Calumet Specialty Products Partners Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 4, 2023

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Calumet Specialty Products Partners Second Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note that this event is being recorded today. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brad McMurray, Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our Q2 call. With me on today's call are Todd Borgman, CEO Vince Venargo, CFO Bruce Fleming, EVP, Montana Renewables and Corporate Development Scott Obermeyer, EVP, Specialties and Mark Long, EVP, Sustainable Products and Strategy. You may now download the slides that accompany the remarks made on today's conference call, which can be accessed in the Investor Relations section of our website At www.calumetspecialty.com. Also, a webcast replay of this call will be available on our site within a few hours.

Speaker 1

Turning to the presentation on Slide 2, you'll find our cautionary statements. I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, we may provide various forward looking statements. Please refer to the partnership's press release that was issued this morning as well as our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may affect our actual results and cause them to differ from expectations. I'll now pass the call to Todd. Todd?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brad, and welcome to Calumet's 2nd quarter 2023 earnings call. This was a quarter of many strategic achievements. Most crucially, all elements of Montana Renewables, the RD unit, the renewable hydrogen plant The next generation pretreater met or outperformed expectations. Further, our sustainable aviation fuel project came online, Catapulting us from nowhere to the largest SaaS producer in North America. At the corporate level, we continue the process of improving our balance sheet by Successfully issuing unsecured debt, which will eliminate our secured notes.

Speaker 2

Our specialties business continued with excellent commercial execution, While asset operations overcame a series of tornadoes and extreme weather that limited production, ultimately, we generated $7,700,000 of adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, which is a decrease of $10,000,000 from the prior period. Our Northwest Louisiana team spent much of the last quarter the last half of the quarter recovering from weather driven power disruptions. While doing so, we elected to pull forward maintenance and at this point, we have no meaningful planned downtime for the remainder of 2023 And we enter the Q3 running our assets at full rates. At the halfway point of our 3 year plan to fortify operations, Our assets continue to demonstrate an improved ability to recover quickly when challenges arise, and we're also adding redundancy to further prevent or lessen the impacts of external events on our business. Commercially, we're executing across all of Calumet with a focus on the customer.

Speaker 2

Montana Renewables has pointed half of our sales volume to Canada and seamlessly stepped into the SAF market. Our specialties Suite's team continues to capture value from our unique and integrated value chain and our supply chain and planning teams spent the last half of the quarter ensuring customer needs were met as we navigated around the weather and maintenance. Further, it's nice to see a return to a more normal environment performance brands as input costs have stabilized. This is a business that we can grow and we're seeing strong signs of that in our industrial business. Our branded products are well positioned to meet the industry's growing demand For high performing and energy efficient solutions, whether it be Belray products servicing the global mining industry or our new biodegradable biomax products being utilized in the global marine market.

Speaker 2

The 2nd quarter also saw the completion and full startup of Montanari Nobles, And the team settled into the new operation nicely. As we stepped into this new business, it was essential that we quickly proved out the core operating pillars, which we're ensuring the RDU and hydrogen plant for ANIT plant rights, proving our new and leading pretreater technology, demonstrating catalyst performance and meeting SaaS specifications. We've demonstrated all of these core concepts. As expected, we encountered a few blips as the team quickly scaled the learning curve and our commissioning experience feels like minor teething problems relative to the industry experience. MRL's operation is intricate, including a closed recycle and our net zero hydrogen production and serial number 1 of the next generation feedstock pretreater technology.

Speaker 2

As our operators learned the intricacies of this new operation, they quickly got the plant running consistently at the planned 12,000 barrels a day by quarter with the subsequently commissioned pretreater following the same upward trajectory. We took our Board of Directors to visit the plant earlier this week And we're all once again impressed with the quality and knowledge of our local Montana team and leadership. Naturally, we're in a period of rapid learning as we dig deeper into the operation and understand the true ability of our units. 1 quarter end, we both developed some new understanding and confirmed a few of our core 1st and most importantly, we've proven our technology works and our team can operate this facility at expected levels. We are making on spec product right out of the gate and even some of our customers were surprised at how quickly we came online.

Speaker 2

We monitor our catalysts closely It's performing as planned, even as we introduced higher amounts of feed that we treated ourselves. Further, the capacity creep has already started. As you might remember, we don't know the maximum capacity of our RDU as we never filled the unit in Fossil Service, so its true capacity has not yet been tested. Just a few months in, our team has already demonstrated the RDU's ability to run over 13,000 barrels a day. Next, we're pleased with the decision we made to install the pretreater with ARA technology.

Speaker 2

The amount of feedstock flexibility this unit opens is tremendous, Over previous quarters, we spent a lot of time talking about the need for a pre cheater in this business, And we're quickly seeing the field of renewable diesel producers naturally separated into those that have pretreatment ability and those that don't. Last quarter, I mentioned that the difference between treated and untreated feed cost was $0.80 a gallon. Right now, the pretreater advantage is roughly $1 a gallon. At these levels, the ability to process untreated feed is even more important than location for the time being. Fundamentally, the next generation technology allows us to lose 4% less feed than a standard treater.

Speaker 2

At current feedstock prices, That's roughly a 20¢ a gallon advantage. With these data points, we expect the ARA technology will allow us to maintain a structural advantage even within the camp of competitors that do have free treat. We also are learning how different feeds are handled. They run at various speeds, Cause filter changes at different intervals and differ in the amount of time it takes to unload a railcar. These are common items to work through, which will allow us to We're optimizing the drawdown of our previous market purchases of treated feed and we continue to ramp up the pretreated rates as we gained comfort with the new technology.

Speaker 2

Further, we have confirmed that location is as important as we thought. We've seen generic industry margins tightening recently, especially for the treated feeds on the golf. This temporary dynamic has occurred before When markets rebalanced from a short term disruption. While we fully expect it to normalize quickly, our relative location advantage provides flexibility allows us to pivot rapidly in a changing environment. This is true on both the feed and product side of our business.

Speaker 2

On the feed side, the location advantage is magnified by our next generation pre trigger that we just discussed. In fact, we just placed our first order for Camelina, which will arrive in the next couple of weeks. Camelina is in its very early stages, but given its indigenous to Montana, extremely low CI It does not compete with food. This cover crop presents tremendous upside to Montana Renewables. On the product side, 50% of our existing RD is now Selling in Canada, as we see our early theory playing out that our products will migrate to the spot of optimal logistic advantage.

Speaker 2

As the largest single market, California is often a reference point for renewable fuels in our industry. But with Canada sharing a land border with Montana, we fully Our products to all land in premium locations. Next up, the level of interest in SAF is even bigger than we expected And industry seems to quickly be aligning that SaaS is the best, fastest and most practical path to airline decarbonization. With the SaaS market currently being a fully voluntary market, it's been interesting to see the wide range of views that exist on how this material will price long term. For us, Shell has been a great partner so far, and we're pleased with the value they're bringing to the table in these early days.

Speaker 2

As Montana Renewables looks forward to the MAX SAF expansion, we continue to be enthusiastic. We expect to be in a position to share some early numbers on And we believe that with MAX SAF, we can more than double our current EBITDA run rate in 2025. The MAXAF project leverages our early mover advantage, and we could sell all of the product we could make into California, Oregon, Washington, Canada, even Illinois and Minnesota with the new state staff credits. And finally, we're already exploring renewable naphtha and diesel fractions, the use is in our solvents business. We've seen early successes with other sustainable product lines And adding another example of unique and advantaged integration to our specialty platform is exciting as we continue to look for ways to leverage our newly found renewables expertise across our enterprise.

Speaker 2

With that, I'll turn the call over to Vince to take us through the quarterly results. Vince?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Todd. Before we move forward, let's pause on Slide 4 to take a closer look at 2 new brands we recently added to our SBS portfolio. Titan 0 is our carbon neutral wax product and PENclear is an all natural product Developed to supplement our Panerico Beauty Care line. Moving to Slide 5, our FPS business Generated $61,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. Our production volumes were roughly in line with the Q1.

Speaker 3

And as Todd mentioned, In June, our Northwest Louisiana plants were impacted by severe weather. Tornadoes and hurricane force winds We estimate that the events cost approximately $20,000,000 in profitability. We use the unplanned downtime To pull some turnaround work forward, further, we successfully completed a planned turnaround at our Cotton Valley facility. I can say that as of July 1, we were back to full operations across the entire Northwest Louisiana region. The margin environment continues to be constructive for both fuels and specialties here in the 3rd quarter.

Speaker 3

While we have seen and expected a reversion from all time highs we experienced late last year, margins are well above mid cycle averages And we expect that to remain. Our material margin for the quarter averaged $0.77 And $10.21 per barrel for fuel. We continue to be optimistic about the fundamentals of our SPS business And our expectations are constructive for the rest of the year. Moving to Slide 7, our Performance Brands business had another solid quarter, Generating $12,200,000 of adjusted EBITDA, we continue to see price stability in the marketplace. Our production volumes were up quarter over quarter and we saw significant demand in both the industrial lines and from TrueFuel, Our most direct retail offer.

Speaker 3

The 2nd quarter trends to be the the second quarter tends to be the best demand quarter For TrueFuel, as both the spring weather and planting seasons coincide, and we were pleased to see strong demand within that channel. We have highlighted 2 of our other products on the slide as well. We have mentioned Bio Max before As a high performance biodegradable maritime solution that is now also being applied across other industries, The line continues to show real promise in its early stages as more and more customers interact with it. And our Bell Ray brands, which are particularly well known for performance in mining applications, have seen tremendous growth Year over year, our industrial demand is up 35% year to date, and this is a segment of the business that we expect big things from As the world prioritizes high performance and power efficiency, especially in some of the leading megatrends like mining, food and energy.

Speaker 4

Moving to

Speaker 3

our Montana business, you could see on Slide 9 that we generated $12,600,000 of adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. For the legacy asphalt plant, we operated at full capacity of nearly 12,000 barrels per day of production. We entered this year's asphalt paving season during the Q2, which was our first opportunity to utilize The recently constructed polymer modified asphalt or PMA plant. This unique and high quality asphalt It's being praised in the marketplace and we are very pleased with the early sales. The second quarter was also an important one for Montana Renewables.

Speaker 3

During the quarter, we bought our feedstock pretreater online, shipped our first staff volumes And ramped up rates of both our RDU and pretreater. Average production for the quarter was a little over 7,000 barrels per day As our team quickly learned the plant and with plant operations derisked, we were able to end the quarter producing over 12,000 barrels per day. During the quarter, we also announced an exclusive agreement to sell 100 percent of our SAF to Shell, who is also one of our 3 renewable diesel We are excited at the staff opportunity that is ahead of us. We are running off the last of our treated renewable feedstocks And expect to rotate to a slate of primarily untreated feed. These are cheaper feedstocks that will allow us to capture the full earnings horsepower of Montana Renewables.

Speaker 3

To discuss our strategy for Montana in more detail, I'll now turn the call back over to Todd.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Vince. Our priorities and next steps are clear. We entered the Q3 operating well across the board. In specialties, we have some inventory to rebuild, but otherwise they're planning on a strong second half. At Montana Renewables, we'll continue to process what's left of our trade and safety stock And maximize pretreat throughput.

Speaker 2

For the quarter, we've implemented a 1,000,000 barrel challenge at the site for both our legacy and renewable businesses. And through the end of July, we're tracking ahead on both. Our plan and intention is to demonstrate in the Q3 that Montana Renewables sits atop the stack a competitively advantaged renewable diesel and sap producers. Looking forward a bit more, internal process design work for our MAX Sap expansion has already started, And we expect to make a final investment decision near the end of this year. Zooming out, our strategy remains unchanged.

Speaker 2

We're committed to completing the deleveraging of Calumet, unlocking value and increasing trading volume for our unitholders. Our Department of Energy loan process continues and we remain hopeful and confident that we will receive positive news that enables us to go forward with the mass staff expansion That would take Montana Renewables from North America's largest SAP producer to one of the world's largest SAP producers. And last, We continue to expect the potential monetization of Montana Renewables to complete the deleveraging of Calumet. For some time, we've discussed the possibility of a Montana Renewables IPO, private monetization or even both. Naturally, this has created a flurry of interest in the advisor community And even potential investors, and we continue to receive clear feedback that Montana Renewables is a differentiated business with transformational value potential to Calumet, well in excess of the entire company's current enterprise value.

Speaker 2

As always, we'll continue to execute against our stated strategic plan And we'll also continue to actively explore All Pass to best unlock the extreme unitholder value that we believe exists within County Met. With that, I'll hand the call back to the operator for questions. Operator?

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yes. Thank you and good morning. Lots to hit Pierre, but I guess really let's dive into MRL first, maybe a little more clarity on how some of the Advantage Feedstocks at room 3, you mentioned some learning curve issues with that. Is there one that's worked a little better or is priced a little better, Has come up with a better yield? Just sort of curious any more you can offer there?

Speaker 6

Hey, Roger, it's Bruce. Good morning. Excuse me. Yes. A couple of things as you think about the optimization.

Speaker 6

The feedstocks do have different yields, but that's mostly in the split between diesel and SAF. The total distillate yields are substantially Similar across feeds. So the pricing is interesting because there's rotation among classes. Tallo can get an advantage and then corn oil can come in on top of it for a while. So we've got a pretty good supply and trading function, Trying to follow those rotations and we're able to do that more quickly than an average competitor because we're quite close to the sources.

Speaker 6

Yes, most of our feeds are days to maybe 2 weeks away. And so we shift gears pretty quickly.

Speaker 5

Yes, that's helpful. And then the other question I have for you, since we are all attuned to California, the CFS and the other things that drive us to see RD sales in the U. S, what Specifically, do you see in Canada's setup that makes it competitive from either an RD or a SaaS Standpoint?

Speaker 6

Higher price.

Speaker 5

That's an easy answer. All right. Well, that's my two questions. I'll

Operator

And our next question will come from Amit Mehro with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just staying on the feedstock topic, you mentioned Camelina. Could you give us any color on cost advantages Camelina presents for you guys and whether this is a seasonal feedstock option for you or can it be available through the year?

Speaker 6

Amit, the best way to think about that is that Commercial quantities of Camelina are actually not in the market yet. So this is experimentation. We were fortunate to pick up opportunistically some Camelina oil. We really like it. It's in the low 20s Carbon intensity, CI, and dramatically better than vegetable oils and it grows in our latitude.

Speaker 6

So what we imagine is going to happen is that now that this is a cash crop, there will be more and more of it. There is some Crushing activity now and that's simply going to speed up. So if you look at some of our public information, We're forecasting commercial availability to us out in 2025, 'twenty six that shows up in some of our charts. The economics of it, I wouldn't read too much into this because it is an experimentation phase, but This is competitive with untreated feeds. So that's going to be quite a good margin, albeit a small volume.

Speaker 7

Understood. Got it. So this is a little bit more of a longer term development effort for you guys. Got it.

Speaker 6

Yes. We're just to be clear, we're not doing the development. There are 4 developers in Montana now. They're backed by Global majors. I mean, this is very visible.

Speaker 6

And so it will happen. We're just speculating on how fast. So as I said, We put commercial availability to us about 2 years out.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thank you for that. Then on the topic of deleveraging, Do you think going into the second half of Carnegie Pre, you could begin some deleveraging efforts this from cash flows or will you wait for some sort of monetization event to Undertake sort of that part of the strategy.

Speaker 2

Yes. Amit, this is Todd. I think we're certainly going to generate positive cash flow in the second half of year with Montana Renewables now running fully, construction over, so on and so forth. So absolutely, there'll be we would expect cash flow to be available. That being said, I think the major big bang deleveraging event, It's still going to be tied to monetization.

Speaker 2

There'd certainly be the option to delever over time with Operating cash flow. With MRL on and our specialties business operating as well as it has over the past couple of years, we'd expect that to be an But I think we've been pretty clear that we want to complete the deleveraging of Calumet as quickly as possible. Have been talking about it for a while here. We want to get back to growing the business and the most logical path is Minority monetization of Montana Renewables.

Speaker 7

Understood. Thank you, guys. That's all I have.

Operator

And our next question will come from Manav Gupta with UBS. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good morning, guys. My question to you here is, can you help us understand your SaaS strategy? How much are you producing right now? Once you do expand, if you do, then how much SAF could you produce? And then just a quick follow-up is, how much more do you actually Expect to make on an EBITDA per gallon basis in SaaS versus RD.

Speaker 4

So if you think you can make 140 In RB, can you actually make $250,000,000 in SAPS? And I'll turn it over after that. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Hi, Manav. It's Bruce. Good morning. If I take those in reverse order, we've got an undisclosed commercial premium Above renewable diesel, that is very sufficient to incent SAF recovery. The volume part is we've contracted 30,000,000 gallons per year.

Speaker 6

That's a percentage of our yield, kind of 12% to 15%. The expansion case, the licensers tell us we can go to full conversion 100% staff. We think there will be an optimization short of that. So we are tentatively advertising 230,000,000 gallons of SAF Capacity post installation of our yield flexibility project.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question here will come from Jason Gabelman with T. B. Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about the monetization strategy and efforts going on. And specifically, Todd mentioned A couple of things at the end that you're receiving indications that the value of MRL Is higher than the value of the current enterprise value of the company. So I was wondering if you could just elaborate on that a bit.

Speaker 8

How do you translate that into actual value for shareholders? And what does that process look like over the next few months? And then tied to that, considerations for converting To a C Corp, do you see that as a necessary step in unlocking the value? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Let's have Bruce start with kind of MRL valuation and then I'll pile on if that's all right with kind of the last question.

Speaker 6

Sure. Good morning, Jason. It's Bruce. The MREL valuation is reasonably clear. The energy transition companies, The public peer companies are trading in an enterprise value to EBITDA multiple that's visible.

Speaker 6

We expect to lay in with That at a minimum, if not get a premium for the competitive advantages that we've got due to location, due to the advanced Pre Treater Technology and due to the fact that we're now North America's largest SaaS producer. So when you put all that together, That's the public valuation signal that we would expect to target. I'll tell you that the bulge bracket banks we're talking to Have no concern about some kind of an overhang from the parent, which I think is part of what you were getting at. And so we're simply going to stand it up and it looks like it's going to be a pretty straightforward process. How long that takes and the condition of the capital markets will obviously give us a shot at Positioning our timing, but from here in early August, we're presumably Targeting 1st part of next year for closing and funds realization.

Speaker 2

Yes. And I think Just to pile on a little bit, we know there's intrinsic value in Calumet, right? Bruce just talked about some of the value that we'd We can look at comps in the marketplace. We can look at a number of points to triangulate into what Montana Renewables is worth. And we've talked about unlocking that through IPO or monetization.

Speaker 2

Primarily, we think MRL would be very liquid As a publicly traded company and that would certainly help Calumet. We've also said we're exploring optimal paths Like we always do, natural time for all stakeholders, I guess, Jason, is to look at the full strategy would be when we're talking about selling or spinning some of it to create new entity. So could something with the structure be one of those options? Sure. I mean, I guess everything's an option.

Speaker 2

Everyone involved is rational economic creatures and We all want what's best for Calumet. So I guess I'd just say the entire strategy is complex. It takes time. And what we do from here With this large amount of value sitting in Montana Renewables is arguably the most important decision in the history of Calumet. So getting that That's right.

Speaker 2

It's the most important thing and we're going to prioritize that over rushing down a particular path. We'll be talking with the market. We'll be seeking input. And at the end of the day, there's a heck of a lot of value here. So we're focused on unlocking that and we'll go from there.

Speaker 2

Got

Speaker 8

it. Thanks. I appreciate the comments. And then my follow-up just on the margin outlook and specifically Related to RIN prices, following the EPA's decision on the renewable volume obligations '23 to 'twenty five, I think there's a decent amount of concern that RIN prices are going to be volatile next year as the industry brings on New renewable diesel capacity, I know you Calumet has a view of kind of a stable margin for renewable diesel over the medium term. But do you anticipate some elevated bounce of volatility in the renewable diesel margin next year Due to a potential RIN oversupply and how do you think the market kind of evolves through that?

Speaker 8

Thanks.

Speaker 6

Sure, Jason. It's Bruce again. The individual components of the industry margin index that we Couple of things that are talked about last. California is clearly going to accelerate their LCFS reduction profile, so that goes on the credit side. And The more SAF we pull out of the renewable diesel pool, the shorter it is.

Speaker 6

So there's an interaction there. And then the final comment, I don't see a lot of analytics that recognize that Canada is part of our trading market, but it is. And not to be flip, but I'm not sure I care where California goes because we're not going there.

Speaker 8

Got it. And just to elaborate on that last point, could you sell Percent of your product into Canada while kind of sustaining the current margin profile?

Speaker 6

We could. That would potentially not be optimal distribution. But I'm on record for the last 2 years as saying our physicals shouldn't fall more than 100 miles from Puget Sound. If you look that up, that means we hit Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and now all of Federal Canada. So we're pretty excited about the fact that there are small rule differences, normal seasonal patterns and a lot of trading volatility.

Speaker 6

I was a West Coast operator for 12 years before I came to Calumet. There is a lot going on out there. And because of our geographic Proximity, we're close in, in time and we can take advantage of that. So I think the fact that Federal Canada Broad and addressable diesel market equal to the PADD V volumes, probably ought to get more attention.

Operator

And our next question will be a follow-up from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yes, thanks. Good morning again. And maybe just turn off of MRL a little bit here and talk about the other Core parts of the business. Obviously, the weather issues had an impact. Q2 sounds like that's pretty well worked Out of the system by the time we get to Q3.

Speaker 5

But I was just curious as you look at the overall sort of supply demand that's been in here, we've had a lot of Supply chain issues throughout the industry, just how things are shaking out and how should we think about a normal market because it's And what, 3 years since we've seen a normal market, I think.

Speaker 9

Well, Roger, this is Scott. I think a few comments here. I think he hit the nail on the head when he said it. It feels like we're more of a normal market now after a couple Highly volatile years, and we agree with that assessment. We feel like our business right now is about as normalized as what it's been over the past few years.

Speaker 9

As we look at sort of what I would say Roger is additional context here, sort of the headline summary of our view of the market right now, we do see some moderating demand And some of the normalizing margins going on at that macro level, but we remain bullish overall with We've got, as you know, Roger, a diverse portfolio of specialty products, the great base of customers and our unique integrated business Model that continues to be strengthened. Just some final color commentary, Roger, as we look at the business through, I'll say, Three lenses, our Performance Brands business, our SPS Fuels business and the SPS Specialties business. On the Performance Brands, we've been commenting for the past couple of years where we felt like a normal market would be for the business And we're in it now. The demand on the retail side is a little soft. But as mentioned in the call, our Industrial business is very strong right now.

Speaker 9

Margins are, I'll say, normalized within the business. And so we've got A pretty good outlook going forward on the Performance Brands piece. On the Fuels piece, Roger, overall, tough 2nd quarter as fuel cracks, the 2.11 came down $9 although that spiked back up here as we start Q3. But overall, I think inventory is relatively short and we've got a constructive outlook within the fuels business moving forward. And the last piece I would just say on Specialty SPS, this business we see continuing to perform very well.

Speaker 9

We've done a lot of work over the past few years to really And so we feel really good about where we're at. Yes, the margins are normalizing a little bit, but we're still Talking $75, $80 a barrel type of margins, when I think 3, 4, 5 years ago, that number was more in the 30s. So feel really good about where we're at within our specialty business.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks for that. I guess I was a little surprised to hear industrial demand Strong and retail demand soft. It seems like all the other data points we see at macro level would imply the opposite of that, but good to hear. One other question to follow-up on.

Speaker 5

The base oil markets were pretty oversupplied We call it 2015 to at least 2020. That seems to have improved. I'm just curious as you think about Group 1, 2 and 3 on the base oil front, have we seen demand increase or we've seen supply go down? Just What's helped out on that side of the margin ledger?

Speaker 9

Roger, Scott again. Let me start with a comment on the retail and the industrial, just to comment on that. On the retail market, I think consistent with what's going on out there, there's a lot of, I'll call it de risking by the big box retailers. The consumer market has been strong on the service Frans, I think a lot of the retail market has been de risking inventory. It's led to some choppy demand on the retail side.

Speaker 9

The industrial side for our Performance Brands and the question around how we've seen a strong, I think Todd or Vince alluded to in the Earnings statements for the call, a lot of our products are put in the high value markets. So we've got a great brand and great products that go into mining, as an example, that go into environmentally friendly Marine lubricants that go into the energy transition market are high value products are experiencing great demand, great growth Because of the uniqueness of all versus just more of a commoditized industrial play. Now Roger, And this last question on the base oils, a few thoughts. It's mostly on the production side. So I'll call it less supply on the Group 1 over the past 5 years than what there was.

Speaker 9

We like our Group 1s. It's a niche product. We try to stay out of the commoditized PCMO markets and focus more on the high value applications group 1, group 2. So less supply there and there's been some global trade disconnects past couple of years on the Group 3 as well.

Speaker 5

Appreciate the clarifications. Thank you.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Operator

And our next question will be a follow-up from Amit Dayal with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Just following up on your comments about The Montana IPO, did you say you are targeting early next year as a potential window To undertake this, I just wanted to see if that is sort of the timeline we should be thinking about?

Speaker 2

Yes. Amit, it's Todd. We've said that in the past and continue to think that that's reasonable. Obviously, no commitments. We've got to get through the process, get the feedback and kind of make a final decision.

Speaker 2

But what we want to do is be ready. A lot of this is going to be driven by the market and we want to be there when the market is open And if that's early next year, then great. And if it takes longer than that, then so be it. But we want to be there to kind of be opportunistically ready When an opportunity presents itself.

Speaker 7

So should we think about 3Q as a very sort of important quarter for the renewables business where you want to demonstrate the capability of this operation to

Speaker 6

support that outcome?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, I think you bet. I think our focus has been on the Q3 for a while. We've had a number of milestones at Montana Renewables. First, we had to finance it, then we had to construct it, then we had to prove that it all worked, derisk Technology, improve the operations.

Speaker 2

I think we've done all of that and the very last milestone is prove it through a set of audited financials, which We've been saying for a while, we think that we'll do in the Q3 and that continues to be our intention.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Operator

And our next

Speaker 8

Are you planning on splitting out results for MRL for 3Q, just given it's an important quarter and it sounds like you want to provide more And then just a couple other operational questions on MRL. Are you running all untreated feed at this point? And do you expect to be in that EBITDA guidance range that you've previously provided? Thanks.

Speaker 2

I'll take the I'll start it off here, see if Bruce wants to jump in. But yes, it's been our intention to split out Montana Renewables when we reach We reached steady state and like we said, we expect that to be Q3. As far as all untreated feed, I don't think we're at 100 percent untreated feed, we're certainly ramping up, very comfortable with where we've been. The guidance that we've given of $1.25 to $1.45 per gallon Obviously, it's on untreated feed. So as we ramp up and work through The safety stock that we bought in prior periods of treated feed, the blended average EBITDA won't quite be that high.

Speaker 2

But we're focused on long term about 0.2 $5 to $1.45 And we're seeing that pretty much now when we look at it on an untreated basis, right, Bruce? Yes. We remain comfortable with our guidance.

Speaker 6

Remember that these California indicators that everybody likes to focus on Are not that good a capture of our better position. So between Amit's question a second ago and yours, We're committed to proving this in the Q3. And whether or not we're ready to carve out the audited financials, that's up to Vince, but We'll absolutely be doing a special look. So you'll get a clear transparent sense of how that works for us.

Speaker 8

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question will come from Gregg Brody with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, good morning, guys.

Speaker 6

Hey, Gregg.

Speaker 10

Congrats on getting the facility, the renewable facility running As you have. My question is more about your optionality here, with in terms of So is there some limitations to how does this impact the way you're thinking about monetizing MRL, because you're an MLP and is there some limit to how much cash you can take in? Maybe you could give us a little sense of that. And then also there any update on timing specifically around IPO that we should be thinking about?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think The limitation you may be thinking about is around qualifying income. So sale of Montana Renewables Through an IPO or otherwise, it could be qualifying income. I think there are different points of views on that. So if that's where you're going, that's a possibility.

Speaker 2

Certainly, the plan always has been to make Montana Renewables At a certain point in time, the right point in time. So, if that's a step in the process, then so be it. Like I said earlier, I think we have a number of options there as far as sequencing and how we go about that. But we don't see Any major, major road stops and monetizing Montana Renewables from our current position?

Speaker 10

Too much because there's tax consequences for your credit unit holders.

Speaker 2

Great.

Speaker 10

And then maybe just timing on the IPO as part of that

Speaker 2

Yes, I think that's what we're trying to hit on earlier. We've said around Q1, we'd like to be ready. We could probably be ready late this year, but unlikely that the best market is going to be over the holiday season. So, Our plan right now is to get ready and see what opportunity the market provides us. And if it's early in the year, then we'd be able to Take advantage of that opportunity.

Speaker 10

And then just moving on to the MAX SAF opportunity, you said you're going to make a decision by the end of the year. Can you help us think about the capital requirements for that? How you fund it? How does the DOE funding potentially fit into that? And maybe An update there as to what's happening with that.

Speaker 6

Sure, Greg. This is Bruce. I'll take that. The Ultimate throughput potential of our hardware is the first thing to hold in mind. And we're not Sure what the upper bound is because in fossil service, we never filled that unit.

Speaker 6

We're already Substantially above its initial engineering design from when we put it up. So we will find The engineering basis and then we'll stretch it. Our estimates are that's where we get the 18,000 barrel a day throughput number that you've heard us talk about. Optionally, we can install yield flexibility so that that 18,000 barrels a day can have a mix like the current mix or Rotate to all the way or almost all the way Saffield. And that's an incremental capital, incremental return decision That we would expect to execute in the field at the same time.

Speaker 6

So there's 2 decisions, we'd like to just do one project and have one outage to tie it in. That's what's being sorted this year. And by the end of the year, we expect to Have that clarified. Capital is obviously contingent on whether or not we add the yield flexibility. So we've Floated some super notional ranges in the couple of $100,000,000 source of funds for that.

Speaker 6

DOE is very interested. Cash flow from operations is also sufficient. But if we fund it that way, We're interacting with the corporate strategy that Todd covered earlier. So by the end of this year, in summary, we'll have our capital pinned down, we'll have our Investment basis agreed and we'll have DOE as a source of funds that is the mainline

Operator

And our next This question will come from Justin Jenkins with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Great. Thanks. Sorry, guys. I've just got a couple of modeling questions. I think over the past few quarters, we've seen a pretty big working capital build.

Speaker 11

I assume a lot of that's just related to Montana Renewables Inventory, but just the progression here maybe going forward on how that unwinds or doesn't?

Speaker 2

Yes, I think you're right. As we've ramped up Montana Renewables, obviously, we've built inventory. We'd expect that to normalize Over time, this is expensive feedstock. It's expensive product. So, it adds up in a hurry I'm kind of on the working capital front.

Speaker 2

And as we've been building the front end of that supply chain, naturally we see that. And then over time, As revenues come in to offset it, we'll see normalization.

Speaker 11

Perfect. Thanks. And I guess second question is on maybe managing the RINs Liability here in the context of recent EPA decisions and obviously in the context of you guys producing a lot more RINs here with RD production, Just how we should think about that liability going forward?

Speaker 6

This is Bruce, Justin. Good morning. I think The key is that the obligated parties, which are the downsized Calumet, Montana refinery, Which we're referring to as a specialty asphalt refinery now has got a much, much smaller RIN liability footprint. Shreveport remains about the same, but we're simply not very prominent on the RINs landscape. The entire Activity around about 29 legal challenges It's going to give you the answer and you're going to find out the same time we do as the courts rule on these things.

Speaker 6

So I think I'll leave it at that.

Operator

And our next question will be a follow-up from Gregg Brody with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, guys. I got cut off there. Just Is there a timing on the DOE that we should expect in terms of having an answer, but maybe you could talk a little bit about how that process is going?

Speaker 6

Greg, it's Bruce. The timing is going to be up to them, but I'll tell you that we announced we were admitted into The second part of their application process, the diligence is going well. We have a weekly standing meeting And the step in front of us would be the conditional loan commitment that could really come at any time. Again, that's their business and their workload, but we're optimistic that we will Have that cornerstone of our strategic balance sheet planning in place this year.

Speaker 10

And that's helpful. And then just my last one. When you raised the bond deal in June, you talked about Tendering for bonds and actually redeeming the rest of the 24s at some point. Curious how you're thinking about that? Is that something we should expect near term?

Speaker 10

Are you preserving some optionality there as you think about cash for other uses right now?

Speaker 2

Yes. No, we're actually surprised more didn't come through during the tender and we'll go ahead and move forward Like we said, and call those bonds here in the near future. That's fully the plan.

Operator

And this will conclude our question and answer session.

Speaker 2

I'd like

Operator

to turn the conference back over to Brad McMurray for any closing remarks. Yes. Thanks,

Speaker 1

Joe. On behalf of management team here in the room and all of us here at Calumet, we appreciate your time and interest in joining the call this morning. Thank you for your ongoing interest in Calumet. And with that, have a great weekend, everybody.

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Earnings Conference Call
Calumet Specialty Products Partners Q2 2023
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