Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rockpoint Gas Storage, Inc. third fiscal quarter 2026 webcast and conference call. This conference call is being recorded, and at this time all lines are in a listen-only mode. I would like to now turn the call over to Rahul Pandey, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Morgan, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Toby McKenna, CEO; Jon Syrnyk, CFO; and other members of the senior leadership team. We'll begin the call with some prepared remarks from Toby and Jon, after which we will open the call for the Q&A session. In order to accommodate as many questions as possible, we kindly request to limit your questions to one plus a single follow-up if necessary. Our investor relations team will be readily available following this call for any additional follow-up you may have. Also, I would like to remind listeners that some of the comments and answers that we will provide today relate to future events. These forward-looking statements are given as of today's date and reflect events or outcomes that management currently expects. In addition, we will refer to some non-IFRS financial measures.
For additional information on non-IFRS measures and forward-looking statements, please refer to Rockpoint's public filings available on our website or SEDAR+. With that, I will turn the call over to Toby.
Thank you, Rahul. Good morning, everyone. We remain focused on operating our assets safely, delivering reliable and high-quality storage services to our customers, and executing our commercial strategy. We are very pleased to share that we have delivered a strong quarter that highlights the quality of our assets and the upside optionality of our business model. This quarter, we delivered a record adjusted EBITDA of $116 million. Our fee-for-service gross margins, which includes our take-or-pay and short-term storage businesses, grew 14% year-over-year. This continues to be the cornerstone of our business, providing stable and contract-based cash flows. At the same time, our optimization business continues to provide upside optionality. By leveraging our physical assets and responding to market dislocations, this business continues to capture additional value and boost our overall corporate-level results.
Looking ahead, we're in a strong financial position to advance capital-efficient and high-return investments to drive organic growth. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet, which positions us well to pursue and self-fund organic growth opportunities as they advance. In terms of organic growth opportunities, our focus remains on advancing high-return brownfield projects, where our two leading brownfield opportunities, which include the expansion of our natural gas storage capacity and the development of our battery storage projects in Alberta. Both of these projects are great examples of how we are leveraging our existing footprint to drive capital-efficient growth. On the commercial front, our open take-or-pay contract season is witnessing strong customer engagement. Our commercial teams continue to secure contracts across our portfolio. Both the contract duration and the rates we are seeing remain very much in line with our expectations across both operating regions.
This reflects our confidence in the underlying demand fundamentals and value of our storage services in the gas infrastructure value chain. In terms of near-market trends, we continue to observe favorable dynamics that reinforce the scarcity and increasing insurance value of natural gas storage. Firstly, we are observing rising stress across natural gas infrastructure systems during weather events and operational disruptions. The key driver for this is an increasingly tighter gas transmission system, lack of storage development, and growing multi-sector demand for natural gas. Just last month, the polar vortex that impacted the Midwest and Eastern regions of North America was a major market event. It created substantial natural gas price dislocations in those markets and drove volatility higher. We're also observing elevated volatility in the Alberta natural gas market as LNG Canada moves through its commissioning phase.
We expect that volatility will continue to rise further as LNG Canada ramps up towards its nameplate capacity of 1.8 Bcf per day. All of this supports our view of higher reliance on storage services during or driving enhanced insurance value. Secondly, it's been a relatively warm winter across the Western regions of North America thus far. Assuming we don't see a severe or prolonged cold spell or a major pipeline disruption, we're heading into the upcoming injection season with relatively high levels of natural gas inventory. This dynamic is positive for storage operators as a result of the following. First, higher exit inventory levels typically put downward pressure on the following summer's natural gas prices, which results in wider seasonal spreads.
This view is similar to what we saw last summer when natural gas supply was supported primarily by wells drilled on the back of NGL economics in the liquids-rich parts of the basin, with natural gas produced as a byproduct. This contributed to oversupply and prolonged natural gas price weakness. Further, by retaining relatively high natural gas inventory in the ground, we can reduce the operating costs associated with refilling our facilities during the upcoming injection months. This backdrop provides both margin advantage and operational flexibility as we move into the upcoming injection season. While these short-term dynamics are important, the long-term structural shifts which are underway in the North American natural gas market are more important than ever. We believe that natural gas price volatility and storage demand will continue to increase due to secular natural gas demand growth across an increasingly constrained North American natural gas infrastructure system.
Growth in LNG exports, renewable power generation, and its associated intermittency, power demand from AI and data centers, and industrial natural gas consumption are all contributing to increased natural gas storage demand and natural gas price volatility. For our shareholders, we remain committed to delivering a competitive annual total return of 15%+ over the long term. This annual total return profile has three components. First, EBITDA growth of 4% to 5% supported by growing recontracting rates. Second, DCF growth of 5% to 6% underpinned by continued investment in capital-efficient, high-return organic growth projects. And third, an attractive dividend yield backed by a conservative payout ratio. With that, I'm now going to turn the call over to Jon, who will provide us with a financial update.
Thank you, Toby, and good morning, everyone. I want to start with two reminders for our listeners. First, Rockpoint reports on a fiscal year that ends March 31st, and therefore we are reporting and discussing our third fiscal quarter for the period ending December 31st, 2025. We have taken this approach to align with the standard operation of natural gas storage businesses, where injections typically occur from April to October and withdrawals typically from November through March. Second, Rockpoint's functional and reporting currency is U.S. dollars. As such, all reported figures are present in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. In terms of our Q3 quarterly financial results, adjusted gross margin for the quarter was $133 million, an increase of 18% compared to the same period last year. This growth was supported by strong take-or-pay and optimization contributions.
Take-or-pay gross margins increased by 27% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher contracting fees per unit of storage capacity. Optimization gross margin increased by 30% year-over-year and benefited from elevated natural gas price volatility, especially in the month of December. Toby mentioned we're pleased to report record Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $116 million, representing a 20% increase compared to $97 million EBITDA for the same period last year. Our business generated $82 million of Distributable Cash Flow in the quarter, reflecting a 34% increase relative to Q3 of the prior year. And lastly, net earnings for the quarter were $88 million compared to $58 million for the same period last year. We continue to maintain a strong financial position. We ended the quarter with net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA leverage of 3.1 times on a last 12-month basis, well below our long-term target of 3.5 times.
Overall, we continue to have solid momentum supported by strong market fundamentals, robust fee-for-service contracts with a high credit quality, longstanding customer base, and our ability to be commercially flexible to capitalize on market opportunities when they arise, as was demonstrated in the quarter. That concludes my remarks this morning. I will now turn the call back to Toby.
Jon. Rockpoint delivered a strong quarter and is in a solid financial position. The macro outlook for our business environment remains very positive for three key reasons. First, as global natural gas demand continues to grow, the role of natural gas storage in balancing supply and demand variations becomes increasingly more important. Second, our assets provide us with a durable competitive advantage as they are large, strategically positioned, and fully integrated with our key natural gas pipeline partners. And third, natural gas market volatility continues to grow due to prevailing structural trends. Looking ahead, we are excited about our journey to unlock long-term value for our stakeholders, and we are confident that our assets will continue to play an essential role in enabling our customers to balance the growing and evolving energy needs of the communities and the regions where we operate.
On behalf of Rockpoint's board of directors and management team, I want to thank all of our stakeholders for their continued support and partnership. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Morgan, our operator, for the Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. In order to accommodate as many questions as possible, we kindly request that you limit your questions to one plus a single follow-up if necessary. Your first question comes from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Hey, morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. I'm hoping you can give us a bit more of a sort of refined outlook for the upcoming year. I know you reiterated the IPO growth target of 5%-6% from higher rates, but fiscal Q3 results exceeded expectations. I can appreciate a lot of that was optimization. I also appreciate that your open season for next year is still ongoing, but we did see a temporary widening of Canadian seasonal spreads earlier this year, and presumably, you used that opportunity to lock in some attractive storage rates. So again, can you just give us a bit of an updated view on the Canadian profitability outlook for the 2027 fiscal year in the context of maybe your overall corporate growth trajectory?
Hey, Aaron. This is Jon. Yeah, thanks for the question. I think you are correct. We did reaffirm our fiscal 2027 results. Ultimately, we did call out the outperformance in the current Q3 quarter as a result of some wins related to our optimization strategy. And we did indicate that in Q4, it's a little bit back to normal operations as you'd expect. I think ultimately, as Toby alluded to, the higher inventory levels exiting this winter has driven that seasonal spread expansion in Alberta. We've now seen that over the last couple of weeks, which is a positive indicator for our business. And as you know, in Alberta, we have a bit more weight across our working capacity to our short-term storage contracts, which would participate in that.
Now, that being said, I would remind you that we have a good amount of fee-for-service revenue already contracted in our book for fiscal 2027. And then as well, a reminder that we would ideally like to see that elevated seasonal spread sustain for a good period here because ultimately, it does take time for us to take off that capacity and transact and contract it. So overall, positive indicator, which we're pleased to see and want to see that sustain for it to have more meaningful impact to our 2027 outlook.
Okay, fair enough. Maybe for my follow-up, you referenced high inventories heading into the summer. How are you thinking about the current NGTL summer maintenance schedule and the knock-on impact of the access to your facilities? Expect more or less restrictions than prior years? And can you remind us what the opportunities and potential challenges that summer maintenance might create for you?
Yeah, thanks, Aaron. It's Toby. Certainly happy to speak to that. So more or less, TransCanada has indicated this summer will look, in our view, a lot like last summer. So there are expected curtailments, especially on injection on the downstream facilities in the East Gate Zone, which is where the majority of our facilities reside. Also, remember, last year during curtailments and years prior, we typically do a little bit better than expected during those periods. And the rationale for that is that during restrictions, because gas is unable to flow outside of Alberta, prices typically get suppressed quite dramatically at times. And due to the size of our facilities and a variety of other tools that we have, we're able to participate in those price dislocations, which gives us injections at discounted rates.
Right now, because the year is shaping up more or less in strong contango, that would indicate that our gas is not needed to be withdrawn for the remainder of the winter. And as such, an example would be keeping gas in the ground today, and we would actually put forward transactions on against the summer, effectively creating summer withdrawals. Those summer withdrawals are highly expected not to flow, and therefore, we would be purchasing them back potentially at discounts this summer. And that's one of the ways that we're able to participate, even if we have physical constraints at some of our storage facilities. Broadly speaking, curtailments in East Gate affect injections. That means that the curtailments will affect withdrawals in upstream of James River. And in that case, our facilities are better positioned to have larger market share during what we think is a more valuable withdrawal season.
So overall, we do continue to see some maintenance in TransCanada as that system debottlenecks for good reason. There's a lot of demand and a lot of supply trying to get egress. Overall, we do believe that these maintenance activities are short-term in nature. Broadly speaking, it does just continue to add to our view that volatility continues to be something our customers need protection against.
Thanks. Total sense. Thanks for the answers, and I'll turn it back.
Your next question comes from Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Just want to focus on the long-term structural shifts for gas storage facilities. Specifically, you mentioned earlier that your recent take-or-pay contract executions had been in line with your expectations. Can you just unpack that a little for us, including reminding us what your near-term expectations are?
Yeah, thanks, Maurice. Ultimately, with that statement, I think we have an internal view on both the total storage value presented in both of our markets. And as a reminder, storage value is a component both of seasonal spread or intrinsic value, as well as the insurance value component. Our comment made was that both term of contracts as well as rates, recontracting rates on our take-or-pay, are in line with expectations in both regions. And I'll just keep in mind that we still have about a month and a half remaining in our take-or-pay open contract season for fiscal 2027. So I think in terms of further color, that's what we're willing to provide at this point in time, given we're still in the middle of the contract season, and we'd look to providing further detail on our year-end Q4 results.
Understood. Maybe as a quick follow-up from me, clearly, this past quarter, you've had good optimization STS results, and it sounds like there's some benefit from the polar vortex in January. As you increase your take-or-pay percentage - and let's think about this beyond just the next fiscal year but longer-term, particularly in Alberta - how do you think about what the optimal mix is between take-or-pay versus the other two, which is STS and optimization?
Yeah, thanks, Maurice. Yeah, so I mean, the optimal mix is still, as we've originally stated. I mean, we want to have a good balance towards being contracted in that target of 85% range. In the short term, given that we are in the middle of contracting season and as LNG continues to ramp up, we are continuing on our contracting journey, as Jon mentioned. But we're also seeing a lot of other dynamics come to play in our markets. And I'm never surprised at the calls that we're getting from different participants, given recent trends. That event that occurred in the Midwest, for example, has really created a realization that natural gas infrastructure is extremely tight and that even with ample amounts of overall working gas storage in the ground, cold events drive a need for high-rate deliverability.
That remains a key focus of ours, and we're getting a lot of inbounds from customers to that extent where they're asking for higher-rate injection and higher-rate withdrawal. We're spending time customizing those contracts. Overall, broadly, we continue to see good interest from customers in order to help us achieve that target. Overall, I'd also say that times are still early. LNG is only in and around 1 Bcf today. It's about halfway towards its 1.8 Bcf target on phase one. We do expect that as that volatility continues to grow in our market, that we'll continue to see higher and higher demand and, more importantly, maybe more insurance value, such as we saw starting in 2014 in the Gulf of Mexico.
We're being patient to make sure that we're contracting at levels that we believe are fair and/or at the premium that they deserve to be, given the overall volatility that we continue to see coming into our markets.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from Rob Hope with Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Morning, all. Can you provide a little bit more color where we are on the development timeline or what milestones we should be looking for for some of the low-cost, high-return organic expansions that you highlighted in the release, specifically the Alberta storage expansions as well as the battery projects?
Yeah, hey, Rob. Thanks for the question. Ultimately, we maintain the same view. We continue to be focused on our brownfield opportunity set, which are those capital-efficient, high-return projects. As you know, in this elevated storage value environment, we have had to continue to reprioritize and progress these projects. And more specifically, I'd point you to our Warwick gas expansion project. So as a reminder, that's what we envision: up to 5 Bcf of incremental working gas capacity. The team's been working hard in terms of continuing to progress well works and reservoir assessment with that project. And that's one that we'll continue to keep you and the market updated with any milestone announcements as we move forward with that. The second one we'd highlight is our Alberta battery storage project. So there's an initial 11 MW of battery storage that we're looking to integrate into our existing storage facility.
And on this one, we continue to have conviction that we have a significant advantage as it relates to the topside infrastructure in place, which we can tap into, which has overbuilt and redundant electrical infrastructure. We think it's a complementary project to our overall base storage business, which ultimately, we remain focused on. And I think with this one, more work has been done over the quarter with our local utility, really just focusing in on the technical design and planning and integration with the existing storage operation. So again, complementary projects. We do envision strong speed to market, and we'll provide further updates with those. But the overall brownfield proposition remains the same, and we have a good suite of projects across our assets that we're being disciplined in doing our work, but we'll provide more updates as we continue along.
All right. Appreciate that. For my second question, a bit more longer-term and broader in nature as well. So far, this winter, we've seen a real dichotomy of weather on the east and western side of the continent. Given this and on the longer-term basis, how are you thinking about the geographic diversity of your asset base and potentially looking for new geographies?
Yeah, so that's not lost on us, Rob, that there could be opportunities at some point for greenfield development. Today, in our markets, we still see a lot of barriers to entry. I think everyone's familiar with the two projects that had been announced that were widely anticipated in AltaGas and Enbridge. And we don't believe there's a lot of expandability in our markets due to the major physical barriers that exist, especially around pipeline takeaway. So yeah, we continue to look at potential other opportunities across the board. We've received a lot of interesting inbounds since we've gone public. And one of the regions that we do see potential growth in is in the Gulf of Mexico region. And the reason for that is that they continue to have an enormous amount of new demand coming into that market, both via LNG and AI and data centers.
And they're trying to do everything they can to get natural gas solutions, which means they do have pipeline projects on the docket. So where pipeline projects exist, we see that as a potential window for natural gas storage to be developed. And given that that region has salt, it could be a region that at some point in the future, Rockpoint would participate in. But it's early days. We continue to evaluate the things that we see in front of us. And I like your point. Over the long term, we could see that as a market that we would be interested in operating in, given we also have a history in that market via our old Tres Palacios ownership. So yeah, that would be a region that we're interested in, and we think it's a great region to operate in, very similar to Alberta and California.
All right. Appreciate that. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Ben Pham with BMO. Your line is open.
Hi, morning. I wanted to continue on Rob Hope's question on other geographies you're looking at. Where does Rockpoint stand on acquisitions, particularly in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico you referenced? And maybe just more specifically, just the checklist you're looking at when you could be looking at M&A.
Thanks, Ben. Good morning. Yeah, I think we want to be careful that that's not a key focus for us. I mean, we are getting a lot of interesting inbounds, as mentioned earlier. It's certainly been a bit of a surprise, I would say, on how many calls that we're getting on different opportunities. We do have an acquisitive background. Our shareholders have an acquisitive background. And at some point, it could be an area that we would like to focus on if it's obviously incredibly accretive and low-risk and makes sense. Today, I would say that the number of, call it low-hanging fruit M&A opportunities, I would say, is still very low overall. A lot of the businesses that own storage, for good reason, don't want to part with it. And we understand that point completely.
This is an area of growth that I think is very synergistic for existing incumbents. And therefore, it doesn't tend to be sort of a non-core asset that we see a lot of interest in divestitures. But overall, yeah, like I said earlier, I think because the Gulf of Mexico does, in reality, have a variety of tools in its toolbox that are unavailable across most of North America: big demand, big supply, but more importantly, actual pipeline development, where pipeline projects have been announced and FIDed and are moving forward, that's where white space exists that a natural gas storage facility could potentially tap in. And therefore, I envision there might be more potential greenfield developments there as opposed to M&A opportunities. So we keep our eye on all of these things.
We know a lot of the folks in the region, and we appreciate a lot of the inbounds and people having faith in us to potentially participate. And big picture, that could be something that we have interest in. But in the short term, it's really important that we stay focused on our brownfield developments. And the rationale for that is that it's incredibly high reward, low risk for us and others to develop any sort of services that will increase rate inside of our fence. Customer behavior is changing. We're not looking for just overall increases in working gas across North America. What customers are really looking for is increased rate. So to the extent that we can focus on areas that we control today, such as compression, dehydration, pipelines, those are areas where we can grow our business meaningfully and fairly low risk.
Our real focus at the moment is on the brownfield side.
Okay. Got it. And maybe on the optimization piece, which is to some extent linked to STS, you mentioned a mild weather leads to wider spreads. And in the summer, you can then relock down to set up optionality for a falling season. But I wanted to clarify. Does that mean then for Q4 this fiscal, then just looking at your commentary, you've effectively maybe removed or there's less optionality in the near term?
Yeah, hey, Ben. This is Jon. I think one of the messages that we had in our press release was related to the optimization win in the quarter. You can think about that as an incremental, call it low-to-mid-teens of gross margin add in Q3 related to that early withdrawal activity in December. But keep in mind that activity, as we're early withdrawing and selling gas into the market, we put a commensurate buy at some point in a forward period. And really, what that does is that also, for the most part, maintains the forward gross margin profile there too.
So, I think stepping back, some of the messaging in the press release as it relates to Q4 was highlighting that we had a bit of an outperformance or win in the quarter, which we're very excited about and continues to prove the thesis of increasing volatility, especially in the Alberta or WCSB. But Q4, given where we sit with high inventories, not just Rockpoint but across the province, as well as warmer weather forecasts, our current outlook is a more uneventful Q4, if that makes sense.
Okay. Hey, thanks. Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from Patrick Kenny with National Bank Financial. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just maybe on the recent application filed in California for Wild Goose and Lodi, any early indications on how that process is going or the timing for approval on track for September, October? And then I guess as a follow-up to that, with some of the outperformance here in the quarter, just wondering how we should be thinking about the optimal funding strategy there just in terms of how you'd like to see the mix between cash and Class A shares.
Thanks for the question, Pat. I think on your first component there related to the CPUC approval, I'd say that was a logical step. That was a joint application by Rockpoint and Brookfield to get that application into the regulatory body. That is a process that has an uncertain timeline, past precedent, which would suggest that anywhere from 12-18 months. So I think in order for us to get that ball rolling, it just made sense. We'll provide future optionality for the business and Brookfield going forward as it relates to that approval. Your second question or follow-up was more so on optimal funding strategy. I guess, could you clarify? Because I think your question was as it relates to cash versus the Class A shares. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?
Yeah, I guess it's more of a capital allocation question here. You get a little extra cash generated in the quarter, looks like, this fiscal Q4, shaping up to be somewhat similar. So I guess in terms of your options there and perhaps accelerating repayment of the term loan or just keeping a little bit of dry powder for California, just how you're thinking about the optimal strategy there?
Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I mean, first and foremost, we view our capital allocation decision-making as a dynamic process that we continue to reassess as the financial and market conditions evolve. And I think ultimately, our goal is to be a good steward of capital and make disciplined allocation decisions. And would just point you back to that capital allocation strategy and rank order hasn't changed. We continue to be consistent with what we've communicated in the past. And ultimately, that is maintaining our strong balance sheet and having ample liquidity. To your point, we're at 3.1 times leverage, already well below our 3.5 leverage target. A reduction of debt is not something that is a high focus for us because we're already very comfortable.
Second, delivering a sustainable and growing dividend would be kind of the next priority for which, again, we're on track and have communicated a sustainable and growing dividend in line with our DCF growth. And then thirdly, the reinvestment in our business, as Toby mentioned, especially focusing on those higher-return, capital-efficient brownfield projects is the next priority. And then I think returning capital in alternative forms, whether that may be buybacks, etc., would be another great use of excess cash flow or profits. And that's something, certainly, that we are investigating and can provide updates as we progress. But that's another pocket, which, again, we'll continue to assess quarter to quarter and make the right business decisions with our excess cash to drive value and returns to shareholders.
Okay. That's great. I appreciate the color.
Thanks, Pat.
This concludes the Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Rahul Pandey for any closing remarks.
Thank you all once again for your time, your interest, and for joining us today. We encourage you to contact our investor relations team with any additional questions you may have. We wish you a great rest of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.