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spk00: Hello and welcome to Core Energy's conference call to discuss the first quarter 2022 results. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Kreps, Investor Relations for Core Energy. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you everyone for joining today's Core Energy Infrastructure Trust conference call. With me today are Dave Schulte, CEO, John Greer, COO, and Robert Waldron, CFO. Earlier this morning we published a press release announcing the first quarter results for 2022. We expect to file our Form 10-Q this afternoon. You can also access a webcast replay of this call on the investor section of the company website at coreenergy.reit. Typically, this is available within a couple hours of a live call's end. I would like to remind everyone that the statements made during the course of this presentation that are not purely historical may be forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor of protection available under the applicable securities laws. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are discussed in our filings with the SEC. These documents are available on the investor relations section of our website. We do not update our forward-looking statements. During this call, we will make reference to certain forward-looking non-GAAP metrics which will be reconciled in subsequent filings as part of our results reporting. We encourage all of you to review our complete disclosures, risk factors, GAAP financial numbers, and those non-GAAP metrics with the related reconciliations. And with that, I would like to now turn the call over to Dave Schulte. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning, everyone. After I discuss our current operations, John Greer will discuss Core Energy's strategic position in the lower carbon economy, and then turn the call over to Robert for a financial commentary. Our company's story is relatively simple. With regulated oil and gas revenue structures, mitigating volume risk, and a longer-term opportunity to repurpose assets into lower carbon service in California. With MoGas, we have a very stable natural gas transmission and distribution asset in the central United States. These assets operate under long-term contracts with take or pay characteristics, supporting growing residential, commercial, and industrial markets. Natural gas is expected to continue to be used by our shippers for basic utility needs for a very long time. With Crimson, we have a crude oil gathering and transmission asset in California. These assets also provide service under fixed fees for volumes transported with long-term investment grade customers. We have successfully integrated various pipelines and as necessary in any mature industry, we believe we are in the best position to manage network cost and reliability for the benefit of our customers. However, since our assets primarily generate revenue based on a cost of service model, we can and will continue to mitigate the impact of any longer term volume declines with periodic tariff rate increases to the extent necessary. We are reviewing our tariff structure in preparation for our next filing to potentially also reduce quarterly revenue fluctuations. Over the medium term, California Transportation System that we own will benefit from Phillips 66 plans to convert the Rodea Refinery to renewable diesel production and no longer process crude oil by 2024. Those crude volumes are expected to continue to be produced in the state, but will need a path to different refineries, such as the Crimson Pipelines and among other possible routes. I'll now turn the call over to John Greer, our Chief Operating Officer and the founder of Crimson Midstream, to discuss our position in a lower carbon future. John?
spk05: Thanks, Dave. Our pipelines remain critical to California's global leading lower carbon energy economy. If we are successful, our pipelines will also be important to its future carbon reduction efforts. As we outlined in our inaugural ESG report, our pipelines are the most carbon efficient means of transporting large volumes in the market today. Every barrel of oil Californians consume that is not produced in-state is either imported by ships or transported by rail. This incurs a far higher carbon footprint versus our more efficient pipelines. Ships waiting to offload in the port of LA or Long Beach or San Francisco burn an estimated 4 million tons of fuel a day and more when in transit, emitting CO2 into the air throughout the journey, including a significant amount into the communities we serve. Additionally, California oil is produced under the strictest environmental and most rigorous regulatory rules in the world. The carbon emissions from California producers are among the lowest in the global oil industry and its refineries produce the cleanest burning formulation of gasoline in the world. By virtue of being a highly efficient transportation system connecting in-state production to in-state refining, we already help provide the greenest barrel of oil and transportation fuels in the world. But we can do more and we're taking steps to do so. As the global economy transitions to a lower carbon future, we have an important and significant opportunity in our California footprint to help reduce greenhouse gas releases through carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS. The commercial case for CO2 capture is better in California than in most other states, which provides us with longer-term growth potential as part of the network connecting emissions with storage. In fact, California Air Resources Board, or CARB, released their revised climate plan yesterday, which indicated CCS will be a necessary and significant contributor to the state meeting its climate goals. We believe we're in the best position to participate due to our expertise in operating pipelines in the state in our available inventory of physical assets including the easements and rights-of-way to accelerate development timelines and minimize overall costs of these projects. We have spoken about our potential for engaging with project developers and have begun working on specific mandates to enable the transportation of CO2. I am happy to announce that we signed our first non-binding MOU with a carbon sequestration project developer to provide a transportation solution from origin to destination with several opportunities to expand both in reach and volume. The company is in further discussion with other developers for the transportation of CO2 and we believe this contract will be the first of many. The MOU and these discussions put us on the doorstep of a project scoping, and participation with shippers in contracting parties. With that, I'll turn it over to Robert to address the financials.
spk02: Thanks, John. Looking at the results, first quarter revenue was $32.9 million, with steady performance from MoGas and Omega and lower overall volumes in California, reflecting the continued temporary closure of the offshore Amplify pipeline and the continued delay of new drilling permits that would bolster production volumes potentially shift on our line. We do see near-term opportunities ahead in transportation volumes if these two situations are remedied. We anticipate the return this fall of the Amplify offshore production volumes that feed into our system. As a reminder, these barrels were lost late last year due to an underwater pipeline break in a third-party system not owned by the company. Prior to the break, the pipeline accounted for 1.2 million barrels of annual volume and a sizable boost to our cash flow of approximately a million dollars. Digging into the permitting issue a bit more, in October 2021, a court ruled that Kern County may not issue new drilling permits under a recently revised environmental impact report. until a legal challenge is rolled on by the court. The state could issue new permits needed to maintain production, but has slowed issuance significantly. The hearing on the EIR challenge has been delayed until late this month, but we're optimistic permits will begin being issued by the county once that hearing takes place. Adding pressure, large producers in the state have sued for relief from this lack of permitting. Producers have expressed the desire to increase production should permitting issues be resolved, as oil pricing is at levels that provide attractive returns for new wells. As to dividend coverage, for the three months ended March 31st, 2022, we had adjusted EBITDA of $12 million, adjusted net income of $4.7 million, and after providing for maintenance capital and debt amortization, adjusted cash available for distribution or adjusted CAD of $2.5 million resulting in a robust 3.3 times common dividend coverage. The company's board declared dividends on all preferred obligations during the first quarter and a 5 cent per share dividend on our common stock. No dividend was declared on Class B common stock. We'll only begin paying a Class B dividend once we are confident the Class B dividend can be maintained in the foreseeable future at the minimum 1.25 required coverage ratio for all common and Class B. As a reminder, the Class B common is owned by management and features subordinated dividend rights that are specifically designed to prioritize the dividend to our external shareholders. As a potential added benefit to our investors, in 2022, we expect to characterize at least some percentage of our dividend as return of capital due to our losses from 2020. which may provide favorable tax circumstances to many of you. Reviewing our 2022 outlook, we are revising our target range from $44 to $46 million in adjusted EBITDA down to $42 to $44. We still expect $8 to $9 million of maintenance capital expenditures. These expectations are revised to accommodate the previously mentioned delayed return of the amplified offshore volumes and a softer volume outlook primarily due to the delay in court proceedings around drilling permits. There will be some quarterly variability in dividend coverage due to timing of maintenance spend, which is expected to be higher in Q2 and Q3 than Q1 and Q4 based on our current maintenance schedule. On page 50 of our 10Q to be filed later today, we have provided a table of quarterly expected maintenance capital expenditures for the remainder of 2022 to help in understanding of this variability. Our board takes this into consideration each quarter in evaluating our dividend declaration. I also want to remind everyone of the prospective forward-looking capitalization table located on page 54 of our 10Q to be filed later today. We maintain this table because we believe it, combined with our GAAP financial information, provides further insight into the non-controlling interest reflected on our balance sheet. We finished the quarter with liquidity of approximately $37 million, including cash of $13.3 million and $24 million of undrawn revolver availability. We took the opportunity to fix the floating rate on our bank debt through November to mitigate the risk of further interest rate increases. We are presently looking at sequestration projects opportunities with a target of five to seven build costs on investment as our hurdle rate. We do not anticipate the need for external equity to fund the investment required for the carbon sequestration project John previously mentioned. At this time, we'll take questions from our covering analysts or institutional stockholders before closing the call. Thank you.
spk00: Certainly. The floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold just a few moments while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from Greg Fleschner with Siebel. Please pose your question. Your line is live.
spk03: Hey, good morning. Just wondering about the Amplify pipeline.
spk02: I know you guys
spk03: said it's coming on this fall or expected to come on this fall. I was just wondering as far as the volume picture looks on that, should we expect kind of similar volumes going forward as you had historically?
spk04: Robert, can you answer that?
spk02: Yeah. You know, it's hard to know exactly what they've been doing, so it's hard to speculate. But, you know, based on where it was producing prior, you know, it was just a little under 5,000 a day.
spk03: Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's helpful. Going to the carbon sequestration MOU, just kind of wondering as far as next step goes, kind of what we should be looking out for to come through as far as announcements goes. And if you could kind of maybe put some goalposts around when we can expect some kind of announcement. If it's too early, I understand. But then also going off that, Just kind of looking at your existing pipelines, I know you said you can utilize right away, which is good. I was just kind of wondering if you could kind of comment a little bit more on the transition of pipelines into CO2 transportation and kind of what that looks like for costs.
spk04: John, why don't you talk about sort of next steps, and then Robert, if you need to follow up with financial implications, that's great.
spk05: Sure. Thanks, Dave. The timing on that is that there is a project that is ongoing in which there is a continuing, there is a project that makes good sense for us in terms of what has been signed up so far. And it continues and it is apt to increase in size and scope, as I mentioned. And so there's a good project going forward. There are permits that need to be obtained in order to move the project forward. And the next thing for us to look for is announcements of filings and permits and things that go along those natures. In the sense of there being future projects, we're talking to other companies and I think there's progress that we will make. I will say that we have been hesitant to make an announcement until we had something sort of more solid in our hands. And so we do have a signed MOU, and we have sort of held off on that. But relative to the other pipelines and rights-of-way that we own, yes, they're in good places that allow us to use our rights-of-way, and we're in discussions about moving those forward as well.
spk02: That answers your question. Hey John, maybe I'll just add a couple things too. I directed to CRC. I think they're probably the leader out in front of everyone in California right now. You can look at their disclosure when they expect, this is regarding timeline, when they expect to bring projects online. I think their first injection is 2025 and they're expanding that by 2027. Obviously, you have to have the reservoirs permitted and functioning before you can connect the pipelines and the capture piece. So that probably dictates timeline. And then just on the economics, as mentioned in the call, we target a hurdle rate of five to seven times. So these are pretty attractive projects for us. And the thing that really that maybe is overlooked is that the utilizing an existing right-of-way not only reduces costs but also I think reduces uncertainty around some of the permitting and securing of rights-of-way compared to a greenfield project.
spk03: Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah, that's a really helpful commentary. I appreciate it. Then I guess lastly, You know, just wondering if you have anything you're seeing more on the traditional asset side, you know, as far as acquisitions of assets go, kind of if you could just talk about how the market looks, you know, as far as pricing and such.
spk04: So I think that question was aimed at, yeah, I guess that question was aimed at me. We're primarily engaged in what are more negotiated transaction opportunities. We do try to stay engaged with marketed processes. Many of those include assets that are not good requalifying assets, but they do give us insight as to activity levels and valuation multiples. We've been in a pretty favorable interest rate environment, but banks generally have been pulling back on availability in our sector. So there needs to be more equity or more creativity around the consideration received by the sellers in these transactions. And so sellers are open to longer term exit potential, including taking equity or retaining equity in the company that they're selling. Those are the things where we think we have an opportunity where the structure we have has a competitive advantage because we have, as a REIT, no inside tax. And as a 1099 security, we have good access to capital and potentially better liquidity than an MLP structure or in a company of our size. So multiples have, they've looked to be coming down because of now higher interest rates and still hesitancy around banks lending. And at our current trading value, there's accretion potential or we won't move forward.
spk02: Great. Thanks. That's it for me.
spk00: Thank you. There appear to be no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Dave Schulte for any closing remarks.
spk04: You know, under any version of energy transition plans that we've seen, our company is poised to serve customers and our nation's critical needs for decades. And the California economy itself is one of the largest economies in the world. And we're committed to doing things the right way, ensuring that we're operating in a safe and efficient manner at all times. And our disclosure policy matches that. We'll be circumspect about making announcements until we feel that there's some firm substance and that we are able to participate in a meaningful way. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today on the call. We'll be hosting meetings at the upcoming EIC conference next week. Please contact our IR team if you'd like to meet with us at that event or arrange an alternative meeting time or call. Thanks and have a great day.
spk00: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
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