Earnings Labs

Genesis Energy, L.P. (GEL)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 19, 2020

$17.30

+2.22%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.55%

1 Week

-30.37%

1 Month

-72.86%

vs S&P

-40.48%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the 2019 Fourth Quarter Conference Call for Genesis Energy. Genesis has four business segments. The Offshore Pipeline Transportation Segment is engaged in providing the critical infrastructure to move oil produced from the long-lived world-class reservoirs from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico to onshore refining centers. Samantha, would you please check that the Internet connection is on?

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

It is on.

Operator

Operator

Okay. The Sodium Minerals and Sulfur Services segment includes trona and trona-based exploring, mining, processing, producing, marketing and selling activities as well as the processing of sour gas streams to remove sulfur at refining operations. The Onshore Facilities and Transportation segment is engaged in the transportation, handling, blending, storage and supply of energy products, including crude oil and refined products. The Marine Transportation segment is engaged in the maritime transportation of primarily refined petroleum products. Genesis operations are primarily located in Wyoming, the Gulf Coast states and the Gulf of Mexico. During this conference call, management may be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The law provides safe harbor protection to encourage companies to provide forward-looking information. Genesis intends to avail itself of those safe harbor provisions and directs you to its most recently filed and future filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We also encourage you to visit our website at genesisenergy.com where a copy of the press release we issued today is located. The press release also presents a reconciliation of Non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. At this time, I would like to introduce Grant Sims, CEO of Genesis Energy, L.P. Mr. Sims will be joined by Bob Deere, Chief Financial Officer; and Ryan Sims, Senior Vice President, Finance and Corporate Development.

Grant Sims

Management

Good morning. For the quarter, our diversified businesses in total performed slightly better than our expectations and we ended the year towards the high-end of our revised annual guidance for adjusted EBITDA. In our offshore pipeline transportation segment, we saw strong volumes across our platforms and pipelines as newer projects continued to ramp and sub-sea tiebacks and infield drilling more than offset any natural decline from our dedicated fields. During the quarter we announced new contracts with Murphy Exploration & Production Company, USA, subsidiary of Murphy Oil, to support their operated Khaleesi / Mormont and Samurai field developments through the new King's Quay floating production system. The King's Quay FBS will have the capacity to produce up to 80,000 barrels per day of oil and up to 100 million cubic feet of gas per day from the field development starting in mid-2022. The King's Quay FBS will tie and subside or 100% own Shenzi lateral and the crude oil production will then be delivered 50% or 100% owned Cameron Highway system and 50% to 64% owned Poseidon crude oil system for delivery all the way to shore. The associated gas production will tie in subsea and be gathered on our 100% owned Anaconda system, which ties into our 25.6% – 25.7% owned Nautilus gas system for transportation to shore. Given the multiple opportunities for Genesis to handle both the oil and gas production from the King's Quay FBS and if the producers are able to achieve their anticipated volumes, we would reasonably expect to see a benefit of approximately 50 million to 60 million of annual incremental EBITDA associated with the King's Quay FBS. During the quarter, the producing community also made a couple of significant announcements in the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron announced their Final Investment Decision or FID…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Shneur Gershuni [UBS Investment Bank].

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Maybe we can start off with the soda ash guidance for this year and do appreciate all the color that you gave. I was trying to understand how you're accounting for the coronavirus. Is it – are you saying from where you are right now, you're basically accounting for the worst of the inventory build right now and that in theory China's position as a net exporter could add – if it recovers faster, is that the recovery or so of some form that, that could make things better or worse from where you are? I'm just trying to understand how we should be thinking about the impact given that China as a net exporter?

Grant Sims

Management

At this point our implied guidance on soda ash is independent of any effects of the coronavirus. We just don't know export data out of China is do, generally speaking we’re good at the 20th to the 24th after the sub-preceding month and so we just haven't seen it yet. So we do know that there are several large synthetic soda ash production facilities in Wuhan providence, which we would anticipate are completely shutdown. But again, we don't know the net effect within the dynamics within the Chinese economy. So as you stated or as in the question, yes, the kind of the U.S. domestic exporters' coming out typically the Pacific Northwest, the marginal competition is with synthetic production coming out of China into the non-China Asian markets.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

Okay. So effectively the way to think about it, as long as they're – the net exporting position stays roughly the same, even if their imports are down a lot. But if their exports are down a lot as well too, the impact could be effectively muted and we should sort of be thinking of more of the global market. That's sort of the right way to think about it?

Grant Sims

Management

We think that's sort of the right way to think about at this point.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

Okay, great. Just two follow-up questions. If I remember correctly from your prepared remarks, you sort of talked about two, $620 million of cash outflows for this year. I was wondering if you can sort of walk us through the assumptions, I'm trying to understand, is the Granger JV fully funded from a CapEx perspective for 2020 and that's why the outflows are that low?

Grant Sims

Management

That's correct. We believe that the – given the structure of the redeemable preferred that we put in place that it doesn't stress the internal balance sheets, there's no cash payments associated with that during the construction period. And the sources of the funds are under draws under if you will, or issuance of the redeemable preferred. So as we look at it and how we manage the business and how our banks think about it also is basically there are recurring obligations in the zip code with $620 million and that includes all of the cash taxes, senior secured interest expense, all of the run rate on the senior unsecured on the bond complex, maintenance capital spent, the preferred distributions and common distribution. So on top of that, we have around $25 million worth of, as we said around $25 million worth of budget to growth capital and around $20 million of AROs, which are really kind of non-recurring and it's – the majority of which is associated with an asset, which we think that we can sell either by the end of 2021 or certainly, I mean, 2020 or certainly in 2021 and a multiple of those encouraged. So kind of at the mid-point of our EBITDA guidance that's where we think that we are cash flow neutral.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

Okay. And one final question if I may. If I recall, you did a big financing earlier this year. If you reduced all of your upcoming maturities and reduced your credit facility balances to almost zero, is that sort of a correct characterization that there's really no maturity or lingering type of issues that we need to be thinking about in the near term while you go through the soda ash issue?

Grant Sims

Management

The senior secured facility as it currently exists has a term going through I think may of 2022 and the first maturity of a bond is sometime in 2023. I'm not sure what month in 2023. So what we did with the refinancing was basically issued 28s and called the 22s and stuck them at the end of the maternity ladder.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

And you took down your balance on your revolver as well?

Grant Sims

Management

No. It was basically equal to the issuance that we redeem.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst

Got it. Perfect. Alright, thank you very much. That does it for me.

Grant Sims

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kyle May [Capital One Securities].

Kyle May

Analyst

Good morning. I wanted to ask about your assumptions for crude-by-rail volumes coming out of Canada. Based on the information in the press release, it sounded kind of lumpy through the year. So just wondering if you could walk us through your assumptions and then how we should think about this segment of the business beyond 2020?

Grant Sims

Management

Well that in part is why we ranged the overall EBITDA here. I think as we said on the third quarter call, if we just average one train a day, which is approximately 70,000 barrels a day for the year of 2020, we would expect everything else the same, that the contribution margin from onshore facilities and transportation would be $10 million higher than it was in 2019. So we are ranging it a little bit as you look in the aggregate from the $640 million to $680 million. At this point, as I said in the prepared remarks and the press release, we have a clear visibility through the first quarter, but we've not yet received nominations for April. And given just the dynamics of pipelining out of Canada, as we mentioned in the press releases, there's less diluent required, therefore there's more capacity in the second and third quarter typically. And so we don't know yet how that may or may not affect the economics. But suffice it to say, in the first quarter we’re averaging over the 70 kbd i.e., over the one train a day and we would expect that in the fourth quarter also, we’re just a little bit uncertain on the second and third quarter.

Kyle May

Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And then appreciate the EBITDA contribution you provided for some of the long-dated projects. But just wondering if you can give us an update on your thinking around the leverage ratio projections or when you may hit some of the targets you have in mind?

Grant Sims

Management

Yes, what we didn't kind of expect was the – while we consider it to be a cyclical fall and contribution of soda ash which we'll recover, but, so if – again, if you kind of do the arithmetic, actually in 2021 or 2022 with the addition of the everything that we threw out there with and everything else the same, we would, there's close to 200 million of incremental EBITDA. So if everything else is the same, you can kind of get your hands around the arithmetic of being paying down cash, at the same time the denominator of trailing EBITDA increasing. So it's probably in the 2021, 2022 type timeframe that we start getting down into the low-4% from our perspective of managing the leverage calculation or the leverage covenant.

Kyle May

Analyst

Okay. Got it. That's all for me.

Grant Sims

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of TJ Schultz, [RBC Capital Markets].

TJ Schultz

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Just a follow up on soda ash, you mentioned I think due to the mix of contracts that the recoveries historically can take from four to eight quarters, so with that, you point to a recovery in cash flow by 2022, so are you locked-in now for the next two years or could you reset contracts at the end of this year and 2021 is kind of still to be determined?

Grant Sims

Management

Yes, it's a good question and I will put some more color around it. As I said in the – as we said in the prepared remarks, and then in the press release, the domestic contracts are typically under call it two to three, sometimes five-year contracts, most of which are subject to annual redeterminations. And most of those are subject to a gap some colors around the pricing. So those are kind of fixed if you will within a band for a period of time. As a general proposition, as I said half of our sales go to export markets. And then, this is very general but half of it goes – half of that, so a quarter of the total sales going into Latin America, which typically are one-year contracts. Not all, but typically are one-year contracts. And then the other half of the exports or quarter of total sales go into Asia and those are typically three to six month contracts. So in any given year, contract-year, the only thing that can really move or be re-determined primarily and then this is very general, but are the agent contracts if you will, but then after four quarters and you can reset the Latin American contracts to the higher price. So I'll just give a little historical perspective, I'm not going to talk about the absolute price levels, because I'm uncomfortable doing that, given that there are only five domestic suppliers and other – we have other arrangements for exports through ANSAC. But the – in the last two occurrences where we saw export prices dip this low within 12 months, prices had recovered 15% within the subsequent 12 months they had recovered an additional 12% to 15%. So I think that, that's why we said typically we've seen historically that it takes – it can take because of the nature of the contracting and the terms can take four to eight quarters before we can get back on trend.

TJ Schultz

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for that. I have just two quick clarification on some of the guidance you gave for 2020. First, what's the maintenance CapEx to be spent for 2020 that you include in the cash obligations? And then what cash flow impact in 2020 is there from re-contracting the Phoenix? Thanks.

Grant Sims

Management

The maintenance capital spent as currently budgeted is around $60 million to be spent in 2020. The American Phoenix, I would say in today's market probably, but it's directionally correct because six or nine months ago it was probably $20,000 a day re-contracting risk. I would say today it's somewhere in the order, if it worked to re-price in today's market, I think it's probably close to a $5,000 a day. So not a large in the overall scheme of things, not a large amount of re-contracting risk.

TJ Schultz

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Grant.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sunil Sibal, [Seaport Global Securities].

Sunil Sibal

Analyst

Yes. Hi. Good morning guys. I just want to see you remind us, where do your covenants, say it on the leverage metrics for the next few quarters?

Bob Deere

Analyst

It's at 5.5% for the remaining term of the senior secured credit facility.

Sunil Sibal

Analyst

Okay. And you are low-5% at the end of 2019, considering, there be some more variability with all that's going on in China and all that. Could you talk a little bit about the levers you may have a level to a kind of scale comfortably within 5% – 5.5%?

Bob Deere

Analyst

We say even in stress situations to the downside, that we don't perceive any issues, we’d sustain comfortably within the 5.5%.

Sunil Sibal

Analyst

Okay. That's all I had. Thanks.

Bob Deere

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time.

Grant Sims

Management

Okay. Thanks everyone and we'll talk to you soon.

Operator

Operator

This does concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.