Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Natural Resource Partners LP Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Tiffany Sammis, Natural Resource Partners’ Manager of Investor Relations. Ms. Sammis, you may begin, ma’am.

Good morning, and welcome to the Natural Resource Partners fourth quarter and full year 2018 conference Call. Today’s call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website. Joining me today are Craig Nunez, President and Chief Operating Officer; Chris Zolas, Chief Financial Officer; and Kevin Craig, Executive Vice President of Coal. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting NRP’s views about future events. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in NRP’s Form 10-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our fourth quarter 2018 press release, which can be found on our website. I would like to remind everyone that we do not intend to discuss the operations or outlook for any particular coal lessee or get into detailed market fundamentals. In addition, I refer you to Ciner Resources’ public disclosures and commentary for specific questions regarding our soda ash business segment. Now I would like to turn the call over to Craig Nunez, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Thank you, Tiffany, and welcome, everyone, to our quarterly call. 2018 was another transformational year for NRP, marked by significant cash generation, debt reduction and several noteworthy accomplishments. We sold our VantaCore construction aggregates business, which was only marginally profitable, over the last year on a free cash flow basis for $205 million. We received $25 million as part of a settlement of a long-standing legal dispute surrounding our Hillsboro and Macoupin mines, which was the first of $190 million of payments to be received over 15 years. And we generated $183 million of free cash flow and $107 million of net income attributable to common unitholders. Our long-term goal to drive our leverage ratio below 3x is now within our sights. What seems like an audacious and unattainable objective when our ratio was at 5.3 is on the cusp of becoming reality. And throughout it all, we continue to maintain strong liquidity, ending the year with $206 million of cash and $100 million of committed borrowing capacity. Last but not least, we continue to reward our common unitholders, 35% of whom are insiders, with $22 million of distributions during the year. Looking ahead, we continue to generate significant amounts of cash on the back of solid demand for coal and soda ash, a trend we have seen for some time now. Excluding our discontinued operations and onetime beneficial items, we recorded $158 million of free cash flow in 2018. We believe it’s reasonable to assume that this level of consolidated free cash flow may be indicative of a sustainable run rate that we can plan on for the near future. In thinking about the earning power and financial stability of our company, one metric we focus on is what we call our cash flow cushion, which is the amount…

Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone. I’d like to start out summarizing the financial statement impact of the tow significant fourth quarter events; the Hillsboro litigation settlement and the VantaCore sale. First, the settlement in October of our Hillsboro litigation with Foresight resulted in a receipt of $25 million of cash, which was recognized as other income in the fourth quarter. Second, we exited the construction aggregates operations business with the sale of VantaCore in December for $205 million and realized a gain of $13 million on the sale. Our construction aggregates business results including this gain on sale are now presented within discontinued operations. Regarding the use of proceeds from the sale, as of year-end, we paid off the remaining $94 million of outstanding borrowings on our bank credit facility, and in January of this year, we used an additional $49 million to prepay a portion of our Opco senior notes at par, resulting in $143 million of debt reduction to date. We will use the remaining net proceeds to continue to repay our Opco senior notes at par as they amortize in 2019. With that being said, let’s discuss our overall fourth quarter and year-end results. During the fourth quarter, our continuing operations generated $80 million of operating cash flow and $35 million of net income. Full year amounts from continuing operations were $178 million of operating cash flow and $122 million of net income. Free cash flow was up $38 million over the prior year quarter and up $62 million for the full year. These results were driven by the steady performance and strong cash collections from our coal royalty segment, the Hillsboro litigation settlement in the fourth quarter and having lower debt and paying less cash for interest during the year. Basic and diluted earnings…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Nick Jarmoszuk from Stifel. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. You did a good job addressing the funds on the capital structure, the 10.5%s. I was curious, are there any restrictions in the cash balance in terms of how it can be applied to either the 10.5%s or the preferreds to pay down some of the higher-cost portions of the capital structure?

Sure, Nick. This is Chris. We do have restricted cash on our balance sheet as of year-end. It was about $104 million, and that’s from the proceeds from our VantaCore asset sale. We’re required to use that – those proceeds to repay debt, and we plan to use those proceeds to repay debt. As I talked about, we paid $49 million of that cash in January of this year, which leaves us about $55 million left over that we plan to use to pay Opco notes as they amortize in 2019.

And the regular cash balance can be applied to anything in the capital structure?

Correct.

Okay. And then question on the – some of the recently announced met coal expansion projects. Do you guys have – are those your properties? Do you have any upside with those? Or are they not within the NRP portfolio?

So the recently announced – you may be referring to Archie’s Lear project. Those – that project is currently not on the NRP reserves. Most recent significant expansion we’ve seen on our properties are the Ramaco operations in Southern West Virginia that have come online and continue to expand.

Okay. And then a final item, 2019 CapEx, is there a number you can guide us towards?

We’re not giving guidance, but if you look at the coal CapEx for last year, it was zero and we don’t expect much change from that.

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. Ms. Sammis, you may continue.

Thank you, everyone, for joining our call. I want to appreciate you – I want to thank you for your interest in NRP. Appreciate you following us and taking time with us, and we look forward to speaking with you in the months and quarters ahead.

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for joining. Have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.