Calumet Specialty Products Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Obermeier: Roger, Scott again. Actually, let me start that with the comment on the Retail and the Industrial is just to comment on that. On the retail market, I think consistent with what’s going on out there, there’s a lot of, I’ll call it, derisking by the big-box retailers. The consumer market has been strong on the service front. On the retail front, I think a lot of the retail market has been derisking inventory. It’s led to some choppy demand on the retail side. The industrial side for our Performance Brands, on the question around how we’ve seen it strong, I think Todd or Vince alluded to in the earnings statements for the call, a lot of our products are put in the high-value markets. So we’ve got a great brand and great products that go into mining, as an example, that go into environmentally friendly marine lubricants, that go into the energy transition market.

Our high-value products are experiencing great demand, great growth because of the uniqueness of them versus just more of a commoditized industrial play. Now, Roger, on this last question on the base oils, a few thoughts. It’s mostly on the production side, so I’ll call it less supply on the Group 1 over the past 5 years than what there was. We like our Group 1. It’s a niche product. We try to stay out of the commoditized markets and focus more on the high-value applications, Group 1, Group 2. So less supply there, and there’s been some global trade disconnects past couple of years on the Group 3 as well.

Roger Read: Appreciate the clarifications.

Operator: And our next question will be a follow-up from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

Amit Dayal: Just following up on your comments about the Montana IPO. Did you say you are targeting early next year as a potential window to undertake this? I just wanted to see if that is sort of the time line we should be thinking about?

Louis Borgmann: Yes, Amit, it’s Todd. We’ve said that in the past and continue to think that that’s reasonable. Obviously, no commitments. We’ve got to get through the process, get the feedback and kind of make a final decision. But what we want to do is be ready. A lot of this is going to be driven by the market, and we want to be there when the markets open. And if that’s early next year, then great, and if it takes longer than that, then so be it. But we want to be there to kind of be opportunistically ready when an opportunity presents itself.

Amit Dayal: So should we think about 3Q as a very sort of important quarter for the Renewables business, where you want to demonstrate the full capability of this operation to support that outcome?

Louis Borgmann: You bet. I think our focus has been on the third quarter for a while. We’ve had a number of milestones at Montana Renewables. First, we had to finance it and we had to construct it, and we had to prove that it all worked. Derisk the technology, improve the operations, I think we’ve done all of that. And the very last milestone is prove it through a set of audited financials which, we’ve been saying for a while, we think that we’ll do in the third quarter, and that continues to be our intention.

Operator: And our next question will be a follow-up from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen.

Jason Gabelman: Yes. Just following up on MRL. Are you planning on splitting out results for MRL for 3Q, just given it’s an important quarter and it sounds like you want to provide more conspiracy of the market? And then just a couple of other operational questions on MRL. Are you running all untreated feed at this point? And do you expect 3Q to be in that EBITDA guidance range that you’ve previously provided?