Robert D. Bondurant
Analyst · Raymond James
Thank you, Ben. And to let everyone know who's on the call today, we have Ruben Martin, President and Chief Executive Officer; Joe McCreery, Vice President of Finance and Head of our Investor Relations; and Wes Martin, VP of Business Development. Before we get started with the financial and operational results of the fourth quarter, I need to make this disclaimer. Certain statements made during this conference call may be forward-looking statements relating to financial forecast, future performance and our ability to make distributions to unitholders. We report our financial results in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and use certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meanings of the SEC Regulation G, such as distributable cash flow, or DCF, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA. We use these measures because we believe it provides users of our financial information with meaningful comparisons between current results and prior reported results, and it can be a meaningful measure of the partnership's ability to pay distributions. Distributable cash flow should not be considered an alternative to cash flow from operating activities. Furthermore, DCF is not a measure of financial performance or liquidity under GAAP and should not be considered in isolation as an indicator of our performance. We also included in our press release issued yesterday a reconciliation of DCF to the most comparable GAAP financial measure. Our earnings press release is available at our website, www.martinmidstream.com. We also issued a press release this morning that furnishes all fourth quarter business segment information for 2012. Now before I begin my discussion on our fourth quarter performance, I want to point out the financial statement reporting impact of our acquisition of the Cross Oil lubricant packaging business and the remainder of the Class A interest in Redbird Gas Storage from our general partner. On October 2, 2012, the partnership effectively redeployed cash generated from the sale of our discontinued operations by acquiring the Cross lubricant packaging business for $122.7 million and the remaining Class A interest in Redbird Gas Storage for $150 million. The partnership accounting for these transactions as a transfer of net assets between entities under common control pursuant to FASB accounting rules. These net assets were recorded at the amounts reflected in our general partner's historical consolidated financial statements. These same FASB rules also require that all historical quarterly and year-end income statements be revised to include the results of the acquired assets as the date of common control. Accordingly, the partnership's historical financial statements have been recast back to 2007. On a segment basis, the recast effect of the lubricant packaging acquisition shows up in our Terminalling segment, and the recast effect of the acquisition to Class A interest in Redbird Gas Storage shows up in the equity and earnings of unconsolidated entities line of the income state. The financial impact of recasting the lubricant packaging acquisition for the first 3 quarters was to increase EBITDA of the Terminalling segment by $8.5 million. The financial impact of the acquisition of the Class A interest in Redbird for the first 3 quarters was to increase equity and earnings of unconsolidated entities by $0.8 million. With that background behind our numbers, we had fourth quarter 2012 net income from continuing operations of $9.2 million compared to a recast $8.7 million for the third quarter. And for the year of 2012, we had net income from continuing operations of $37.1 million, compared to a recast $13.4 million for the prior year. Now as with other MLPs, we believe the most important measure of performance is distributable cash flow. Our total distributable cash flow from continuing operations, or DCF, for the fourth quarter was $20.1 million, a distribution coverage of 1.1x. This coverage calculation is based on our actual distribution paid in the fourth quarter and does not include the impact of the 3.5 million shares we issued in late November 2012. It also does not include any IDR payments to the general partner as we have suspended IDR payments until a cumulative suspension of $18 million is met. At December 31, 2012, our cumulative suspension amount was $1.6 million. And as of today, is $3.4 million. For the year, our actual DCF was $83.8 million, a distribution coverage of 1.1x based on the actual cash distributions paid in 2012. Now I'd like to discuss our fourth quarter cash flow from continuing operations, compared to the third quarter. In the Terminalling segment, our fourth quarter cash flow, which is defined as operating income plus depreciation and amortization, but excluding any gain or loss on sale of assets, was $12.9 million in the fourth quarter, compared to a recast $13.3 million in the third quarter. Our specialty terminals, which now includes our newly acquired lubricant packaging business, had cash flow of $9.2 million in the fourth quarter compared to a recast $9.7 million in the third quarter. The lubricant packaging business had cash flow of $2.2 million in the fourth quarter, compared to the inclusion of a recast $1.7 million in the third quarter. Also, our Corpus Christi crude terminal had cash flow of $3.3 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $2.2 million in the third quarter. The crude volumes at our Corpus crude terminal have constantly increased over time, and we're currently consistently receiving over 100,000 barrels a day into our 600,000 barrel capacity terminal. Offsetting these fourth quarter increases in specialty terminal cash flows was a decrease in cash flow from our Arkansas lubricant refinery. Cash flow from this operation was $2.6 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $3.8 million in the third quarter. We experienced unexpected downtime at the refinery due to a boiler outage. This issue reduced our daily throughput revenue and also increased our operating expenses for boiler repairs. We do anticipate the performance of the refinery to be more normal in the first quarter of 2013, when compared to the reduced performance in the fourth quarter of 2012. The other portion of our Terminalling segment, Marine shore bases had cash flow of $3.7 million in both quarters. We continue to remain long-term bullish on the shore base business as we believe there will be a continual increase in the Gulf of Mexico rig count year-over-year. As a result, our diesel throughput volume should increase driving an improvement in operating cash flow. To further show our commitment to the shore base terminal business, we closed the Talen's acquisition on December 31, 2012. We purchased Talen's for $103.4 million. We immediately sold the working capital to our general partner for $56 million, leaving a net investment in Talen's of $47.4 million, subject to certain working capital adjustments to be determined. We entered into a fee-based diesel throughput agreement with our general partner. And as a result, we believe this business will add incremental cash flow of $6 million to $7 million to us in 2013. For the year, using a recast 2012 segment income statement, our overall terminal cash flow was $51.1 million compared to $41.9 million in 2011. Using 2012 as a baseline for 2013, we believe we should have increased cash flow above that baseline from the Talen's acquisition of $6 million to $7 million. Also with expected increase business at our Corpus Christi crude terminal and our lubricant packaging business, we should realize an additional $10 million to $13 million of cash flow growth in 2013. Now in our Sulfur Services segment, our cash flow was $8.6 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $7.9 million in the third quarter. For the year, our Sulfur Services segment had cash flow of $44.9 million in 2012, compared to $34.4 million in '11. Our cash flow in the fertilizer side of the Sulfur Services business was $5.1 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $4 million in the third. The third quarter's traditionally our weakest quarter in the fertilizer business, though this increase in cash flow was expected. Also we performed a turnaround on our sulfuric acid plant in our Plainview, Texas facility in the third quarter, so we did not experience that downtime and associated cost in the fourth quarter. For the year, our fertilizer business had cash flow of $28.7 million, compared to $18.7 million in '11. This increase was primarily driven by both volume and margin growth. Looking towards 2013, we are forecasting a slight decrease in fertilizer cash flow as we believe there may be some margin compression this year. On the pure sulfur side of the business, our cash flow was $3.5 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $3.9 million in the third quarter. This decrease was primarily volume driven as our sulfur sales volume fell 10% in the fourth quarter. This was driven by decreased exports sales at our Beaumont and Stockton prilling facilities as there was reduced sulfur supply production running through these 2 prilling operations. For the year on the pure sulfur side of the business, our cash flow was $16.2 million, compared to $15.7 million in '11. Looking toward '13, we see a slight decrease in the pure sulfur business cash flow as we feel there may be pure logistical opportunities realized in 2013, compared to 2012. Moving to our Natural Gas Services segment, we had cash flow of $8.8 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $3 million in the third quarter. The increase in cash flow in the fourth quarter was primarily driven by a refinery butane business, which generates a significant majority of its margin-based cash flow in the fourth and first quarter. This winter seasonality is when refineries demand butanes for gasoline blending. For 2012, we had cash flow from our Natural Gas Services continuing operations of $14.5 million, compared to $6.8 million in '11. The year-over-year increase in cash flow was primarily driven by refinery butane business. This was the first year we have focused on this business as we started the business in the second quarter of '12. As a result, 2012 cash flow shows no benefit of first quarter profitability. Looking toward 2013, we believe cash flow should increase in this segment at a benefit of having the refinery butane business operating in the first quarter of '13. Again, there was no such benefit in the first quarter of 2012. In addition to the wholesale NGL marketing business, we now own 100% of Redbird Gas Storage, which owns a 41.7% Class A interest in Cardinal Gas Storage and a fully diluted 38.7% interest. For both the third and fourth quarters, we had distributions from Cardinal of $0.8 million. For 2012, we received $4 million in distributions compared to $1.4 million in 2011. However, our forecasted distribution of Cardinal should be reduced in 2013 as recontracting rates at Monroe Gas Storage are less when compared to 2012. In our Marine Transportation segment, we had cash flow of $6.1 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $4.3 million in the third quarter. Of the increase, $800,000 came from the offshore side of the business as utilization increased as a result of minimal downtime for repairs and maintenance. The balance of overall marine transportation increase in cash flow was the result of the recovery of a previously written-off bad debt on the MM [ph] side of the business. For the year, Marine Transportation cash flow was $17.9 million in 2012, compared to $14.1 million in 2011. This increase was entirely driven by an improvement in the offshore side of the business. The utilization of our 2 offshore tows that usually operated in the spot market was significantly improved. This improvement in overall offshore utilization has been primarily driven by the increasing Eagle Ford Shale production. Looking toward 2013, we forecast this offshore utilization to again be slightly improved, so we are forecasting a slight increase in Marine Transportation cash flow over 2012. Finally, our unallocated SG&A was $5.3 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $2 million in the third quarter. $1 million of this increase is due to an increase in overhead allocation we received from our general partner. And for the quarter this allocation was $2.7 million. The balance of the increase is due to transaction costs surrounding the fourth quarter acquisitions of the packaging business, the Redbird Class A interest and the Talen's Marine shore base terminalling business. Legal audit, consulting and fairness opinion costs related to these acquisitions were charged in the fourth quarter. Now looking towards 2013 and as in any acquisition cost, we believe unallocated SG&A cost should be $13 million to $14 million for the year, compared to $11.7 million in 2012 and $8.7 million in 2011. So to summarize, MMLP had overall cash flow from continuing operations and including distributions for Cardinal of $31.9 million in the fourth quarter, compared to a recast $27.3 million in the third quarter. For the year, we had recast $120.7 million in cash flow from continuing operations, compared to a recast $89.9 million in '11. Now for the fourth quarter, we had maintenance capital expenditures and turnaround costs of $4.6 million. And for the year, these costs totaled $10.7 million. Looking toward next year, we are forecasting approximately $13 million to $15 million in maintenance and turnaround costs. Now I would like to turn the call over to Joe McCreery, who will speak about liquidity and capital resources, our recent acquisitions and our 2013 growth capital plans.