Westlake Chemical Partners LP

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, May 2, 2025. I would now like to turn the call over to today's host, John Zeller, Westlake Chemical Partners Vice President and Treasurer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners first quarter 2025 conference call. I am joined today by Albert Chow, our executive chairman, Jean-Marc Gilson, our president and CEO, Steve Bender, our executive vice president and chief financial officer, and other members of our management team. During this call, we refer to ourselves as Westlake Partners or the Partnership. References to Westlake refer to our parent company, Westlake Corporation, and references to Opco refer to Westlake Chemical Opco LP, a subsidiary of Westlake and the partnership which owns certain Oliphant's assets. Additionally, when we refer to distributable cash flow, we are referring to Westlake Chemical Partners MLP distributable cash flow. Definitions of these terms are available on the partnership's website. Today, management is going to discuss certain topics that will contain forward-looking information that is based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements suggest predictions or expectations and thus are subject to risks or uncertainties. We encourage you to learn more about the factors that could lead our actual results to differ by reviewing the cautionary statements in our regulatory filings, which are also available on our investor relations website. This morning, Westlake Partners issued a press release with details of our first quarter 2025 financial operating results. This document is available in the press release section of our webpage at wlkpartners.com. A replay of today's call will be available beginning two hours after the conclusion of this call. The replay can be accessed via the partnership website. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, May 2nd, 2025, and therefore you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay. I would finally advise you that this conference call is being broadcast live through an Internet webcast system that can be accessed on our webpage at wlkpartners.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc Gilson. Jean-Marc?

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter 2025 results. In this morning's press release, we reported Westlake's partner first quarter 2025 net income of $5 million, or 14 cents per unit. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, our first quarter sales and earnings were impacted by the planned turnaround at our PetroOne SLN unit in Lake Charles, Louisiana, which resulted in lower production and sales volume in addition to higher maintenance capital expenditure. The stability of Westlake's partner business model is consistently demonstrated through our fixed margin excellent sales agreement, which minimizes market volatility and other production risks. The high degree of stability in cash flow, when paid with the predictability of our business, has enabled us to deliver the long history of reliable distributions and coverage. This quarter distribution is the 43rd consecutive quarterly distribution since our IPO in July of 2014 without any reductions. I would now like to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on the financial and operating results for the quarter. Steve?

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and good afternoon, everyone. In this morning's press release, we reported Westlake Partners' first quarter 2025 net income of $5 million, or 14 cents per unit. Consolidated net income, including OPCO's earnings, was $42 million on consolidated net sales of $238 million. The partnership had distributable cash flow for the quarter of $5 million, or 13 cents per unit. First quarter 2025 net income for Westlake Partners of $5 million, This $10 million below the first quarter of 2024 partnership net income, primarily due to lower production and sales volume as a result of the planned turnaround at Petro 1. Distributable cash flow of $5 million for the first quarter of 2025 decreased by $12 million compared to the first quarter of 2024 due to the lower production and sales volume and higher maintenance capital expenditures as a result of the Petro 1 planned turnaround. Turning our attention to the balance sheet and cash flows, at the end of the first quarter, we had consolidated cash balance and cash investments with Westlake through our investment management agreement, totaling $154 million. Long-term debt at the end of the quarter was $400 million, of which $377 million was at the partnership, and the remaining $23 million was at OPCO. In the first quarter of 2025, Opco spent $16 million on capital expenditures. We maintained our strong leverage metrics with a consolidated leverage ratio of approximately one times. On April 30, 2025, we announced a quarterly distribution of 47.14 cents per unit with respect to the first quarter of 2025. Since her IPO in 2014, the partnership has made 43 consecutive quarterly distributions to unit holders and we have grown distributions 71% since the partnership's original minimum quarterweight distribution of $0.275 per unit. The partnership's first quarter distribution will be paid on May 29, 2025, to unit holders of record May 13, 2025. The partnership's predictable fee-based cash flow continues to prove beneficial in today's economic environment and is differentiated by the consistency of our earnings and cash flows. Looking back, since our IPO in July of 2014, we have maintained a cumulative distribution coverage ratio of approximately 1.1 times, and with a partnership stability in cash flows, we were able to sustain our current distribution without the need to access the capital markets. For modeling purposes, our Petro-1 ethylene unit began the restart from its planned turnaround on April 12th and continues to ramp up to meet market demand needs. As Jean-Marc mentioned, we have no further planned turnarounds in 2025 or 2026. Now, I'd like to turn the call back over to Jean-Marc to make some closing comments. Jean-Marc? Thank you, Steve.

We are pleased with the successful completion of the Petro-1 turnaround, which positions us for solid production levels in the future. Our first quarter financial performance was consistent with our expectations and prior experience during a period where A significant turnaround temporarily impacts our production and sales volume. Turning to our outlook, global trade tensions have intensified in recent weeks, creating a heightened atmosphere of uncertainty for businesses and investors. While trade negotiations are likely to continue to cause some market volatility, the partnership's financial performance and distributions will continue to be supported by our Ethylene Sales Agreement, which provides a predictable fee-based cash flow structure from our take-or-pay contract with Westlake for 95% of OPCOS production. As has been the case since our IPO over 10 years ago, this Ethylene Sales Agreement will continue to deliver stable and predictable cash flows through economic ups and downs. as well as planned and unplanned turnarounds. Turning to our capital structure, we maintain a strong balance sheet with conservative financial and leverage metrics. As we continue to navigate market conditions, we will evaluate opportunities via our four levers of growth in the future, including increases of our ownership interest of Opco, acquisitions of other qualified income streams, organic growth opportunities, such as expansions of our current ETI-Lane facilities, and negotiation of a higher fixed margin in our ETI-Lane sales agreement with Westlake. We remain focused on our ability to continue to provide long-term value and distributions to our unit holders. As always, we will continue to focus on safe operations along with being good stewards of the environment where we work and live as part of our broader sustainability efforts. Thank you very much for listening to our first quarter earnings call. Now I will turn the call back over to John.

Thank you, Jean-Marc. Before we begin taking questions, I would like to remind you that a replay of this teleconference will be available two hours after the call has ended. We will provide instructions to access the replay at the end of the call. Michelle, we will now take questions.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1-1. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 1-1 again. Our first question comes from Matthew Blair with TPH. Your line is open.

Thank you, and good afternoon. It seems like the financial impact of the Q1 turnaround at PetroOne was a little bit more significant on your quarterly earnings than previous turnarounds. Could you help us understand that? Was that just a function of the size of the turnaround, or were there any unplanned expenses that caused a bigger impact there?

No, Matthew. This is Steve. It really went really as we had planned in terms of the impact. You know, we brought the unit down at the end of January. And so for the quarter, it was down for the months of February and March. And so we expected the unit to be down from a production perspective those two months. And so the impact for the quarter really was reflective of what's going on. I think you may be also factoring into the fact that we still are seeing elevated interest rates kind of weighing on the loan obligations that the company has. That's probably the factor that you might be thinking about, because realistically, the performance and its production over the course of the quarter was really as we had been expecting, and frankly, as we had it internally budgeted.

Okay, sounds good. And then the The valuation difference between the parent Westlake and the MLP Westlake LP seems to have compressed lately. Is there still enough of a valuation difference to justify keeping Westlake LP around?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think as you think about the parent, the C-Corp, it certainly has seen some compression in its valuations, which increases its multiple accordingly. But we tend to think about this over the business cycle rather than at any current period in time. And so as we think about this, the value proposition has continued to be there. As you know well, the markets have been challenged in terms of drop-down stories in the MLP space. But nevertheless, the valuation differential between the partnership where it trades and Westlake Corporation where it trades really over a reasonable cycle period of time remains pretty elevated.

Great, thanks for your comments. You're welcome. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1. At this time, the Q&A session has now ended.

I will now turn the call back over to John Zeller.

Thank you again for participating in today's call. We hope you will join us for our next conference call to discuss our second quarter 2025 results.

Thank you for participating in today's Westlake Chemical Partners first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this call will be available for replay beginning two hours after the call has ended and may be accessed until 1159 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, May 16, 2025. The replay can be accessed via the partnership website. Goodbye.