Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund first quarter 2026 Q&A portion of the conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Rohit Bhardwaj, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining the Q&A session of our 1st quarter 2026 results call. Our press release, financial statements, presentation, and prepared remarks have been posted on our investor relations website at chemtradelogistics.com. Before we proceed, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as well as information on certain non-IFRS and other financial measures referred to today can be found in our disclosure documents filed with the securities regulators and available on sedarplus.com. One of the non-IFRS measures we refer to today is Adjusted EBITDA, which is EBITDA modified to exclude certain non-cash items such as unrealized foreign exchange gains and losses.
While our slide deck and disclosure documents refer to Adjusted EBITDA, we may refer to it as EBITDA during the call. With that, we would now like to open up the line for questions. Thank you. Operator?
Your first question comes from Hamir Patel from CIBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Scott, with respect to the North Van council decision, can you speak more to what the company has done to address the council's earlier concerns that that may position you now, hopefully for a more favorable outcome, when it's next considered by council?
Good morning, Hamir. Well, we have been having, you know, active negotiations with the district, and we did modify our earlier proposal. That proposal will be coming out in public, but it's not out in the public yet. Here's One of the issues that we addressed in there was related to the mayor's comments at the last vote in April, where he discussed one of his major concerns was that this approval would have given Chemtrade the operating rights in perpetuity to produce liquid chlorine. That was one of the major points that I think the mayor and the district had.
That's been a point that we have negotiated. The details of that will be coming out, let's say in about two weeks, when the district makes that public. For right now, I don't wanna comment on specifically what's in there, but it's related to perpetuity, to having the right to produce liquid chlorine in perpetuity.
Right. Okay. Fair enough. I also wanted to ask about, you know, with the new Water Solutions segment breakdown.
How much EBITDA for Water Solutions is embedded in that full year CAD 485 million to CAD 525 million guidance? Just given the rolling contract renewals there, and I know there's a reference to the next 4 to 6 quarters as a timeframe for capturing the higher sulfur input costs, what would sort of steady state EBITDA for Water Solutions look like once those costs are passed on?
I think 2 things to say there. One is there is seasonality in the Water Solutions business. Typically, Q3, the middle quarters are the strongest. Generally speaking, Q3 is the strongest. We have, you know, in our guidance range, we have taken into account the higher sulphur and another input cost like aluminum, that has been factored in. We have made some assumptions as to some moderation in sulphur as the year progresses. Right now, sulphur is at a close to, if not at an all-time high. We have made some assumptions around it. I don't even want to get into specifics around what our run rate Water Solutions EBITDA will be.
You know, as we go through the year, we'll get a better sense of what the EBITDA is there.
Okay, great. Thanks. That's all I had. I'll turn it over.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Nelson Ng from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Great, thanks. Rohit, you talked about the elevated prices of sulfur and sulphuric acid. Can you just walk us through some of the kind of puts and takes related to that in your two segments, water and ASP? Like, I presume it benefits your or we've seen the benefit to your acid business.
Yes.
Can you?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, can you just talk about the sensitivity? Like, I know that sulphur prices increased, like, materially after the Iran conflict. Can you just talk about Q1 versus what you're seeing in Q2?
Yeah. Firstly, it's very difficult to give a precise sensitivity because there are many other factors that come into play. As a general statement, the ASP segment does have a slight benefit from higher sulfur. On the Water side, it really depends on the volatility. If it spikes up very quickly, then it's hard for us to pass that through in real time. We try and do it, there's a bit of a lag. Keeping in mind that when it does moderate, we make that, you know, that profit on the back end. Over a cycle, you definitely come out okay and maybe a little bit ahead.
In terms of where sulfur is today, if you look at sulfur historically, there have been in the last 15 years, a couple of spikes in sulfur. Generally, those are very short-lived. They tend to be about 2 quarters, and then it starts to come off rapidly. This time it's a little different because even pre-war, sulfur was starting to go up. Our initial thought was that it would come down pretty quickly. With the war and the fact that about 20% of the world's sulfur comes through the Strait of Hormuz, this is persisting at a higher level than would be typical for sulfur. The industry experts are expecting that there'll be some moderation in the back half of the year, that it's coming down. Still above historic levels.
Like, we think it's gonna take a bit longer because of this. This is a unique disruption that hasn't been experienced before. It'll probably stay, even though it'll be off the peaks, we expect that and so do the industry experts, it'll still be quite a bit higher than historic levels.
Okay. Got it. Thanks for the color. Just in terms of capital allocation, you have about, I think, CAD 25 million or so of your 2028 convertible debt outstanding. Can you just remind us whether you have the option of cleaning that up and calling the debt later this year?
Sure. The hard call is only the last year, which would be 2027 July. There is a soft call provision. If you are trading for 20 trading days at 125% of the strike price or higher. Strike price is CAD 12.85. If you do the math on that, if you're trading above 16, you can call it for 20 trading days, we'd have the right to call then. That can be done, they can be redeemed after June 30th this year if that condition is met. Recognizing that the most likely outcome in that scenario would be a conversion because rationally people shouldn't enter at par when That debenture is trading at CAD 140 right now.
Short answer is if we stay at these current price levels, we will have the ability to call those in short order.
I think it's also fair to say that, you know, our strategic priority has been to unwind our convertible debentures. That's been a, you know, an initiative for us. We plan to continue to keep that as an initiative.
Great. Thank you both. I'll leave it there.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Hi, team. Thanks for the time. This is Robert on for Steve. just hoping to ask a question here on the UltraPure side. just wanted to see if we could get some more color on the Caledonia, Ohio ramp, how that's going, and on what timeline we should kind of expect operations to be at full ramp rates there. Thanks very much.
Yeah. Hey, Robert. Good morning. We're very happy with how the UltraPure line, let's say, is progressing. We have shared, and I can share with you now, that we'll be selling to 2 of the fabs, to 2 major fabs this year. We're very happy with that. Work is continuing to go on with other 2 as well. We'll be selling this year. That's into advanced node. Now, the other material we will be, we continue to sell into lower grade applications, but we built that plant really to achieve the quality for the advanced node. When I talk about the how we've got qualified, that is for advanced node.
We'll be filling up that line, you know, over the next, I'll just say, couple of years. I think we'll see pretty rapid pickup here over the next 12 months.
Okay. Great. Thanks for the color. Just wanted to flip to chlorine quickly. You mentioned that chlorine demand has improved here, sounds like for seasonal reasons. Just wondering if you could provide a bit more color here on some of the factors driving this improvement overall. Should we expect prices to kind of remain stable here for the balance of 2026?
Yes. With chlorine, two things going on. We're going into the seasonally higher demand period for chlorine. In the summer, there's more water treatment as snowfall and rain over the winter melts. There's seasonally more demand. Also, people are preparing pools and all of that goes into water treatment and the demand for chlorine. That's part of it, which is normal. The other part is that, due to the well, the Middle East crisis, there's an increased demand for PVC in the U.S. and we've seen prices for PVC jump up. Looks like the U.S. is beginning to see exports of PVC going over to Asia, going over to other regions.
That's creating a pull for chlorine, particularly in the U.S. That pull for chlorine is added to the seasonal demand for chlorine.
Just keep in mind 1 thing. If you look at our guidance assumptions, what we said is that in 2026, we expect our MECU net backs, which is the combination of, you know, chlorine, HCl, and caustic to be CAD 195 lower than last year. If you look at our assumption for Northeast Asia, which is a good guide to, you know, how we price our business, that's only down by $20 U.S. year-over-year. You see that big disconnect between the CAD 195 and the $20 U.S. That is coming from HCl and chlorine. And we give you a, you know, a rough idea. Like for example, in Q1, that represented 70% of the year-over-decline.
Our guidance, our guidance range does assume weaker chlorine HCl for this year versus last year.
Okay, great. Thanks for the color. I'll pass the line here.
Your next question comes from Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. It's Evan on for Joel. Thanks for your time. I just wanted to ask on your caustic price assumption. You guys used the CMA forecast for the year, and obviously no one knows the war duration, et cetera, and how this could be affected. Do you have a house view on if the caustic forecast from CMA are reasonable or conservative?
Well, it is.
They're the experts.
Yeah. They are the experts. Couple things that I'll, you know, share about our view and CMA's view. Well, I can share number 1 is there is a lot of volatility that we and the world are seeing in caustic soda prices. In Q1 of this year, what we all saw was that Northeast Asia was had an average price of about CAD 350 per ton. That was about CAD 100 below our assumption for the year. That was obviously is not a good thing. As the war progressed, we saw caustic soda prices in Asia jump CAD 200 a ton. It jumped up to CAD 550.
It looked like that they may stay there for a while. It looked like that may stay there for a while. As this is playing out, China has increased, it looks like, their coal-based PVC production, of which caustic is a byproduct for that. For a period of time, they've ramped up that, and there have been deals done back at the CAD 350 level, which was a surprise and a shock, I think, to a lot of people. In addition to that, the Korean government has stepped in with subsidies, we understand. I understand CMA talks about this as well.
The Korean government has put in subsidies to support their PVC producers and chlor-alkali industry because they, in particular Korea and Taiwan are experiencing difficulties in getting natural gas coming from the Middle East. They're really strained, and the Korean government in particular is helping them. The bottom line is there's volatility, a lot of volatility. We've chosen to use the CMA outlook. That's the best information that we can get. You know, it's gonna be very tricky to be accurate, I think, on a quarterly basis.
I think the important message is that CMA and Argus both call out that by 2028, their view is that caustic soda should be CAD 200 or so higher than what it is, CAD 200 higher than what it is right now. The timing of that's going to be, you know, it'll be almost impossible to get the timing of that right, but that's the direction that it's, that it's headed in their view.
If you look at this year, our guidance assumptions for Northeast Asia index is about $415. Keeping in mind that when we price our caustic, we have roughly a quarter lag. What that suggests when you look at that is that we are expecting the remainder of the year to be in line with where it is today, which is at roughly $450 mark. We're not expecting that the upswing which the industry experts are calling for in the longer run. It's just as far as it's difficult to either predict over a very short period of time. I think we are being quite realistic in terms for our outlook for this year.
There may be some upside, but, you know, again, we have to see how it plays out.
Okay. Thanks so much for the color. Just on one more thing. Would you mind talking about the magnitude of increase you saw in costs of quarterly pricing in Q2? I guess you kind of just touched on it versus Q1. What this might look like if spot prices holds.
Okay. A couple things. As Rohit called out, in quarter two, as we work with our customers to agree on prices for Q2, that's based on the average for caustic from the prior quarter. In Q2, that would be based on what we saw the higher prices in Q1, which the average would have been above CAD 500. However, we had the turnaround in Q2, really that had an impact for us of over 4 weeks of production. You'll have to factor that in the turnaround. We have used the CMA outlook as we look at the second half of this year, we have an average price.
About CAD 450, which is today's. When you look at the spot price, there's typically a range that's given, so we are looking at the midpoint. Currently, the range is as high as CAD 550 on the high end, you know, I think closer to CAD 390 on the lower end. We are in the, you know, typically we go close to the middle. We do have, you know, negotiations with customers. Some a little bit above, some a little below, but it's safe to use the midpoint. We are currently assuming that midpoint remains in place.
Just 1 comment on Q1, while prices spiked towards the end of the quarter, the first couple of months were pre-war unaffected, so that did bring down the average for Q1 a little bit as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Gary Ho from Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one, you made a comment that while you kept your guidance, it's been a bit more challenging to forecast. I was just wondering if you can maybe elaborate, whether that you're specifically addressing maybe one or two different chemicals or is it just overall? Just wanted to get some update on that comment, if possible.
Yeah, sure. This is Scott. The biggest, let's say the most difficult thing to forecast for us right now, is caustic soda. We are relying on the experts, the market experts, for that. By far that would create, let's say the, not volatility, but that's the hardest thing. That could have the biggest impact on us. That's number 1. As we move to the acid business, what I can share is that demand for our regen is strong. Pricing is strong, that's good. Our merchant acid business typically does better. When sulfur prices run up, we're able to recover and expand our margins in merchant acid. We see that.
We feel good about that. At some point we do see sulfur prices, you know, we think sulfur prices are going to drop down. Getting the timing of that, because, you know, that's gonna be a challenge. Regen is very strong. Merchant will do better than average because of the run-up in sulfur prices. Water, on the other hand, we have the acquisition in Polytec, so that's going smoothly. We have our organic growth projects. Those are going well. We feel good about the Water business, but Water is dealing with the significant increase in sulfur and also a significant increase in aluminum. Those 2 together, our team are passing on those price increases to our customers.
Again, as we've said many times before, our prices are annual contracts, so they come in and come out every month. Our team's very actively involved with repricing materials to the customer, but that's a bit of a headwind between sulfur and aluminum.
Keep in mind on the ASP segment, we had said that the back half of 2025 did have some unusual benefits because some of our competitors had supply disruptions. We were able to participate in the spot market and make higher margin. When you're looking at the whole year, just keep that in mind as well, though. That does provide a bit of an offset to, you know, to the sulfur benefit you're getting.
Well, the other thing is that, as we've said, just reiterating what's different this year is we took, we had our turnaround in North Vancouver. The turnaround is over. It was a very successful turnaround. We also have upcoming turnarounds in our acid business in the second half of this year. We've called that out as well.
Okay, great. My second question, maybe you can elaborate on your capital allocation priorities. You've been very busy on your NCIB front. Also maybe just giving us update on your M&A pipeline. I know there's a preference for Water Solutions opportunities. Polytec, I think, was done at very attractive multiples, but.
You know, there was an existing relationship there. Any other candidates, like those within your pipeline?
In terms of our capital allocation, we'll continue to allocate capital obviously towards our distribution. We have been active in the NCIB. We have shared a long-term target in terms of bringing our unit count down to roughly 100 million units. We're on that path as long as we believe that our units are undervalued. We believe that's currently the case. We'll continue with our NCIB. We'll continue with our organic growth expenditures. We have been averaging roughly CAD 50 million the last several years. That money previously went to our UltraPure upgrades and expansions. Those are largely complete.
For the past year or 2, our focus has been more on the water side. Our plan is to continue to invest in organic growth opportunities, primarily water, and there could be some additional expenditures in UltraPure, but those will be the 2 main focus segments. We had 2 acquisitions last year. Those acquisitions are going well. This year, what we're doing is getting those integrated into our system, running well, and then our goal is to bring our leverage back down. As our leverage comes down, then we'll look at another acquisition. We shared that I don't see anything on the horizon this year that would be significant.
We could be looking at, could be the next year or two in 2027 or 2028, but tied to bringing our leverage down. We do have a pipeline of opportunities that we're looking at pretty much all in water. Again, we like the water space. We see water becoming an even larger part of our portfolio, and that'll be enabled by our organic growth expenditures as well as some M&A.
Keep in mind that we've set our target for leverage is 2.5 times or lower. At this stage, we are around that level. We have also said that for something strategic, we could let that get into the higher 2s, so long as we have a view to bringing it down quickly after something. There is, you know, next year there should be some room. We also have said, as we're undervalued, we have no intention of raising equity. That does put a bit of a governor on the size of something we can do. But you know, at this stage, we have the flexibility to focus on the pillars that Scott mentioned, the distribution, the organic growth, and NCIB. Great. Okay.
Thank you very much. Thanks for those comments.
Your next question comes from Zachary Evershed from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. With the raw material cost pressures within the Water segment, how are you balancing the pricing conversations in Polytec or with Thatcher customers, given it's still the first year of integration, you might not wanna rock the boat too much in terms of customer retention with the change in ownership?
Well, look, I would say in the chemical industry, that's I think a routine thing. As your raw materials go up, I think regardless of who the owner of the business is, you have to pass those through. Yes, we have made those acquisitions. Customers are new to us in those cases, but the relationships, even though we are new to Polytec, those relationships have been in place for many years. The customers of Polytec and Thatcher understand, you know, that as raw materials go up, those have to be passed through. Those customers are also buying from other companies, they're seeing those same exact increases. You are right.
We are spending more time and the Chemtrade team is spending plenty of time with the Polytec team, and our teams are fully integrated. We have Chemtrade, I think, has done a very good job, in my opinion, in our opinion, with our pricing strategies and being effective with that with our customers. We're also working with the Polytec team on that, but strengthening those relationships and focused on growth as well as pricing.
Gotcha. Thanks. Then with the turnaround at the Van plant, the Van plant successfully completed, what was the EBITDA impact there for the 4-week shutdown?
We've given the guidance in the past that it's in that CAD 15 million range. Some of it does depend on, you know, what's happening in caustic markets, et cetera. That's probably still a good ballpark number to use. We will give you more insight when we release our Q2, but at this stage, you can use that as a rough guide.
Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over.
There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to Scott.
I'd like to thank everyone for their time this morning. I will remind everyone that we have our annual shareholder meeting starting at 10:00 A.M. at the TSX Center. Anyone that is available, we would invite you to come join us for that. Thank you for your time this morning. I'd like to also say thanks to our Chemtrade employees and have a good rest of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.