top line, as demonstrated in slide 6. In 2016, we increased the sales volumes of polysulphate by about 16%. And we expect a similar growth rate in 2017.

In Q4 2016, polysulphate sales volumes almost doubled. And we are pleased with our achievement in producing granulated polysulphate and our new product PotashpluS, a granulated blend of polysulphate and potash.

New-generation polymeric bromine flame retardants had a significant contribution to ICL industrial products in 2016. The E-Max technology that was developed by our specialty fertilizers is a production technology to lower cost of controlled release fertilizers. And in the food specialties business line, our new products provided full [table of] solutions [for mixture] and stability based on specialty phosphates and dairy proteins.

As you may remember, our target for 2016 and 2017 CapEx was not to exceed $650 million for each year. As demonstrated on slide 7, in 2016, we effectively delivered on our target. While strictly managing our spending, we will continue to ensure that we provide sufficient resources for growth, as demonstrated in the depreciation line.

Most of the maintenance CapEx is in our essential minerals and sales to maintain and further improve the competitiveness of our existing assets.

In contrast, most of the growth CapEx is directed to our specialty businesses. And we plan to continue to increase our growth investments in these businesses to support our goal to achieve above GDP growth.

Looking into 2017, as you can see on slide 8, the business environment remains challenging. The market continues to be competitive in several business lines, especially those that are correlated to the phosphate commodity market.

We continue to focus on the matters that are our control, focusing on commercial excellence in our specialty business. By offering new products and solutions and by expanding geographically will ensure these businesses continue to provide a balancing effect to the more volatile essential minerals division, operational excellence in our mineral assets and production plants around the world to further lower our production cost, ensuring we maintain a strong competitive position.

In addition, during 2016, we made significant progress in our working capital and CapEx management. And our goal is to further build on our achievements in 2017, which will contribute to cash flow generation and to stronger balance sheet. All in all, we believe that ICL will come out of this cycle as a better, stronger, and more resilient company.

With that, I would like to conclude and pass the floor to Kobi. Kobi, please.

Thank you, Asher. Good day, everyone. I will start with our financial results on slide 10. Overall, we are pleased with the solid quarter's performance in the middle of a commodity turmoil. The fourth quarter is traditionally a weaker quarter for ICL due to seasonality. And despite this, we had good achievements in both our essential minerals and specialty solutions division, as well as ICL cash generation power.

Both quarterly and annual sales were similar to the level in the comparable periods. This is a great achievement in light of the price pressure that we faced, particularly in the commodity market.

We cannot control commodity prices. But, we were able to offset some of the negative impact by improving what we can control, focusing operational excellence to reduce cost and improve production utilization and on commercial excellence, including innovation, pricing initiatives, improved portfolio, geographical expansion, and customer relations, all of which continue to contribute to the balancing effect of our specialty businesses.

The measures we have taken to reduce our costs and working capital along with our disciplined approach to CapEx have made it possible to record another strong quarter of operating cash flow and positive free cash flow in contrast to the broader commodity sector, which resulted in a reduction in net debt in the quarter.

Cash flow generation will continue to be priority for the Company. I am pleased with our achievements in the past few months to settle several legal fronts, which were significant over -- for several years with only moderate financial impact.

This includes the conclusion of an arbitration proceeding between Dead Sea Works and Haifa Chemicals, the conclusion of proceedings regarding prior years' tax assessment by the Israeli tax authorities, the dismissal of a motion for certification of a class action against the Company that was filed in 2013 on the grounds of misleading disclosure, as well as the approval of settlement agreement regarding a class action against the Company's Dead Sea Works subsidiary with respect to potash prices in Israel.

We are proud of all of our achievements which position us as a stronger, more resilient company for years to come.

Turning now to our business performance and the major developments for each of our divisions during the fourth quarter and the full year on slide 11. And I will begin with specialty solutions. The division's operating profit increased by 12% compared to the fourth quarter of 2015, an impressive achievement as the fourth quarter of 2015 was unusually strong due to exceptionally high sales of clear brine fluids and some catch up we did following a slow first half in 2015.

The ICL industrial products business line performance continued to benefit from the implementation of its strategy. In 2016, we had record sales volumes of several important new products, like FR-122P, the mercury emission control product line, and several other flame retardants. Our costs were driven down by the labor reduction and lower raw material costs while still maintaining our elevated selling price level as we focused on value-oriented pricing strategy.

ICL advanced additives benefited from increased sale of environmentally friendly extinguishing materials. In ICL food specialties, we increased sales of dairy protein and blended solutions, which helped to compensate for the price pressure in single-ingredient phosphate additives market.

In our specialty fertilizers, price decrease of commodity fertilizers, which are used as raw materials for the specialties, increased competitive pressure in the market. In addition, lower [pro] prices incentivized farmers to use cheaper commodity fertilizers over semispecialty fertilizers. We are [sum up] more encouraged since the beginning of 2017, where we are seeing the price appreciation of ammonia and a good start for the year in Israel and Europe.

Moving to essential minerals, we experienced strong commercial and operational performance in the potash business while our commodity phosphate business continued to face a very challenging environment.

During the quarter, we shipped the highest potash volumes in the Company's history for a single quarter. The potash results were also supported by better realized price for potash compared to our major peers, which reflects our geographical advantages. During the fourth quarter, we were able to complete all the contractual shipments to China as well as some optional volumes. Our shipments to Europe (inaudible) also increased compared to the fourth quarter of 2015.

The improvements we made in our logistic systems as part of our operational excellence initiatives as well as higher production in ICL Dead Sea allowed us to meet the increased demand in a relatively short period of time. The record production at ICL Dead Sea in 2016 was achieved through better management of the raw materials flow together with the utilization of higher capacity in our processing plants.

The improvement in the Dead Sea is expected to offset a decrease of 300,000 tons expected in the UK production in 2017, mainly due to the shift to polysulphate. In the last few months, potash prices recovered from the low levels recorded in the third quarter of 2016. We experienced good customer engagement and believe there is more room for a moderate recovery in demand in prices in 2017.

In the phosphate market, selling prices continued to decrease in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter of the year. The phosphate business lines' annual and quarterly results were severely impacted by prices.

We are disappointed with the results of our YPH joint venture as it is still highly exposed to the phosphate commodity prices, and our focus for 2017 is to minimize the losses it is generating. In recent weeks, there has been some stabilization and even improvement in the market, with price increases realized in Brazil, the US, Europe, and China.

Added to this is the expectation for slightly lower Chinese production in 2017 from the already low bar set in 2016. However, we expect higher raw material and energy cost, especially for ammonia, to offset some of these price increases.

Looking into the first quarter of 2017, we expect potash shipments to be down significantly from Q4 2016, but moderately higher prices to partially offset this decline. Lower volume is the result of the completion of the previous Chinese contract without a new contract signed at this point in the year coupled with seasonality low volume, which typically occurs in the first quarter.

We continue to intensively implement efficiencies in our YPH joint venture in China. And together with the moderate price recovery, we hope to improve the results in the phosphate business line.

In the specialty solution division, this is still off season in some major business lines, and we expect to be stable sequentially.

The bridges on slide 12 demonstrate the challenges we faced this year, namely the significant impact of lower commodity prices on both sales and operating income. While we were able to mitigate the impact of lower prices by increased volume sold, which resulted in almost flat sales year over year, the impact was much more noticeable on our operating income. Yet again, our increasing ability to control our costs and the successful implementation of our efficiency measures helped to partially mitigate that effect.

In this regard, it is important to mention that part of the positive contribution of the raw materials, energy, and transportation items is also related to our operational excellence initiatives. It should be noted that the 2015 strike impact was adjusted in the operating profit, but not on the sales level. This is why quantities impact is positive in the sales, but negative in the operating profit.

Turning to slide 13, in the specialty solution division, we can see that sales this quarter were almost the same as the fourth quarter of 2015, which was stronger than usual fourth quarter. Some of our business lines experienced price declines due to the increased competition as a result of low commodity prices. That was offset almost completely by the increase in quantities.

Despite the lower prices, the division's operating income increased by 12%, attributed to low production input cost, improved product mix, as we grow the share of new products as well as efficiency measures.

Let's take a closer look at our essential mineral division on slide 14. The late signing of potash contracts in China and India resulted in high shipments of these -- for these markets during the quarter. As Asher explained, our logistical advantages, which were further enhanced by operational excellence initiatives, as well as strong production in the Dead Sea helped us to ship record quarterly volumes of potash.

Even though we benefit from higher netback in our potash prices, as reflected in our full price compared to our major peers, we also continued to see the significant impact of the price decreases versus 2015, especially on the phosphate business line performance. This was partially offset by lower raw material and energy prices.

Turning now to slide 15, as we completed our current operational excellence and efficiency plans, we are satisfied with our accomplishments, which result in a further contribution in 2016 of more than $100 million compared to 2015. Over the period from 2013 to 2016, we have achieved a 22% reduction in production cost per ton of potash, mainly due to cost reduction at ICL Dead Sea and an increase in the Dead Sea share in production and sales.

Our target for 2017 is to create additional value of $100 million to further improve ICL competitive position. We (inaudible) to efficiency measures in our production assets and in our administrative costs as well as through commercial and operational excellence initiatives, which are expected to contribute to better production utilization, increase sales of new products and solutions, and better pricing, especially in our specialty businesses.

And finally, on slide 16, our disciplined balance sheet management in 2016 is reflected in the quarterly cash flow generation, especially in light of the significant decrease in commodity fertilizer prices.

For 2017, our target is to maintain our achievements in the working capital and cash flow management. After successfully achieving our 2016 CapEx goals, we plan to further reduce CapEx in 2017 while still leaving room for growth, as Asher demonstrated earlier.

The combination of our disciplined balance sheet management with lower CapEx and cost should help us to achieve another year of meaningful cash flow generation. This is expected to support our goal to finish 2017 with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of less than 3.5, which is important for maintaining our investment grade rating, while we're still providing solid dividend yield to our shareholders.

Thank you for your time, and we will be happy to take your questions now.

(Operator Instructions). Patrick Rafaisz, UBS.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. Couple of questions. First, on the optional volumes you shipped to China, can you quantify how much that was and how much that could be potentially in 2017?

Then on cash flow, you mentioned the strong collections in Q4, which helped a lot to improve the yearly performance. Would you agree that this creates a pretty tough base to beat in 2017, i.e. that working capital intensity is unlikely to improve further next year or this year?

And then lastly -- sorry, I've got three question -- for specialty fertilizers, do you have a view on when the competitive pressure could start to ease in this segment? Thank you very much.

Okay. I would like -- Asher speaking. I would like to convey that question to -- the first two questions to Kobi and afterwards to Nissim.

Okay. The -- I will talk about the cash flow. And, Nissim, you will talk about the quantities to China.

On the working capital and cash flow, yes, Q4 was particularly strong due to the collection in this fourth quarter. We do expect a weaker cash flow generation quarter in the first quarter of 2017. But, still, we expect 2017 to be a very strong year of cash flow generations.

But, to your question, yes, Q1 will be lower than 2017. We also still plan to further reduce our working capital in 2017. We still believe that there is room to further improvements in our working capital. It might not continue to be this dramatic reduction in future years, like we experienced in 2016. But, at least in 2017, we still expect to see some improvement. Nissim?

Okay. In regard to the contract supply to China, so first of all, we concluded our obligation of the contract. We don't have a flow or maybe a little (inaudible) to flow to 2017. And of course, all of us waiting now for the next milestone of signing the next contract in China, which at least rumors from the market is expected to be by end of first quarter.

Do you have any view on the price points with the first contract?

Look, we hope that the price will go up.

Understood.

Neel Kumar, Morgan Stanley.

Hi, this is Neel Kumar calling in for Vincent. You had a comment in your press release about having (inaudible) for phosphorus-based flame retardants in the quarter as a result of the stricter environmental regulation in China. And I'm just wondering if you expect this trend to continue in 2017 and for Chinese producers to continue to have these issues.

Eli, please.

As we can see now, we believe that the regulation in China will continue in that same direction. And according our forecast, our quantities will become or will stay as it is now.

Gotcha. And I was also wondering if you could talk about price you were able to get for polysulphate in the fourth quarter. And how do you expect prices to be affected as you increase volumes?

Nissim?

Okay. Polysulphate is a successful move of penetration to the market with new products. And this possesses a [wider] character. It is a unique product with four nutrients, and it's accepted in the market in a successful way.

We expect that the prices of polysulphate will follow the prices of the different nutrients in the formula. So, if prices of potash are in positive momentum, and this what we see in the last weeks, I expect that the polysulphate prices will follow this positive momentum.

Great. Thanks.

Asher speaking. It was a question about the specialty fertilizers situation in China. We believe that it's a direct relation between the specialty fertilizers, mostly based on phosphates and what's going on in the phosphate market. And we expect that, once it will be some recovery in the phosphate market, we should see it immediately also in the specialty fertilizers.

Joel Jackson, BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to go back to some of your commentary on potash production. Can you help us understand? Like you produced 5.3 million tons of potash in 2016. What will 2017 and 2018 look like?

You talked about the UK Boulby being down 300,000 tons because of, of course, the transition to polysulphate. You will be taking that offline presumably in 2018. And then you're ramping up your expansion at some point in the next little while in Spain of Iberpotash. So, will potash production in 2017 be down 300,000 tons versus 2016? And then what will 2018 look like, or please correct me.

As you said, the mine in UK is focused on polysulphate. And the reduction of 300,000 tons of potash will be partly compensated by all the operational excellence which we build in the Dead Sea and in order to compensate as much as possible of these quantities. So, what we will see in 2017, maybe it's slightly less quantity than 2016, but not dramatic.

And then what will 2018 look like with the different puts and takes?

2018, I expect to continue with this approach in Dead Sea to continue to debottleneck. We will not be, again, compensated fully the reduction, but mostly. And in 2019, I expect that the Spanish mine will start to add the additional quantities.

So, does that mean we should expect the UK potash mine to produce about the same amount of potash in 2018 and 2017?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you for that. So, my next question is on phosphates as well. So, you talked about that the goal with the JV in China is to just minimize the losses. Obviously, this is a reasonably recent investment and a large investment. You learned a lot about it. It sounds like this opportunity has soured. At what point, even though it's a new investment, would you consider walking away from this investment?

Walking away is not in our agenda. And look, this joint venture is suffering heavily from the huge reduction in the phosphate prices. Just to give you rough idea, in 2016, the prices reduction influenced $100 million in the bottom line due to this.

So, we'll compensate it partly this by efficiency measures and other operational excellence activities, which we'll continue to do also in 2017. If what we see in the last weeks is positive trend of phosphate prices will continue, then we will see here a different picture.

We have still a lot to do in operational excellence and cost reduction. And of course, we are analyzing few options how to optimize this activity.

I would like to add to Nissim -- Asher speaking -- that our challenge and our target, it's very challenging. So, we're analyzing and we're pushing the price reduction, of course, and operational excellence, the commercial excellence. We are checking also the mix of the products that we are producing there. And we believe that [this work] therefore that will be done, we should minimize the losses in this joint venture. And this being said, we don't have in the agenda any, let's say, programs to shut down or to work out from this joint venture.

Okay. One more question, please. You did very well with your potash costs per ton in the quarter. You also drew down a lot of potash inventories. You had pretty high inventories in the Q3. You have achieved cost like this before, but they've been higher in recent quarters. In 2017, what should potash cost look like? Should they be more on the average of 2016 numbers, or is Q4 a good cost to model for the year?

Okay. As I start (inaudible) to reduce our costs and to optimize our processes. And in the last (inaudible) even before the prices started to go down. And I think we are now enjoying the results of these efforts by reducing our cost. This process of reducing cost will continue over in the coming years. So, from this point of view, I'm comfortable with our competitive edge, and this process will continue.

So, will 2017 cost on average be lower than 2016? Is the Q4 number a reasonable rate to move forward for 2017?

Joel, you can take the fourth quarter number as a good estimate for 2017.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Steph Bothwell, BofA Merrill Lynch.

Hi. It's actually Steph Bothwell from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Just a couple of quick questions from my side. So, firstly, on the CapEx guidance for 2017, if I look at your presentation, it looks like the upper end of the range is around $610 million in terms of total CapEx.

I wondered if you could perhaps split that out between growth CapEx and maintenance CapEx and, on the growth side, perhaps give us a little bit of detail in terms of where you will be spending.

And the second question is on elemental bromine prices, which you flag are still quite elevated in China. Perhaps some sense in terms of where you expect these prices to go for elemental bromine as we proceed into the year. Thank you.

This is Charlie Weidhas speaking. I'll address the question around CapEx. So, without giving a specific number, the majority of the CapEx that we'll be spending in 2017 is geared towards maintaining our capacity, operational safety, and environmental performance, as well as cost reduction.

But, there still is an amount there that is for selected growth projects in our specialty division and a little bit in our essential minerals division.

Regarding the question on bromine, I'll turn it over to Eli Glazer.

It's Eli Glazer speaking. Related to bromine prices in China, we anticipated the prices in China will remain at this level they are now.

Okay. Thank you. And just to follow up on the CapEx point, can you perhaps quantify how much is related to growth CapEx and how much is maintenance? I mean, what is the proportion that you left for growth spend?

Okay. Sorry. Asher speaking. For the growth CapEx, we have close to $100 million. And to maintain the capacity, we have about $150 million.

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Abbas Ali, JPMorgan Asset Management.

Hi, good afternoon. I had two questions. One, if you could just give a few more details on the impairment of assets that you took this year and that you also used in the calculation of your adjusted EBITDA.

And secondly, on the liquidity position, the cash on the balance sheet is I guess relatively low. It will go down even further post the dividend payment. So, what are your funding plans for this year if you could give some color on that? Thank you.

Abbas, thank you. On the impairment of assets, we didn't have much in the fourth quarter. For the full-year results, the main item there is the discontinuing of the projects that we had announced in the third quarter, the potash project in Ethiopia as well as the information systems project, the global harmonization project, what we called. Those are the main items that you also see in the EBITDA calculation. But, this belongs to the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, we did not have ones.

In terms of cash and capital funding, we ended the year with around $3.4 billion of net debt. This is the same level that we ended the previous year, which is a very, very nice achievement because we started 2016 with a significant investment in our partner in China of $250 million. And we were able to go down to reduce the debt level to the level of the beginning of 2016.

Cash generation will continue to be strong in 2017, and this will satisfy all our cash needs. So, we do not expect a further increase in our net debt. To be opposite, we also would like to continue to see slight decline in debt during this year as well and to finish the year with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of less than 3.5. This is our current target for 2017.

Thank you very much.

Howard Flinker, Flinker & Co.

Hello, everybody. I have two minor arithmetic questions and a bigger question. Your inventories dropped year over year. Is that because of price or because of a reduction of units? That's the first question.

This is because our problem to reduce the working capital.

So, quantity.

Quantity. Okay. Good.

Quantities, of course.

Good. Thank you. Second, my memory fails me. Did you own the 15% of the Chinese joint venture for much of last year's fourth quarter or not, so I can compare mentally?

We invested in the joint venture in the 15%, if you ask, in our partner, we invested in January 2016. So, it was not in our balance sheet at the end of 2015. The joint venture itself, if that was your question, started in October. So, one quarter of working in 2015 versus four quarters in 2016, but the comparison of the fourth quarter, if you compare Q4 2016 to Q4 2015, in these two quarters already were with the joint venture operation.

All right. That's clear also. And finally, at the beginning, you say one of your efforts this year will be to raise price. In a tough market like this with plenty of supply, how do you do that?

When we talk about price levels, we talk about our specialties and not about the commodities.

Oh, I see. Okay. That makes it clear. Thank you very much. (inaudible).

(Operator Instructions). Yonah Weisz, HSBC.

Yes, good afternoon. Just a question on clear bromine (inaudible) fluids, which are based on bromine, with the slight recovery in oil prices, do you feel any -- from your clients, any (inaudible). Thank you.

Eli Glazer speaking. In the last year, we saw some reduction in the market, and we still see some good demand, and we (inaudible). In general, we see a quite flat market for the coming year. In other words, it's not a big reduction vis-a-vis the last quarter.

Andrew Benson, Citi.

Thanks very much. I was sort of disconnected from the call a few times, when -- especially when you're talking about potash and polysulphate. So, I do apologize for (inaudible) for asking the same question. But, can you just give an idea of the volume of price for polysulphate? You talked I think about lower volumes of potash this year. I just wanted to confirm that because, as I said, I couldn't hear it. And I presume that that's the absence of ability to further destock.

And also, on potash, you talked about your hope for the prices will go up with the China contract. And you hoped it would be signed by the end of March. And I just wondered what that hope was based on.

Okay. Let's start from the end. Prices potash in the last weeks, what we see is that already bottomed, and we see some recovery of prices in different markets. Based on what we hear from the market, the expectation also in China for a price increase.

Now, my estimation, and this is again my view, is that, during the first quarter, it might be after now, the Chinese holiday, start of the negotiation, might be will end by the end of the first quarter, but no guarantee here. It's really negotiation. And based on the past experience, could take long time. It can take short time. What I can say is that the inventory in China is lower than 2015, which will help to boost the negotiation.

In regard to polysulphate prices, right now, there is a linkage between what is going on with the prices of potash to the polysulphate. And I expect that this will continue in the future. Now, remember, we are in a penetration situation in polysulphate. We're still in the education of the market, education of the farmers. We do a lot of field work. And I don't expect that, in the short term, we see here different prices of polysulphate compared to what we have today.

Okay. All right. Thanks so much.

(Operator Instructions). Gilad Alper, Excellence Nessuah.

Yes, hi, thanks for taking my call. My question is about the outstanding issues between ICL and the State of Israel, the barrier shield regarding phosphate, the 2030 concession, other issues that are outstanding. Is there any progress? Are you guys waiting for something to happen? Are you just stuck in a standstill with the State because, obviously, all of these issues have huge issues -- have huge impact on valuations, your investment options in Israel. So, what's going on with the State of Israel? Thanks.

Kobi?

Hi, Gilad. The relationship with the government of Israel is currently working well. In the last few months, we made some significant moves that we just mentioned, what I mentioned earlier, the settlement with the tax authorities on prior-year taxes. And the discussions are now much more constructive and to the point, obviously, is mining and doing a lot of operation in Israel, the discussions are on a day-to-day basis.

Discussions on the barrier is currently not with the government. It's with the hearing committee. We are participating in those discussion. We provide information as needed. And it's very hard for us to predict where this will stand. And this we believe will continue for some time. It's very hard to predict right now where it will end.

On the 2030 things, I believe that this is something that probably, for Israel, will be -- remain under discussions for future years. We don't see any rush for -- any reason for rush for the Israeli country to take decisions or any actions right now. This is something that can still wait for days to come. And many things can still happen in this volatile commodity market. And right now, we don't see any activity. And so, we are not involved in that at this moment.

Okay. That means basically that you barred -- well, you're kind of barring yourself I guess from making any large investments in Israel, given that you don't know what the return is going to be, given that you don't know what the new concession is going to look like, right?

Well, we continue to invest in Israel on an ongoing basis. We mentioned the operational excellence that we continue to do. We are the large employer in the south of Israel. We are very, very proud of that. And we continue to do that.

We are the largest taxpayer in Israel. And we are very proud of this as well. Significant enhancements in Israel, even when the time will come, and obviously in a downturn in a commodity cycle, this is not something that is currently on the table. But, if time will come, we will discuss it with the government. And I'm sure we'll find solutions for that as well that will satisfy the need of both parties.

Okay. Thanks.

Thank you. And there are no further questions. So, I'll turn the call back to you for any closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to talk to you again. And if you have further questions, we are always available. Thank you. Good day.

Thank you very much. So, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you, all, for participating. And you may all disconnect.