Calumet Specialty Products Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So when we talk about the three impacts in December and January, it was really the loss of water from the city that had the greatest impact. If not for that, we would’ve been up in a few days. And honestly the same thing holds for a year ago with Uri. So 2 years in a row we’re not going to let that happen again, we’re going to fix that. So hopefully that gives a little bit of the flavor of what we mean by kind of modernization, reliability focused maintenance. Does that help?

Neil Mehta: That helps. And then as we think about what sustaining CapEx is, because there’s — does some of those projects do seem more one time in nature, we’re just trying to get a sense of what kind of open free cash flow looks like.

Todd Borgmann: Yes, we think about our long-term as kind of an $80 million type run rate. I’d say we launched a 3-year plan last year, so we probably have one more year of elevated 120 type — $120 million to $140 million type range. But after that I think about $80 million is the run rate.

Neil Mehta: Got it. Thank you. And then the follow-up is just around capital structure. You’ve done a terrific job getting your net debt to EBITDA now down to 4x from what was very, very elevated levels during the COVID period. If we’re in a more uncertain economic environment and things get a little bit tougher, talk about what the resiliency that you’ve built into the business and financial model to protect downside, so the outcomes are better than last time.

Todd Borgmann: Yes, I think in general you can a couple ways with that. In general, we’re on record of saying we’d like to take an additional $300 million of debt out of the system over the long run. At the same time, we don’t feel that mandatory to survive, because remember we have basically an additional 100% improvement addition to our EBITDA stream coming in Montana Renewables. So we think we’ve got to a point where our leverage is on that — the high-end of the range. But it’s within a reasonable go-forward what range. I think as you start to see cash flow from operations come in over the long run, we will see that overall debt load decrease to $300 million. I think you can broaden that out and talk about capital allocation as a whole, right.

And we’re really going to just rely on market signals received throughout the year to guide us on there. I think it’s a broader sources and uses question and as we look about that potential sources of capital, we cash flow from ops, which I talked about. We have the muni process, which we’re in . We have the DOE process, which we mentioned; we have potential equity at Montana Renewables that could be a minority equity sale, it could be an IPO, it could be both, it could be a full takeout. We look at uses, we have debt repurchase, which is the heart of your question. We have equity repurchase, we have MAX SAF CapEx, we have repurchase of the $250 million Stonebriar facility, and we have specialty growth CapEx. So with the capital markets kind of deal live, I guess I probably shouldn’t go too much further, but I will say strategically that we do want to continue to lever.

That’s fundamental to our thesis that hasn’t changed. And I’ll also say the single biggest variable in capital allocation is really the price of Calumet equity. If it remains where it is today when Montana Renewables is at steady state, it’s hard to imagine an investment with a higher rate of return. I guess maybe MAX SAF. But we’ll be watching that closely. So hopefully that gives a little bit more color to the question and we’re actively pursuing capital. We have a bunch of really great ways to deploy it. Right now we’re focused on completing the pre-treater and after that we’re going to look to the market to help us deploy our capital most effectively.