Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure Ltd. Quarter Two Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 10th, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Bowman. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, welcome everyone to Tidewater Midstream's second quarter 2023 results conference call. I'm Scott Bowman, Tidewater's Director of Capital Markets, joining me today are Robert Colcleugh, Tidewater's Interim CEO, Brian Newmarch, Tidewater's Chief Financial Officer, and other members of Tidewater's management team. Before passing off the call to Rob to review some highlights, I want to remind everyone that some of the comments made today may be forward-looking in nature and are based on Tidewater's current expectations, estimates, judgments, and projections. Forward-looking statements we may express or imply today are subject to risk and uncertainties, which can cause actual results to differ from expectations. Further, some of the information provided refers to non-GAAP measures. To know more about these forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures, please see the Tidewater Midstream financial reports, which are available at tidewatermidstream.com and on SEDAR+.
With that, I'll pass it off to Rob to discuss some highlights from the quarter.
Thanks, Scott. Good morning, and thank you for joining our Q2 2023 conference call. Tidewater's quarter was very eventful. We conducted our first major turnaround of the Prince George Refinery, which, while on time and on budget, took the facility offline for about 6 weeks. We also overcame the challenges presented by the wildfires near the Brazeau River Complex, which resulted in that facility being down for over 3 weeks. Finally, Tidewater Renewables was completed the construction of the HDRD facility and began actively commissioning units to prepare for commercial operations. Fortunately, our midstream business continued to deliver consistent results during the quarter. Starting with our midstream business, our Pipestone Gas Plant plant maintained consistent runtimes and strong throughput throughout the quarter, which helped to offset the downtime at the BRC.
We have previously discussed, the facility was safely evacuated during May and remained offline until, utility commission, utility companies, were able to safely restore power to the facility. Operations resumed when the power was restored in June. We expect that the financial impact of the wildfires at the BRC to be substantially offset by insurance proceeds. Our natural gas storage asset at Dimsdale achieved record results in the quarter. Given the term structure of the features market, it's expected to continue to drive strong results for the storage assets going forward. Moving to the downstream business, I'd like to thank our operations team at the Prince George Refinery for safely and successfully keeping the turnaround on time and on budget.
The diligence of our operating, operations team allowed us to maintain our excellent safety record on major maintenance projects, as no lost time man-hours were reported in the project. Operations at PGR resumed in June, which was timed to capture the increase in demand for gasoline as a result of the onset of summer driving season. Within the Tidewater Renewables business, several process units of the HDRD facility have been successfully commissioned, with the final two to take place over the next two weeks. First diesel is expected before the end of the month. The HDRD economics continue to remain attractive and the facility will be Canada's first renewable diesel plant. Although we've experienced some minor delays while commissioning during the quarter, the project remains on track with the previously communicated net forecast capital cost of $174 million.
Ramping up HDRD production volumes through the second half of the year, we should see $35 million-$45 million of adjusted EBITDA on the second half of 2023. We anticipate a run rate annualized corporate EBITDA to range from $130 million-$155 million once the HDRD facility is fully operational. I'll now turn the call over to Tidewater Midstream's Chief Financial Officer, Brian Newmarch, to walk through some of our financial results.
Thanks, Rob. During the second quarter of 2023, our midstream business drove consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $44 million, which includes about $8 million of contribution from the renewables business that we report on a consolidated basis, given our 69% ownership stake. On a deconsolidated Tidewater Midstream basis, second quarter Adjusted EBITDA was approximately $36 million. As Rob mentioned, we undertook our once every 4-year, 6-week turnaround at our Prince George Refinery during the second quarter. This project equates to an approximate $45 million investment that will help enhance runtime and throughput at the facility and is the primary contributing factor to this quarter's distributable cash flow number. With the scheduled turnaround at our refinery, our midstream business delivered strong results during the quarter, with RAM, Pipestone, and our natural gas storage business offsetting the BRC wildfire-related outages.
We saw a pickup in volatility in natural gas pricing during the quarter, as these wildfires led to a loss of field receipts in the AECO market during the quarter that drove volatile cash prices. These price dynamics led to a very profitable quarter for our natural gas storage assets due to the additional extrinsic value capture and the wide storage spreads realized. Within our downstream business, we saw the seasonal bump to gasoline demand to finish the quarter, with stronger gasoline prices helping offset the lower diesel cracks. Despite softening diesel prices, PGR 2-1-1 crack spreads averaged about 85 million, sorry, CAD 85 per barrel for the quarter. Our first half, 2023 capital investments were driven primarily by the turnaround and are weighted to the first half of the year. Second quarter maintenance capital included unbudgeted costs at the BRC incurred due to the wildfire impacts.
Despite the additional maintenance costs during the quarter, we still see our deconsolidated maintenance capital budget remaining within our previously guided range of CAD 55 million-CAD 65 million, although we now expect to be at the higher end of this range. With PGR resuming operations, summer driving season in full swing, and the imminent completion of the HDRD facility, we expect Tidewater's annual consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to be within the range of CAD 190 million-CAD 210 million for 2023. We will refine this range once commercial production of renewable diesel commences at the renewables HDRD facility. I will now pass things back to Rob for some closing remarks.
Thanks, Brian. The second half of 2023 is, will be transformative for Tidewater. HDRD will be generating Canada's first renewable diesel sales. Our PGR refinery is at full production and capturing strong crack spreads, our core midstream assets are expected to continue to deliver strong results. Finally, we are nearing the completion of our structured asset review, and we'll be speaking to the results at that time. I'll now ask the operator to open the call up for questions.
Thank you. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Questions will be taken in the order received. If you wish to withdraw from the question queue, please press the star followed by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Our first question comes from Robert Hope from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. You know, good to see some strong results with the natural gas storage assets. You know, when you take a look at, you know, these assets moving forward, you know, how long do you think the strength could persist? Then secondly, do you view them as kind of core and integrated to your base business, just given we have seen a number of storage assets been transacted in the last couple of months?
Sorry, I apologize. We had a little technical difficulty. Could you repeat the question?
Oh, yes, of course. Just on the natural gas storage assets, 1, do you view these as a core asset, you know, or could these be for sale, just given the fact that we have seen a number of them transact? 2, the strong margins that we saw in Q2, you know, how much of that was just kind of the puts and takes during the quarter with the fires, and how much of that will you think will persist into the back half for the year and into 2024?
Yeah. Let me take the last half of that question first. We are, yeah, we, we do like storage. We think that the quarter was sort of just the first quarter of a number of strong ones, and that's just set up less by the extrinsic value, but more in the intrinsic value of the spreads going forward. We're quite confident that we're gonna see similar numbers on our, particular on Dimsdale. It's more of a clean gas storage asset going forward. Not only that, but, you know, it does look like the North American market is short on gas storage in general, just given the volume of production that's up there.
It's doubled, you know, doubled over the last 7 years in North America, gas production, and we've actually seen a decrease in the amount of gas storage. I think this is a structural situation. In fact, we haven't even seen the very low gas prices this summer that we and others had anticipated from the NGTL maintenance cycles. And that's partly because they happened during the fires. The fires took things offline. Anyway, yeah, we, we like it. Could it be for sale? As we've said before, all of our assets, you know, we want to understand where the market values our assets and compare that relative to where we value them. The decisions be made on the asset review as we when we announce them.
Everything is, everything is in the process to be investigated.
All right. Appreciate that. Then maybe diving into the 2023 guidance a little bit more, easier for us to strip out kind of LCFS. When you take a look at the remaining variables, you know, is the key driver here just, you know, crack spreads at the refinery, or are there any other issues we should be looking at? I guess, you know, is Q4 going to be more indicative of kind of the run rate for 2024?
Yeah. Obviously, cracks and the margins of the refining business are kind of the biggest factor here on how we look at the second half of the year here. You know, I do I think there's any big changes coming? Nope. We're really happy with the way that our, our midstream, our GMP assets are performing. As we've mentioned before, if we take a look at kind of what gas storage did during the quarter, there was a chunk of extrinsic value capture that I spoke about before, plus, we've, we've locked in a decent chunk of storage spreads here into Q3. Those do moderate slightly into Q4, but I think kind of the run rate seems in line with how we should how we think about things.
... sorry, would Q4 be a good run rate into 2024?
Yeah, that's, that's a, a fair assumption.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Andrew Kuske from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Maybe just on the, the PGR turnaround. You know, when you got under the hood of everything, were there any major surprises in the turnaround? Do you expect to see any benefits from any kind of incremental capacity creep or just minor debottlenecking that, that you've benefited from, that you're gonna see in, in quarters ahead?
Yeah, I think it's pretty minor. We wouldn't anticipate seeing much of a increase in capacity. There, there are a couple of debottlenecking items that were planned. They didn't come out as a result of the turnaround, but they were planned to coincide with the turnaround, but they're quite small. There really wasn't any surprises, which frankly, was a surprise. You know, it was our first turnaround in four years since we've owned the refinery, and we were kind of anticipating to find some issues, and we really didn't. We're very happy with the result. Yeah, it just, it went quite smoothly. It's a nice, nice change for us.
Well, that's always good news. Maybe just shifting gears a little bit, part of this ties into Pipestone. Typically, like, the bookends of producers, you know, those that really want to own processing on their own and those that only want to use processing, you know, whether they're contracted or they're more open. Could you give us just some color on your conversations you're having around, you know, expansion and just in general, producer health, and how that changes the conversations themselves?
Yeah, you're talking with regard to phase II of Pipestone?
Yes.
Yeah, I, I'm happy to get into that, but, we're gonna save those discussions, for when we have, discussions around our, review process. It all ties together in terms of, you know, assets that we're looking at, as well as, where we're gonna be spending our capital. To be clear, I expect to be able to do that, sooner rather than later.
Okay, appreciate that and respect that. If I could sneak in maybe one more just on the natural gas price volatility. You know, what we're seeing in the power market in Alberta is obviously the renewable influence causing a lot more intraday vol in power markets, and part of that would cascade into the gas price volatility. Are you seeing something similar, and is that really affecting the value of storage spreads?
Not really, to be honest. We are seeing, we... And we experienced this, pretty much anybody who uses power in this province has been seeing that volatility is pretty crazy on the power side. We don't see it reflected as much on the natural gas side. It's fairly, it's fairly normal vol there. You know, I-- we were anticipating to see some real volatility just as a result of maintenance, on the, you know, on the system maintenance in Alberta. We didn't-- we haven't really seen that, which is good for producers. But... That was a result, primarily the forest of the fires, and a lot of the maintenance took place at the same time when that production was taken offline, so it, it, it smoothed itself out.
We see the value of storage being structural, less of a. You know, the volatility helps. You know, if you own storage, you love to see that volatility, obviously. There's a structural shortage of storage out in the market, and especially given the growth that we've seen over in natural gas over the last, you know, 7+ years. That's where we see the real value, because that's enduring value that you can capture over time, and it's more predictable. Then you can trade around that to capture some of the, you know, what we'd consider extrinsic value from the volatility, any volatility that does show up, you know, whether that's weather-related or maintenance or anything else.
Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate the color.
Our next question comes from Robert Kwan, from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I know you don't want to get, excuse me, into the, the asset review, which makes sense. I'm just wondering, when you do make the announcement, do you intend that it's going to be, you know, here's the path that we're gonna move forward, or will it be something more definitive to the extent that you're gonna divest, that there'd be an agreement with the counterparty?
Yeah, I'm, I'm not exactly sure what you're gonna get, but I am pretty sure that I don't wanna go down that road at all right now, Robert. We will have some answers to you. We know that they're they are owed. I don't anticipate it being very long. You won't have to wait long.
Okay, that's fine. If, I can just ask about the guidance on the CAD 190 million-CAD 210 million. There, there is a statement that you're gonna, you know, update based on the RD commissioning. Just to be clear, though, does the CAD 190 million-CAD 210 million include the CAD 15 million-CAD 25 million that was in the renewables release? Is this.
Yes, it does.
just standalone? Okay.
So-
Okay. The last question just is on the quarter, and you talked about expecting to get insurance proceeds the BRC, did you book any provision to receive that in Q2, or is this a completely impacted quarter and any proceeds will be booked when, when received?
Yeah, there, there was a minimal accrual for insurance proceeds. We, we think there's more to come. Obviously, that's still a live discussion with the adjuster. We, we took a conservative approach, in my opinion, as to what was recognized during the second quarter.
Okay. That was an accrued amount, that wasn't anything that was paid out early?
Correct.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you have a question, please press the star followed by the one . Our next question comes from Robert Catellier from CIBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I'd like to go back to storage for a minute, please. I just wonder, in light of your bullishness on that, are you doing anything to position the company for more natural gas storage exposure? In other words, are you investing more in your storage position, in anticipation of good spreads?
We don't have anything planned right now. As you, you, I think, know that Dimsdale is our biggest storage asset, and to really make that effective, that asset needs to be needs to see some capital. It's scaled to be closer to 100 BCF, and that's gonna take some capital to get there. We don't have any plans outside of that asset or our other storage assets that we've got at the BRC.
Okay. Then, just with respect to the wildfires, do those change how, you use, you view risk and manage risk, either operationally or financially through leverage?
That doesn't change. That, that alone doesn't change anything for the, with regard to the way we view it. We have been pretty clear, I think, that we would like to see our leverage lower than it is. That's, you know, frankly, it's more a function of having crack spread exposure at the refinery, which is, you know, has some volatility associated with it, probably more so than, certainly than the processing side or some of our other midstream assets. The fire was, it was certainly important for us to go through that kind of an exercise with regard to our emergency response plans and making sure we, you know, evacuated well, and we could track all of our workers and all of their families as Drayton Valley was also evacuated.
was informative to see how close that fire could get to that facility. It was quite remarkable, the wall of flames that was surrounding the facility as our workers were evacuating, and to see the absolutely limited amount of physical damage that happened, even though the fire was that close. These are, these are well engineered and well-thought-out plants. Not just us, but I've had this discussion with a number of other operators of gas plants in our province and in BC, and it is remarkable how well some of these assets can survive those types of events.
Okay. Thanks, Rob.
Our next question comes from Curtis Jensen, from Robotti & Company. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Can you hear me okay?
You bet.
Anyway, good work getting through the PGR turnaround and managing through the fires. I just kind of a question about Pipestone. It seems to me there's, there's probably definitely customer demand for an expansion, but I'm not sure how we're still talking about it, because it, it occurs to me that, you know, Tidewater really is... I mean, you're in a capital-intensive business. That'd be obviously, a very capital-intensive project, and yet you have a, a massive cost of capital disadvantage. I guess I'm missing something about how we're still talking about expanding it, without, without, you know, a much larger partner who's got a lower cost of capital or something.
I, I guess one of my questions would be, one of your customers, Pipestone, announced it's gonna be acquired by Strathcona, and I'm wondering what implications does that have for your relationship? I mean, in the context of an expansion there, is Strathcona somebody that might bring capital to a phase II?
Yeah, no, I understand where you're coming from, and I certainly understand, we've, we are, you know...
Am I in the middle of hypotheticals?
A little bit, but it's, it's a fair question. You know, my answer might not be totally satisfactory, but it, it, you know, a lot of this will come to light through our asset, strategic asset review, which is, will be announced shortly. Yes, obviously, cost of capital is a very important thing when you're involved in large, especially large capital projects. It, it doesn't, it isn't missed by us, your comments, and we think that the asset review will help to clear things up.
All right, thanks a lot.
You got it.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand it over to Scott Bowman.
Actually, we just had one more question back into the queue here, so if you don't mind doing one last circle up for questions, that'd be great. Thank you.
We have Patrick Kenny with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah. Hey, guys. Sounds like the asset review process is nearing completion here, and of course, the HDRD will be fully up and running soon as well. Not to get into any details, but can you just remind us where you ultimately want to land, both from a capital structure standpoint, and as well from a corporate structure perspective? I'm just wondering what, what the bull's eye looks like, you know, say, 6 to 12 months out with respect to the consolidated balance sheet and structure.
Yeah. Maybe I'll start off with kind of targets on, on capital structure, level, levels of leverage. I, I think we're of the view that less, less debt is better. That's obviously become more obvious as we've seen floating rates increase and our cost of capital increase right alongside with it. I think just having lower debt levels increases your degrees of freedom on strategy and how we kind of focus the business. I think as, as, as we've spent kind of the last, call it six months, with, with Rob in seat here, there's been a enhanced focus on cash flow generation, thinking through our cost structure, thinking how we can generate cash from each of these assets.
I think as, as we've spoken to throughout this call here, as we work through our portfolio review, which assets make, make the most sense to me in this business and which have value, higher value, potentially in, in other hands here. I think that's all kind of part and parcel of the strategy. I think there's a core possible business here that we're very focused on, maximizing. Then, as I said, we've got some work to do on the balance sheet that, that, that, that, that is a priority for us.
I think it, it ties into the asset review, as you mentioned, Patrick. We've got-- When we come out of this, if we've got a different mix of assets, we've got to look at what type of cash flow comes out of those assets and the volatility around it. You know, are they gonna be-- Are you left with mostly take-or-pay type of contracts, in which case, you know, your, your appetite for some leverage is probably a little higher. If you're more commodity exposed, then our appetite will certainly be lower for, for leverage.
I guess, the second part, would you guys be leaning towards simplifying the corporate structure, just given, you know, some investor feedback, market appetite, or would you be averse to, I guess, adding complexity to the structure?
Well, in in my mind, a lot of the complexity comes from consolidating our results with LCFS, with the renewables business. We've always said that it is not our end goal to own 70% of the renewables business, sort of as in an ongoing way. We also look at that asset as probably most investors look at it. We think we're at the finish line. We think it's tremendously undervalued, certainly, relative to anything else in that space. Until we get the thing up and running and cash flowing on a steady basis, we're probably gonna see a discount.
I think that's probably the easiest way to reduce some of the complexity in Tidewater Midstream, is to, you know, get to a more normal holding position and to sort of Well, eventually stop consolidating those results. I think that would go a long way to simplifying things. I'm not sure how long it will take, though.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Got it. We'll, we'll let it run its course. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand it over to Scott Bowman. Please go ahead.
Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. The team is available to address any outstanding items with our contact information at the bottom of this morning's press release. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes.