Brookfield Business Partners L.P. (NYSE:BBU) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Wallace: Yes. Hi Jaeme, it’s Mark Wallace. So we don’t have any specific day to give out on the $2 billion. I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we’re on a very good trajectory up from our kind of our 2021 record year and the next few years, we would expect to cross the $2 billion mark. I think it’s probably a pretty easy math calculation. If you look at kind of our leverage we ended last year was at 5.4 times. And if you think about the levered free cash flow around the $500 million paying back, you can probably extrapolate in the next few years how it would look relative to a $2 billion in our business.

Jaeme Gloyn: Okay. And you would expect to use the bulk of that $500 million to repay debt? Or would it be more like 50% that, 50% organic growth opportunities, other CapEx stuff like that? How are you thinking about that?

Mark Wallace: Yes. So when we give out that number, we’ll talk about our levered free cash flow number. So we’ve included prior to that we would consider running our business and whatever growth capital we would need. So yes, we would see that kind of number for deleveraging the company as a priority number one for us.

Jaeme Gloyn: Okay. Perfect. Thank you. On Unidas, obviously, it was broken out in this quarter’s disclosures, is there something in that business that you can give us a little bit more color in terms of your growth expectations on the Brazilian fleet market, where you’re seeing that business trajectory over the next several quarters to a couple of years?

Cyrus Madon: What is – Cyrus here. Why don’t I start and others will chime in. But look, we closed on the acquisition really a merger of equals about six months ago. That transition is going well. Business is performing despite a very tight credit environment, it’s performing quite well, and we expect it to continue performing well this year. Fleet management is benefiting from a rent versus buy decision and as I said, a tighter credit environment, it’s also benefiting from medium-term contracts it has in place. Rent-a-Car has slowed down a little bit because of the economic slowdown in Brazil, but used car sales have been quite high and in fact, are capturing more demand that’s migrating from new car sales, just given the economic environment. But to answer your question a little more directly, we expect the business to perform quite well this year.

Jaeme Gloyn: Okay. And then last one for me. With some of the term out of debt and refinancing, are you able to update some of the data points from the Investor Day around the weighted average cost of borrowing, how much is fixed or hedged and the sensitivity to changes in interest rates at this point?

Jaspreet Dehl: Sure. I can do that. So we ended this quarter with weighted average interest rate of 7.9%. The weighted average term on the debt is 5.5 years. But with the – if you factor in the Clarios refinancing that happened after quarter end, it’s 5.8% you’re supposed with the six years the fixed versus float. So we took advantage of some of the volatility that we saw this quarter just with some of the banking issues in the broader environment and put on a few more hedge – interest rate hedges within the business. So we’re now 50% hedged compared to closer to 40% last quarter. And I think I may have touched on this last quarter, but we’ve – there’s some debt within the business side. We don’t think it’s appropriate to hedge like our debt in Brazil, that’s just uneconomical the revolvers that we have within the businesses.