Genesis Energy, L.P. Class A Common Units (NYSE:GEL) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 2, 2024 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Dwayne Morley – Vice President, Investor Relations
Grant Sims – Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Michael Blum – Wells Fargo
Wade Suki – Capital One
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the Genesis Energy LP First Quarter 2024 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. Please go ahead.
Dwayne Morley
Good morning. Welcome to the 2024 first 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 maritime transportation of primarily refined petroleum products. Genesis’ operations are primarily located in Wyoming, Gulf Coast states and the Gulf of Mexico.
During this call, management may be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act 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 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 LP. Mr. Sims will be joined by Kristen Jesulaitis, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer; Ryan Sims, President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Louie Nicol, Chief Accounting Officer.
With that I’ll turn it over to Grant.
Grant Sims
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 generally in line with our internal expectations.
As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we continue to view 2024 as kind of a transition year as we move increasingly closer to the important inflection point when our current growth capital spending program is completed. De minimus growth capital spending in future years combined with the contracted and/or expected increased financial performance from our offshore, marine and inorganic chemical businesses over the coming years should provide us with the ability to generate significant amounts of cash in excess of all of the current cash obligations associated with running our businesses.
In the aggregate these current recurring cash obligations add up to approximately $600 million per year. This is comprised of roughly $320 million of cash interest expense, which includes interest and principal payments on our alkali senior secured notes, approximately $120 million of cash maintenance capital expenditures, almost $90 million of preferred distributions and approximately $74 million of common unit distributions at the current level of $0.60 per unit per annum.
Going forward, we expect the dollars we generate above these recurring cash obligations will be used to return capital to our stakeholders in one form or another as we redeem more preferred and/or pay down aggregate debt. These recurring costs will obviously go down giving us even more flexibility to return capital to unitholders. We expect our coverage of these cash costs to accelerate as we move through next year.
As we sit here today, we believe we should be able to sustain if not grow such coverage of our cash costs for many years ahead without requiring significant amounts of discretionary growth capital.
As this important inflection point draws near, we continue to advance discussions at the Board level around how best to allocate this anticipated cash flow and I would expect to provide everyone with more details around our capital allocation priorities and strategy at some point later this year. This is undoubtedly an exciting time for Genesis as we move closer and closer to the point on which we have been keenly focused over the last four years or so barring any unforeseen circumstances, we believe we have positioned the partnership with significant financial flexibility to manage our debt metrics and liquidity, further simplify our capital structure, return capital to our common unit holders in one form or another and thereby create long-term value for everyone in the capital structure for many years ahead.
Now I will touch briefly on our individual business segments. Our offshore pipeline transportation segment continued to perform in line with our expectations during the quarter, despite certain fields underperforming relative to the original producer forecast we received late last year. This underperformance was a result of unscheduled downtime at a certain host facility and another operator having to temporarily shut in some production due to some issues that arose as they were installing subsea equipment to be able to add additional wells to their production facility. Importantly, both items have since been resolved.
During the quarter, we continued to see significant volumes from BP’s Argos facility, which has recently exceeded 130,000 barrels per day, and steady volumes from our other major host fields. Most oil from the Winterfell development remains on schedule for the second quarter and, I’m happy to announce, we have recently executed new minimum volume commitment contracts with multiple investment-grade counterparties that further support the forecasted volumes on our CHOPS system. We also remain in active discussions with multiple producers regarding numerous additional infield, subsea, and or secondary recovery development opportunities around our existing facilities. If sanctioned, these would turn into new production through our integrated infrastructure as early as later this year, or certainly over the next few years.
I think it is once again important to emphasize how unique our situation is in the central Gulf of Mexico relative to other midstream opportunities, especially in high-profile onshore basins. Unlike most onshore situations, where significant dollars are required to maintain or grow volumes by building out additional gathering facilities connecting each new well or pad of wells to a main trunkline or terminal, the “gathering” in the Gulf of Mexico is done by the producers, them tying back wells to existing floating production facilities that are already, and in almost every situation, exclusively connected to one of our laterals or pipelines to shore.
These floating production systems have a design and useful life of 30 or 40 or even more years. Once Shenandoah and Salamanca are online, and taking into account Argos and King’s Quay, we will have added over 400,000 barrels per day of new production handling capacity to our pipeline systems in recent years. The incremental capacity in our new SYNC lateral, which extends into an increasingly active area of the central Gulf of Mexico, and the incremental capacity in our expanded chops pipeline to shore, both are only roughly 50% contracted with these new fields.
As a result, this position must capture the types of incremental opportunities I described earlier, or even new standalone developments, for many years to come, at zero incremental capital required to be spent by us. As we mentioned in the release, our team has made significant progress on our offshore expansion projects to date. We successfully laid the 105-mile SYNC pipeline last year, and are currently awaiting the arrival of the Shenandoah floating production system to finalize the pipeline and riser connections.
We have also continued to advance our CHOPS expansion project in parallel by successfully installing and commissioning new pumps on our Highland A5 platform. Furthermore, we successfully installed a new Garden Bank 72 deck on its newly reinforced jacket in mid-April. The GB72 platform has been designed to serve as the receipt point for the new SYNC pipeline and provide additional pumping capabilities for all volumes on the expanded chop system.
These offshore expansion projects are fully underwritten by our contracted developments, and their combined almost 200,000 barrels of oil per day of incremental production handling capacity. We now anticipate both developments to start in the first half of 2025. These two developments alone will provide us with anticipated incremental segment margin per annum of approximately $90 million at the contracted take or pay level, and upwards of $120 million at just 75% of the producers’ respective forecasts. These amounts could meaningfully exceed $120 million per annum to the extent that producers meet or exceed 100% of their respective forecast when they’re fully ramped.
Similar to other developments that have recently come online, we would expect both of these fields to ramp up very quickly and reach initial peak production within three to six months of their respective dates for first production. The combination of our steady and marginally increasing base production volumes, the contracted opportunities we have coming online over the next 12 months or so and the backlog of potential incremental tieback and development opportunities, positions us to deliver stable steady and growing cash flows from our Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment for many, many years and decades to come.
Turning now to our Soda and Sulfur Services segment. Our soda ash business generally performed in line with our expectations, despite some operational hiccups during the quarter, most of which have been resolved. The global macro conditions for soda ash remain relatively consistent with our previous commentary. Over the last nine months or so, the combination of slower economic growth outside of the United States and the anticipation of the global soda ash market having to absorb five million tons of natural production from Inner Mongolia, has contributed to what we believe is a trough export pricing environment in late 2023 and here into 2024.
Despite these near-term challenges, we believe the market is starting to turn the corner and shows signs of balancing. The five million tonnes of new natural production from Inner Mongolia looks to have been almost totally absorbed within China. The cost competitive nature of this natural production, will undoubtedly pressures Chinese synthetic producers. As a reminder, there were 25 synthetic soda ash production facilities in North America in 1948, when the trona deposits in Southwest Wyoming were discovered by our predecessor company. Today, there is only one. This same phenomenon is likely to play out in China.
Synthetic producers with their higher cost structure and more objectionable environmental footprint relative to natural producers simply cannot compete over the long term and yet they still supply almost 70% of the world’s soda ash and our cost structure in essence ultimately determines the market clearing price of soda ash. We believe this pressure on synthetic production is happening in real time and or the demand for soda ash within China is being underestimated.
In recent months, we have seen the delivery of soda ash into China from natural producers in Turkey, as well as from producers in the US. We have seen no significant increases in Chinese export volumes. We do have some indication that Chinese domestic soda ash prices have bottomed and actually increased in recent weeks. Internationally, we know that there has been some high-cost synthetic production taken off line in Europe and volumes are being pulled from certain Asian markets outside of China and are being redirected to higher-value markets and therefore reducing supplied Asian markets ex-China.
he market data points I just mentioned, when combined with the expected end of the destocking move existing customer inventories, the expected return to normalized global economic growth and the continuing increase in worldwide demand from various green initiatives, all lead us to believe the market should become increasingly more balanced, as we move through the year. We continue to believe this backdrop should provide a tighter supply and demand environment, which in turn should provide support for stable domestic prices and an improvement in export prices as we start our negotiations for 2025 volumes towards the end of this year.
I would be remiss to not mention the public comments of David Einhorn, who presented has won best value investment idea at the sun conference in mid April. Mr. Einhorn analyses and comments were specific to a large, but not pure-play soda ash producer that happens to have operations adjacent to ours in Wyoming. His long term bullish thesis for soda ash is consistent with and in fact very similar to a lot of what we have said on recent calls and we’ve discussed with investors over the last few quarters. It’s actually quite an informative presentation in general. And I would encourage anyone who’s interested to find and watch the video to learn more about the fundamentals in the soda ash market and the possible implications for our future financial performance.
As we stated in the release, we continue to work through typical commissioning type challenges with our Granger expansion project. I’m happy to report, that we have recently received and installed certain replacement parts, the originals of which did not perform as designed and expected. We have proactively worked with the vendor to ensure we have an adequate number of spare component parts on site, in case we run into similar challenges in the future. We expect this warranty type work to be completed by the end of this month.
Despite running Granger sub optimally for the first four months of the year, we have clearly demonstrated that expanded Granger production facility is more than capable of achieving the original design capacity of 1.2 million to 1.3 million tons per year. In fact, we are quite confident we have a path to exceed the original design capacity just like we did with the world’s first commercial solution mine soda ash plant our ELDM facility in Westvaco.
ELDM was originally designed in the mid 90s to be able to produce 625,000 tons per year and that we have averaged about 850,000 tons per year for the last decade. These incremental tons will both increase our volumes available for sale, but importantly will lower our average operating cost per ton at Granger and throughout our entire soda ash operations.
Regardless of the ultimate timing of soda ash margins returning to or exceeding mid-cycle levels, we remain confident in the long term soda ash thesis. We believe we are very well positioned to deliver increasing financial performance from this market-leading business for many decades to come.
Our Sulfur Services business performed in line with our expectations during the quarter. Our Marine Transportation segment continues to meet or exceed our expectations as market conditions and demand fundamentals continue to remain very favorable. As mentioned in the release, we continue to operate with utilization rates at or near 100% of practical available capacity for all classes of our vessels, as the supply and demand outlook for Jones Act tankers remains structurally tight.
These market dynamics continue to be driven by a combination of steady and robust demand, a heavy maintenance cycle that continued retirements of older equipment and effectively zero new construction of our types of marine vessels. In fact, according to a leading industry participant in the inland market in particular, and I quote, if you look at the last three years, we have seen the lowest amount of new construction activity within the last 20 years. And on top of that, there are still another 500 barges that are over 30 years old and are candidates for retirement.
So the supply side of the equation looks pretty good going forward. This lack of new marine tonnage combined with steady increase in demand from our customers, continues to drive spot day rates and longer term contracted rates in our inland and offshore fleets to record levels. In fact, the market fundamentals we are enjoying today, are some of the most promising and on par exceeding some of the best times, we have ever experienced in the marine business. Furthermore, same leading industry participant has stated that the contract rates need to rise upwards of 40% from here in order to rationalize the new construction of comparable marine equipment. This is driven by the increased costs of steel, extended construction time lines, lack of available shipyard space and the increased cost of capital.
We are therefore not alone, in thinking that these market fundamentals could last upwards of an additional three to five years, all of which lead me to believe our Marine Transportation segment is well positioned to deliver record and growing earnings over the coming years.
As I’ve mentioned in the past and we’ll reiterate again, today. The value proposition for Genesis remains unchanged and totally intact. We have line of sight to the end of our current growth capital program later this year, and look forward to increased increasing financial performance next year, driven primarily by offshore growth and expected improvement in soda ash pricing and margins and an increasing contribution from our marine group.
Absent unforeseen circumstances, we continue to anticipate being able to generate roughly $250 million to $350 million or more of cash per year, in excess of all of the current cash requirements to run our businesses. We think is actually quite a large number especially, for a company our size.
We will continue to evaluate the various levers we can pull to return capital to our stakeholders, including paying down debt, repurchasing additional amounts of our corporate preferred security, raising our common distribution, and our purchasing what we view as mispriced publicly-traded securities. We will do all of this while maintaining an appropriate level of liquidity and of course, while maintaining a focus on our long-term leverage ratio.
Finally, I’d like to say the management team and the Board of Directors remain steadfast in our commitment to building long-term value for all of our stakeholders, regardless of where you are in the capital structure and we believe the decisions we are making reflect this commitment and our confidence in Genesis going forward.
I would once again like to recognize our entire workforce for their individual efforts and unwavering commitment to safe and responsible operations. I’m extremely proud to be associated with each and every one.
With that I’ll turn it back to the moderator for your questions. Thank you.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Michael Blum Wells Fargo. Please proceed.
Michael Blum
Thanks. Good morning everyone. So, just a couple of questions. One you noted you might be able to make up some of the volumes on Granger this year. Is that already reflected within the guidance range? And if not how much upside would that represent?
Grant Sims
I think as we stated that the operational issues at both Westvaco as well as startup and commissioning issues at Grainger probably being the margin by around $8 million in the first quarter. We have the opportunity to make up volumes. It would have serve in the back half of the year serve to make up some of that Michael.
So, I mean at this point, there’s no guarantees, but we’re pretty, pretty excited about the efficiency that we’re seeing at Grainger. And once we get the component parts replaced, we feel comfortable that we will — as I said referenced earlier, that we’re quite capable of exceeding the design capacity of that expansion.
Michael Blum
Okay, perfect. Thanks for that. And then the $250 million to $350 million of cash flow after all the obligations that you referenced today in the press, release is that a number you would expect to materialize in 2025? Or is this more of a 2026 cool? And how much improvement in soda ash pricing or segment earnings would this assume?
Grant Sims
Yes, I think that it’s a kind of a next 12 months run rate that we anticipate that obviously we don’t expect to be there in calendar fiscal 2025. But on a on a on a visible next 12 month run rate. Certainly by the middle of 2025, we would expect to hit that.
And I would say that basically that is a function of if we stay in a low cycle or slightly below low cycle soda ash margin then we’re at the lower end of that range and we would be at the upper end of that range if we get back to mid-cycle if we as we references $250 million to $350 million or more that’s really going to be driven by two things.
The first thing is, if the producers on the offshore approach or exceed 100% rather than 75% which is kind of the number that we’ve used in the contemplation of our guidance and our initial thoughts around 25%.
That can be as I said in our prepared remarks meaningfully in excess of I first anticipated the performance out of the offshore. And then obviously if we get to exceed that the both on a volume basis as well as a margin basis on their soda ash business that’s going to drive for you to kind of above cycle.
And if you look at some of the forecasts and prognostications by other soda ash producers the worldwide demand for soda ash going from in round terms around 65 million metric tons per year to 80 million metric tons per year by the end by the end of this decade.
And that’s going to put price pressure on prices and increase margins to us. So that’s why we’re very comfortable about that range. And we think that there’s more bias to the upside than there is to the downside.
Michael Blum
Thanks, Grant.
Operator
And our next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One. Please proceed.
Wade Suki
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Just on Shenandoah you mentioned — I am sorry that you mentioned a $6 million impact later in the year fourth quarter if some of us were including that in a full year 2025 estimate.
I mean can you give us a better sense what’s that might be next year? And is it as simple as multiplying that by five or in some kind of offset from additional tie-in opportunities? Any color you could give on that?
Grant Sims
Yeah. I mean I think it’s — everything else the same. Yeah, it will somewhat affect the 2025 simply, although, we haven’t given any guidance on 2025, but it will some somewhat affect 2025, because if we start in and a May timeframe instead of the full year than we don’t have it.
A couple of things can fill that hole. First of all, I’d like to comment that that doesn’t go away. It’s just delayed. I mean we’re still going to get that whether or not your numbers $30 million or whatever we’re still going to get that.
So it’s not a big deal that can be offset by a number of things including, as I said even within Cal 2025, in the event that instead of kind of running at 75% they hit 100% of their forecast and that that more than makes up for missing that you have calculated $30 million in the front half of the year.
Also and we believe that we’re going to have significant upside at least on a standalone basis in the Marine business in 2025 versus a record year in 2024. So I mean there’s ways to fill that gap. So I’m not a while. It’s disappointing. It doesn’t affect one way or the other from our perspective the long term or intermediate term financial performance of the Company.
Wade Suki
Perfect. That’s great. Thank you. And just switching gears a little bit to Soda and Sulfur Services, you gave us, I think last year, you gave us some really good guide close in how to think about Soda and Sulfur services on a normalized basis. Could you refresh us on those ranges as they stand today? And then let’s say maybe looking out next year once Granger is fully up and running?
Grant Sims
Yeah. I mean, we took into account the optimized Granger situation when we roll things out. But if we look at 17, 18 years’ worth of historical, financial performance of the business, we said in kind of a low commodity cycle world that one would expect around $40 a ton margin, maybe slightly less this year. But 4.8 million tonnes, which we’re not willing to produce this year because of the Granger ramp up if you will as well as the operational hiccups that we had at Westvaco in the first quarter, but at around $40 a ton is kind of at the low end of the commodity cycle.
And needs around terms it could be less than and $60 at the high end, which we exceeded both in 2022 and 2023 by meaningful margins. But on average over that 18-year period, the $50 feels like a right number. So if you get to at 4.8 million tons of the total production capability and sales at combined Westvaco as well as expanded Granger only at its designed capacity, you’re at $240 million run rate business.
If you get to the $60 that’s why you approach $300 million and if you believe that any of these growth projects that are being bandied around that are going to cost at least $1,000 a ton per installed ton of production capacity they’re going to have to earn $100 margin just to get a simple return of 10% on investment, while they may have a slight cost advantage of $20 or $30 a ton that would indicate that if they go forward and we’re looking at $70 to $80 per ton margins in order to equivalent to us that would put business in the $350 million, $400 million range.
So that’s why we think that the long-term thesis around the soda ash is extraordinary and exciting. And, notwithstanding, the truck pricing environment where the 65 million metric ton market had to absorb five million tons of incremental production but the things work out over time.
Wade Suki
That’s perfect. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Grant Sims
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Sims back to you.
Grant Sims
Thank you very much and I appreciate everybody listening in and good questions and we’ll talk in another 90 days or so if not sooner. So thanks very much.
Operator
This concludes today’s conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.
