Greetings. And welcome to Genesis Energy L.P. Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Dwayne Morley, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thanks, Rob. Good morning. Welcome to the 2023 fourth quarter conference call for Genesis Energy. Genesis Energy 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 in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico to onshore refining centers. The Soda 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 marine 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'd like to introduce Grant Sims, CEO of Genesis Energy L.P. Mr. Sims will be joined by Kristen Jesulaitis, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer; Ryan Sims, President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Louis Nickel, Chief Accounting Officer.

Thanks, Dwayne. Good morning to everyone and thank you for listening to the call. As we mentioned in our earnings release this morning, our financial results for the fourth quarter came in ahead of our internal expectations and the performance of our diversified market-leading businesses helped contribute towards a record year for Genesis. For the full year, we reported adjusted EBITDA of $756 million which was above the top end of our most recent full year guidance and is approximately 11% over our normalized 2022 results. During the quarter our Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment benefited from steady and increasing volumes through our pipelines while our Marine Transportation segment continued to exceed expectations driven in large part by the continued structural tightness in the Jones Act market. Our soda ash business finished off the best year in its history and continued to perform in line with our expectations during the quarter despite softer soda ash prices in a more challenging macro environment in the back half of the year. This strong consolidated financial performance in the fourth quarter resulted in our leverage ratio as calculated by our senior secured lenders ending the quarter and the year at 3.96 times as well as a coverage ratio for the current distribution to all our common unitholders of 4.8 times. As we look ahead to 2024, we remain encouraged with the fundamentals and exciting prospects for our largest business in the Gulf of Mexico. Our Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment contribution is expected to be flat year-over-year, given a certain economic step-down associated with the 10-year anniversary of an existing one-off life-of-lease transportation contract that will somewhat sequentially mask the financial contribution from the continued growth in volumes and strong activity levels around our irreplaceable assets. Importantly, we are now a short time away from…

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Blum with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning everyone. Wanted to ask on Marine Transportation, obviously really strong outlook at this point, I wanted to ask first is there -- given that the market dynamics and ability to effectively lengthen the terms of these contracts to lock in these favorable rates? And then, kind of on the flip side, given how strong things are right now. Is that a segment that you would consider divesting? I know that's something you've talked about in the past.

We're approaching the current contracting world by putting the extending the length and the percentage of our vessels which are under longer-term contracts. So it's indeed a good time to lock in some of these rates. But we still believe that as we said in the comments that we view that rates have to kind of go up from here in order to really solve the structural issues. So we are maintaining a balance that are vessels which are exposed to increasing day rates on the spot market. So we feel very good about the -- where we are. In terms of the potential to ultimately exit the business I think that we're committed to it. It's a very good business obviously cyclical but the next three years to five years we view as very strong for the business and could be even beyond that and lessen until people other people initiate significant construction programs which is the only way that you're going to solve the supply-demand imbalance for Jones Act tonnage.

Got it. Thanks for that. And then just wanted to ask a little bit of a left field here, but there's been some recent press about ideas to use sodium to replace lithium for EV batteries. Just curious if that's something you're hearing about from any potential customers as it relates to your soda ash business? Thanks.

Yes, Michael, this is Ryan. We have seen reports of that. I think a lot of it is coming out of China with the sodium ion batteries. And certainly that would help from a demand perspective. We see some growth there. So I think overall it's a positive for the industry but is still in its early stages.

Thank you.

Even in the lithium carbonate world if you look at some of the more recent public pronouncements of the large public lithium producers lithium demand being driven by EV batteries which in most processes require two parts of soda ash per one part of lithium to make lithium carbonate that the demand profile for soda ash is a drag along if you will from the increased lithium demand is very positive for our business.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Grant Sims for closing comments.

Again thanks everybody for listening to the call and we look forward to visiting with you in 90 days if not sooner. So thank you.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and we thank you for your participation.