Operator
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the CVR Energy Second Quarter 2011 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jay Finks, Director of Finance. Thank you, Mr. Finks. You may begin. Jay Finks – Director of Finance: Good afternoon everyone. We very much appreciate you being here for CVR Energy call this afternoon. With me today are Jack Lipinski, our Chief Executive Officer; Ed Morgan, our Chief Financial Officer; and Stan Riemann, our Chief Operating Officer. Prior to discussion of our 2011 second quarter results, we are required to make the following Safe Harbor statement. In accordance with Federal Securities laws, the statements in this earnings call relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements based on management’s belief and assumptions, using currently available information and expectations as of this date and are not guarantees of future performance and do involve certain risks and uncertainties, including those noted in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our 2011 second quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC yesterday after closing the market. With that said, I’ll turn the call over to Jack Lipinski, our Chief Executive Officer. Jack? Jack Lipinski – Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Jay. Thank you all for joining us. From the results released last night, you can see we had a very solid second quarter. Consolidated net income was $124,900,000 million or $1.42 per fully diluted share on sales of over $1.4 billion. That compares to net income of $1.2 million in the same period a year ago on sales of just over $1 billion. Adjusted net income was $130,400,000 million or $1.48 per fully diluted share in the second quarter. Non-cash adjustments like FIFO and share-based compensation along with the few other items account to the difference, as Morgan will provide you more detail on that during his remarks. Today, I’ll first speak about our results and where we go from there. After that, Ed, Stan, and I will take your questions. Let me go first to the petroleum segment. If you joined us for last quarter’s conference call, that morning we had an issue with our CCR, aside from some reduced rates during the CCR outage. We are very happy with the quarter turned out operationally. Because of the CCR issue, we filed an 8-K indicating that we expected to operate about 108,000 barrels per day average for the quarter. We actually bettered that sum and averaged 109,500 barrels a day. Since then, our CCR has returned to normal operations and now we are running the plant at capacity above 115,000 barrels a day. The petroleum segment had operating income of $183.5 million as compared to $4.6 million for the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA for the petroleum segment was $208.4 million versus $46.5 million a year ago. The continuing story for the second quarter is and was the Brent TI spread, which drove margins for all refiners with access to WTI base crudes. We are a 100% WTI-based refiner and we were able to capture this difference between Brent and WTI. The Brent-WTI relationship will continue to define our market at least – we look forward at least in the next two years. Today, that spread was $21.75 and it is moving around a little bit. This is a new number. This year so far we have seen it range from a low $30.29 to a high of $22.63 on July 14. In addition all indications are that we will continue to see our group cracks, our regional cracks at above historic levels. During the year, our crack averaged $26.71 versus $11.75 a year ago. Today, the NYMEX 2-1-1 stands a little over at $33 a barrel. We realized an average refining margin of $25.49 per throughput barrel compared to a refining margin a year ago of $6.70. It’s remarkable what difference a year makes. This quarter, we increased the amount of heavy sour crudes we ran to 21.2% of crude input, that’s up from 17.2% in the first quarter and also up from about 12% a year ago. We actually set a record of 24,600 barrels a day of heavy sour Canadian crudes process during the quarter. Western Canadian Select one of the typical marker heavy Canadians traded at $17.61 discount WTI for the quarter. While this is not a bond burning discount, we continue to maximize our runs of heavy sour crudes as long as these differentials continue. Final note on the petroleum segment, our gathering business set another record in June gathering more than 36,000 barrels a day. These fairly-priced barrels are an important part of our refinery economics and we are absolutely focused on growing this business. Let me turn to nitrogen fertilizers. The fertilizers segment had second quarter operating income of $39.3 million on net sales of $80.7 million for the second quarter. That compares to operating income of $16.5 million on the second quarter of 2010 on net sales of $56.3 million. Those of you who listened to the earlier CVR Partners call with CEO, Byron Kelley we are very pleased with their results. He reaffirmed IPO guidance of $1.92 in distributions per common unit during the four quarters ending March 31, 2012. The quarterly distribution of $0.40 cents per common unit announced last week covers the period with the effective date of the IPO on April 13 through the end of the second quarter. CVR Energy through its subsidiaries owns the general partner and 69.8% of the common LP units. CVR Energy receives proportional distributions with respect to our ownership. Recapping Byron’s call, the fertilizer business operated very well in the second quarter. On-stream stats for gasification were 99.3% on-stream times, ammonia 98.5% on-stream time, and the UAN plant ran at 97.6% on-stream time. Part of the story looking year-over-year is the difference in fertilizer prices, and again, we report fertilizer prices as net back to plant gain. This quarter we averaged ammonia sales at $574 a ton and UAN and again for those of you unfamiliar is urea ammonium nitrate solution, at $300 a ton. That compares to year ago of $312 a ton for ammonia and $205 a ton for UAN. Year-over-year, we are seeing significant improvement in net back prices. To kind of give you an indication, our UAN book this time last year was 295,000 tons of orders at $167 a ton. This year our book is approximately 300,000 tons of orders with an average net back over $300 a ton. All right, looking forward, this fall we’ll begin a bifurcated turnaround of the refinery with approximately two-thirds of the work being done in the fourth quarter this year. The remainder of the turnaround work will be completed late in the first quarter 2012. Because of the way the work is scheduled, we’ll continue to operate even though we’ll be at reduced rates during our turnaround period. On average, we expect to run between 110,000 and 115,000 barrels a day in the third quarter and looking forward between 90,000 and 95,000 barrels a day in the fourth quarter when we’re in turnaround. You should all remember that we expense our turnaround cost as they are incurred. So, when you look forward to our fourth quarter, we’ll not only be running fewer barrels, but will have increased expenses at the refinery. As of this morning, our consolidated businesses had approximately $810 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand and cash investment and excess working inventories of an additional $42 million. For the quarter, we had operating cash flow of $179 million. Cash on the balance sheet has increased more than $100 million since our last conference call. We remain net debt free, but we expect our current cash position to decline as we reach the end of the year, because of turnaround expenses, tax payments, and capital expenditures. With that, I’ll turn the presentation over to Ed. Ed? Ed Morgan – Chief Financial Officer: Thank you, Jack and good afternoon everybody. Just a recap of few points, at the consolidated level, the net income was $124.9 million or $1.42 per diluted share versus $1.2 million or $0.01 per diluted share in the second quarter last year. However, adjusted earnings per share were $1.48 versus $0.22 per diluted share last year. I just remind everybody, we do believe that adjusted earnings is a meaningful metric for analyzing our performance as it does eliminate the impact on our accounting for major turnaround expenses and non-cash accounting matters providing for better comparison to market expectations. In the second quarter, we adjusted for share-based compensation FICO inventory accounting and a few other items, so let me briefly walk you through the adjustments and provide some brief color. First, share-based compensation in the second quarter, that was $1.3 million after-tax or $0.01 per share. With the exit of our private equity share holders during the second quarter and our share-based compensation expense is projected to be approximately $6 million over the next two quarters or approximately $3 million per quarter on a pre-tax basis. The second adjusted to net income is the increase or decrease in inventory value that we realized under first-in first-out or FIFO inventory accounting. In the second quarter of 2011, we realized an unfavorable FIFO impact of $2.5 million after-tax or $0.03 per share. The other after-tax adjustments to the income include a loss on extinguishment of debt, a loss on disposition of assets, and expenses associated with the upcoming refinery turnaround. In total, these three items represented an add-back of $1.7 million after-tax or $0.02 per share. Turning to liquidity, we ended the second quarter with a liquidity position of just over $1 billion, which is comprised of $748 million in cash and cash equivalents, $42 million in excess inventory, and $243 million available under our working capital facilities. The significant events driving this increase in cash with the completion of the IPO and the net term loan financing on April 13 which added $419 million from the IPO and $179 million of operating cash flow during the second quarter. As of June 30, our current debt-to-capital was 35% versus 43% the same period a year ago. Our long-term target to our debt-to-capital is 25% to 30%. Our total debt position at the end of the second quarter was $595 million, and as Jack mentioned, if you net out our cash on hand, we were in a cash positive position of $153 million. In connection with the successful completion of MLP IPO, we were required to offer to redeem a $100 million of our first and second link notes at price of $103 million. As a result of this offer, we did receive acceptance for $0.5 million of the first link notes and $2.2 million of second link notes. Now, moving over to capital expenditures, the second quarter 2011 they totaled $13.6 million versus $5.4 million for the same period in 2010. Our 2011 total capital spending forecast is still expected to be $144 million, of which $38 million is related to our UAN expansion. Of the total, $92 million is budgeted for the petroleum business, which includes $23 million to complete the Cushing, Oklahoma Tank Farm project. We do expect to start inputting crude oil in the new Cushing Tank Farm at the end of the first quarter 2012. We also expect to spend in 2011 approximately $54 million at the refinery in connection with the turnaround the fourth quarter this year. As a follow-up to Jack – what Jack mentioned earlier, for accounting purposes we will expense these turnaround costs as they are incurred. From a tax perspective, our effective tax rate for the quarter was 36% and we do anticipate our full year tax rate will be 36% as well. With the recent completion of the public offering for the fertilizer business, we will continue to consolidate the full pre-tax earnings of CVR Partners. All income attributable to the non-controlling interest of our MLP will represent a permanent non-taxable adjustment for CVR Energy and will effectively act to lower our effective tax rate on a go-forward basis. With that Jack, turn the call back over to you. Jack Lipinski – Chief Executive Officer: All right, thanks, Ed. As you know, we operate in a very volatile industry. For WTI based refiners, the sky is blue and the seas are calm right now, but it’s not always that way. A year ago in February, we saw group three crack spreads as low as $4 a barrel. We’re now seeing group cracks over $30 a barrel. I am not expecting any returns in these low levels, but those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat that. While we have a very substantial cash position right now, we intend to manage it conservatively. I am in discussions with our Board. They clearly understand our situation and fully intend to do the right thing to ensure – to enhance shareholder value as we move forward. With that operator, we’re ready to take questions.