Joseph Adams
Analyst · Stephens. Your line is now open
Thanks very much, Alan. To start today, I’m pleased to announce our sixth dividend as a public company and our 21st consecutive dividend since inception. The dividend of $0.33 per share will be paid on November 30th, based on a shareholder record date of November 18th. We remain committed to this dividend and there is nothing in this past quarter or ahead that we see, which places the dividend in question. As a Company, our objective is to provide investor returns through dividend income and earnings growth. The business today has two main components, Aviation and Infrastructure. The Aviation sector has grown nicely with over $515 million of equity invested as of this call and another $135 million in letters of intent, which together should produce over $150 million of annual funds available for distribution of FAD, which more than covers the dividend and SG&A of the whole company. Our infrastructure assets consisted of four North American port and rail road terminals with excellent connectivity located in strategic places. This portfolio of critical industrial infrastructure offers multiple opportunities to grow over many years. Overall, we feel we have an excellent balance of current income generating assets and long dated earnings growth. Let me now turn and talk a little bit about the financials. A key metric for us continues to be funds available for distribution or FAD. During the third quarter, total FAD was $10.1 million made up of $25.7 million from our equipment leasing portfolio, negative $6 million from our infrastructure investments and negative $9.6 million from corporate. Our equipment leasing FAD was comprised of FAD from aviation at $27.5 million. Note that we made no opportunistic sales this quarter, we could have made several profitable trades and instead opted to retain longer term lease deals. Netting out the proceeds from sales in Q2, aviation FAD went from $21.5 million in Q2 to $27.5 million in Q3 or a sequential increase of 28%. Offshore energy was minus $1.8 million of FAD an improvement from Q2 and FAD minus $3.8 million. The improvement was a result of both the pride and the pioneer being on charter for part of the quarter. Our infrastructure FAD continues to be negative $6 million but better than Q2 when it was negative $6.8 million. This improvement was a result of lower operating costs realized at the both Central Maine & Quebec Railway, the QR and an increase in spot business at Jefferson. Turning now to talk about leasing, our aviation business is in the strongest position since we began five years ago. Our competitive advantage stems from our deep engine technical knowledge and maintenance management expertise. We continue to refine and improve the business model by investing in our people, sharpening the focus and developing maintenance expense savings programs to further widen the mode between us and the rest of the industry. I would like to highlight the financial performance in Q3 and point out some key return metrics. With average book equity of $450 million in Q3, aviation generated $28 million and $16 million of adjusted EBITDA and net income respectively for the quarter or approximately $110 million and $66 million respectively on an annualized basis. Even with some lag from the ramping up of the portfolio, aviation produced annualized EBITDA returns and ROE of 25% and 15% respectively, which is why we find this such an attracted business. And we continue to invest in additional attractively priced assets. Since September 30th the end of Q3, to date we have closed on an additional $55 million with two aircraft and seven engines and we have another $135 million under signed letters of intent. Assuming these deals under LOI close and there are no asset sales. Our portfolio would consist of approximately 40 aircraft and 70 engines totaling approximately $650 million in invested equity capital. Turning to offshore quickly, offshore remains a distressed and a difficult business and difficult part of our portfolio. Companies in this sector continue to restructure, and once again this quarter, several liquidating. Ultimately, this is good as it reduces competition and limits capital for new assets, which will help bring asset supply and demand back in balance overtime. While the market continues to be driven by short-term contracts, we are however seeing an increase in tendering activity for inspection repair and maintenance projects in 2017. The fuels like the industry has hit bottom, but 2017 may again be a slow year, but better than 2016. We expect offshore to be breakeven or slightly positive from both an adjusted EBITDA and FAD basis and towards the end of 2017, we will look at this sector to determine if we think we can earn a good return or we should redeploy the capital elsewhere. Let me turn now to talk about the infrastructure portfolio. We have four port and rail terminals in North America. Jefferson, Repauno, CMQR, and Hannibal. The common theme of these properties is a location in a healthy and growing industrialized area combined with excellent rail, water and road connectivity. A good location with efficient transportation options is where we believe, we will produce long-term value creation with high barriers to entry. Focusing on Jefferson as we have outline this year, we have been pursuing four areas of business development. One, Canadian crude by rail, two crude blending and storage, three, ethanol by rail storage and distribution and four, refined products to Mexico by rail. With respect to Canadian crude, we have moved several strains of undiluted crude to Jefferson this quarter and had delivered new test blends to the market. We are actively engaged with both size of the market securing long-term demand for our customize blends while likening in sizeable supply contracts of attractively priced heavy crude. In addition, we expect the constraint so on pipeline capacity out of Canada to increase in 2017, which should provide further pricing advantages for rail. With respect to the 500,000 barrels storage project for heavy crude, which we announced on the last call, construction has begun and we expect that project to be online and generating EBITDA in Q3 2017 and we continue to pursue other storage and blending deals. As to ethanol, the project is also in full swing and we and Green Plains expect product to be moving through Jefferson early in Q3 of 2017. The market response has been very strong and as such we and Green Plains have decided to increase the terminal capacity by adding 50,000 barrels of tankage to the previously announced 500,000 barrels. We are in active negotiations with approximately 10 customers, potential customers in addition to Green Plains and hope to finalize several deals by the end of this year. We and Green Plains believe the project is going better than originally planned and we expect that our run rate EBITDA will be near the upper end of our previously announced range of $5 million to $10 million per annum. With respect to refined products to Mexico, we continue to move forward with multiple parties. As Mexico deregulates its energy sector and allows new entrants into the market, Jefferson is working with local refineries to supply large and growing inland markets in Mexico with refined products by rail. Several Gulf Coast refiners are very serious about establishing a presence in Mexico soon to be able participate in a very large and growing market over the next decade. Based upon our current negotiations, we hope to execute a contract by the end of this year. Turning to Repauno, since closing on Repauno in July, we have been doing several things. One permitting and preparing the 186,000 barrel carven for butane storage. Two, negotiating with an auto importer for long-term use of the docks in 100 acres. Three, in discussion with several industrial tenants for build-to-suit warehouse development and four, master planning in energy storage and distribution for natural gas liquids and crude. We estimate that we will invest approximately 15 to 20 million in the Butane initiative between December this year and March 2017 with operations commencing in April 2017. We expect Butane to generate a minimum of $2 million to $3 million of annual EBITDA which is a decent start on what we think will be a very substantial business. The Central Maine and Quebec railroad had another good quarter with car loads and revenues up 1% and 11% respectively year-over-year. We will likely continue to see a shift in low margin haulage traffic to higher margin long haul to better drive profitability. The management team continues to focus on excellent customer service and maximize our share in the market and add long-term development projects particularly around the port of [indiscernible] port. On Hannibal, we have progressed through the first phase of the PJM interconnection feasibility study and are moving into permitting, which will take approximately six to nine-months. All signs are currently positive for development of a new 500 megawatt gas fire turbine power plant which takes advantage of the excellent location and infrastructure at Hannibal and the point of low cost gas and ethane available in that region. To sum up, FTAI has an outstanding aviation business, which is producing significant cash flow and earnings to pay the dividend and our portfolio of infrastructure port and rail terminals will provide excellent earnings growth and value creation opportunities over the long-term. And because we currently have low leverage, we have access to debt capital which will allow us to continue to grow aviation and build out the infrastructure portfolio. With that, let me turn it back to Alan.