Hallador Energy Company (NASDAQ:HNRG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brent Bilsland: So, I don’t think that it’s fair to look at a partial quarter, right? We did not own the plant for a full quarter and scheduled outages in that quarter, so it didn’t generate the entire quarter. We’re telling you that we’ve got significant — 100% of the plant sold at agreed upon price in through May of 2023, and then we materially open up, which means the plant’s performance will be based upon what is the price of power when we get to those months. We do have — we are spending heavily on the plan for both maintenance CapEx and realize the seller had announced in January of 2020 that they were going to close the plant. And so there’s some catch-up maintenance that has to be done with that plan. I think on a going-forward basis, once we — our maintenance is caught up, we anticipate the maintenance CapEx being somewhere in the $18 million a year range.

And there will be money spent this year to comply with the ELG environmental regulation to extend the life of that plant. We have to begin building some of those structures in 2023, 2024, so that they’re in place by the end of 2025. So we kind of view it as, yes, we’re spending are we spending more will the plant be cash flow negative this year? That’s to be determined because that will be determined by what is the power price on the unsold portion of the plant. So, I don’t think looking at fourth quarter EBITDA is that indicative of future EBITDA of the plan.

Mike Rybak: Okay. That’s helpful. So if we think about sort of, I guess, normalized, I mean, I think you talked about ’24 being a contribution year. I don’t have the future curve in front of me. But as it stands today, and obviously, it’s subject to change can go up, could go down. But as it stands today, if you think about the future curve in 2024 when factoring in more of a normalized CapEx environment, right? The $18 million you just cited, how do we think about sort of that normalized free cash flow generation of the plant today — or the plant to 2024 based on the forward curve today?

Brent Bilsland: Yes. So I don’t have a number. I don’t have a guidance number for you because we haven’t quite put to bed what our sales position would be. I think that the fact that we have committed to invest in ELG, which is up to a $45 million commitment. To me, that is a way of saying that we’re signaling to you all that, look, what are our options. Our options are don’t make that investment, close the plant at the end of 2025 and sell coal on the open market. And what we’re saying is where we see power prices at today, where we see power prices going is it fully supports the investment, right? It’s a cash flow positive investment or we wouldn’t make that decision. And the thing that’s tricky is it’s really easy to look at the math and say, well, gosh, if gas is this price and a gas plant can produce an electronic at this price and that’s where the power market should be.

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