Compass Minerals International, Inc. (CMP) operates as a significant global producer and supplier of vital minerals, concentrating its activities primarily across the ...
Compass Minerals International, Inc. is a publicly traded basic-materials company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CMP. The company’s modern corporate history includes formation activity in the 1990s and corporate reorganization in the early 2000s, while its operating heritage reaches back to 1844, when its first ...Compass Minerals International, Inc. is a publicly traded basic-materials company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CMP. The company’s modern corporate history includes formation activity in the 1990s and corporate reorganization in the early 2000s, while its operating heritage reaches back to 1844, when its first mine began operating. Its headquarters are located at 9900 West 109th Street in Overland Park, Kansas. Edward “Ed” C. Dowling Jr. serves as president and chief executive officer and joined the company in January 2024.
The company is organized into three principal business areas. Its Salt segment produces, markets, and distributes sodium chloride and magnesium chloride products. These include rock salt, mechanically and solar-evaporated salt, brine, and flake magnesium chloride. Compass Minerals also sources potassium chloride and calcium chloride, selling them independently or incorporating them into blended products. Salt products are used for winter road maintenance, consumer water conditioning, industrial and chemical manufacturing, water treatment, human and animal nutrition, and other commercial applications. The segment also provides secure records-management services.
Plant Nutrition North America focuses on specialty sulfate-of-potash fertilizers and related agricultural, turf, ornamental, organic, and micronutrient products. Offerings include broadcast and direct-application grades, liquid fertilizer inputs, turf products for golf courses and ornamental markets, Protassium+ organic products, and Wolf Trax micronutrients. Customers include agricultural distributors, retailers, and growers. Plant Nutrition South America supplies specialty plant nutrients, supplements, water and wastewater treatment chemicals, decontamination products, and industrial process chemicals.
Compass Minerals’ cost structure is influenced by mining, evaporation, processing, energy, transportation, maintenance, labor, environmental compliance, and logistics. Its bill of materials varies by product and may include mined mineral feedstock, purchased potassium or calcium chloride, processing chemicals, packaging, and transportation inputs. The company generally benefits from established mines, mineral reserves, production infrastructure, distribution networks, and long-term customer relationships, although earnings can be affected by weather, especially winter road-salt demand, agricultural conditions, fertilizer prices, energy costs, freight rates, production reliability, and commodity-market movements.
Based on the supplied trailing-twelve-month data, Compass Minerals has approximately 1,849 full-time employees and generated an operating profile characterized by positive operating cash flow and free cash flow to firm, but relatively modest net profitability. Reported metrics include approximately $1.15 billion in market capitalization, an enterprise value of about $1.82 billion, an EBITDA margin near 16.2%, a gross margin near 17.2%, and a debt-to-equity ratio above 2.7. These figures indicate a capital-intensive and leveraged business in which operating execution, cash generation, debt management, and demand stability are important financial considerations. The company’s strategic priorities include safe and reliable production, efficient delivery of essential minerals, disciplined capital allocation, operational improvement, customer service, and long-term growth in specialty plant nutrition and mineral-based solutions.
YoYYoY means Year-over-Year. It compares the latest annual value with the previous annual value to show long-term trend strength.
QoQQoQ means Quarter-over-Quarter. It compares the latest quarter with the immediately previous quarter to show short-term momentum changes.
RevenueThe total money that came through the front door from selling things, before paying a single bill. Think of it as the grand total of every credit card swipe from customers. (YoY compares this year to last year's performance, while QoQ compares the current three months to the previous three).
$1.2B
+11.3%
-52.5%
Net IncomeThe absolute bottom line. If the company paid every single supplier, employee, banker, and tax collector, this is the actual money left in their pocket at the end of the day.
$-79.8M
+61.3%
-144.9%
Gross MarginThe basic markup. If they sell a $100 pair of sneakers, this percentage tells you how much of that price tag is profit right after paying for the rubber and shoelaces, but before paying for things like store rent or TV commercials.
+15.3%
-12.2%
-3.9%
Operating MarginThe 'day job' efficiency score. Out of every dollar a customer spends, this shows how many cents the company keeps after making the product AND paying for all the everyday corporate overhead (like salaries, marketing, and keeping the lights on).
+2.0%
+119.5%
-59.0%
Net MarginThe final take-home percentage. When you strip away every conceivable cost, tax, and interest payment, this is the exact number of cents the company truly gets to keep from every dollar in sales.
-6.4%
+65.2%
-194.5%
Free Cash FlowThe holy grail of corporate cash. It's the spendable, physical money left over after the business pays for its daily operations AND buys the big, expensive upgrades (like new factories or servers) it needs to survive. This is the 'free' money they can use to pay dividends or buy back stock.
$128.0M
+228.3%
-110.4%
FCF MarginThe ultimate cash conversion rate. It shows how good the company is at turning regular sales directly into cold, hard, spendable cash. A high percentage means the business is an absolute cash-printing machine.
+10.3%
+215.2%
-122.0%
Debt / EquityThe financial risk gauge. It compares how much of the company's empire was built using borrowed money (loans) versus the owners' own money (shareholders). A high number means they are heavily leveraged and playing a riskier game; a low number means they are playing it safe.
362.1%
+22.8%
-2.7%
Current RatioThe 12-month survival check. It simply compares the cash they have right now (plus things they can quickly turn into cash) against the immediate bills they absolutely must pay this year. A score above 1 means they have enough in the wallet to cover the upcoming bills without panicking.
2.15x
-20.4%
-2.3%
Total AssetsThe absolute size of the company's empire. It bundles together absolutely everything of value they own—from the cash in the register and the inventory in the warehouse, to the software patents in the vault and the factories on the ground.
Operator: Thank you for joining us and welcome to Compass Minerals Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Tripp Sullivan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Tripp Sullivan: Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to the Compass Minerals Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today, we will discuss our most recent quarterly results. We will begin with prepared remarks from our President and CEO, Edward Dowling, and our CFO, Peter Fjellman. Joining in for the question-and-answer portion of the call will be Ben Nichols, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that the remarks we make today reflect financial and operational outlooks as of today's date, August 6, 2026. Outlooks entail assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially. A discussion of these risks can be found on our SEC filings located online at investors.compassminerals.com. Our remarks today also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliations of these items in our earnings release or in our presentation, both of which are also available online. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Ed.
Edward Dowling: Thank you, Tripp. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the Plant Nutrition business because it's earned the lead. At Ogden, we produced segment-adjusted EBITDA of $15 million in the quarter on improved pricing and lower per-unit costs. We again raise our full year guidance for this business. Operational improvements we put in place 2 years ago are compounding. Team who was determined to restore the business to the $40 million to $50 million adjusted EBITDA range per year and have now exceeded that level. We continue to invest in Ogden with the dryer project underway that we expect to complete by the end of next fiscal year. That investment will allow us to improve product yield, further improve production volume and cost profile of this operation, as well as finished good product quality We're excited about the continued momentum at our Ogden site, solidifying our position as the leading North American producer of sulfate of potash. In our salt business, the commercial story is strong. We realized meaningful price gains in the highway de-icing during the quarter and beginning to see a constructive pricing environment in our C&I product line as well. These are encouraging and I want to put them into context. When comparing the salt costs in our P&L between periods, there are a number of factors that must be considered, including production costs, logistic costs, regional and product mix. As a winter unfolds, where we sell our products, where they are produced, how it is shipped to the customer and our production costs all have various levels of impact, particularly in a season like this past one where inventory levels became very tight. …
