CSI Compressco LP (NASDAQ:CCLP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jonathan Byers: Yes. We have some different alternatives for financing. One of the — one that’s been interesting, particularly given the term of the contracts, the new contracts that we’re signing, is capital leases. We’ve done a few of those over the last two years, and they’ve worked out pretty well at attractive rates. As far as capital to grow the business, I think there’s a lot available. Really, the question and the balance is, given the rates on some of it, how much of that do we want to spend versus focusing on deleveraging the business and driving free cash flow?

John Jackson: I think part of that is going to come down to when we get refinanced and know what our true go-forward interest cost is, then we’ll be able to figure out what the arbitrage is on that versus capital lease just using our — whatever we might have an ABL or liquidity free cash flow or just using some kind of capital lease structure. Because, as John mentioned, those will be attractive. But you’re kind of pairing a known versus an unknown, but we are — John has done a great job, I think, it’s chasing down all the alternatives that we could, potentially accelerate some growth capital if we found the right source of financing.

Gregg Brody: What is — today’s market, what is the cost of capital for some of these capital leases?

Jonathan Byers: It’s at or below ABL debt.

Gregg Brody: Got you. And then just last one here. Is the limitation on growth more component availability at this point, more so than capital availability?

John Jackson: No, it’s more capital availability than component. I mean there’s component issues. But I think if we went to Cat and said we want 30 or 40 — we want to spend $100 million of capital, I think Caterpillar could deliver that for us in ’25. So it’s definitely self-constrained. Our primary motivation has been to get this leverage down to a sustainable environment. So, we’ve been using pretty much our free cash flow to grow, but sustaining our debt levels and growing into our debt, so to speak. Now as we refinance and know what that’s going to look like going over the next five years, seven years, whatever that may be, we’re going to then will be able to make more decisions on do we grow a little bit beyond our cash flow? We’re not really there at that point. I think we want to get down closer to 4x before we start looking at a cycle of what we want to do. We really want to stay within that cash flow.

Gregg Brody: And could you just remind us when you plan on providing 24 guidance?

John Jackson: Year-end earnings call, which you’ll probably be late February, early March.

Operator: And this concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to return the floor to John Jackson for any closing comments.

John Jackson: We appreciate everyone checking in with us today for those listening live and for those who listened to it on recording, we look forward to talking to you at year-end and continue to improve and grow this company. Appreciate the time today. Thanks.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation and you may now disconnect your lines.

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