NuStar Energy L.P. (NYSE:NS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Noah Katz: Okay, sounds good. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Gabriel Moreen with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Chris Jeffrey: Hey, good morning. This is Chris Jeffrey on for Gabe. Maybe just looking at the storage results for the quarter and the release mentioned, customer – the North Beach contract, customer transitions and St. James tank maintenance. Just curious as you’re looking into 4Q, kind of where should we expect that level given those puts and takes? Should we kind of expect it to return to where it was 2Q, 1Q? Or what’s kind of the run rate now?

Danny Oliver: I think there might be some slight improvement. Some of that has to do with the reset in our MVC levels in Corpus, and that will continue into Q4. But so far in Q4, we’re seeing the volumes actually pick up. So back above MVC levels. So right now, I’m anticipating a better Q4, but we’ve still got a couple of months left to go.

Chris Jeffrey: Great. Thanks Danny. And then maybe just looking at G&A for the quarter as well. There was kind of a modest jump in 3Q, which seems to be typical maybe in 4Q. There’s a bit of a lift. I was just curious if that’s a timing thing or related to the press takeout. Anything that we should be aware of there?

Tom Shoaf: What line item was that?

Pam Schmidt: G&A.

Chris Jeffrey: G&A.

Tom Shoaf: Yes, G&A. Yes, we had an increase in G&A this quarter. Some of that is salary-related, comp-related type expenses, which are our normal annual increases and things that we see each year. Another piece of that would be our headquarters rent. You recall that part of the proceeds – or all of the proceeds that we did when we monetized our headquarter building. We turned that into an operating lease. And so that kind of moves from – since we were refinancing, that kind of moved into the G&A category. So you’d see an increase due to that as well. And professional fees were up a little bit as well in G&A. So I think it was just really a combination of those three things. And remember, on the headquarters lease, even though that has been reclassified, we actually get a benefit of that because the rate that we’re paying on that lease is actually substantially less than what we could do in the bond market staying certainly less than the Series Ds that were out there, and we use those proceeds to redeem the Series D.

So even though you have that, we’ll call it income statement category change where it kind of goes from interest expense or distributions up to this expense, you still have a savings there. It’s just a reclassification thing.

Chris Jeffrey: Got it. And then maybe just to look – ask the Permian question in a different way. Just kind of how you’re thinking of the capital for 2024 compared to that 35 to 45 for this year. And is that similarly flexible based on kind of how the volume progresses for the year?

Danny Oliver: We haven’t given any guidance yet in 2024, but I think we’ll probably have some of that for you on the next call.

Brad Barron: Yes. What I would say is that, as we’ve said on every call, the capital and the Permian scale is up and down with volume. And so you can expect it to be – if you have higher volume, we’ll see a little bit higher capital for connection. Lower volume, you’ll see an offset there, which is beneficial.

Chris Jeffrey: Great, thanks everyone.

Brad Barron: Thank you.