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spk02: Quarters 2024 earnings conference call. Our host for today is Christina Cometko, Investor Relations. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Christina Cometko, you may begin.
spk01: Good morning everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm Christina Cometko, I'm responsible for Investor Relations at NANCO. Joining me today are J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Elizabeth Lubman, Senior Vice President and Controller. Yesterday, we published our 2024 first quarter results and followed our 10 queue. This information is available on our website. Today's call is also being webcast. The webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements made here today. These risks include, among others, matters that we've described in our earnings release, 10 queue, and other SEC filings. We may not update these forward-looking statements until our next quarterly earnings conference call. We'll also be discussing non-GAAP information that we believe is useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. Reconciliations for these non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and on our website. With the formalities out of the way, I'll turn the call over to JC for some opening remarks. JC.
spk03: Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. I'm glad to be on the call this morning since we have a lot of good news to report. I mentioned during our year-end call that I am optimistic about our 2024 outlook as we move past a tough 2023. We expected unfavorable 2023 comparisons would turn favorable in 2024, so I'm pleased to report that our first quarter operating results were in line with those expectations. Our consolidated operating profit increased 162% over the prior year, driven by significantly improved earnings at our minerals management and North American mining segments. Christine will go into more detail about our first quarter earnings and provide an overview of our outlook in a minute, but first, let me give you an update on our operations. I'll start with some positive operational news about our coal mining segment. I'm pleased to report that repairs to the damaged boiler at the Red Hills Power Plant are expected to be completed during the second half of 2024. As you can see from our financials, the coal mining segment's revenues decreased primarily due to fewer coal deliveries as a result of this issue. While the Red Hills Power Plant is still only operating on one boiler, it is helpful to have greater visibility on our customers' timeline for resolution. As we've discussed for several quarters, Mississippi Lignite Mining Company's Red Hills Mine completed the move to a new mine area in 2023. This move sets us up nicely for the future, and we expect production costs at MLMC to decline significantly in 2024 and 2023 levels. These costs, however, expected to remain above historical levels through 2024 until the boiler issue at the power plant is resolved, deliveries return to normal, and a pit extension is completed later this year. Before I move to our other segments, I wanna comment on the Environmental Protection Agency's recent announcement of new rules for coal-fired power plants. On April 25th, the EPA issued a pre-publication version of the final rules for mercury air toxics standards and greenhouse gas emissions, which require compliance as early as 2027 and 2030. These rules are ultimately enforced as drafted, that we will be applicable to the power plants that we serve. While we are still in the process of analyzing these new rules, I'd like to note that similar previous efforts by the EPA were met with extensive litigation, and we're anticipating a similar response to these rules. As you can imagine, this is a very high priority for us. It's worth noting that the United States is experiencing strong overall growth in the demand for electricity. MLMC supplies coal to the Red Hills power plant, which supplies electricity to TVA. TVA just announced in their 10-queue filing earlier this week that they experienced an all-time record high peak power demand during Q1. These EPA rules go into effect as written. It's hard to see how the country adequately replaces the energy generated by these power plants. Shifting to our other segments, I mentioned earlier that our minerals management and North American mining segments generated improved operating results in the first quarter. At minerals management, the higher first quarter income was the result of higher production volumes and included earnings from the large acquisition of mineral interest that closed in December. The Catapult Mineral Partners team, which oversees this segment, has done a great job of growing and diversifying our portfolio of mineral interests over the last few years. We now own a larger portfolio of mineral interests. We are more diversified in terms of operations, geographic footprint, and stages of mineral development, ranging from producing wells to undeveloped mineral interests. Catapult team is again targeting mineral interests of up to $20 million in 2024. Our North American mining segment also delivered strong -over-year earnings improvement. North American mining's operating profit improved 184% and segment adjusted EVDA increased 70% compared with 2023. I'm proud of the significant progress the North American mining team has made on operational and strategic projects that contributed to the improved 2024 first quarter results. Our sawtooth mining operation is the exclusive miner for the Packer Pass Lithium Project owned by Lithium Americas Corporation. Sawtooth mining is contributing moderate income to North American mining segment during the current construction phase of that contract and is expected to continue to do so until we enter the production phase, which is expected to occur in the 2027-2028 timeframe. More information about this project is available on the Lithium Americas website. North American mining team continues to evaluate and pursue new business opportunities, including diversification into additional minerals as we did in 2023 with a new contract to mine phosphate for a customer in Florida. Overall, I believe we're making meaningful progress towards building this segment into a very successful business platform. Finally, moving to our mitigation resources of North America business, this team continues to advance existing mitigation projects and build on the substantial foundation it has established over the past several years. Mitigation resources added a new project in the first quarter by acquiring an attractive piece of land near a high growth area in central Florida. We anticipate that mitigation resources will further expand its business model in 2024 with a focus on generating a modest operating profit in 2025 and achieving sustainable profitability in future years. Overall, I continue to be very optimistic about our outlook in 2024 and beyond. Have a lot of confidence in our team and I'm pleased with the way all of these businesses continue to advance their strategies, including efforts to protect our coal mining business. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Christy to cover our results for the quarter and our outlook in more detail. Christy.
spk01: Thank you, JC. Let me begin with high-level comments about our consolidated first quarter financial results. Then I'll provide some detail on our individual segments. We reported consolidated income before taxes of $5.6 million compared with $4.4 million last year, a 28% increase. A shift in our mix of earnings led to an effective income tax rate of 18% this quarter versus a negative rate of 30% in first quarter 2023, which resulted in a $2.3 million -over-year increase in income tax expense. Due to the higher income tax expense, our first quarter 2024 consolidated net income decreased to $4.6 million, or 61 cents per share, compared with $5.7 million, or 76 cents per share last year. We generated EBITDA of $11.2 million. This was modestly higher than the prior year EBITDA of $10.8 million. The operating profit and EBITDA growth was primarily due to significant improvements in earnings at our minerals management and North American mining segments. Minerals management generated operating profit of $7.9 million and segment adjusted EBITDA of $8.9 million, an over 30% increase in both metrics compared with the prior year quarter. The improved earnings were due to higher production volumes, including contributions from a large acquisition of mineral interest near the end of last year. And North American mining operating profit of $2.4 million and EBITDA of $4.6 million increased significantly compared with last year. The first quarter improvements were primarily due to favorable pricing and delivery mix. Improved margins at the limestone quarries as a result of recent contract amendments also contributed to North American mining's favorable results. The improvement in operating profit at both minerals management and North American mining were partly offset by lower coal mining results. Our coal mining segment reported an operating loss of $417,000 and generated segment adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 million. This compares to operating profit of $313,000 and segment adjusted EBITDA of $4.6 million in 2023. JC noted that the coal mining segment's revenues decreased primarily due to the boiler issue at Mississippi Lignite Mining Company. However, the revenue decrease was offset by a reduction in cost of sales, resulting in comparable quarter over quarter results. Lower earnings at our unconsolidated operations primarily due to reduced customer requirements at Coteau contributed to the decrease in the coal mining segment's results. Looking forward at our coal mining segment, we expect strong 2024 operating profit compared with the significant 2023 loss, which included a $60.8 million impairment charge. Higher segment adjusted EBITDA, which excludes the impairment charge, is also projected. These anticipated increases are primarily due to an improvement in the results at Mississippi Lignite Mining Company and higher earnings at Falkirk and Coteau in the second half of 2024. While MOMC is expected to incur a loss in 2024, largely attributable to reduced coal deliveries, while the power plant is operating with only one boiler, the loss is projected to be significantly less than 2000 and 2023, excluding the impairment charge. This is primarily because production costs are expected to decrease compared with last year. In addition, the effect of the impairment charge taken last year will result in lower depreciation and amortization expense and contribute to lower production costs in 2024 and beyond. The projected increase in full year 2024 earnings at the unconsolidated mining operations is driven primarily by an expectation for increased customer requirements at Coteau and Falkirk, as well as a higher per ton management fee at Falkirk beginning in June 2024 when temporary price concessions end. Turning to North American Mining, we expect substantial quarterly growth in operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA in each remaining 2024 quarter, leading to significantly improved full year results over 2023. Improvements at existing operations, as well as contributions from new and modified contracts will all contribute to the improvement in results. Finally, at Minerals Management, we expect 2024 operating profit and segment adjusted EBITDA
spk08: to
spk01: decrease moderately compared with the prior year, excluding the 2023 impairment charge. The forecast of reduction in profitability is primarily driven by current market expectations for natural gas and oil prices, as well as development and production assumptions on currently owned reserves. Overall, at a consolidated level, we expect to generate net income in 2024 compared with the substantial 2023 net loss. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes any impact from the prior year impairment, is also projected to increase significantly over 2023. These improvements are mainly due to increased profitability at the coal mining segment. Growth in North American mining is also expected to contribute to the higher 2024 net income. Before I turn the call over to questions, let me close with some information about our balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with consolidated cash of approximately $62 million and debt of $50 million. We had availability of $100 million under our revolving credit facility. During the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 128,000 shares for $4.3 million under an existing share repurchase program. In 2024, we expect cash flow before financing activities to be a moderate use of cash. We will now turn to any questions you may have.
spk02: If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. You will be placed into the queue in the order received. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted. Once again, if you have a question, please press star one on your phone now. And we will take our first question from Douglas Weiss with DSW Investments. Douglas, your line is open.
spk09: Hey, good morning.
spk08: Morning.
spk09: A question on the mining business. Once you've started a project, how much is the ongoing capital expense on those projects on an annual basis?
spk03: Are you talking about a coal mine or are you talking about a North American mining project?
spk09: North American mining.
spk03: Yep, you know, it entirely depends on the project. In some instances, we own the equipment and we'll maintain that equipment over the life of the contract. And that's all included in the fee structure that we receive. In other instances, the customer is responsible for funding those things. So it's really very contract specific. I guess I would add that most of the operations that we do inside North American mining, I'll just use an example, right? We might acquire a drag line that will operate at a quarry or a phosphate mine or somewhere else for somebody. And the upfront capital is the most significant piece, typically, of that project. Over time, you're gonna have repairs to the drag line. You're gonna have planned outages where you need to do periodic upgrades and improvements. But for the most part, I think you could think of the North American mining project of having a majority of its capex upfront, although there will be some over time.
spk09: Okay, so to the extent you're not bringing on new projects, is it fair to say that a fairly high proportion of EBITDA in that division will convert to cash flow? I
spk03: think that's the safest. As opposed to, I'll compare that to a manufacturing business where you're constantly replacing things on your manufacturing line. The mining business is typically not like that, but you will go through, as we saw in our Red Hills mine, you go through periods of time when you do have to reinvest, but it's generally EBITDA is true EBITDA. You can think of it as cash flow.
spk09: Okay, and would you be able to say what sort of returns you're looking for on that sort of upfront investment in terms of, you get a new project and you buy, you spend 20 million or whatever on the drag line, what sort of EBITDA do you hope to earn on that in the years that follow?
spk03: Well, I mean, I think given the fact that these are multi-year projects with investment upfront, I'd point you to like an IRR calculation and we target things that are in the mid-high teens in general.
spk09: Okay, great. And when you guide to quarterly growth for that business, do you mean sequential growth, like the second quarter will be better than the first quarter and so on?
spk03: Generally, yes.
spk09: Yeah, okay.
spk03: But like any business, you can't draw a straight line to all those points and have it look like a nice neat graph.
spk09: Right, sure, sure. Okay, I guess moving on to your royalty businesses. You give disclosures in the K on your reserves, but I found with other royalty businesses, those reserves aren't really that communicative in terms of the real reserve life of those assets. And I wondered if you could just speak generally about what you think the sort of economic life is, particularly for your gas assets. I guess Appalachia would be the largest one. Yeah, go ahead.
spk03: Yeah, the Appalachia assets are our legacy assets. I mean, we've acquired those over decades and decades. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those have been acquired in the early part of the 1900s as we were establishing our underground coal mining business in that part of the country. It's where the company started. From a gas standpoint, the wells, so let's just go through history, right? We acquired the natural gas reserves as part of acquiring all minerals historically. In many instances, we mined the coal or somebody else ended up mining the coal. We sold the surface at some point if that was owned. And we've owned these natural gas assets for a very, very long time. You get sort of, I guess, probably 10 years at most ago and fracking became kind of the prevalent, horizontal fracking became kind of the prevalent way of producing the minerals in Appalachia. And then pipelines came in sort of in the
spk07: 2017,
spk03: 2018 timeframe, which is when we said this thing's about to get supersized. So we made a conscious decision to, let's go hire people that are experts in this area and develop our catapult minerals partners business. So they oversee those assets. As those have been, I mean, a lot of that's been developed, but there's a lot of wells yet to be developed. If you look at the typical decline curve on a well, and it varies, but on average, these things can last for decades. They have a large, any kind of horizontal fracking well has large production upfront and it tails off pretty quickly, but then it can run for a very, very long time. It can run for decades.
spk08: In fact,
spk03: I mean, I know there are royalty companies out there that focus on just buying the tails of wells from people. So, you know, you take the natural gas assets in Appalachia and you translate that to what we're buying elsewhere. And we're targeting a broad portfolio of mineral interests, meaning when we buy a package, it typically has got producing wells, it's got wells that have been drilled but not completed, so they're not producing. It's got wells that have been permitted, but nobody's taken any action on the permits, and there are undeveloped reserves. So, you know, one of the things I love about this business is a majority of the value we're paying for these assets is focused on the producing wells, because that's what a lot of people are paying for. A lot of people are interested in, you know, what's the cash flows I'm gonna get out of this right away, and we, of course, look at that and we appreciate that. But we're also acquiring a lot of reserve interests that are gonna start, be developed and produced in years to come. So, I see this business as, you know, accumulating more and more and more of that, which just provides a much stronger and longer runway for profitability to come out of this part of the business. It's kind of a wide-ranging answer. Does that answer your, does that address your question?
spk09: Yeah, I think so. As you look at opportunities to acquire, are you seeing better value on the oil side or on the gas side?
spk03: You know, it varies. It really, in many instances, it gets to specific dynamics around the transaction, and like, really, why is somebody selling? Has somebody had a fund for the last 20 years and they're closing out the fund and they need to sell? Has somebody been getting their funding from a private equity firm and that goes away and so they need to raise some capital by selling some wells? I mean, what's their motivation? That's really probably the greatest driver of swings in value, from my experience.
spk07: Okay. I
spk09: mean,
spk03: do prices affect the value of mineral interests? They do on the margin, but it doesn't swing as much as you would think it might, based on monthly, quarterly changes in oil and gas prices.
spk09: Right, okay, makes sense. On MLMC, once you've finished the, you know, you're all done with the moving locations and so on, what's a good normalized cost of goods sold there?
spk03: We don't disclose that. And your point about, you know, we're moved and we're done. We're moved, we're almost done. You'll note in our disclosures that we talk about a pit extension. So we went over, we established the new pit. We're operating over there. It's going very well. We're very pleased with the way that's playing out. We did, part of the plan, we knew when we got there, we were gonna make the initial pit longer. As you can imagine, right, a longer pit is gonna be a more efficient way to mine. It's like anything, right? It's larger scale, you make it a bigger pit. So we're still extending that pit this year. It'll be done later this year, at which point the costs will really drop to where they think they should be, which is much more in line with historical levels. And we're getting, you know, we're getting a double punch right now because we're, you know, self-inflicted wound. It's the smart thing to do to extend the length of this pit, which adds to our costs. The other thing you've got is the power plant that's just operating on one of the two boilers. So our production is only at about half what it would normally be, which puts, you know, it's not efficient, makes it a higher cost operation. So I think we're headed back to historical levels that we feel quite good about. We just have to get a couple more quarters behind us.
spk09: Right, okay. And then just touching on North American mining again, you had a really nice step up in your EBITDA margin this quarter. Is that sustainable or are those margins gonna move around quarter to quarter?
spk07: Well, everybody's
spk03: margins move around quarter to quarter. So with that qualifier, I think there have been some fundamental shifts in the business, some of which are strategic in nature, tactical in nature. We've been working on some things over the last few years. You've seen in prior quarters, we've disclosed that even last year, you know, we put a pause on new business development while we were straightening out some operational matters. We feel good about where those are. One of the other things we've done is sign up some new contracts. We're always tweaking our contract structure because these contracts won't run for a bunch of years. We're always tweaking the contract structure to think about how do we best serve our customers while thinking about our own, the economics of our business. And I think you've got a combination of some new contracts, some amended contracts, as well as some operational and strategic improvements we put in place that are paying dividends. And I think that we are headed towards a, you know, stronger performance in that business going forward because of those things. Is it gonna be, you know, consistent every single quarter? Probably not, but I feel good about where we're headed.
spk09: Okay, makes sense. And you have an unconsolidated income line in that division. Is that, can you say what that is? Which asset or what mine that is?
spk04: It's just some smaller, you know, historical mines that are locations that we account for as a variable interest entity. And so under the equity method.
spk09: Okay. And then, and let me know if there's anyone in queue because I don't wanna stop anyone else from asking questions.
spk03: You have great questions. We're more than happy to ask. I appreciate your interest. We're happy to answer your question.
spk09: Okay, great, well, thank you. So on the coal segment, I'm curious, you know, using the Sabine mine as sort of a case study where you received several years of payments after the mine closed. Could you just talk a little bit about how good the economics are of those sort of, you know, closure payments relative to the prior operating earnings of the mines?
spk03: So I'll speak generally, right? Generally during production, you know, in our management fee contracts, which in the coal mining segment are Coteau, Falkirk, Coyote Creek and Sabine. So generally during production, you know, that's when you're doing a lot of work. You've got a lot of people, a lot going on. So the fee is higher. In the initial years, the first few years after you go into final mine reclamation, there's still a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of dirt moving going on. There's a lot of regulatory things that we're dealing with, a lot of land issues, or I shouldn't call them issues. It's really just land matters related to wrapping up the mine. And so, you know, the fee is still pretty robust, although generally not what it was during production. And then after a few years, we'll go into a period that is, you know, the tail end of final mine reclamation, which is really more, you know, the dirt work is done, it's monitoring water, it's looking for erosion, it's making sure that the things that were planted are growing as they should. So the fee steps down generally in the later years of a contract. Now, you know, every contract's different with respect to how that works and what we're responsible for and what the customer is responsible for. But in each instance, the customer still continues to pay 100% of the costs. And this is really just related to the fee that we receive. But that's, you know, it's a kind of a step-down structure as the amount of work that's required decreases.
spk09: Mm-hmm, okay. And then I guess just a couple quickly on your new projects. So on the remediation business, how big a business do you think that could be looking out, you know, three to five years?
spk07: Well,
spk03: I mean, we've not said how big we think it can be. We haven't disclosed that. I will tell you that the business, you know, which we started, you know, five, six years ago, is on a much faster growth trajectory than we anticipated when we started it. We've been very pleased with our ability to leverage sort of the North American coal environmental reputation as a way to propel that business into, you know, having a lot of credibility, even though it was essentially a startup. A number of the people that are in that business came from our coal mining operations. And, you know, it's really been helpful as we've got going. We've also got a great relationship with the Army Corps of Engineers in the areas where we operate, which has been helpful to us. So I guess I'd add to the fact that the mitigation part of the business is growing faster than we thought it would. You know, we've branched out now to also start doing abandoned mine land reclamation. You saw that our disclosures that we are the preferred provider of abandoned mine line services in the state of Texas, which is a big deal. And we've been doing some other remediation projects as well that are neither mitigation banks nor abandoned mine land reclamation. So we're seeing growth opportunities in a number of areas, kind of organically grown. And it's on a great growth trajectory. You know, the question we always kick around is, at what point does this thing become a segment? And I don't know. You know, I would say hopefully sooner or later, I think the people in the business would say, they hope later rather than sooner, because you get a lot more attention when you're a segment. But this is a business that's growing very nicely, very rapidly, and you know, the disclosure we put out is we think they're gonna be profitable at an operating profit level in 2025. It'll be sustainable future years. One of the reasons is because, particularly on the mitigation banking side, you know, you acquire a piece of property, and then it takes a year or so to get your mitigation banking instrument with the Army Corps of Engineers, and then you sell the credits over, you know, extended period of time, can be 10 years. So the initial years of this business on the mitigation banking side was planting a lot of seeds by, you know, initiating projects. We're now getting into the period where we're gonna start seeing, you know, very attractive income from the credit sales out of those banks. So not a direct answer to your question, but I hope that was helpful.
spk09: Yeah, yeah, that's great. And then I think last question, just on the, you gave some additional detail on the K on your solar project. Can you talk a little bit about how large an investment you're contemplating there, and do you continue to think it's gonna be a very high ROI?
spk03: Yeah,
spk07: I mean,
spk03: you know, the returns are pretty attractive on the projects as we're viewing them. I think our approach is primarily, although not entirely, but our approach is primarily that we're going to serve as developers. You know, we have knowledge that I think is somewhat unique with respect to properties that would be attractive for solar farms, including reclaimed mine land, whether that's ours or others. A lot of people are scared off that stuff. We understand, you know, what the risk and opportunities are with respect to those properties. And so our investments are really gonna be in the development phase, which is, you know, acquiring the land or securing the land through a lease or other means. And then working on interconnect studies and, you know, finding EPC contractors and getting, you know, the whole thing put together into a package. I think it's very possible that we will end up right as the thing's ready to go. You know, it's all got a nice box with a bow on it. You know, you sell it to somebody who's in the business of owning and operating these things over the long term, including constructing them. Do we keep an ownership interest in some way in those? We could. It could be an ownership interest in the solar farm itself. It could be, you know, we retain the land and collect a lease payment. I mean, there's a whole bunch of ways we could think about this. I do know when you get into big solar farms, the capital can be very, very substantial. And given our desire to protect the daylights out of our ballot sheet, you know, we're not gonna bite off something that's bigger than we're comfortable dealing with.
spk09: Right, now that makes a lot of sense. Okay, well, actually one last quick one is just on the boiler. I think in your filing, you said second half, you think it'll be repaired. Do you have a pretty good visibility or are you just kinda watching along with everyone else?
spk03: Well, I mean, you know, we're next door, right? The mine is next door to the power plant. So we have great relationship with the folks over at the power plant because of the nature of the operation, you know, 100% of their fuel comes from our mine. They're our only customer. So it makes it very important to have a close, transparent relationship. So, you know, our folks on the scene, you know, stay in close touch with the people over at the power plant. And I think everybody feels good about the progress that's being made. It's really our customer's project. So I don't wanna say that much about it because it's their disclosure, not ours,
spk08: but it's
spk03: progressing nicely and we feel good about it. I think they feel good about it.
spk09: Great, okay, well, thanks again for all the answers and talk to you next quarter.
spk03: Yeah, once again,
spk07: we appreciate your interest. Thanks, Deb.
spk02: Thanks. And your next question comes from Nachi Concy with SiaSense. Your line is open.
spk07: Hey, great quarter, thanks. Yeah, thank you.
spk06: Morning, picking up where that last question left off, just a few questions on Mississippi. Can you provide an update on the financial health of your customer over there? Have they emerged from whatever restructuring they were in? What's the strength of their balance sheet?
spk07: From what I understand from Southern's disclosures, that's all been settled. Right. What you're talking about is the restructuring with
spk03: the bondholders.
spk07: Right. Correct.
spk03: Yep, and that's been resolved. I think Southern disclosed that a couple quarters ago, maybe three quarters, four quarters ago.
spk06: Yeah, I mean, what I've heard is that what I've seen in Southern's disclosures is that they're not putting any additional capital into it. And there was certainly no cash reserve in the business prior to restructuring. So what I'm trying to understand is how strong is your counterparty in its ability to maintain a position of buying the amount of lignite you guys want them and project them to buy for the next several years?
spk03: Well, I think the ultimate, I think the real question is, does TVA need the electrons? And if you look at TVA's latest queue, which was just recently filed, they've had record demand for electrons because that ultimately is how this plays out. And TVA has tremendous need. We see that through the operation of the power plant. And ultimately, if TVA needs the electrons, they're gonna buy them from the plant. And that means that the plant needs coal in order to fuel the plant. Sure. Well, someone's gonna
spk06: have to put in capital, right? I mean, are you saying that TVA might actually put in capital for repairs or for ongoing capex?
spk03: I mean, I'm not privy
spk06: to that.
spk03: I'm not privy to the details, but my understanding is there's a provision in the waterfall with respect to the mechanics of the bonds that provides for capital that's needed for maintenance and repairs. Yeah,
spk06: the old bonds, right. I'm trying to understand whatever the new bond structure is, which I am not privy to. I'm trying to understand.
spk03: Yeah, we don't have, we're not privy to the terms of that agreement.
spk06: Okay, all right, thanks. And then I appreciated your comments at the beginning about the Mercury standard. My understanding from some of the technical documents that EPA put out, and as you stated, it's pre-publication, is that EPA was actually protecting a relatively low additional OPEX requirement at Red Hills was under a million a year. Your comment suggested actually, short of judicial relief of some sort, a pretty pessimistic outlook on compliance across the board, just trying to square those two. And is the truth somewhere in the middle, or how should I think about that?
spk07: I
spk03: think the whole thing is subject to massive litigation. I think it's, I mean, one, the rules aren't final yet, and two, I think this is gonna be litigated just like prior EPA rules have been litigated. There's an interesting piece in the journal yesterday about, or at least I read it online last night, and I assume it was a yesterday article about the challenges that the rules face.
spk06: There's no question of litigation, I agree with you, but the Mercury standards that are in effect for non-lignite coal-fired power plants are in effect. I mean, they have survived. That was
spk07: a decade ago. Correct. So I guess what I'm
spk06: trying to understand is, tons of uncertainty, of course, on how the courts will look at this, and future administrations, of course, might look at this very differently as well, but trying to understand what the actual cost of compliance might be at your customer, even like ballpark order of magnitude, like is it tens of thousands, tens of millions, somewhere in between?
spk03: I think it would be inappropriate for me to publicly speculate on information that I don't know.
spk08: Sure.
spk07: I
spk08: mean, it's their
spk03: power plant. We don't operate any power plants. I'm not privy to that kind of information.
spk06: Sure, makes sense. Last question. So there was this $60 million impairment charge in the last quarter. Can you help me understand, thinking of the Mississippi business and this, the core asset, which is this long-term sales agreement, how much of the book value of that asset went away with that $60 million impairment charge? Does that question make sense? Like, is the asset half the size that I used to think it was? Is it 90% of the size that I used to think it was?
spk03: Liz and I are looking at each other trying to think about that.
spk04: So I think you could see the coal supply agreement. You're talking about the intangible related to the coal supply agreement?
spk03: Are you talking about all the asset?
spk06: I'm talking about the enterprise value of the Mississippi business, basically. How much smaller is it than it was in the quarter?
spk03: I think we've never disclosed the asset value related to a specific.
spk04: In our risk factor in the 10K previously, we said our assets at risk were around $130 million. And we took $5 million. So half of that.
spk06: Yeah. Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you. And so when you were determining the, this is going back a quarter, I'm sorry, but when you were looking at the financials and deciding how much to write off, was it primarily the relatively short term decrease in sales that factored into that overall 60.8 million figure? Or was it also additional thinking around the life of that agreement?
spk07: Well, the trigger
spk03: was the December, I think it was 15th issue at the power plant. And as we're sitting there at year end, you have this big event at the plant, which nobody at that moment in time can assess exactly the extent of the damage or what it's gonna take to repair it. It of course calls into question, what will our near term deliveries be? They pretty quickly figured out that they could operate the plant. They believed on one boiler. We know they can, but they didn't see any reason, any other reasons related to this incident to prevent that. So as we looked at the situation where we could have an extended period of time where there's reduced deliveries to the plant, given the fact that a mining operation is largely a fixed cost operation and that affects our economics pretty significantly, as we're seeing. So it's really that trigger with respect to the near term when you think about NPV of an asset, it's near term, dollars count more than far out in the future dollars. And then of course you had to go through all the gap required exercise to figure out your impairment. But it was the short term effect of that
spk07: that really triggered this assessment.
spk06: Okay, that makes sense. And I think last question, how should I think about the match rule with respect to your other unconsolidated operations? Is there a different way I should think about that compared to the Mississippi situation?
spk03: I mean, if you, I mean, the match rule doesn't apply to our minds, it applies to our customers power plants. And those are all Lignite powered power plants. So each of them, of course, have their own technologies with respect to their boilers and their environmental controls and I think each of them will
spk07: be assessing these independently. I appreciate your time with me this morning. Yeah, thanks for your question.
spk02: And your next question comes from John Huber with Saber Capital. John, your line is open.
spk05: Yeah, thanks for the thoughtful replies. It's been a great call, a lot of good education and I appreciate the history on the, some of the minerals management history there was quite interesting. My question is on that business. You know, I follow a few of the royalty companies and I think the market for the minerals has been quite, it's been quite competitive over the last few years and I'm just wondering if you guys share that view. And if so, I'm wondering what, kind of what advantage you guys have? Like what kind of networks do you have? What advantage do you think gives you guys the ability to earn the returns that you're generating, which according to what I'm looking at, I'm looking at like 68 million of investment capital over the last few years and I think you did around 19 million of profit. So that looks like a pretty good return. So I'm just kind of wondering what your, you know, how you guys are viewing your advantage and what I think is a pretty competitive market right now.
spk03: Yep, so let's go back to the history. And look, I would love to say that we're earning that kind of return on the investment of 68 million dollars. But I went through the history lesson of where we got the Appalachian minerals, which are the biggest income producers for us. And our cost basis in those things is like zero. As they were acquired eons ago. So there's a bunch of that Appalachian stuff that has no meaningful asset on the balance sheet. So if when we look internally at our numbers, our returns right now are astronomical. We believe over time as we make investments that we think this business is gonna be, you know, ultimately as we get more and more and more new money invested, we think we're gonna earn, you know, high teams. I'd like to think low 20s, but high teams on our investments. And it's this interesting point, we're investing in a business that's got extraordinarily high returns and it's gonna blend down to something in the high teams, as you've noted. The, but what's our advantage? I think our big advantage, one is I think we have assembled a great team of people that are very thoughtful about their analysis. And one of the things that makes them a great fit for us is they take a very long-term view of investing in the space, which is partly how they're wired. It's 100% how we're wired if you've spent time looking at the company. We're perfectly happy to take decades long views of investments. So when we acquire minerals, we can, we're perfectly happy to acquire minerals that won't be developed for 10 or 15 years because we're building that base that's gonna deliver, you know, dividends way out into the future. And you don't have to pay a lot for those, but we're willing to look at those packages. I think a number of the competitors, certainly not all, but a number of the other people that play in this space are either doing so with money that's coming out of private equity firms or they're borrowing money or they're operating a yield code, which means they've got to constantly be feeding, you know, the yield code model, which means their primary interest is in producing wells. And that's what they want to buy and that's what they bid up. You start diluting that with things that aren't gonna get developed for two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, they're less interested in that. So it's less frothy in that part of the market, at least generally speaking, you know, and in every kind of market, there's exceptions to the rule, but generally that's kind of what we see and it's the long-term view that we think gives us an advantage.
spk05: That's helpful. Yeah, very helpful. I noticed you have a few, some undeveloped acreage in the Williston Basin. How much do you think, I don't know if you guys have a way to break this down, but of the 68 million that you've spent since 2020, how much of that is undeveloped or how much of that is sort of untapped potential for future production?
spk07: I don't know. I will give you a very honest answer and say I don't know. Sure, okay.
spk03: Liz is flipping into the K right now. Yeah, I mean,
spk04: we have provided some of that data in our 10K, so I don't know if you've looked through that, but that would provide you some additional information. Where
spk05: is
spk04: that,
spk05: Liz?
spk04: Yeah. Like if you start on page 46 of the 10K.
spk05: What, yeah, I see that there's, I see the amount of acreage I was just trying to get a sense for how much, you know, maybe if you had a view of what, what I'm really trying to do holistically is get a sense for, from a strategic level, how are you guys thinking about the capital that you're investing in this? So you've touched on, you gave me a nice background. That was super helpful. You mentioned, I think you mentioned like high teams returns. Obviously you have this sort of legacy assets, these legacy assets that have been part of the company for decades and decades, but what, how are you, when you look at a project, are you, I mean, I'm sure you're coming up with some sort of IRR calculation, but I'm trying to get a sense for how you compare that to perhaps other uses of capital within the business, including, you know, perhaps buying your own stock back, which you've done some of. So just wanted to get a sense for what types of return hurdle rates you're looking at for this, for this minerals business.
spk03: So when we look at investments in this business, you're right, I mean, we're looking at, you know, IRR kind of metrics as well as other metrics, but, you know, IRR is certainly a piece of it. And all of the IRR's cousins, you know, like NPV and ROTC calculations, things like that. When we're looking at projects, I mean, we're looking at the projects as standalone projects, we're thinking about them in the context of what does it cost to add this to a portfolio? And, you know, there's an overhead component certainly, but when we look at stuff, we're trying to buy things that we think are gonna deliver IRRs in the high teens, understanding that the undeveloped, anything that's not producing, we're discounting, you know, what its value might be in the future, because you just don't know. We've got high confidence that it's gonna get developed, but we don't know exactly when, and we certainly don't know what prevailing oil and gas prices will be at the time. So, you know, we attribute, we're shooting for high teens based on what we have a reasonable sense of achieving, and the other stuff is, you know, over and above. It can outperform, it can underperform too, but we think by buying lots of, you know, highly diversified packages of mineral interests, we're getting a lot of exposure to a lot of acres and a lot of basins, and we're getting oilier, we used to be very gas heavy, and that's, you know, that's creating the right dynamic that we're looking for. And I will tell you, over time, a lot of the Appalachian natural gas has been developed, and so we're gonna be way out onto the decline curve, you know, eventually, and so it won't be as meaningful to the portfolio at that point.
spk05: So it sounds like, is what you're saying, it sounds like you may be interested more in acquiring oil assets than, I know a lot of the legacy stuff, the Appalachia, a lot of the stuff in the Gulf Coast is more gas related, but some of the Permian Iraqis is more oily. Is that kind of where you'd like to go?
spk03: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you go back to 2018, you know, all of our eggs were in Appalachian natural gas, right, that's what we had, and so if we were to go back to 2018, to think about diversify, we wanna be in other basins, we wanna have more oil, we wanna have more operators, we wanna, we think it's, we like the asset, we like the space, we like this asset category a lot, and so, you know, we wanna diversify that position into other things in the United States.
spk05: Yeah, that's great. The Cattle Bull team, this 20 million, I had a question on maybe, I don't know what you can share with us, like how they're incentivized, but what happens if you can't find assets that meet your hurdle rate? Is it something where, hey, if we don't get to the 20 million, that's okay,
spk07: or? Without getting
spk03: into the, you know, nitty-gritty details of our incentive plans, we take a one team approach to incentives. Everybody that participates in incentive plans all operate so that we're all incentivized to help each other, make it a team sport. Watch sports, you're gonna always know that wins. So, you know, if they invest, that's great. If they don't invest, that's okay too, because everybody participates in the same incentive programs that are tied to total company performance.
spk07: Yeah, that's great.
spk03: Okay, let's think of your- We think if you carve people off into individual groups, they're gonna start, people by their very nature. It's true of me, it's true of everybody, right? Everybody will start just focusing on what they're interested in, and that's not how you build, you know, a company for the next 100 years.
spk05: No, well said. That's exactly, I would completely agree, and that's music to my ears. You don't wanna have, I've seen too many situations where you have incentive structures where, hey, we're gonna allocate up to 20 million, and that typically means we're going to allocate 20 million, you know, come hell or high water, and that's not necessarily the best use of capital if there's some other source of, you know, returns that you can generate elsewhere within the business. So, that's great. I had a quick question, and thank you for that. Again, that's really helpful on the minerals. On the capex in North American mining, you know, I was reading the filings this morning, so I may have missed this or misunderstood this, but I believe that the 23 million of capex that you spent at the Nevada project is reimbursed by the mine owner, is that correct?
spk03: Yes, from a cash standpoint, will be reimbursed over five years from a GAAP standpoint. Revenues
spk04: recognized over the useful life of assets.
spk03: Okay, that's right.
spk05: Right, okay, so you get paid back over five years in cash. And then of that 33 million that I think you've guided to in that business, is that, is there, what percentage of that is reimbursable, if any?
spk04: The small amount. The majority of that is for the remaining North American mining business, not for Sawtooth.
spk08: Gotcha, okay. And I'm sorry
spk03: to say this, but Christie's telling me that we've got like one minute left on this call before we get cut off. You're the first third caller we've ever had. So we're super excited about the call today. No problem, no,
spk05: my questions are answered. Yeah, I appreciate the thoughtful replies, and yeah, I can follow up later with a couple other quick questions, but no, great call, I appreciate the answers.
spk07: Great, thank you.
spk02: Great, well thank you so much everyone. At this time, I'll turn it back over to Christina Cometko for closing remarks.
spk01: Okay, well with that, we will conclude our very robust Q&A session. As J.C. said, that was very informative for everybody. Before we conclude, I would like to provide a few reminders. A replay of the call will be available later this morning. We'll also post a transcript on the website when it becomes available, and if you do have any follow-up questions, please reach out to me. My phone number's on the release. So I hope everyone has a great day, and I'll turn it back over to Bailey to conclude the call.
spk02: This concludes today's conference call. A replay of the conference will be available for seven days, ending May 9th, 2024. To access the replay, please dial -645-7964, or -849-6722. Then enter the playback ID 9435, followed by the pound key. Thank you for attending.
spk04: The host has ended this call. Goodbye.
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