Profile: United States Lime & Minerals Inc (USLM.O)

United States Lime & Minerals, Inc., incorporated in 1950, conducts its business through two segments, Lime and Limestone Operations and Natural Gas Interests. The Company manufactures lime and limestone products, supply primarily the construction, steel, municipal sanitation and water treatment, oil and gas services, aluminum, paper, glass, roof shingle and agriculture industries and utilities and other industries requiring scrubbing of emissions for environmental purposes. Its Lime and Limestone Operations represent its principal business. It operates lime and limestone plants and distribution facilities in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Arkansas Lime Company, Colorado Lime Company, Texas Lime Company, U.S. Lime Company, U.S. Lime Company - Shreveport, U.S. Lime Company - St. Clair and U.S. Lime Company - Transportation.

Lime and Limestone Operations

The Company extracts limestone from its open-pit and underground quarries and then processes it for sale as pulverized limestone, quicklime, hydrated lime and lime slurry. Pulverized limestone (PLS) is a dried product ground to granular and finer sizes. Quicklime (calcium oxide) is produced by heating limestone to high temperatures in kilns in a process called calcination. Hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) is produced by reacting quicklime with water in a controlled process. Lime slurry (milk of lime) is a suspended solution of calcium hydroxide produced by mixing quicklime with water in a lime slaker. PLS is used in the production of construction materials such as roof shingles and asphalt paving, as an additive to agriculture feeds, in the production of glass, as a soil enhancement, in the flue gas desulphurization process for utilities and other industries requiring scrubbing of emissions for environmental purposes and for mine safety dust in coal mining operations. During the year ended December 31, 2011 (during 2011), it sold almost all of its lime and limestone products in the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. Principal customers for the Company's lime and limestone products are highway, street and parking lot contractors, steel producers, municipal sanitation and water treatment facilities, oil and gas services companies, paper manufacturers, utility plants, glass manufacturers, roof shingle manufacturers and poultry and cattle feed producers. During 2011, approximately 800 customers accounted for the Company's sales of lime and limestone products.

The Company’s limestone reserves contain at least 96% calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The Company has two subsidiaries that extract limestone from open-pit quarries: Texas Lime Company (Texas Lime), which is located near Cleburne, Texas, and Arkansas Lime Company (Arkansas Lime), which is located near Batesville, Arkansas. U.S. Lime Company - St. Clair (St. Clair) extracts limestone from an underground quarry located near Marble City, Oklahoma. Colorado Lime Company (Colorado Lime) owns property containing limestone deposits at Monarch Pass, located 15 miles west of Salida, Colorado. No mining has taken place on the Colorado property since its acquisition. Existing crushed stone stockpiles on the property are being used to provide feedstock to the Company's plants in Salida and Delta, Colorado. Texas Lime operates a quarry, located on approximately 3,200 acres of land that contains known limestone reserves in a bed averaging 28 feet in thickness, with an overburden that ranges from 0 to 50 feet. Texas Lime also has mineral interests in approximately 560 acres of land adjacent to the northwest boundary of its property.

Arkansas Lime operates two quarries and has hydrated lime and limestone production facilities on a second site linked to the quarries by its own standard-gauge railroad. The quarries cover approximately 1,050 acres of land containing a known deposit of limestone. The average thickness of the limestone deposit is approximately 60 feet, with an average overburden thickness of approximately 30 feet.

St. Clair operates an underground mine located on approximately 700 acres it owns containing limestone deposits. As of December 31, 2011, it was approximately 14 million tons of probable recoverable reserves on the 700 acres.

As of December 31, 2011, the Cleburne, Texas plant had an annual capacity of approximately 470 thousand tons of quicklime from two preheater rotary kilns.

The Company also maintains lime hydrating and bagging equipment at the Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma plants. Storage facilities for lime and limestone products at each plant consist primarily of cylindrical tanks.

Colorado Lime operates a limestone grinding and bagging facility with an annual capacity of approximately 125 thousand tons, located on approximately three and one-half acres of land in Delta, Colorado and a limestone drying, grinding and bagging facility, with an annual capacity of approximately 50 thousand tons, on eight acres of land in Salida, Colorado. A mobile stone crushing and screening plant is also situated at the Monarch Pass Quarry to produce agricultural grade limestone, with an annual capacity of approximately 40 thousand tons.

Natural Gas Interests

The Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary, U.S. Lime Company - O & G, LLC (U.S. Lime O & G), has royalty interests ranging from 15.4% to 20% and a 20% non-operating working interest with respect to oil and gas rights on the Company’s approximately 3,800 acres of land located in Johnson County, Texas, in the Barnett Shale Formation. As of December 31, 2011, three wells were drilled.