Joe Craft: So I think our priority, as Cary mentioned, will be pay down the debt. We will be paying down the senior notes in ‘24 and potentially in the first quarter of next year. However, he’s also looking at refinancing, or entering into some facilities that will give us capacity to grow. Some of them will be funded, but hopefully some of them will be unfunded, be revolver type arrangements. So then as far as growth, we’ve talked about oil and gas. We’ll continue to invest there. We will still have opportunities to invest in other items. There’s nothing on the horizon that I can give you any specifics on how we would allocate that capital, but we are continuing to look at multiple areas of investment. And so we’ve got a capital allocation process that will evaluate investments in future cash flow growth, which we do put as a priority.
And then alternatively, we will look at whether there are other uses for that capital. I mean, I think that distributions have continued to be high on our priority list. So it’s my goal that distributions will be consistent, but we got to evaluate the future on a quarter-by-quarter basis as we talked about. So that will include not only just the future markets but just as important the opportunities in front of us to make investments.
David Marsh: Got it. Thank you very much. That’s all I have.
Operator: Our next question is from the line of Dave Storms with Stonegate Capital. Pleased to see you with your questions.
Dave Storms: Good morning.
Cary. P Marshall: Hello. Good morning.
Dave Storms: Good morning. Just a couple quick ones for me. Curious as to how you’re thinking about the labor outlook now that we’re kind of through the holidays and maybe labor might start picking up. I know you mentioned that you might be sticking with the three units at Mettiki, I believe it was, but with some of these capital improvement projects expected to be completed this year, is that going to require increased hiring?
Joe Craft: So, we have seen an improvement in our retention and our availability of labor, specifically in Illinois Basin as an example. So we do have the Henderson County mine that we are developing that should become operational. Well, it is operational as we’re ramping, but it should get to where we will be increasing staffing at that mine by the end of 2024 or during 2024 as that ramps up. We expect that that plant or that mine will be — will have more production starting in 2025, that — effectively what we’re doing at River View is we’re basically having two portals instead of one. And that second portal will be at Henderson County. So there will be some hiring there. There still is a need of some hiring at our mines, just back to normal attrition, not what we’ve been experiencing in the last two or three years, but what we would consider to be normal.
So I think on a labor front, we’re in a better position than we have been historically. At MC Mining, we still see challenges, so we’re currently not anticipating increasing that mine back to four units. It’s possible, but that’s the one area that we’re continuing to see challenges of being able to attract sufficient numbers to commit to bringing back that unit. But I think everywhere else, we’ve been encouraged by the recent activity of people wanting to come work for us.
Dave Storms: Very helpful. Thank you. And then just on the inventory front, how comfortable are you with your current inventory levels? Are you expecting to continue to run those off? I know they were impacted by that temporary outage. Now that hopefully things are starting to normalize, would you expect your inventory levels to continue to track down slightly?
Joe Craft: I think, our goal is to maintain, more than likely, just as a working inventory level, given the amount of tons we’re putting in the export market. It’s right at a million tons a month. But it will fluctuate based on timing of vessels, because the vessels take, it may be on the 30th, it may be on the second, so there could be 60,000 to 100,000 tons right there that could put us in a position that we could be a little higher than that. Our goal would be to maintain inventory right at that million ton a month level. Right now I think it’s around 1.3 million, something of that nature, but — so it’s going to be in that swing area I would say.
Dave Storms: Understood. And then last one from me, kind of on a macro level. I thought I saw that LNG export terminal constructions have been paused in the US. Do you anticipate that if this becomes a prolonged pause, that it will increase demand for international coal as consumers need to switch from LNG to coal, or is this not something that you really have on a radar at this point?
