Blueknight Energy Partners L.P.

Good morning. My name is Claudia, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Blue Knight Earnings Conference Call for the third quarter 2021. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you should need assistance during the conference call, please press star then zero, and an operator will assist you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Lewis. Blue Knights Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. We're pleased to welcome you to Blue Knights conference call during which we will discuss financial and operating results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2021. Please note that our earnings release, which can be found on our website, includes financial disclosures and reconciliations for certain non-GAAP financial measures that should help you analyze our results. Additionally, supplemental information will be available in our TEN-Q, which will be filed tomorrow with the SEC. I would like to remind you that comments and answers to questions during the call may include forward-looking statements that refer to management's expectations or future predictions. These statements are made as of the date of this call, and management is under no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the future. they're subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from management's expectations. Additionally, we should note that on October 8th, Blue Knight's Board of Directors of the General Partner received a non-binding cash offer from Ergon to acquire all of the outstanding publicly held preferred and common units. The offer was publicly filed with the SEC and is available on our website. Given that the General Partner is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Ergon, the Conflicts Committee, which is composed solely of Blue Knight's three independent directors, will evaluate the offer. Additionally, the Conflicts Committee retained independent financial and legal advisors to assist in their evaluation and potential negotiation of the offer. Given that the Conflicts Committee's review is ongoing, management is unable to comment about the process and will not discuss this matter any further. With that, after our prepared remarks today, we will open the lines for Q&A. I will now turn it over to Andy Woodward, our Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Matt. Good morning to everyone who dialed in. I plan to start today's call by highlighting our financial and operating performance during the third quarter and year to date, followed by an update on external factors influencing our business and the progress we are making with our growth strategy. Matt will then provide more details on our financial performance and key metrics before we open the lines for Q&A. Now, turning to our business highlights. I'm especially pleased with our performance over the third quarter, during which we achieved a handful of major milestones for the partnership. First, we successfully transitioned and achieved our synergy targets following the sale of our crude oil business. Second, all 2021 expiring contracts renewed to date have been extended at current or more favorable terms. Lastly, we have now reached our long-term target on coverage at 1.3 times on all distributions when looking over the last 12 months. The business is also tracking extremely well. We are having one of our best years in environmental health and safety performance and recorded one of our strongest quarters to date, which has contributed to adjusted EBITDA and DCF to be higher year-to-date by 12% and 19% compared to the prior year, respectively. With that said, we expect to exceed our 2021 financial guidance laid out earlier this year. Finally, our outlet continues to improve as we generate and advance growth projects consistent with our strategy and further supported by passage of the historic $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill that should lead to robust demand for asphalt over the next five plus years. For the third quarter 2021, adjusted EBITDA was 16.9 million, up 22% year over year, DCF was 13.9 million, up 21% year over year. Matt will go into this in more detail. The drivers of growth included 2.1 million in other income, higher volumes, continual improvement in corporate costs, and interest savings. This performance translated into maintaining our industry-leading financial metrics. The distribution coverage of approximately 1.73 times on all distributions 4.35 times on common unit distributions and total leverage of 1.87 times. Earlier this year, we communicated to the market our desire to achieve long-term financial targets of leverage of 3.5 times and coverage on all distributions of 1.3 times or greater on an LTM basis. I'm pleased to report today we have now achieved these targets on both measures. As we have communicated previously regarding our capital allocation policies, meeting these two targets were critical as we balance maximizing risk-adjusted returns, opportunistically repurchasing preferred units, and before we consider returning capital back to unit holders in the form of distribution increases. Looking forward, and as stated before, we may consider raising the distribution provided the increase corresponds with a sustainable increase and the underlying cash flow above the 1.3 times level. As we evaluate those decisions, we'll be considering both actual underlying growth, tailwinds and headwinds in the business over our long-term forecast. Nonetheless, we are very excited to have reached this point. Operationally, third quarter total throughput volumes were up 7% year over year, and year to date slightly ahead of the prior year and 3% above the trailing three-year average. In addition, of the 2021 contracts we've renewed so far this year, we have executed at current or more favorable terms. At a more macro level, Congress has recently passed a bill representing the largest investment in our nation's infrastructure in decades. As we've noted throughout the year, This bill leads to a sizable increase in funding over the next five plus years. This bill, along with increased spending levels at the state level, should provide a stable and rising demand environment for infrastructure and road construction work for years to come. Now, turning to our strategy. We've been hard at work generating new opportunities and advancing existing projects that were initiated earlier in the year when we began pursuing growth in earnest. These opportunities align with how we've described our strategic growth areas in the past and include projects that enhance the logistical or product capabilities of certain terminals, acquisitions of new terminals, and solutions for existing customers in complementary products beyond asphalt. If and when We have executed definitive agreements. We will announce these projects in more detail at the appropriate time. In summary, I'm encouraged by our performance this quarter, our long-term outlook for our business, and the steps we are taking to prove out and advance our strategy. I will now turn the call over to Matt to walk through our financial performance. Matt?