Earnings Labs

Martin Midstream Partners L.P. (MMLP)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Sun, Nov 2, 2014

$2.49

-1.97%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Martin Midstream Partners LP Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will be having a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Bob Bondurant. Sir, the floor is yours.

Bob Bondurant

Management

Thank you, Nicholas. And let everyone knows on the call today, we have Ruben Martin, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Joe McCreery, our Vice President of Finance and he is also the Head of Investor Relations; and Wes Martin, our VP of Corporate Development. Before we get started with the financial and operational results for the third quarter, I need to make this disclaimer. Certain statements made during this conference call may be forward-looking statements relating to financial forecasts, future performance, and our ability to make distributions to unit holders. 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 distributed cash flow, or DCF; and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA; and we also use adjusted 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 cash available to pay distributions. We also include in our press release issued yesterday a reconciliation of EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, and distributable cash flow to the most comparable GAAP financial measure. Our earnings press release is available at our Web site, www.martinmidstream.com. Now I would like to discuss our third quarter performance. For the third quarter, we had adjusted EBITDA of $33.7 million compared to $31.9 million in the second quarter of 2014. Our distributable cash flow, or DCF, for the third quarter was $19.3 million, a distribution coverage of 0.78x based on the distributions we paid in the third quarter. This coverage ratio does not include any IDR payments to the General Partner as we have suspended IDR payments until a cumulative suspension of $21…

Joe McCreery

Management

Thanks Bob. I'll start with our normal walk-through of the debt components of our balance sheet and our bank ratios. I will then highlight some of the Partnership's financing growth and other activities during the quarter. On September 30, 2014, the Partnership had total long-term funded debt of approximately $910 million. This consisted of approximately $402 million of senior unsecured notes, and $508 million drawn on our $900 million revolving credit facility. Thus, the Partnership's availability on September 30, 2014, was $392 million. For the third quarter ended 2014, our bank compliant leverage ratios defined as senior secured indebtedness to adjusted EBITDA, and total indebtedness to adjusted EBITDA were 2.67x and 4.78x respectively. Additionally, our bank compliant interest coverage ratio, as defined by adjusted EBITDA to consolidated interest expense was 3.15x. Looking at the balance sheet, our total debt to total capitalization at September 30 was 64.1%, there is a slight improvement compared to the quarter ended June 30, 2014, as a result of the Partnership's multiple equity offerings during the third quarter. In all, on September 30, the partnership was in full compliance of all banking covenants, financial; or otherwise. Now, reconciling our current revolver balance to the quarter ended September 30, the outstanding amount today is $493 million and thus the partnership has available liquidity of $407 million under its credit facility. This current lower revolver balance is attributed to working capital reductions associated with lower inventories in our NGL business. Now, I would like to highlight a significant acquisition we completed during the third quarter. Back in August, our Redbird Gas Storage subsidiary acquired all the category membership interests approximately 57.8% in Cardinal Gas Storage Partners LLC for total consideration of $120 million from Energy Capital Partners. We call that MMLP through Redbird previously owned the other…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Gabe Moreen with Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Gabe Moreen - Bank of America

Analyst

Hi, good morning, guys.

Joe McCreery

Management

Good morning.

Ruben Martin

Analyst

Good morning Gabe.

Gabe Moreen - Bank of America

Analyst

Following up on Joe's comments on the One Oak transaction, I guess curious as to whether kind of you'd endorse that doubling of EBITDA within the timeframe that they put out there, and also in their press release I don't think they mentioned explicitly rate tariff changes. I was wondering if you saw that as part of the driver of growth that they—either they laid out or are you still going forward for that asset?

Joe McCreery

Management

Yes, let me start on our risk in China. And I think I would categorically that's their number not ours, doubling the cash flow. We certainly see the value in the uplift but with respect to the tariffs, I mean I think that something that we saw but I'm not going to speak for them on that. So what we are going to do is get together on it Gabe and it's very early obviously with this announcement and moving forward just see what types of projects specifically we are talking about here. But doubling is a – that's a One Oak number not a Martin number. I'm just going to leave it at that.

Gabe Moreen - Bank of America

Analyst

Fair enough. And then I guess as a follow-up to that, did you guys, given the much higher multiple One Oak paid for their stake than you did a couple of months ago, did you at all contemplate monetizing your 20% as part of the transaction, or is that off the table given how much you like this asset?

Ruben Martin

Analyst

This is Ruben. We like the asset like what One Okay say it and we also liked the fact that One Oak ended up with pipe. And so we are looking forward to the things that we are going to be doing in that. I hope the 17 is a good day maybe even sooner to start process is going to try to increase that cash flow. Again, we are going to do what's best interest of the shareholders. If something ever came up that we were able to work that would positively influence the company and help us and help One Oak. And we have to get some things going together then we are open for anything.

Gabe Moreen - Bank of America

Analyst

Great. Thanks. And last one for me is just given the comments around the condensate splitter, can you just talk about kind of what your latest thoughts are for 2015 growth CapEx, and what might be in there?

Wes Martin

Analyst

This is Wes. Actually Gabe we are right in the middle of our budgeting process right now. So we don't really have a firm number that we can go out to the market with – I will say that in terms of if you did remove the splitter off the table, I think in terms of what we see is probably in the $50 million to $100 million range of various growth projects. At this point in time, but again, we are right in the middle of the budgeting process haven't had a chance to get with all the managers yet to see what they have got on tap. So we will have a little bit more detail on that here shortly. But, right now we can't give a definitive firm number at this point.

Gabe Moreen - Bank of America

Analyst

Got it. Thanks Wes. Thanks everyone.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Darren Horowitz with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Darren Horowitz - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning guys. Just one question for me. Ruben, with One Oak now involved in the 80% ownership of this asset, does that change the way that you guys were thinking about, like, the acres that you had at the Neches facility, or last quarter we spent a little bit of time talking about that underutilized dock, and maybe the opportunity for hydrocarbon export. I'm just wondering if you're thinking about things differently, and to Wes' point, I realize you're in the process of going through what 2015 CapEx looks like. But just qualitatively, does anything change the way that you're thinking about development of either Neches or the Beaumont area, or some of that other acreage that you have, or that barge capacity at Stanley?

Ruben Martin

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. We have continually wanted to develop Neches, by the way Neches is a town in Mississippi. But, yes, the answer to your question is, it does influence that I truly believe that there is some good fits here. It fit our Beaumont facility. We have – as we said before, we have an additional 90 acres in Beaumont that we closed a few months ago. It's given us a plenty of room. We are working on expanding the facilities there not only from the dock space standpoint but from other activities in the – at that facility. So the answer to your question is, yes, we believe it does enhance and it does increase the possibilities that we will be able to do some things there that are going to further enhance and grow the partnership for the things that you talked about.

Darren Horowitz - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Would it be fair to assume that with the splitter now on hold, that maybe it might make some sense for you guys to consider moving further upstream with regard to stabilize your vapor control condensate, and maybe that being more of an opportunity to move those hydrocarbons across the dock?

Ruben Martin

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. We have that's what really changed and the whole situation is that when people started talking about the splitters. And then you get into the situation as what exactly are we talking about. And if you are talking about some of the stabilization units, splitters, the question is how deep you go and when is the government going to come out, when it comes to trying to exactly define what is exportable and what's not. And I think that it's kind of put a lot of people on hold. As I say, it's like they threw a hand grenade right in the middle when everybody is trying to make decisions and changed a lot of people decisions. So I think everybody is trying to evaluate exactly where they are going on the situation. We do know, for sure there is going to have to be more tankage, there is going to have to be more dock space. So all of these things are in play and we are currently talking about expansion on all of those levels. Question is, what type of stabilization or fractionation is it going to take to export the condensate or export the different products for the condensate.

Darren Horowitz - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Hypothetically, is any of that in that $50 million to $100 million of capital spend that Wes threw out for 2015?

Ruben Martin

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

No. It's really not. We have already got on the books and looked at least $50 million worth of new projects that are there and looking at it probably another 100 that are out there that would be started. The thing is nowadays whenever you do start a project it takes so long when it comes to permitting and construction and all of these things. We are not as compared to what it used to do years go. So all of these types of projects are carryovers and as they start they go forward and they spread out over several years. But, we know that we have currently demanding the Corpus for an additional 0.5 million barrels maybe as much as a million barrels of new storage in Corpus. And it takes new docks to start getting those kind of barrels across the docks and into the market. So there is a lot of – there is still a lot of activity down there and we are hoping to see with some of the things happened in the market that a lot of activity will move north up into the Beaumont area too.

Darren Horowitz - Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And speakers I'm not showing any further questions in the queue at this time.

Joe McCreery

Management

Okay. We want to thank everybody for calling in and dialing in to get information concerning our company. And as we all know the third quarter for our company is the seasonal down for the entire company. We have had a real good recovery concerning marine transportation with all of the dry-docks and everything that had happened in the first half of the year. Our fourth quarter outlook is good. We expect good cash flows from West Texas LPG and from the Cardinal Gas Storage to kick in finally and continue to help us. But, fourth quarter looks good. 2014, we have increased our distribution. It's the best year for our distribution growth since 2009. And we like the trend. We like the way things are going. And there is a lot of activity and there is a lot going on down here. So we appreciate everybody's time and thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. And you may all disconnect. Have a good day everyone.