South Bow Q1 2025 Earnings Report

South Bow EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.47
• Consensus EPS: $0.42
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.05
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

South Bow Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $498.00 million
• Expected Revenue: $527.00 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$29.00 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: -8.50%

South Bow Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/15/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

South Bow (NYSE:SOBO) Corp is a strategic liquids pipeline company. It is a new liquids-focused midstream infrastructure company. South Bow Corp is based in Canada.

South Bow Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• SouthBow delivered a strong Q1 with normalized EBITDA of $266 million, maintained its debt metrics amid market volatility, completed the Blackrod Connection pipeline scope and ERP implementation, and declared a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share.
• The Milepost 171 incident was quickly contained to a single agricultural property, the line was back in service within days under PHMSA pressure restrictions, and most costs are expected to be covered by insurance or through the variable toll structure.
• SouthBow reaffirmed its 2025 guidance of $1.01 billion in normalized EBITDA, narrowed upside/downside cases to +1%/–2%, and expects to exit the year with a net debt/EBITDA ratio of about 4.8× before deleveraging begins in 2026.
• The company continues significant investments in pipeline integrity and safety, with in‐line inspections, a metallurgical analysis by June, and an independent root cause failure analysis due late summer to drive remedial action plans.
• Capital allocation remains focused on strategic growth—leveraging existing infrastructure in North America’s strongest corridor—with the Blackrod project ramping in 2026 and a long‐term target of 2–3% EBITDA growth.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Southwell First Quarter twenty twenty five Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that this conference is being recorded.

[Operator]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Martha Wilmot. Please go ahead.

[Martha Wilmot, Director - IR at South Bow]

Thank you, Kevin, and welcome, everyone, to SouthBow's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. With me today are Bevan Wirsba, President and Chief Executive Officer Van Dafoe, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Richard Pryor, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. We also have additional members of our leadership team in the room to help with the question and answer session. Before I hand it over to Bevan, I'd like to remind listeners that today's remarks will include forward looking information and statements, which are subject to the risks and uncertainties addressed in our public disclosure documents available under SouthBow's SEDAR Plus profile and in SouthBow's filings with the SEC. Today's discussion will also include non GAAP financial measures and ratios, which may not be comparable to measures presented by other entities.

[Martha Wilmot, Director - IR at South Bow]

Finally, I'll ask our analyst callers to hold themselves to two questions each to keep the discussion moving along. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bevan.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Thanks, Martha, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today, as we have many items to update you on since our last call. First, I would like to touch on our first quarter results, as we had a solid financial start to 2025 and accomplished important milestones on our road to independence. We now have two quarters under our belts and the financial resilience of our business is becoming increasingly evident, thanks to our highly contracted assets and the fundamental need for our services. In the first quarter, normalized EBITDA was $266,000,000 and we successfully maintained our debt metrics despite a volatile market backdrop.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

We demonstrated strong project execution in completing the pipeline scope of our Blackrod Connection project and implementing our new enterprise resource planning system. We also demonstrated our commitment to returning value to shareholders through our latest quarterly dividend declaration of $0.50 per share, which will be payable on July 15 to shareholders of record on June 30. SouthBow's journey began in July 2023, and we have consistently achieved every target set as we transitioned into an independent company. The team has done an outstanding job demonstrating our ability to operate independently, and we will continue doing so in the future. Moving on to Milepost one hundred seventy one, I've spoken with several of our shareholders since the unfortunate incident in North Dakota, and I shared with them that maintaining safe and reliable operations was the most important goal we had to meet in becoming an independent company.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

I can't underscore the significance of our systems' safety and reliability enough, which is why we have shown it in our actions through significant investments in our integrity programs over the last several years. We will continue investing in these programs as we work through our remedial action plans. As I have said many times, no incident is ever acceptable at South Bow, but I'm proud of the way our team came together demonstrated South Bow's ability to execute and get our system back up quickly and effectively, while meeting the expectations of our regulators, the surrounding community, and local leaders. The collaboration I witnessed throughout our organization showed our strength to be agile and perform as a standalone entity while coming together to find answers. This unified partnership will continue as we complete our investigations and more importantly, find solutions to prevent future incidents.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

At South Bow, we have significant financial protections to safeguard our cash flows during incidents. 90% of our EBITDA is contracted over the next seven years, meaning there is no commodity price or volumetric risk in our base business. Our transportation service agreements contain provisions which enable continued collection of fixed tolls during outages, and we have insurance that will cover most of the costs associated with such incidents. Taking that into consideration, we are reaffirming our normalized EBITDA guidance of $1,010,000,000 for this year. You'll hear more on that in later remarks.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

With that, I will now ask Richard and Van to walk through the more critical aspects of the incident and how we are managing the business operationally and financially. Richard?

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

Thanks, Devin, and good morning. So today, I'll share the progress we've made in our response to the Mild Pulse one hundred seventy one incident, as well as next steps as the root cause failure assessment is completed and we address PHMSA's corrective action order. I'll start with a few details about the incident itself. On the morning of April, our operational control center detected a pressure drop on a Keystone segment in North Dakota and immediately began implementing a system wide shutdown. Almost simultaneously, we had field technicians on-site in North Dakota that initiated an emergency shutdown at the upstream BOB station.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

The speed at which our teams responded allowed South Pole to protect the surrounding community and contain the environmental impacts. During the incident, we worked closely with the regulators, local leaders, landowners, customers and the community. We mobilized over 300 resources during our around the clock response and our field crews successfully contained the release to a single agricultural property without impacting sensitive habitats or any waterways. And over the following six days, our engineering and construction crews replaced the damaged section of pipe. The team did an outstanding job returning the line to service late on April.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

We've now substantially recovered the 3,500 barrels of released volume, we injecting more than 85% back into the pipeline with the remainder being disposed at an approved treatment facility. As of last night, we have completed removal of all contaminated soil from the site and we forecast to reclaim the site with clean soil in the coming weeks. Our insurance policies are expected to largely cover the cost of the incident. Today, we're operating the pipeline under pressure restrictions in accordance with the PHMSA Corrective Action Order. With these limitations, we still expect to meet our Keystone contractual commitments of 585,000 barrels per day.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

Our effective operations and strong system availability evidenced by a system operating factor of 98% in the first quarter provide us confidence that we'll be able to continue delivering our contracted volumes. While still early in the root cause failure analysis, I can confirm the pipeline was operating within its permitted and design pressures at the time of the incident and was not subject to unusual operating conditions. As for next steps, we are coordinating closely with PHMSA to progress the incident investigation, develop remedial work plans and implement enhanced integrity programs going forward. This includes a metallurgical analysis of the pipe feature that we expect to be completed by June, and the root cause failure analysis conducted by an independent third party that is expected to be completed by late summer. We are also working with our suppliers, service providers, engineers, and other third party experts to determine the cause of the failure.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

As we are able to provide more information about the root cause, we will share our findings with our regulators as well as our industry peers, so they can also learn from the incident. While we have a lot of work ahead of us, we'll continue prioritizing the integrity of our pipeline system to ensure its safety and reliability as we always have. With that operational update, I'll let Van talk to Southpole's financial outlook for 2025.

[Van Dafoe, SVP & CFO at South Bow]

Thanks, Richard. Southpole's business is underpinned by highly contracted cash flows that are stable and predictable. Approximately 90% of our normalized EBITDA is contracted for over seven years, which means the variability in our business is limited to our uncommitted volumes and our marketing business. South Bow is reaffirming our 2025 outlook for normalized EBITDA at $1,010,000,000 We modeled several scenarios relating to Milepost one hundred seventy one incident and are adjusting our range to account for those effects. As Richard mentioned, we expect to deliver on our committed contracts for the remainder of the year, though we expect to have limited capacity to transport any uncommitted or spot volumes on our Keystone system with the pressure restrictions in place.

[Van Dafoe, SVP & CFO at South Bow]

With that, we are adjusting our upside case to 1% from 3% of our base case. Our downside case has improved slightly after delivering a strong financial start to the year and generating $266,000,000 in normalized EBITDA during the first quarter. We've also gained better clarity into tariff impacts on our business and our ability to mitigate that exposure. As a result, we are adjusting our downside case from a decrease of 3% to a decrease of 2% of our $1,010,000,000 base case. With our relatively unchanged outlook on normalized EBITDA, we expect to exit 2025 with a net debt to normalized EBITDA ratio of approximately 4.8 times, increasing modestly through the year as we advance our Blackrod Connection project and complete spin off activities.

[Van Dafoe, SVP & CFO at South Bow]

Our deleveraging journey will begin as the cash flows associated with Blackrod start in 2026 and increase through 2027. I'll now hand it back to Bevan for closing remarks.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Thanks, Fan. As Richard indicated, our system safety and reliability remains our first priority. And as Van pointed out, the resiliency of our base business provides stability in our cash flows. As we continue to learn about the MyoPost one hundred seventy one incident, we are committed to providing transparent updates to all our stakeholders. This is fundamental as we advance our industry practices going forward.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Finally, South Bow remains firm in our capital allocation priorities and will maintain our risk managed approach to delivering shareholder value. Our continued focus on strengthening our investment grade financial position is paired with pursuing growth that leverages our existing infrastructure in the most strategic corridor in North America, while connecting the strongest crude oil supply to the strongest demand markets. I'll now ask the operator to open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Our first question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan Securities. Your line is open.

[Jeremy Tonet, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Hi. Good morning.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Good morning, Jeremy.

[Jeremy Tonet, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Thanks for the details today. I was just hoping maybe to dial in a little bit more, I guess, on the range of outcomes here. I think there was a line in the press release talking about next steps forward here post the incident could further impact the company's financial and operational outlook for 2025. Just wondering if you could walk us through maybe a little bit more of the open items that could have more of a meaningful impact at this point, given everything that you know so far.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah, Jeremy, I think it's really important for us to focus on the fact that really our outlook is our base business is fully underpinned and 90% of our EBITDA is contracted. And so we have no further risk on the base business. As per steps going forward, Richard highlighted the great progress of having no further contaminated soil on the site and also working really closely with our regulators. So we're working through the root cause failure assessment, you know that will give us good insight into how we may adjust maintenance activities through the year. But as Van pointed out, we've modeled those scenarios in assessing what our range could be.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

So the few steps are simply to work closely with our regulator, look at what our changes to our pipeline integrity maintenance program will be through the year, and then continue to operate at the levels that we have been so that we can move our contracted barrels.

[Jeremy Tonet, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Okay, got it. Thanks. And maybe just taking a step back here as far as, I guess, what's known with root cause so far, and I guess, you know, other historical incidents in the past, if there's any kind of, you know, bigger thoughts with regards to preventing incidents in the future or across the system, any other learnings here, I guess, that could derisk, I guess, the future?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah, Jeremy, pipeline integrity and the safety of our systems is our number one priority. And we've invested a tremendous amount over the last five and a half years. We've done a significant number of in line inspections, and we've been working very closely with our in line service providers. And we anticipate doing more in line tests very quickly on the system. And the combination of evaluating all of that new data with the historical data will be key in moving our business forward and ensuring that we can remain safe and reliable going forward.

[Jeremy Tonet, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Got it. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Thanks, Jeremy.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Robert Hope with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

[Robert Hope, MD - Equity Research at Scotiabank]

Good morning, everyone. Just going to the corrective action and just maybe on the pressure restrictions and the duration there, is it fair to use the prior pressure restriction as a proxy for what you think the duration will be for this one? I guess really it seems and we do appreciate the 2025 guidance, but I'm just wondering as we take a look to 2026, whether or not you think you'll be able to do any spot volumes there.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

It's Richard Pryor here. I'll jump in. I'd just say at this stage, it really is too early to speculate around the timeframe on how, you know, the investigation will unfold, exactly what it will determine and then and then how long it will take to work through the remedial work programs. Like, I would say, you know, if you look at the multiples 14 incident, you know, like because of the the locational factor and some of the things that we had to go out and investigate in the field, it was that was a fairly protracted timeframe because because some of the investigative work was quite complicated. If you look at this specific circumstance, doesn't share some of those same complications.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

So I don't know that I necessarily take that proxy and just apply it to this. But I don't want to prejudice the investigation. We do need to work through the metallurgical studies and the RCFA. We expect we'll have the RCFA completed by the third party in the summer timeframe. I do want to mention though that these investigations are typically quite dynamic in that we will learn more as the investigation is unfolding, you know, versus waiting to hear everything mid summer.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

In parallel with the investigation, our own internal engineers and integrity providers are also starting our own remedial work program. As Bevan mentioned, we're going be running in line inspection tools and completing investigative digs here starting within the month of May. And as we learn more about all of this, we'll certainly share more information. And maybe the last thing I'd leave you with is I wouldn't necessarily expect that the pressure restrictions and the corrective action order like all comes off all at once. Like these are often again, a dynamic process and as we learn more and resolve certain issues, these things tend to happen in phases.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

With that, I just highlight obviously we're going to attack this with the resources and the urgency that it needs. Because keeping our lines safe is the most important thing to simple.

[Robert Hope, MD - Equity Research at Scotiabank]

All right. Appreciate that. And then maybe going over to the some commentary on enhanced maintenance, just taking a look at guidance, maintenance capital hasn't changed. So just want to get a sense of is this kind of the baseline and that could move up depending on what happens with the investigation? Or will this be a multiyear endeavor?

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

Yes, I think just on maintenance, we mentioned on previous calls that we had planned to do some to bring some routine maintenance into 2025 that we were going to take advantage of some of what we thought was going to be some available system capacity. And so what we're like looking at doing there is revising more of the longer term plan. So we'll bring in some integrity work and remedial work specific to MilePlus one hundred seventy one and then we'll shift out some of the other non urgent work into subsequent years. And then just lastly, I would remind you that we do expect that all of that work is operational in nature that operational costs are permitted within the variable toll on how Keystone is commercial deals are structured.

[Robert Hope, MD - Equity Research at Scotiabank]

Excellent. Thank you.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Maurice Choi with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets]

Thank you, and good morning. Maybe I'll just finish off a question about the incident, but more on the leverage side. Given that you've not amended your trajectory to exit 2025 at 4.8 times EBITDA. Is is that a reflection of how little costs that you think won't be recovered from this, or is this that you expect to recover mostly everything by year end even if the amount is large.

[Van Dafoe, SVP & CFO at South Bow]

Yeah, Maurice, it's Van here. So we expect all costs related to MyPost one hundred seventy one to be covered by insurance or through our variable toll. So within the year, so that's why our debt to EBITDA for year end has not changed.

[Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets]

To make sure I did miss it, but have you disclosed what the total costs been so far? Or is this one where even if the cost has been incurred, what is the total cost that you expect from this incident overall?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Maurice, it's Bevan. It's a great question. It's really early days, but the response went extremely well. We're in a location that is also very different than historical. And so at the time when we're ready to disclose those costs, we will.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

So we haven't disclosed it, so you haven't missed anything. We're working on the remediation, as Richard has highlighted, and so we're progressing really well. And once we have the total estimate, we'll share that with our shareholders.

[Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets]

Understood. And just to finish off a question about just volumes in general and your outlook for spot volumes on Keystone. Beyond the pressure restrictions from Milepost one hundred seventy one, was there something during Q1 or maybe just more broadly about the market that motivated the more moderated outlook for spot volumes that you can kind of discuss here?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yes, we've been very consistent with our outlook on the year, even starting last year where we saw some headwinds against our uncontracted barrels. And just to remind everyone that we only have we reserve 6% for uncontracted volumes out of Canada. So 94% of our volumes are fully committed. So with tremendous uncertainty in the first quarter, particularly in January at the start of what we were seeing with potential tariffs and the necessity to make decisions around how you move your barrels as a producer, we saw some volatility and headwinds against our uncontracted capacity, but that was in line with what we expected given the basin has extra pipeline egress capacity.

[Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets]

Sorry. Just just to follow-up on that one. So if the January events were as you had expected, and as you just said earlier, your messaging on the outlook is consistent throughout, so what has changed to to cause this moderator out?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah. I think, you know, our first outlook, we we were the headwinds were primarily and solely the fact that there was additional egress. And so we envisioned that there'd be challenges on our uncontracted barrels exiting the basin. Now we've just added a couple of different layers of headwinds, Maurice. We have now we had that the tariff headwind that provided some uncertainty.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

But again, because our base business is contracted, it's just that headwind was going against the same headwind of the additional egress. And now with the operational kind of restrictions that we have with respect to Milepost 171, those headwinds, again, are going against that same uncontracted space. So while our outlook was originally based on egress, it's just going to be consistent. It's just which headwind is kind of blowing the hardest doesn't really change our outlook going forward. And that's why we were able to tighten our outlook in terms of our guidance for the year.

[Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets]

Understood. Thank you.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Robert Catellier with CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Robert Catellier, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

Hey. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to address the longer term guidance. You gave some pretty good detail on your 2025 guidance. But wonder, given that you have a relatively modest view of uncommitted volumes in marketing in 2025, I'm wondering how that plays into the long term 2% to 3% EBITDA growth.

[Robert Catellier, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

And is that still the right number? Or stated another way, what has to happen to reach that goal if market conditions don't change?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

So, Robert, a couple things. First of all, you know, we've made great progress on our Blackrod project, which was, as we indicated in the circular, kind of the first underwritten project, that will contribute EBITDA to that 2% to 3% growth guidance. And we see that that project will be able to finish our component of the scope here by year end. And then our customer will ramp up through the year. So our outlook in terms of that contribution of a partial year or half year of EBITDA growth in 2026 remains.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

We had indicated in our at year end disclosure and the discussion at the quarter call that we still see strength in supply growth. And so our outlook was that we may start to see some tightening of egress volumes in 2026. And that is where we'll see the potential to have some growth back in our uncontracted volumes. But we anticipate that to be a little later in the year. We've now managed to come through two different administration changes in both The United States and Canada.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

And so we're getting the market and our customers are getting some additional certainty around how that macro environment will shape. And that's what will affect the supply growth and demand for our services.

[Robert Catellier, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

That's a good segue to the other question I wanted to ask, given that we have seen changes in both administrations, so what are you seeing in the policy and permitting environment on both sides of the border that gives you, that builds your confidence about your outlook, both for production but also for projects, specifically thinking about permitting?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah. So one our top jobs as a management team is capital allocation. And for capital allocation, we look to certainty around outcomes. And so what we've seen in both administrations make commitments to look at the regulatory process and provide some additional certainty around how capital allocators like ourselves can look to to make those investment decisions. So we think it's constructive on both sides of the border that we work in.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

But every project is different within our portfolio. And so we build our business to be agnostic to administrations and look to make sure that we can allocate our capital in the risk preferences that we've demonstrated to date.

[Robert Catellier, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

Okay, that's great, Bevan. Thank you.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Benjamin Pham with BMO. Your line is open.

[Ben Pham, Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets]

Hi, thanks. Good morning. Just wanted to ask a question on potential asset sales. Can you remind us your restrictions on that and your overall thoughts around useful on First Nations partnerships and potential ability for you to look at that?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah, Ben, great question. So all our assets are core assets. When we spun out, we were fortunate that our business didn't have any noncore assets within our portfolio. But directly to your questions around First Nations and potential equity investments, We have demonstrated as a management team in the past the ability to prosecute those types of investment opportunities as parts of developments of new projects. And it will always be something we will consider.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

We don't have any plans at present on any of our specific projects to date, but it's certainly something that we have the capability to consider as part of our capital structure going forward on new investments.

[Ben Pham, Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets]

Okay. Got it. And then maybe next question, maybe your initial thoughts, and StrefCon and May, just any reads on the base and the outlook and just overall initial thoughts would helpful if you can.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Well, a little bit out of our scope to talk about a third party transaction. I think in general, markets have shown that scale and consistency of delivering on objectives is important. So I don't know exactly what's driving the interests in that situation. For us, we're focused on our base business. We've got a strategic corridor, and we'll stick to our capital allocation priorities of allocating capital to strengthen our corridor.

[Ben Pham, Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets]

Yeah. So you don't think there's a I mean, the production outlook for oil heavy and just in terms of direct indirect implications, just not how much really to really say that on a preliminary basis at this point?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Well, think both of those two operators have demonstrated tremendous success both in the oil sands and in their emerging plays in the clear water, which is why we are bullish around the supply fundamentals out of Western Canada. And why we believe that that supply, one of its natural homes, is the strongest demand market in the Gulf Coast. So I think if the industry as potentially consolidates or looks to grow, it's just really strong support for our business.

[Ben Pham, Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets]

Okay, got it. Okay, thank you.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Patrick Kenny with NBF.

[Patrick Kenny, Analyst at National Bank]

Thank you, good morning. Just on the business development front and with line of sight to BlackRock being completed early next year, just wondering if you can comment on how the inbound interest has evolved over the past couple of months from customers both upstream post election as well as downstream, now that we're seeing record exports out of the Gulf Coast. Just curious where you might be seeing the most interest in terms of extending the system on either end.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah, Patrick, I'm very encouraged by what we've seen as we've stood up our business and being focused on trying to find customer solutions. Our teams talked on both ends of the system, the downstream delivery points and also the aggregation and gathering of new volumes in the north of our system in Alberta. So I would say pretty consistent interest and acknowledgment that we're now an independent company that has its own capital structure and can work to find really good customer solutions. So I'm encouraged that we're building a good hopper, those opportunities are going to take some time to mature. You know, we're just over six months old, but even with that, I feel good about what the team has been developing on both sides, on, as you say, Patrick, down on the delivery points, and also up in Alberta with our existing assets to the north.

[Patrick Kenny, Analyst at National Bank]

Okay. And I guess on a larger scale, you know, if pressure restrictions limit your ability to offer the uncommitted egress for a longer, say, more sustained period, Might this bring the the big sky open season back on the table? Or I guess what stars need to align macro or otherwise to to bring this opportunity back to the front burner?

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yeah. So we, you know, we we did close with our partner on that opportunity, the the open season. There's a lot of commercial reasons why that didn't advance, but that hasn't stopped us actually in terms of some of the things we're maturing. There are other other other opportunities to leverage that corridor that the team has been working on. So we haven't stopped.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

We haven't stopped looking at ways to continue to grow our business and look for egress. That isn't necessarily tied to our outlook with respect to our uncommitted demand. We feel that that volume, as I said, the supply fundamentals and the demand, we think the longer term outlook and even midterm outlook are very robust. So we're working those in parallel.

[Patrick Kenny, Analyst at National Bank]

Got it. Thanks for the update. I'll leave it there.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Thanks, Patrick.

[Operator]

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

[Keith Stanley, Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Hi. Good morning. First, wanted to just start on the contractual commitments. Can you clarify that you can move 585,000 barrels a day through the affected segment? Or are there other tools like market purchases or other things you need to use to meet commitments?

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

Yeah, I can clarify that we expect to be able to physically move the 585,000 barrels of throughput. There's not any synthetic conditions that are being applied to achieve that. Okay, great.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

And I think that comes, Keith, from, as we've been mentioning, we've had tremendous operational performance improvements over the last five years. And as Richard said, in the first quarter, we've demonstrated 98% system operating factors. And that's being able to deliver so effectively is giving us that opportunity to continue to serve our customers well.

[Keith Stanley, Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Great, thanks. Second one, a bit theoretical, but just thinking about future scenarios. You know, you have very good sort of insurance coverage and contract structures that that keep you whole in situations like this. If if you did go down the road and eventually have to replace some of the pipe, that has had multiple issues like the Berg steel, is there how can we think about insurance coverage for a scenario like that or how costs might be recovered under contracts and realize we're certainly not there at this point.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Yes. Well, Keith, the history has been and our outlook continues that we do identify operational projects. Those operational projects or maintenance capital get flowed through the variable pole with respect to digs, portions of pipe replacement or wraps or things. And that's consistent across the industry. That's not something that's just something that we do.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

But I think across the industry, that's regular. The insurance, I would say, is not something that we would lean into on ongoing maintenance capital type projects.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

I wouldn't mind just adding in there, though, that I think it's it's far too early to to make assumptions around around the Burke pipe, you know, like this. This is a this is a world class American pipe mill. You know, we're we're not aware of broad systemic issues with respect to their pipe. You know, are there are we've had two incidents that that were failures on the long seam. But at this stage, we can't say that they're related or that the issues are related yet.

[Richard Prior, SVP & COO at South Bow]

We really do need to work through both the metallurgical analysis and the root cause failure analysis. And from there we will develop, you know, remedial work plans like these. These pipelines are designed, you know, for very long service lives. And, you know, I'm confident that through, you know, our integrity programs are in line inspection, our integrity verification, digs and, you know, other various remedial work that we'll put in place that that we'll be able to, you know, solve the issue that that occurred here and and have a robust integrity program going forward that'll keep our assets safe and then the oil in the pipe.

[Keith Stanley, Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Appreciate the helpful color there.

[Operator]

And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Bevan for any further remarks.

[Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO at South Bow]

Well, thank you for your interest in SouthBow and for the thoughtful questions today. We look forward to connecting with you again in a few months.

[Operator]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.

Participants

Executives

• Martha Wilmot, Director - IR
• Bevin Wirzba, President & CEO
• Richard Prior, SVP & COO
• Van Dafoe, SVP & CFO

Analysts

• Jeremy Tonet, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase
• Robert Hope, MD - Equity Research at Scotiabank
• Maurice Choy, Research Analyst - Energy Infrastructure at RBC Capital Markets
• Robert Catellier, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets
• Ben Pham, Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets
• Patrick Kenny, Analyst at National Bank
• Keith Stanley, Director at Wolfe Research, LLC