Gibson Energy Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Gibson Energy fourth quarter and full year 2024 conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Beth Pollack, Vice President, Capital Markets and Risk. Ms. Pollack, please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 operational and financial results. Joining me on the call this morning from Gibson Energy are Curtis Philippon, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Riley Hicks, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We also have additional senior management team members in the room to help with questions and answers as required. Listeners are reminded that today's call refers to non-GAAP measures, forward-looking information, and is subject to certain assumptions and adjustments and may not be indicative of actual results. Descriptions and qualifications of such measures and information are set forth in our investor presentation available on our website and our continuous disclosure documents available on CDAR+. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Curtis.

Thank you, Beth. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. We'll begin with highlights of 2024, followed by Riley discussing our financial results and position. I will then provide some closing comments. This has been a milestone year in Gibson's history as we advanced our infrastructure strategy and set up our team for the next phase of growth. Since joining at the end of August, I've been pleased with the progress we've made. Our strategy is simple. We focus on our great assets. We remove unnecessary distractions. and implement a goal execution culture that ensures alignment and accountability. On people, we ensure we have the right people, we are organized correctly, remove low performers, and foster an ownership culture. On growth, we prioritize working closely with our customers, growing around our current assets, and building the growth muscle to ensure that we have a pipeline of projects competing for capital. Financially, we are owners, and we stay committed to the governing principles that provide us a strong foundation. To deliver on our strategy, it is imperative that we have the right team in place for this next chapter. On this note, I'm happy to have Riley Hicks, our new Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer with me today. Riley joined Gibson in 2018 and has held critical roles across several areas of the business. Most recently, Riley oversaw corporate development, marketing, and strategy. After working closely with Riley over the last six months, it is clear to me that his financial acumen and proven leadership abilities will be instrumental in driving Gibson forward. Together, we are committed to creating shareholder value and maintaining our strong investment grade financial profile. I'm looking forward to partnering closely with Riley and I'm confident he'll be a difference maker for the organization. On behalf of the board and the rest of the team, I would also like to acknowledge and thank Sean Brown for his dedication and time with the company. We wish him the best in his future endeavors. In 2024, we demonstrated the value of the Gateway acquisition to our business and to shareholders. I'm pleased to report that we ended the year on a consolidated basis with adjusted EBITDA of $610 million, an increase over 2023 and a new high watermark for the company, driven by a full year contribution from Gateway and record adjusted EBITDA from our infrastructure segment. As we look back on the growth of our infrastructure segment since the transition of our business in 2017, we have now achieved a compound annual growth rate of approximately 14%. Strong performance from infrastructure offset a muted year for marketing, which now accounts for approximately 10% of our adjusted EBITDA and ended the year slightly below the long-term run rate guidance. Overall strong performance from infrastructure and the continued growth of our long-term stable cash flows allowed us to end the year with our key financial targets within our key financial targets with leverage of three and a half times within our target range of three to three and a half times and a sustainable payout ratio of 71% within our target range of 70 to 80%. Based on the enhanced quality of our cash flows and strong balance sheet, we have increased our quarterly dividend by two cents or 5% to 43 cents per share, marking our sixth consecutive dividend increase and continued focused on delivering value to our shareholders. As we look forward to 2025, we're excited to build upon several recent milestones. In January, we celebrated the one year anniversary of taking over operations at Gateway, and the acquisition has exceeded our expectations and is a key catalyst for our company moving forward. Gateway is a unique strategically located asset. Its location in the Ingleside Outer Harbor makes it one of only two export terminals in Texas and three in the U.S. with the ability to directly load a very large crude carrier. Its close proximity to the port of Aransas significantly reduces shipping time and costs for customers. And our unique fungible storage system minimizes the merge costs and inventory carry for our customers. Last year, we reached a new record at the facility when we exported just over 2 million barrels in a single day, which represents nearly half of all US crude exports on average. A significant achievement, which demonstrates the strategic and critical nature of our terminal. and its value in the U.S. crude supply chain and the value it provides to both our customers and the entire U.S. economy. In December 2024, we successfully extended and amended a key contract at Gateway while welcoming several new customers to our facility, all of which are major global crude exporters. We also sanctioned dredging, which will increase the depth at our facility and reduce customer shipping time and costs. resulting in higher throughput and increased revenue at Gateway. With the benefit of dredging, which is underway and expected to be complete by the end of Q2, and the previously announced Cactus 2 connection project, which is also underway and expected to be placed in service in Q3, and along with the impacts of recontracting some key customers, we are on track to achieve our key Gateway acquisition objectives earlier than anticipated, including growing Gateway EBITDA by over 15% to 20% on a run rate basis by year end 2025. In Canada, we placed two new tanks at our Edmonton terminal in service at the end of the year under a 15-year take or pay agreement with Synovus, providing an incremental 870,000 barrels of storage capacity and increasing throughput at the facility as we enter 2025. Overall, we expect to deploy up to $200 million between growth capital projects and share repurchases in 2025, $100 million of which to be predominantly deployed at Gateway. We're also executing on our cost focus campaign, which is targeting over $25 million of cost savings by year end. To date, we have already implemented initiatives that will allow us to achieve approximately 50% of this goal on a run rate basis by year end. with numerous other additional initiatives still being advanced. We are confident that we will achieve this goal by the end of the year. Turning to sustainability, we're proud to report that we recently received our fifth consecutive CDP score of A-, reinforcing our leadership and continued commitment to sustainability. All the while, safety remains foundational to everything we do, and we are committed to Mission Zero. Our goal is zero harm to people. Thanks to this focus and the commitment of our team to work together to keep each other safe, we achieved a new milestone of 8.8 million hours without a lost time injury for our employee and contract workforce at the end of 2024. I'll now pass the call over to Riley, who will walk through our financial results in more detail.