Thanks Jennie. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today.

We also have Scott Rook, our Chief Executive Officer with us on the call this morning. And like the last few calls, each of us is a in different location.

The fourth quarter was eventful for Chemtrade as I'll begin by mentioning a few large one-off events and then review the consolidated and segmented business results. This will help guide your understanding of some of the drivers for our performance in the quarter.

Then Scott will follow with some remarks on the current state of our business and future growth. He will also provide additional insights into our 2022 full year earnings guidance and assumptions and key for the business.

Following that, we'll have a Q&A session. Before I go further, I'd like to remind you that our presentation contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially.

Further, information identifying risks, uncertainties and assumptions and additional information on certain non-IFRS measures referred to in this call, can be found in the disclosure documents filed by Chemtrade with the securities regulatory authorities available at sedar.com. One of the non-IFRS measures that we'll refer to in this call is adjusted EBITDA, which is EBITDA modified to exclude only non-cash items, for the unrealized foreign exchange gains and losses.

For simplicity although, our accompanying presentation will refer to adjusted EBITDA, we will just refer to it as EBITDA and other marks, as opposed to adjusted EBITDA. Both of these terms are fully defined in our MD&A.

Starting with the sale of the Potassium Chloride and Vaccine Adjuvants business that were completed on November 02, these businesses were part of the Water Solutions and Specialty Chemicals or WSSC segment. The sale generated net proceeds of $182.7 million with a net gain of $7.6 million.

The net proceeds from the sale were used to pay down our credit facility. As a result of the sale of these businesses Chemtrade is in the process of reconfiguring its operating segments, which will be effective in the first quarter of '22.

Sulfur products and performance chemicals will combine with the remaining Water Solutions and Specialty Chemicals segment to form a new segment called Sulfur and Water Chemicals or SWC. This new organizational structure will be reflective starting with our next earnings release for the first quarter of '22.

Also during the fourth quarter, Chemtrade settled a lawsuit as the plaintiff relating to Canexus Corporation’s North American Terminal Operations or NATO assets for $21 million. A net benefit of $17.7 million was recorded in corporate costs during the fourth quarter of 2021.

The Sodium Chloride business has since the beginning of COVID experienced lower demand, especially due to a decline in demand for office paper combined with an increase in competitive pressure that has reduced margins. As offices have remained closed, and a recovery in demand is uncertain, during the fourth quarter of '21, Chemtrade recorded an impairment in the value of assets associated with this business of $130 million.

While we are hopeful that the business will continue to recover post COVID, this adjustment was necessary to reflect the current market conditions. Starting with the aggregate results for the fourth quarter of '21, revenue was $353.8 million, which is $34.4 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2020.

The increase in revenue for the fourth quarter is due to higher volumes and pricing for all led products in the electrochemicals or EC segment and higher sales volume in selling prices for merchant and region sulfuric acid in the SVPC segment. This was partially offset by the lower volumes and pricing for sodium chloride in the EC segment.

Also relative to the fourth quarter of 2020, the stronger Canadian dollar had a negative impact of $8.4 million. Consolidated EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $92.5 million, an increase of $48.3 million compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.

Consolidated EBITDA for the fourth quarter benefited from the same factor that affected revenue. Additionally, there was a benefit of the settlement of the NATO lawsuit of $17.7 million, that was partially offset by $2.9 million due to the stronger Canadian dollar.

Distributable cash of $25.7 million was $48.7 million higher than the same period in 2020. In the fourth quarter, Chemtrade recorded a net loss of $180.5 million that is primarily due to the $130 million impairment to goodwill intangible assets and property, plant and equipment in each segment and a higher income tax expense in net finance cost.

This was partly offset by higher consultant at EBITDA and a $7.6 million gain from the sale of the KCL and adjuvants business. As a reminder, every $0.01 of increase in the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar is expected to reduce annual EBITDA by roughly $3.1 million and distributable cash by $2.2 million and vice versa Shifting now to the individual segment results for the quarter, SPPC generated revenue of a $102.7 million during the fourth quarter of '21, which was $12 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2020.

The increase in revenue is attributed to higher selling prices and sales volumes for Regen, merchant acid and sulphur products. This was partially offset by the strongest Canadian dollar, which had a negative $3 million impact.

As a reminder, we had an extended outage at one of our Regen plants during the fourth quarter of 2020. The improvement in EBITDA of $10 million was due to higher volume and price for merchant and Regen asset, sorry.

This is more than offset higher sulfur cost and the impact of the stronger Canadian dollar of $1 million Our Water Solutions and Specialty Chemicals or WSSC segment reported fourth quarter revenue of $99.4 million, which was similar to 2020. As we previously disclosed, Chemtrade sold the KCl and adjuvants business that were part of this segment, resulting a decrease in revenue tied to those businesses compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.

The loss of revenue from the sale was more than offset by higher selling prices for Water Solutions products. EBITDA for the period was $16 million, which was $4.3 million lower than the same period in 2020, mainly due to the loss of $3.6 million of EBITDA related to the businesses that were sold early in the fourth quarter.

The EC segment reported fourth quarter revenue of $141.7 million reflecting a $22.4 million increase over the fourth quarter of 2020. The higher revenue was primarily due to higher sales volumes and selling prices for chloride led products, caustic soda, chlorine and hydrochloric acid, or HCL.

Continued strong demands for chlorine and HCL allowed our north Vancouver plant to run at high operating rates during the fourth quarter. Also, as a reminder, the North Vancouver plant took his biennial maintenance turnaround during the fourth quarter of 2020, which had a negative impact on results in that quarter.

The improved results in for soda were partially offset by lower sales volume and prices for sodium chlorate and the impact of stronger million dollar, which had a negative impact on revenue of $2.7 million. The improved performance of Florida alcalaid resulting in EBITDA for the period of $41.8 million, which was $19.1 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2020.

This is despite the approximately $4.5 million impact of the severe flooding in British Columbia during the fourth quarter of 2021 and the negative impact of approximately $2 million with the stronger Canadian dollar. Corporate costs for the fourth quarter of '21 were $2.8 million compared with $26.4 million in the same period in 2020.

The decrease in corporate costs was primarily due to the settlement of the NATO lawsuit, which resulted in the net recovery of $17.7 million. Additionally legal costs during the fourth quarter of '21 were $4.5 million lower than the fourth quarter of 2020.

Finally realized for an exchange gains during the fourth quarter of 2021 were $1.9 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2020. I'm getting a bit of feedback, here.

I don’t know if you could mute people's lines if one might be open. Turning to the balance sheet, during the fourth quarter, we took several steps to improve our balance sheet.

The most significant was the closing of the sale of the KCL and Adjuvants business, which reduced our leverage by approximately 0.7 times. We also extended the maturity of our credit facility by two years to December of 2026.

And we reduced the size of the facility by US $200 million and converted the facility to a fully revolving facility. We eliminated the additional covenant room we had negotiated at the start of the pandemic as this was no longer required and doing so resulted in pricing on our credit facility, reverting to pre-pandemic levels.

Finally, we issued a new series of convertible debentures that mature in August 27 and announced the redemption of the 2023 debentures and therefore we have no debt maturities until 2024. At the end of the fourth quarter, we maintained senior credit facilities that consist of a US $650 million revolving credit line.

We continue to maintain ample liquidity, with US $339.1 undrawn on the facility. As of December 31, '21 Chemtrade was in compliance with all debt covenants contained in our credit agreement.

I'll now shift to our financial outlook. We issued guidance for '22 on January 26, and it's set out on the accompanying slide.

Scott will provide some perspective on this guidance. The key assumptions driving that outlook are in our MD&A and shown on this slide.

I will not read this out for you, but will remind you that our caustic soda price, which is affected by, but not equal to the Northeast Asia spot index, generally lags the Northeast Asia spot index by a quarter. I would also like to point out that rather than providing an assumption for MECU production volume, we have started providing our sales volume assumption.

This is consistent with the volume disclosed in our MD&A where we discuss EC's operating results. The key sensitivities that have an annual impact or our EBITDA are shown on the slide.

Again, I won't read this out. I'll now hand the call over to Scott for some additional insight on the outlook for Chemtrade's business.

Scott?

Thank you, Rohit. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today for the fourth quarter earnings call.

I hope you are all doing well. As you heard from Rohit's update on the fourth quarter, we had quite an eventful end to the year.

Several positive things happened, and we remain excited about the direction that we are headed. I will provide some perspective on the EBITDA guidance we issued for this year and on current business conditions followed by an update on the key initiatives that are in progress to drive sustainable growth and ESG.

Our business is much stronger as we head into 2022, a few key points to highlight. The midpoint of our guidance for this year implies a roughly $31 million EBITDA improvement over last year.

Once you normalize for the sale of KCL and the adjuvants business and the lawsuit settlements. The improvement, would've been more pronounced if we did not have the biennial turnaround at the North Vancouver facility, which is scheduled for the second quarter and expected to have an $11 million impact on EBITDA.

We used the net proceeds of the sale of approximately $182.6 million to significantly reduce our leverage by 0.7 times. This results in $9 million lower annual interest payments.

We will also invest $50 million in our new ultrapure acid facility in Cairo, Ohio, between this year and next. As mentioned, we expect this plant to be in operation in 2024, and we'll return 25% on our investment.

We are continuing to pursue additional organic growth opportunities across ultrapure acid and our byproduct hydrogen. Next I'll share comments from our fourth quarter, along with specific market outlook information.

Caustic soda and chlorine continue to have strong favourable market conditions that resulted in both higher selling volume and pricing. We anticipate that trend to continue in 2022, I'll get into that in more detail on the next couple of slides.

We've also seen a significant rebound in the ultrapure sulphuric acid business. We have regained most of the sales volume that we lost at the beginning of last year.

And I look forward to seeing this business continue to improve this year. In the third quarter last year, our key supplier Vale had a strike that shut down their smelting operations in Canada.

This continued to create sulfuric acid supply disruptions into the fourth quarter. We were able to mitigate some of the impact to our customers by procuring alternate sources of acid and diligently managing our network to keep the supply chain filled.

And as Rohit mentioned, we also felt the impact of the strong Canadian dollar on our financial results. Despite these challenges, excluding the $17.7 million benefit from the NATO lawsuit settlement, we increased our EBITDA by $30.6 million year over year, while also making significant improvements to our balance sheet.

Transitioning to focus on the chloral alkaline markets; during the fourth quarter, we saw the price of caustic soda reach new historical highs. The price of caustic soda had been steadily increasing over the prior quarters.

However, the spike in the fourth quarter was largely attributed to China's dual energy policy that curtailed protection in their country impacting global supply and resulting in some panic buy. We have seen pricing come back down off of those highs, although it is still well above where it was at the start of 2021.

The Northeast Asia spot index, a leading indicator for the market in Western Canada was $575 per tonne in January reflecting an increase of $80 per tonne versus December. In setting our guidance, we have assumed that the index will average approximately $440 per tonne for the 12 months ended September 30 this year, which is the period that will influence realized pricing in '22.

The chlorine market also continued to benefit from favorable market conditions. Capacity rationalization last year, particularly in the US Gulf Coast has tighten supply.

We expect that the tightness in supply combined with continued strength in industrial and construction related demand will help keep pricing at the current levels through the next few quarters. We have also seen stay increases in rig counts in the US and Canada, which is positive for HCL.

So under the current Chlorine and HCL market conditions, we have the benefit of higher margins from pricing and higher operating rates at the North Vancouver facility, thereby enabling us to sell more caustic soda. As we have previously discussed, the single largest opportunity for organic growth at Chemtrade is our ultrapure sulphuric acid business that supplies the semiconductor industry.

The long term fundamentals for the semiconductor industry are strong. In fact, it is hard to point to another sector that has seen the growth that the semiconductor industry is experiencing.

Just a few weeks ago, the leading semiconductor manufacturer Intel announced plans to invest $20 billion in a new Ohio campus with the potential to invest a $100 billion over the next decade. As I mentioned on our last earnings call, we are moving forward with an expansion of our ultrapure asset capacity and our Cairo Ohio facility.

That project is now in progress, and we are actively looking at the next opportunity to add significant capacity in the US. We think we are well positioned to retain our market leadership position in North America.

We are also making solid progress in developing our co-production of hydrogen that is part of the sodium chloride process. We currently have projects being developed that will allow us to fully monetize these hydrogen streams at Prince George and Brandon.

We expect construction of the Prince George hydrogen system later this year. We are announcing 12 long term ESNG targets in our 2022 AIF, which will be released in March.

Today on the call, I plan to share five of our new targets with you. The first Greenhouse Gas; we will reduce or offset 2021 scope one Greenhouse Gas emissions from operations, private fleet and process by 50% by the year 2025.

Second, energy management, we will ensure a minimum of 85% of our electricity is from hydroelectric or other renewable sources, including any future acquisitions. Three, industrial waste.

We will reduce high quality aluminum landfill disposal by an additional 20% of our 2021 baseline by 2025 through reused and process efficiencies. Number four, workforce safety; we will target a 50% reduction of workplace injuries by the year 2025.

And number five, workforce diversity. We will achieve 50% of black indigenous people of color by par and/or women in all management positions by the year 2025.

Finally, these targets will be included in our management teams, short term and long term incentive compensation. So in summary, our business conditions continue to improve during 2021.

We enter this year with strong market conditions for most of our businesses, a better balance sheet and great opportunities for organic growth. Additionally, we are pleased to share our new corporate ESG targets with you.

In conclusion, we are happy with the progress we made last year and excited to continue that progress in 2022 with stronger earnings and organic growth, which will help us beyond 2022. Thank you.

Rohit, and I will now be happy to take any questions.

Good morning, guys. Just a couple for me.

First, just on the organic expansion opportunity, Scott, I think you said you're already looking at your next opportunity. Can you just give us, frame maybe what that means a little bit, just trying to understand, I understand, I think we all understand how quickly this industry is going to grow, but how close do you need to be the facilities?

Do you need to colocate, can you move this product very far? Is this going to be organic versus, or sort of Brownsville versus Greenfield?

Maybe just give us some context around what the future opportunities might look like versus just an expansion?

Well, so look what I can say for now is that so from the market standpoint, the market demand is going to double or triple, I think in the next five years. So the market is going to need a significant expansion larger than what we are doing in Cairo.

Cairo is a nice start. Cairo is also going to be the first plant, the first line in the United States with the quality level that will meet the new smaller node chip production that's going to be in North America.

So if you -- what I can share right now is that most of the -- well, the first expansions from TSMC and Intel are going to be in Arizona. And so I think it'll be advantageous for a supplier to be close to that facility and so that's what I can share for now.

And I think that that facility, the closer, the better also sized and integrated would be better as well. And so, I can't share too many details other than to say, we are actively working on a program that will be significantly larger than Cairo.

I hope to be sharing more details with you here in the next couple of months. But I think that's really all I can share for now.

Okay, well that's helpful. Maybe just looking at the Waters business as it stands, Rohit, maybe I'm not sure if it's question for you, but just trying to unpack the fact that there was still a little bit of the KCL and Adjuvants business in the quarter, I believe a month worth roughly.

Is the margin profile we saw in Q4 generally reflective of what we should expect going forward. I'm just trying to understand, I guess, both margin profile and revenue.

Revenue is roughly flat despite the sale of the business. So just trying to understand what the cadence of that business is going to look like on a standalone basis, I guess, before you repack it with the other consolidated segment now?

Yeah, sure. So, couple of points.

One is yes, the specialty chemical, as you would expect would've had a higher margin profile. So once you pull that out, yes, the margin would go down, but the two things to consider.

Q4 is seasonally a weak quarter for water. So if you look at the margin percent in Q4 versus let's say Q3, you will see a decline, not just because of the specialty chemical being removed, but also because the seasonality and you've got your fixed cost etcetera that you don't come when the volume is lower.

And the second thing to consider is when we see a big spike in raw materials, and we are able to -- we are passing those more and more over to our customers. But what that does is even though from a EBITDA dollar perspective, you are hoping to be even when you look at the margin, your margin actually gets compressed because, you got a higher cost being added to your revenue.

And so when you look at a margin percentage, when the raw are high, your margin percentage comes down. But our hope is to be able to make the actual dollars and so once you strip out the impact in this Q4 of the specialty chemicals going out, water was pretty flat to Q4 last year.

So we have been successful more and more to pass through those material costs over to customers.

Okay. That's helpful.

But so just to think about it going forward though, those price increases are still rolling through. So to start to improve then, do we've had a bit of a drag for about a year now?

They should start to improve, but the issue is that sulphur again, spiked early in '22. So we may still -- we may still, you may still not see a big improvement in '22.

It will depend on how sulphur evolves over the next few months.

Okay. Very good.

Thank you. I'll get back in the queue.

I had a couple of questions on the chlor-alkali outlook. Maybe just to start with on the caustic price and what you're assuming in your 2022 guidance of $440 a ton.

You mentioned that the $575 a tonne for contract pricing in January, I think spot is closer to $670. So the assumption here is that you're expected a meaningful deterioration in pricing for the range of the year.

I'm just trying to understand how conservative your approach is to guidance here.

Well, I would say the caustic pricing over the past four to five years has been a very difficult product to forecast pricing for. And especially when you're looking at a spot price.

We saw a rapid run up in the second half of last year and caustic prices, quite a bit of that was possibly coming from restrictions that were in place in China. Now, and again, that's even hard to say, but we know that China limited their electricity production particularly using cold fire plants and as they've limited production of cold fire electricity plants then electricity was limited and then caustic prices spiked.

Right now that the Olympics have been completed, China has already announced last week that they were going to take their -- they were going to resume to full production with coal fire plants. So we'll see.

It's really -- it is a very difficult thing to predict. I'm not certainly not going to say that we know we're being very open with our guidance.

Where we sit right now today, it's possible that the guidance looks a little conservative, but where it's going to be 60 days for 60 days or 90 days, that's really hard to say.

Okay. And then my next question is just on HCL.

Perhaps you can provide a little color on the amount of chlorine you're converting to HCL, what it's been historically, and what's your expecting for 2022, and then just on pricing, what is your realized price for each HCLs been? How does that compare to a year ago and expectations going forward, especially as drilling activities improve?

Okay. So let, let me give you the answers that I think I can give you on this call.

So firstly, in terms of how much Chlorine do we convert into HCL? At the peak in let's say 2018, 2017, we were getting up to 40%.

We had the capacity to go to 60%, but we got to about 40%. Then, as fracking went down, we were in the 20s and then last year we ended the whole year at about 30%.

And we expect to be maybe a little bit better than that. Now let's see with the current spike in oil and what that does for fracking activity because fracking has lagged.

When you look at I think we have some slides that we show that when oil was at a certain level three years ago, fracking was double what it was now and so while '22, some recovery expected, we aren't counting on a big recovery, but having said that, what's important to know as Scott mentioned, Chlorine has been doing really well. So the lift we get from converting chlorine to HCL is not as pronounced as it used to be because chlorine itself has gone much higher.

In terms of your question on what you realize pricing on HCL, that's one I wouldn't want to get into, but I can tell you that we will -- we've given you some in the MD&A, we give you some idea of percentage change in pricing, but I think I'd like to not get too specific on pricing, but hopefully that answers the question.

Okay. If you can't answer the question or on the HCL pricing, maybe you can answer it this way, if we think about, because these are obviously very local markets, but from an HCL pricing perspective versus chlorine historically has it lagged.

And when you've seen chlorine and oil prices moves, does HCL fall fairly quickly after?

So, a lot of the HCL is -- there's a lot of byproduct HCL out there. So it's not always kind of following the Chlorine molecule because Chlorine gets into different applications because it depends on mines, etcetera.

So I wouldn't say that HCL and Chlorine have always been that correlated. And particularly where we get the benefit in HCL is best in Canada, which is quite diverse from the more Gulf Coast, big clothing market.

So that's where, so for us. If the Canadian fracking picks up, that's where we get the best -- biggest benefit and that's what nothing to do with what's happening with clothing in the Gulf Coast.

Fair enough. Thank you very much.

Welcome.

Just the first question is on aluminium, aluminium skyrocketing on the back of the Ukrainian conflict and inventory tightness should -- could caustic remain elevated for some period of time on the back of the aluminium prices rising and conversely as you look at that as an input into the -- as a raw material into the water alum production, is that, could that extend the time to recovery?

So the answer is parsing out is yes, I would say. So it's certainly possible that with the high aluminium prices, the high aluminium prices and high demand for aluminium, that that will keep a strong pool on caustic.

So that's certainly possible. As I mentioned earlier with caustic, I think the other thing that you have to watch is production of electricity in China.

So there's demand -- there's the demand piece for aluminium, but also the production and the electricity supply coming out of China. I think that's there.

And your point about with aluminum going up, the impact on water, yes, but the impact in the water business is really on our more specialty products, the ACH material. So that's where -- that's the impact there, but yes our -- as we've shared numerous times, our pricing to city municipalities is done in annual contracts.

Scott, sorry, go ahead. You're going to weigh there.

No, no, not please. Go ahead.

I was just going to ask at the end of the day, aluminium rising, is it a net benefit or a net cost you?

So I think if the aluminium is pricing is going up on the back of increased demand for aluminium in Asia, because that's really where we are most focused. And that would be probably a net benefit from us, but they'll dwarf the impact on the water business.

But if it have to really be and then to counter that act, because what really affects us is the imbalance between chlorine and caustic in Asia. So if aluminium is going out, demand is going up, but slow demand for Chlorine derivatives due to maybe more energy intensive users, then that doesn't really help us that much.

Got it. And, do you have any other chemicals that could be affected in terms of pricing, etcetera, coming out of a potential conflict in Ukraine?

No. No, we don't.

I'm just going to reiterate what Rohit said is that I would say that the impact of rising caustic prices dwarfs in the impact on the Waters business, much, much – Yeah, so a much stronger benefit.

That's, that's what I would've thought of…

Yeah. Magnitudes different.

Okay. And then the last one for me guys is just the Sodium Chloride right down, which is understandable obviously in the environment that we are in right now.

But I would've thought with the sale of earth code a bird chill, that there would've been a little bit more rationality in the market and you flag some of the competitive of dynamics in there. So what what's going on the chlorate market on the competitive side, I understand the demand side, but just on the competitive, on the pricing side.?

Well what I'll say what -- what we have seen is I think what we've seen in, in the marketplace is demand destruction primarily coming from office paper, which is what we've talked about. We've seen office paper demand drop 40% or so.

We have all been, been watching that and asking ourselves that is this temporary, at what point is demand going to come back? And I still see maybe I'm an optimist, but I still keep thinking at some point when offices reopen and schools are full of back, that that office paper is going to come back.

However, many of our customers, I say many, we have seen some of our customers go ahead and, and close their pulp mills. And so we have, we've seen more than a half dozen of, of pulp mills clothes over the past 18 months now.

And we've asked the question, could those mills reopen, and I suppose it's possible, but it seems it's beginning to look like those mills are more, are more permanent closures. We're also seeing mills that have that have converted, that they stayed open, but they converted from bleach pulp into unbleached pulp which goes into packaging.

So as the, as the market has declined like I will comment I don't want to get into too many specifics about what we've seen in, in the marketplace. We'll just say that the market has been declined -- the market has I'd say plenty of capacity.

And I think that's something that is will need to be looked at.

Great. Thanks and good morning, everyone.

Just a quick follow up on David's question in terms of the chloride side. So you mentioned that there is plenty of capacity on the chloride side given that your, your brand new facility is one of the largest and lowest cost facility.

Are you seeing some other facilities or chloride facilities potentially shut down?

Well, the -- in the industry has done a good job in the past of sizing capacity. I think, I don't think we'd want to speculate on which plant but if you look at the Costco, you're right, van is very far on one side of the cost curve, so that's clearly the last person there, but in terms of which plants should on the higher cost curve, I think we'd rather, maybe not get in -- not get into that.

Okay. And then this thing on the chlorate side, so your volumes in 2021, I think it was about 8% lower than 2019 has industry demand declined by more or less than 8%.

I'm just wondering whether you are take market share or maintaining the share. And then I, sorry, why don't you go ahead.

Oh yeah. I was just going to say our, our view is that the industry has declined roughly eight to 10%.

That that's our view. So I would say, okay,

Got it. Speaker 3 Okay.

And then I, I think in the past, the chloride side contributed about two thirds of the EBITDA in the electrochemical division. Do you know roughly what the mix is in 2021 between sodium chloride and ?

So we, I, we won't get too precise, but '21 of chloride, I mean, caustic was graph lab was, low because what, how low the was but I think I'd like to leave it at that. Not fine than that.

Okay. Got it.

And then just just one last question. Like obviously I think you touched on Ukraine earlier.

It's one other, I guess, indirect impact from Ukraine is higher oil and gas prices. Obviously higher oil and gas drilling activity is a positive, but do you see any negatives from having high oil and gas prices?

I, think one potential I could think of is if driving, if miles driven reduces in that, obviously her it's refinery utilization, but what's, is there anything else to flag in terms of potentially high oil and gas prices for a longer period?

No, you, you were just saying that that's exactly what I was going to say. That if if if high oil prices if starts to let's say to encourage people to drive less, and then that is an impact right now that's that's not what, what we see, but this, this is going to play out, I think, over the next several months.

And so we'll see, we'll see that it.

Hi, good morning. A bit of feedback on the line.

Talk about SPPC, things going on that business. So talk about .

You talk about, so first, can you talk about that impact on Q1 and you had the highest margins in that business in Q4. Then you've had maybe a long, long, long time, and we know that Sulfur and Sulfur acid price have been extremely strong.

And I imagine some of the stuff you reprice on annual context, 2022 have some upper momentum. So when you look at that business this year, should we see a significant earnings boost?

And can you talk about that and maybe what margins would look like versus '21 and his historical things?

Yeah, so I think you know so we, we also have had the benefit of region being strong in relative to 2020. So that's part of the, the story there.

It's not, just the acid and so story on the valet again. We have to be sensitive to not getting too deep into valets business because they're a very key supplier for us.

But yes, the issues that they had what lingering and so we have to see how they play out in Q1, but generally we are able to offset, offset that. And, so again, hopefully will not be a big factor for us in terms of year-over-year, I don't think we should, I don't expect us to see improve a higher margin.

I think we've got a lot of that benefit because again, the same thing happens in, in SPPC that I'm tried to mention in Water is that when, when Sulfur goes very high, we are able to pass through the Sulfur absolute Sulfur increase on in our selling price, but the margins get declined, right? The margins actually the margin percentage declines, even though we are because it's a higher price or a higher cost.

So the actual margin percentage declines. But I think we, we expect year over year.

We should, should if you look at the where, where Scott tried to bridge the mid-point of our outlook with where '21 ended. And I think a lot of it is going to be the, the story and, and not so much the SPPC story.

Okay. If I can talk a little bit more on the SPPC side.

So if copper cliff issues end up being more than you would like, you're going to have to meet contracts, meet commitments by moving around, buying asset, moving around to logical places. And that's going to really impact your margins because pricing's moved up a lot.

But if valet is fine and your supply is fine, you should actually see a lot better margins. Does that make any sense?

We will. Yes.

Keeping in mind that we share price movements with valet. So yes, we will see improved margins, but they do get a big bene, a large share of the benefit or the herd gets passed onto Vale.

But you're right, when asset is very tight, trying to replace asset with with the different sources can be an extensive proposition. And then we have to look at whatever legal con, whatever contractual we allowed to do to kind of offset things.

And, and what contractual allows. We have the customers obviously try and do our best to, to supply all our customers, but we have to look at all those things.

Okay. If I could, maybe I'm going to try to ask Steve's question a little bit differently from earlier.

If in a, in a world that never exists, but let's say it's a flattish world where commodity prices like, like acid and Water price are all kind of stable. What it is the margin impact of the businesses you sold in WSSC like in a normal flattish world.

Would that mean your margin profile in WSSC drops a hundred B -- hundred basis points or 50 basis points? Could you try to just give that idea in a normal non-existent normal world what the margin impact is on those businesses outta the mix?

So what I would, so we, what I can tell you is, again, we've never, we've never broken out, broken it out that, that precisely, but let tell you what we've, I'll try and triangulate some stuff for you that we publicly said. So when we, we said that that business is roughly 20 million, roughly a 20 million annual business, it's a Specialty Chemical business.

So you can make your assumption as to what the margin on that should be. you would say 50% plus should be the margin on products like that.

And so I think with that, with those arms, with that information, you can probably figure out what the impact would be on the segment

That is helpful. Thanks.

and then finally for me what's your corporate cost be this year? Should they be a lot lower than last year or similar?

So they should be, again, we, we, we will strip out the, obviously the benefit of that, the legal settlement, right? So once you strip that out, they should be back to a normal range of $65 to $70 million.

Well, that, that's what we expect.

I'm, I'm, I'm going to ask one more question. I lied, sorry.

If I look at your Q1 earnings, should they be like, EBIDA similar to Q4?

So, and everything we talk about, we will exclude the, the $70 million firstly. Right?

So, and, and, and, and having said that, I, what I would like to say, we don't want to start getting into quarterly guidance, Joel, but, but what we can tell you is, and I think you made this observation at the last conference call is where you said it's possible that again, depending on where cost unfolds, but your comments were most likely your two, one is going to be, the strongest could be the strongest quarter this year given where cost is. That's assuming that our assumption holds.

And so I think I'd like to leave it at that and not get more precise into where Q1 will be. But I think I would like this opportunity though, just essentially whatever on the phone is to remind people that Q2, we have the big North Vancouver turnaround scheduled for Q2.

So when you're doing your models, I would encourage everyone to kind of keep that into, into accounts.

Hi. Yeah.

Good morning. My questions couple of for me, I'll start with a chloride.

We're seeing there's some movements of, of return to office at least in Toronto perhaps in March and then into April assuming that happens. And there is a relatively meaningful return, like how quickly could you see a recovery in the Chloride business?

So I think we could I think we could begin to see a pickup in demand probably within, within, from our standpoint, probably within let's say, 60 to 90 days from people returning to the office. That's what I would think so that they'll get back in the office, start using printers, the, the inventory they'll start placing orders to fill up the inventory and that's what I would expect.

Okay. Great.

Thank you for that, Scott. And one more for me, it's on the Water products.

I think the volumes were a bit lower. I think there was a comment in the that prices were higher, but volume are lower.

I was just wondering what, what droves those lower volumes and how should they be trended into Q1?

Thanks. So the, the, the volumes are the volume that are generally affected by not reduced demand or reduced consumption.

It depends on kind of water conditions, cetera. So it's, it's not of us to get very granular on volumes, but the volumes are not due to any loss of customers or anything of that would be more it is somewhat weather dependent too.

So we'll have to wait to see how Q1 and Q2 roll out with some of the weather conditions and yeah, but there's nothing meaningful. There's no nothing meaningful in terms of you know loss of customers or anything like that.

I'd like to thank you. Everyone's attention.

And I know Scott wants to add something so that's

No, I I'll just say. Yeah.

Thanks for your, thanks for the attention and the questions today and have a good rest of the day.

Thank you.