Delek Logistics Partners LP

Good day and welcome to the DELEC Logistics Partners third quarter 2023 conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rosie Zucklick, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good day and welcome to the Dellick Logistics Partners Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Participants on today's call will include Abigail Sorek, President, Joseph Israel, EVP Operations, Reuben Spiegel, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and Odeli Sakazi, SVP, Delic Logistics. As a reminder, this conference call will contain forward-looking statements as defined under the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding guidance and future business outlook. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our forecasts. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in the company's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC, along with the press release associated with this call. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak as of their respective dates. I'll now turn the call over to Avigal for opening remarks. Avigal?

Thank you, Ozzie. Teleg Logistics partners delivered another record quarter with over $98 million in EBITDA. We have been pleased to see the consistent performance of our team and assets. We are very proud to be able to deliver that value back to our unit holders. This is a result of our dedication to the company's strategic objectives. Growing third-party revenues, maintaining multi-year MVC contracts, and keeping a focus on growth opportunities. Midland Gathering achieved a record throughput this quarter as a result of our investment in the system. With the Delaware Gathering system, we were able to support our objective, diversifying revenue stream and increasing third-party business. Given our strong performance this quarter, we are confident in our ability to exceed $100 million in a quarterly EBITDA run rate by Q4 of this year. I'm also very proud to say that DKL recently received Operational Award of Excellence concert from the National Safety Council, demonstrating our team's dedication to safety and operational excellence. On October 25th, our Board of Directors approved 5.6% increase in the quarterly distribution from prior year to $1.045 per limited partner unit for the third quarter of this year, highlighting our commitment to increasing the quarterly distribution. I will now hand it over to Ruben.

Thank you, Avigal. Total EBITDA for DKL was 98 million for the third quarter of 23, compared with 89 million for the same period in 22. For the third quarter of 23, distributable cash flow was 61 million, and the DCF coverage ratio was 1.35 times. For the gathering and processing segment, EBITDA this quarter was 53 million. The EBITDA for the third quarter of 22 was 57 million, which benefited from a one-time credit. Excluding this, third quarter 23 results were higher than last year due to increased throughput from our premium assets. Throughput of Midland Gathering averaged approximately 250,000 barrels per day for the third quarter, more than twice the average of 121,000 barrels per day in the third quarter of 22. The wholesale marketing and terminaling segment EBITDA was 28 million for the quarter, compared to 20 million in the third quarter of 22. The increase was due to higher utilization in our terminaling operations and improved margins in wholesale. The storage and transportation segment EBITDA was $18 million in the quarter, compared with $15 million in the third quarter of 2022. This segment benefited from recent industry-wide fee escalations. And lastly, the investment in pipeline joint venture segment contributed $9 million to toward the second quarter of 23, slightly up from third quarter of 22. Moving on to capital expenditures. Third quarter 23 capital spending was 15 million. Most of that spend was for growth projects, namely advancing new connection in both the Midland and Delaware gathering systems. For 23, we expect capital expense to be in the range of 85 to 90 million, with approximately 10 million of growth capex to be partially funded by the producers. Including this, net capital expenditures for the year is in the range of 75 to 80 million. With that, we can open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Our first question comes from Doug Irwin with Citi. Please go ahead.

All right. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to start with Permian volumes. We saw some really strong results in the mid-week quarter. But if you look at the Delaware, it lagged a little bit. I'm just curious if you ran into some of the same issues around extreme heat and compression constraints that we heard some peers talk about this cycle. And if so, have those issues been resolved?

Hi, Doug. It's Avigal. Thanks for jumping on the call. And we are not going to be specific on the numbers, but we are going to give you some highlights. We've seen the permanent base and our DPG legacy gathering system is performing very well and we are very pleased with the acreage we have and our investment over there over the years are yielding us very nicely. So that investment is absolutely going as we wanted. On the DDG, former tree bear, we are also seeing a very stable operation. We are pleased with the progress of the team and the assets and it's trending in the right direction for sure. I allowed Odeli to give you more color, if you can.

Yeah, thank you, Avigar. And Doug, good to hear you again. This is Odeli. So talking about those two segments you mentioned, around the Midland Gathering, as you've seen, we got our volume almost double than last year and also exceeded last quarter. This is basically benefiting us from the previous capital deployment we had both this year and also last year, so we start to benefit those on the volume side in DPG, and also the associated infrastructure is very solid, close to our refinery and what we've built in the recent years, so we kind of start to benefit that. And to your question around the DDG, around the Delaware gathering assets, we still have been able to perform better than last year, but slightly lower than last quarter, and this is, I think, something that you probably also heard earlier, from others as we face, both us and also our producers as well, and also the area with a lot of issue from a weather situation, both from a storm impact and also excessive heat during this time that impact both electricity and also availability for producers. So that's something that kind of impact everything with that.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Abigail Sorek for any closing remarks. Thank you. We were having technical difficulties, and I am bringing in Abigail Surik for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Dave, for the call. Thank you to the team over here in the room that prepared and worked so hard. Thank you for the board of directors, our employees, and the unit holders. And we are very excited about where DKL is. and looking forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thank you, Dave.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.