Calumet Specialty Products Partners Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 9, 2025

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Calumet Inc. First Quarter twenty twenty five Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Kompa, Investor Relations for Calumet.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Debbie. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today. With me on today's call are Todd Gordman, CEO David Lunen, EVP and Chief Financial Officer Bruce Fleming, EVP, Montana Renewables and Corporate Development and Scott Obermeyer, EVP, Specialties. 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 calumet.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 two, you can find our cautionary statements. I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, we may provide various forward looking statements. Please refer to our 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 our expectations. As we turn to Slide three, I'll now pass the call to Todd.

Speaker 2

All right. Thanks, John. Good morning, welcome to our first quarterly earnings call of 2025. We're a little over four months into what has already been an action packed year. Calumet began 2025 by closing and funding our DOE loan, the first of its kind under the Trump administration.

Speaker 2

This transaction strengthened Montana Renewable's balance sheet and ensured stability of the business even during difficult markets just like the one we saw in the first quarter. We also completed the accretive sale of our Royal Purple Industrial business and this morning launched $150,000,000 partial call of our 2026 notes as we execute our deleveraging strategy. Further, we're also progressing additional strategic activity, which we won't fully detail today for obvious reasons, but we will update on a breakthrough and our expectations around the Montaneri Global's MAXAV project as we now expect to reach our next milestone of 150,000,000 gallons of SAF capacity dramatically more cheaply and quickly than originally expected. This project adds immense value to our near term outlook as the renewable diesel industry awaits regulatory clarity, which we view as the critical open item to a partial monetization of Montana Renewables, which is Calumet's final deleveraging step. Before diving into those details, I'd like to take a moment to step back and frame the broader macroeconomic environment and its impact on Calumet.

Speaker 2

Despite the prevalence of widespread headlines regarding potential recession, we're not seeing real signs of recession within our business. One example is the first quarter marked one of the highest specialty sales volume periods in company history during what's typically a slow season nonetheless. That being said, broad economic nervousness in the market, we went back and dusted off our COVID era specialties playbook, which was effective during that global slowdown, which was arguably much more dramatic for our industry than what most are expecting now. What we see is the attributes underpinning our company's resilience that allowed us to generate positive free cash flow back then continue to be enforced today and largely in improved fashion. The resilience of our specialty business is anchored by our integrated asset base, our approach to commercial excellence and a continuing improvement in our operational reliability and cost control.

Speaker 2

Let's look deeper into specialties on Slide four. Calumet's flexibility and financial resilience is underpinned by a few pillars. First, we serve over 3,000 customers with nearly 2,000 products globally, spanning end markets from consumer staples and pharmaceuticals to seasonal applications like road paving. This allows us to dynamically shift our product placement as markets evolve. Second, we operate our specialties assets as a network, not standalone sites, which provides unparalleled flexibility due to the complementary nature and near proximity of our largest facilities.

Speaker 2

We constantly manage make versus buy decisions, adjust feedstock slates and optimize operations to match market needs. Third, our commercial engine overlays this unique flexible system to capture advantage throughout the value chain. This commercial flexibility is a key financial advantage, but the real core of our specialty business is our customer centric approach, which we see in our world class NPS scores. Our product offering, willingness and ability to provide bespoke solutions and deep technical service team combined deliver a customer experience that's been a time at hallmark for decades. These core strengths allow consistent performance across economic cycles.

Speaker 2

And while we have the ability to sell overseas and we do so from time to time, tariffs are not expected to materially impact us as our operations are domestic and the great majority of our sales, while within The U. S. Are under USMCA. To see the power of Calumet's commercial approach, we need to go no further than recent Performance Brands results. Since transitioning to a unified specialty business two years ago, our Performance Brands segment has delivered robust volume growth and EBITDA in this segment has more than doubled.

Speaker 2

We've seen this success within our True Fuel brand in particular. In 2024, True Fuel contributed roughly one third of our segment EBITDA as full year volumes grew over 20%, a trend that continues into the first quarter. Growth drivers include a successful marketing strategy targeting first responders and March volume users, increasing shelf space at the major retailers, including recent entry into Walmart, and on a more macro level, long term growth within the outdoor power equipment segment. True Fuel has roughly a 65% market share in its space, but the space as a whole is not that well known, which we are changing rapidly. This is a key to continued growth of this brand as we have proven that once customers become aware of TrueFuel, the likelihood of repeat oil purchasing is off the charts.

Speaker 2

On the operational front, our cost reduction initiatives are delivering results. Last quarter, I mentioned that we continue to fortify our operations and expect to take over $20,000,000 of operating costs out of the business this year. And in the first quarter, we saw this. While winter season always seems to pose a few challenges across Northwest Louisiana and the railways in the Rockies, total system operating costs were reduced by nearly $5 per barrel versus the first quarter of last year or just over $22,000,000 which is after accounting for the roughly $4,000,000 increase in the cost of natural gas. As we know, much of this improvement is coming at Montana Renewables as we've reduced costs dramatically with innovations around producing less water for disposal and increasing our reliability.

Speaker 2

But it's worth noting the improvement in our specialty business as well, where we saw our operating costs improved by roughly 1.5 a barrel in the first quarter, anchored by roughly $5,000,000 quarterly reduction in year over year fixed costs and an 8% increase in production volume. Strong day to day execution combined with the competitively advantaged position of our Montana renewables business and ultra resilient specialties business allow us to expect positive cash flow across the economic cycle, which we saw during COVID and expect to replicate again here in 2025, especially with the cost of MRL's old capital structure now removed. Let's turn to Slide five, where we discussed renewable market dynamics. First, Montana Renewables generated $2,400,000 of adjusted EBITDA, including the PTCs in the first quarter. Dave will talk more about this and our plan with PTCs momentarily.

Speaker 2

But in a post DOE world, Montana Renewable's ability to generate positive EBITDA with tax attributes, even in the lowest index margin we've ever seen, is representative of our competitive position, which we see in the supply stack on the left hand side of this slide. You'll see we've updated the stack for 2025 production where we've added new production that's come online and reduced others who have departed. You'll see the implied biomass based diesel annual demand from the current RVO is about 4,500,000,000 gallons, which includes 3,500,000,000 gallons from the D4 mandate and about 1,000,000,000 gallons of D6 mandates that are not able to be met. So D4s are used to fill the obligation. During the first quarter, we saw major decreases in D4 RIN generation as the PTC rolled into place, imports stopped and biodiesel saw a dramatic shutdown.

Speaker 2

As the RVO is reset and the biomass based diesel required to meet that demand moves to the right, we'd expect index margins to adjust accordingly as shutdown biodiesel will need to be incentivized to restart. This of course is not a change to our long term expectation, but it took the large cash losses associated with the PTC change to force the biodiesel industry and some renewable diesel to shut down. And hopefully, we'll be seeing actions in the not too distant future that encourage these ag businesses to restart as new crush plants have been invested in and seed ordered, assuming that the renewable fuels growth trend will continue. On the right side of this slide, we see Q1 biomass based diesel production undershot the RVO by about two thirty million gallons. How could it be that we underran the compliance level by roughly 1,000,000,000 gallons on an annualized basis?

Speaker 2

And at the same time, we just saw a record low index margin quarter. We believe the answer to that lies in the overproduction in 2024 and it's a temporary dynamic. This chart shows that just as industry overran the RVO implied demand in the first quarter, I apologize, underran the RVO implied demand in the first quarter, last year industry overran. This D4 RIN carryforward can provide a temporary shock absorber to a RIN production deficit, but as the carryforward credits are used up, we expect normal dynamics to reset. Of course, RVO clarity should help normalize the market as well, which the whole industry looks forward to.

Speaker 2

And at Montana Renewables, we also expect to be adding more SAP just as global mandates step up in early twenty twenty six. In other words, it's tough out there right now, but underlying market fundamentals provide a lot of reasons for optimism as we look forward. Next, let's turn to Slide six and discuss MaxSaf or maybe more specifically a major improvement along the road to our ultimate MaxSaf journey, which we're calling MaxSap 150. As we know, SAP is a central component of MRL strategy. We were among the early entrants in this space, launching SAP to market in late twenty twenty three with Shell as our offtake partner.

Speaker 2

And while renewable diesel margins have been challenging since the RVO misstep, SAF margins have remained stable and attractive. This early market continues to show great promise with the introduction of global mandates complementing an already growing base of voluntary demand. Our grand project calls for 300,000,000 gallons of shaft capacity to be reached and there's no change to that. We previously spoke about our expectation to bring 150,000,000 of those gallons online in late twenty twenty six for a capital cost of 150,000,000 to $250,000,000 Our operations team has rapidly advanced our understanding of the potential of our assets and our SAF production technology. As a result, our project expectations, which were already promising, have improved markedly.

Speaker 2

Rather than needing to wait on our Gulf Coast reactor to be shipped across the country and stood up with other newbuild assets, We can enhance our existing MRL reactor and some other supporting assets already in Montana to bring on 120,000,000 to 150,000,000 gallons of staff in early twenty twenty six for $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 of capital. Given this is predominantly catalyst work and configuration of existing assets, the smaller capital would primarily be back half of '20 '20 '5 and early twenty twenty six. This improvement will increase SAF yield from its current 2,000 barrels a day to an 8,000 to 10,000 barrel a day range, and we also expect a minor increase in total renewable throughput. After we improve our yields through this first step in our sequential project, we're optimistic that our experience will continue to allow us to manage through the remaining project more quickly and economically as well. But for now, we're focused on achieving the maximum amount of staff for the minimum amount of capital as quickly as possible.

Speaker 2

And our marketing team continues to be encouraged by the demand we're seeing for these increased volumes. Increased sales volumes take on three different timelines. First, we currently have a 30,000,000 gallon of annual capacity being sold daily. Next, we've demonstrated 50,000,000 gallon SAF capacity and our ops team is gaining experience achieving that ratably. With the combination of this ratable production and the winter rail constraints behind us, we expect to start selling 50,000,000 gallons of SAF this summer.

Speaker 2

And third, with the breakthrough around MaxSaf 150, we'll also be marketing that additional material soon, which could be sold directly or tied to a monetization event as discussed in the past. We remain flexible in our approach and encouraged by the market response. In fact, as the SaaS market evolves, we've even been approached about SaaS fee credits. With this approach, the Tier one and Tier three credits we generate are marketed to end users through a book and claim approach and a SAF supplier retains the other environmental credits like the Wren and the PTC just like through our existing renewable diesel and SAF contracts. The benefit of this in a world of global mandates is it allows suppliers to separate the SAF credit from the physical transaction to minimize logistics costs for end customers.

Speaker 2

It's not surprising that the resulting economics to Montana Renewables with the book and claim approach provide the same premium expectation of $1 to $2 gallon premium relative to renewable diesel that we've discussed previously and we continue to see that range in the market. With that, I'll turn the call over to David. David?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Todd. I'll review our financials by segment, the drivers of our strong first quarter results and the underlying strengths of our growth platform going forward. First on Slide seven, I wanted to remind investors of the thinking behind our changes to adjusted EBITDA this quarter. As we mentioned on our last earnings call and you see in our first quarter reported financials, we've updated how we report to better reflect the true cash generation capability of our business. We've made two important changes.

Speaker 3

The first is to add back the RINs incurrence. RINs incurrence relates to blending obligation for fuel producers. Calumet is a small refinery and has always received a small refinery exemption or SASRE up until the EPA's issuance of a blanket SRE denial. Calumet has never made a cash payment for RINs and continues to be successful in the federal courts, having been successful in both the Fifth Circuit and the D. C.

Speaker 3

Circuit regarding our small refinery exemption petition this past year. Given the set of facts, along with our goal of presenting investors the most clear and accurate representation of the cash generation capability of the business, this change was made to start the year. The second change relates to the changeover from the blenders tax credit to the production tax credit in the renewables industry. Instead of the previously cash paid $1 a gallon for the blenders tax credit, starting in 2025, we now generate a PTC based on the CI score of the produced gallon. Current legislation contemplates a tax credit that can reduce taxable income or in Montana Renewable's case, be sold back to the market for cash.

Speaker 3

Given Montana Renewable's low CI feedstock advantage and SAF position, its PTC is relatively large, representing roughly $20,000,000 for all of Montana renewables in the first quarter or roughly $16,900,000 on Calumet's eighty seven percent equity portion. The new non GAAP metric of adjusted EBITDA plus tax attributes adds back this tax credit. As Todd said, our plan is to sell the PTCs as we don't yet have taxable income to offset. Thus, we'll report an EBITDA with tax attributes that includes the PTCs generated in a month rather than a hyper volatile metric that would match the quarterly sales timing of PTCs, and reflect the steady value generation of the business. As laws change and the situation matures, the need for this metric may as well.

Speaker 3

But for now, we want to provide a metric to clearly track the value generation of MRL and to properly compare year over year to a period in which the BTC existed as the BTC was included in adjusted EBITDA unlike the PTC. Turning to Slide eight, before we go through the segment results, I wanted to highlight what a transformative quarter we've had on the balance sheet with several exciting developments. First, earlier this quarter, after a temporary delay, we received the initial tranche one funding under the DOE loan. We used the funds from the loan to in part take out expensive debt and get repaid from DOE for eligible project costs. The result has been transformative as we've reduced annual cash flow from debt service by approximately $80,000,000 per year and positioned ourselves to have cost efficient funding to complete our MaxSaf expansion.

Speaker 3

Coupled with the exciting news that Todd shared earlier about a cheaper, quicker path to the first step in MaxSaf, we couldn't be more excited about the business. Second, we completed the sale of the industrial portion of our Royal Purple business, which brought in roughly $100,000,000 of cash proceeds at an attractive accretive multiple, while at the same time streamlining our Performance Brands business. The focus on playing where we have integration with our SBS business allows us to grow volumes and take out costs efficiently. That trend will continue. Finally, we called today the $150,000,000 of outstanding 2026 notes, slightly less than mentioned last quarter, reflects, the recent volatility we've seen across markets.

Speaker 3

We ended the first quarter with $347,000,000 of liquidity in our restricted business, expected to generate strong cash flow in Q2 and to recoup some of the larger working capital swings we saw in the first quarter and plan to deploy the remainder of the call as the commodity markets that drive our underlying working capital instrument sales. As we mentioned earlier, we also have some additional strategic activity in the hopper, which we'll share in the future. The ultimate sale of a portion of Montana Renewables remains as a finer pillar in our deleveraging story. Certainly, the market hasn't helped us out there with headwinds on index margins. But as operators, we have positioned the business with operating leverage to take advantage once the market recovers.

Speaker 3

We've demonstrated reliable operations, reduced our costs and fixed the balance sheet to eliminate high cost third party interest. With the RVO guidance hopefully on the horizon and a cheaper, faster path to more staff, we've never been more excited, more well positioned. Turning to Slide nine. Our Specialty Products segment generated $56,300,000 of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter under our new definition. We continue to see strong volumes, particularly among our specialty product lines, reflecting our commercial excellence program.

Speaker 3

In fact, this is one of the highest quarters on record for SBS volumes at approximately 23,000 barrels per day. As Todd mentioned, first quarter twenty twenty five results were slightly impacted by a full fuel unit turnaround and short freezing challenges in January, something that we've seen routinely the past few winters in Northwest Louisiana. However, we've made fortifying investments, which has limited the impact. Our operational improvement trend continues as we drove year over year op cost improvements of $1.41 per barrel on top of our 9% increase in year over year production volumes despite a reformer turnaround during the quarter. We have some turnaround activity scheduled to begin in June on some specialties equipment, which will impact our results next quarter.

Speaker 3

Even with higher volume and a little cost headwind earlier in the quarter, margins came in just below our 60 per barrel mid cycle level. And looking forward, we continue to expect to operate at that mid cycle margin level even amidst an industry backdrop that is well below mid cycle. Taking a longer view, you can see we're still well below well above 20,000 barrels per day from our 2020 to 2024 range as we remain focused on maximizing our customer and application diversity as well as the incremental value earned through our integrated network. Finally, we've all seen the various headlines regarding potential tariffs, but we do not believe they are impactful to our specialties business considering our manufacturer our U. S.-based manufacturing footprint, customer base, product diversity and nearly all of our sales and feedstocks being domestic or protected by USMCA.

Speaker 3

Moving to Slide 10 and our Performance Brands segment, we posted strong quarterly results of $15,800,000 reflecting strong volume growth and continued commercial improvements in the business. While some of our brands are more integrated than others, we're seeing growth throughout the business and are really proud of progress our team has made both in volume growth and capturing supply chain efficiencies. As previously disclosed, we completed the sale of the industrial portion of Royal Purple, which is completed at roughly 10 times EBITDA multiple. We continue to believe that through the operational and supply chain efficiencies this transaction unleashes, we'll be able to recapture the majority of the EBITDA we've sold over the next two years. Note, we closed the transaction on March 31, so the results reflect the full quarter's contribution of Royal Purple Industrial.

Speaker 3

Moving to Slide 11, our MontanaRenewables segment adjusted with tax attributes adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes generated $3,300,000 in the first quarter compared to a negative $13,400,000 in the prior year period. The Renewables business on its own drove adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes of $2,100,000 attributable to the 87% ownership position of Calumet. The primary driver of the improvement was the tremendous cost savings we've driven in the business and improvements in operations. You can see in the lower right hand side of the Renewables slide, we've reduced op costs and SG and A down from well north of $1 to below our $0.70 per gallon target. Focusing just on op costs, we're at $0.50 a gallon.

Speaker 3

This represents our sixth consecutive quarter of operational cost improvement trend excluding the turnaround in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. We also saw renewable volumes increase from the comparative Q1 period. At 10,300 barrels per day, we're below our targeted range. That was driven by congestion on the railroad, which caused delay to getting feed to the plant coming out of the fourth quarter turnaround last year. Looking ahead, operations will be able to produce our previously demonstrated $50,000,000 of SAF capacity on a ratable basis, and we're now ramped up marketing efforts.

Speaker 3

We expect to increase SAF sales in late Q2 twenty twenty five. And on the tariff front, MontanaRenewables expects no impact. While imported used cooking oil being excluded from the ability to generate a PCC was used in the industry, Montana Renewables doesn't use this feedstock. On the Montana Asphalt side, we drove a $9,100,000 year over year improvement. We talk a lot about cost improvements at MRL, but we've also been hard at work taking costs out of the Asphalt side of the business, which contributed to a much improved Q1 versus what we saw last year.

Speaker 3

We also experienced better wholesale asphalt and local fuel premiums in the market during the quarter, and we look forward to opening up the retail asphalt rack later this quarter. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Yes. Good morning, team, Todd and team. Just want to start off on the regulatory environment and some of the adjustments that you've made to the way that you're showing EBITDA to show the production tax credit does show you guys have confidence that there will be a change over from a BTC to a PTC. So just talk about the regulatory environment that you see on the go forward as it relates to those tax credits? Why you believe that's the right way for the market to value the earnings power of your company as well?

Speaker 2

Hey, Neil, it's Todd. How are you? Thanks for the question. Let me start here on just kind of the PTC and BTC, and I'll give it back to Bruce for the a little bit more color into the regulatory environment. But I actually think your question regarding the, you know, the comparable state of, you know, EBITDA on a VTC world and PTC world and even how it could potentially go back to a VTC world if you read some of the rumors, kind of impact our decision to move forward on this adjusted EBITDA plus tax attributes basis in Montana renewables.

Speaker 2

Because if you think about where we were last year, you know, dollar gallon BTC tax credit was an adjusted EBITDA. So, all we've done now is we've said the PTC credit, which obviously impacts, industry index margin is also now added back to, adjusted EBITDA. So that when we look at a year over year comparison period of a DTC environment to a PTC environment, we get an apples to apples comparison. And if there was a change back, or other regulatory changes, then this metric would continue to work because we'd be able to compare, you know, again, BTC world to PTC world kind of lines up, here. So that was actually in the forefront of our mind as we thought about the right way to show the PTC.

Speaker 2

The other thing I'd say on the adjusted EBITDA plus tax attributes is we're a seller of the PTCs. A lot of folks use them. We don't. And so if you didn't make this adjustment, you would have a very, very choppy, EBITDA stream. It just wouldn't really demonstrate or help investors visualize the earnings power of this business because you would only be recognizing the EBITDA in the periods that you sell it.

Speaker 2

So that's kind of the way we're doing it right now. Ultimately, we expect to capture the value of the PTC as we sell them. It just doesn't happen on a day to day ratable basis, as you know. These are typically, you know, quarterly sales. So, anyways, probably a long winded way, to answer your question, maybe back to Bruce for any color on regulatory.

Speaker 5

Hey, Neil. So I I think the way you asked that sounded like do we do we think the regime has got over it? It definitely has. You know, that's the law that was in the IRA legislation. There's some question when the detailed rules are going to come through under which, taxpayers can enter this income tax credit on their returns.

Speaker 5

But as Todd said, we'll be selling them. So, we feel good about trying to help our investors understand the cash flow potential of the business by accounting for it in this manner.

Speaker 4

That's very helpful guys. And yes, we'll look for more regulatory clarity. The follow-up is just around balance sheet. I know it's you guys talked about should we continue to drive your leverage to your target levels and it's been a huge focus in the credit community where we've seen a big uptick in interest around the credit. So just help the market get comfortable around liquidity, balance sheet, things are tracking and steps that you are taking to really shore up the strength of that balance sheet in a volatile macro?

Speaker 3

Hi, Neal, it's David. I think we feel very good about the liquidity and where we're at. We finished the quarter with around $340,000,000 of liquidity. We also called kind of $150,000,000 of the bonds. I think as we think about the DOE loan, and that removing $80,000,000 of interest and amortization from cash flow, we've really positioned the business well.

Speaker 3

Another lever is kind of the sale of Royal Purple business, which has helped support liquidity. I think as we look forward, we probably told a little bit less than we had talked about. Just given the macro volatility, we saw some working capital outflows in the quarter. And so we've just been a little bit conservative currently, but we feel really good about where we're at. Obviously, the ability to make more SaaS quicker, sooner and cheaper makes us feel even more confident about kind of where the balance sheet and where the business is today.

Speaker 2

Yes. Neil, this is Todd. I'll add a little bit. Obviously, our ultimate leverage goal is reaching $800,000,000 of restricted debt. And that comes with the ultimate monetization of Montana Renewables.

Speaker 2

So David just hit on this, the faster cheaper MAX F-one 50 is a really nice next step to that. Let's see if we get some RVO news in the near future. There seems to be some real optimism around that. We'd expect that to bring some associated margin recovery. And that's why I think really we've those are the remaining boxes necessary for that to become a real option.

Speaker 2

So again, don't expect that as a 2025 event. Obviously, are a few things that need to happen and some of it's regulatory, but we're gaining quite a bit of confidence that, what we're seeing right now in the market kind of from a fundamental basis is setting us up to have a pretty attractive transaction there and hopefully not too distant future.

Speaker 4

Is that $800,000,000 target, could you see that as a '26 event?

Speaker 2

Yes. Yes. We'd like to take so again, I mean, we're just we needed to derisk our operations. We needed to get the DOE funded. Those are done.

Speaker 2

You know, let's get some clarity on the RVO. With that, we'll demonstrate the earnings potential of Montana Renewables with an additional 100,000,000 gallons of staff. I think we'll be able to step up those earnings quite meaningfully. And, and with that, you know, you should be in a pretty good position. So we think that we're going to get that, that additional SAF volume early in 2026.

Speaker 2

So we're certainly looking at 2026 as a likely and hopeful transaction time for us there on Tannery Nobles.

Speaker 6

Awesome.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Tad.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Amit Dayal with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just with respect to the higher SaaS volumes that you're expecting to achieve in 2026, it's lower CapEx than expected, guess previously. I'm just trying to get a sense of whether there was already equipment that was put in place that is no longer being used and if that can be applied to further expand volumes. The press release was not very clear at least to me on that front.

Speaker 7

If you could clarify how all of this is being sort of achieved?

Speaker 5

Hi, Ahmed. This is Bruce. Yeah. Let me let me take a stab at it. The the existing asset, the hydrocracker that we converted back in 2021 and 2022, has more capability for more SAF output.

Speaker 5

And we've got that lined out and demonstrated. So we're simply going to take advantage of that in the market now. And Todd covered that, we'll call that the 50,000,000 gallons a year. To get more out, we've got a very, very modest constraint removal around our heat and material balance, which we think will cost 20,000,000 to $30,000,000 Obviously, we've got a more precise engineering estimate and we've got the AFE in place for that. So that's a go.

Speaker 5

The late to its capacity of the existing unit was known and we have always signaled walking these volumes forward. So we're simply giving you an update that it's going to be sooner and it's going to be lower capital. So we're pretty happy with that. The marketing team is actively engaged in signing up the placement of those gallons. And we look forward to keeping you posted on how that unfolds.

Speaker 7

Understood Bruce. And then as you execute on this, is that when you start collecting on the remaining funds from the DOE?

Speaker 5

Yeah. The what you're referring to, we we organized, and this is a a public document, of course, but we organized the partnership with the DOE to catch up to what had already been done, that's called tranche one. David mentioned that we received that money, you know, or in the middle of the first quarter. The balance of the loan proceeds are available when we call that tranche two in the documents, that's a construction draw facility. So as we meet the conditions precedent, we will just continually tap that money over the next three to four years as we as we finish the full build out and get to the end state of 300,000,000 gallons of SAF.

Speaker 7

Okay. Understood. Look, that timeline is helpful. Thank you so much, Bruce. That's all I have guys.

Speaker 7

I'll take another question offline.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Amit.

Operator

The next question is from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to the PTC because I just want to clarify one, the amount you actually booked in the quarter. Did you book the full amount that you're saying you could have received? Or did you book something less than that $17,000,000 in the quarter?

Speaker 8

And the $17,000,000 is kind of indicative of what you would have been able to book if the rule was in place in time because we've that $0.49 per gallon is higher than or sorry, $0.40 per gallon is higher than what we've heard some peers book? And then going forward, given the changes in feedstock and lower canola oil runs, do you expect the amount you're able to book under the PTC to move higher?

Speaker 3

Yes. So Jason, David here. Just a couple of thoughts. So the $20,000,000 that we booked, that's kind of the full value of the PTC that we generated during the quarter. The higher number just reflects more staff production, expect relative to your expectations, which is we obviously produce a lot more staff that gets more credit from the PTC.

Speaker 3

So that $20,000,000 is the full value when we talk about the 16,800,000.0 that's just reflective of Calumet's eighty seven percent share of Montana Renewables. That's booked also at 100% of the notional value. I think when we ultimately monetize that, they'll be sold at a slight discount. I think the market is around 95 ish percent, give or take. And we'll true that up when we ultimately sell it.

Speaker 8

Got it. And then thoughts on the amount you'll be able to book going slower just assuming a more optimized feedstock slate?

Speaker 3

Well, let me I think we're always going to move our feedstock to the highest margin, whether that margin comes through PTC or cheaper feedstock prices. We think feedstock probably moves to their kind of CI parity over time. So whether we're collecting the value through sales or through the monetized PTC, I think there's some level of indifference there for us. It's all about where do we move to the highest margin feedstock.

Speaker 8

Okay. Got it. And then my follow-up is just the adjustment lower on the SAP expansion CapEx, which frees up more capital under the or more cash under the DOE Phase two loan. Can you talk about other uses of that cash? Will it does it increase the amount of debt you're able to pay down on intercompany loans or are there other potential uses, for that capital that can improve the cap structure?

Speaker 5

This is Bruce. I'll I'll start with the, the capital part. So the the DOE loan, the government will loan money against permitted uses eligible spending. Broadly, should think of that as capital improvements and not working capital. That's one of the reasons you've heard us talk about a pari pursue debt facility.

Speaker 5

The operational income statement is where the vendors, all of the vendors including Calumet which has provided services under an MSA agreement, get paid. So that's not the loan, that's the income statement. Does that help?

Speaker 8

Yeah, it does. Thanks. If I could just sneak one other in maybe, you put out a mid cycle EBITDA number of $240,000,000 This quarter, I think annualized is about $140,000,000 for that base business. Can you just talk about the gaps between what you believe is mid cycle and what 1Q results showed, especially given the strong performance in the specialty side of things?

Speaker 2

I think in general, Jason, you know, you're really just talking about kind of Q1 winter, right? So, so when we talk about the restricted mid cycle, you know, business, we're talking about, fuels in the summer. We're talking about asphalt in the summer. So I wouldn't expect that you should look at kind of certainly wouldn't be expecting 2025 EBITDA to be, you know, Q1 times four. We're looking forward to Q2 and Q3 is pretty strong, earnings environments from what we're seeing in the market right now.

Speaker 8

Got it. Great. I appreciate all the answers.

Speaker 2

All right. Thanks.

Operator

The next question is from Greg Brody with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hey, good morning guys. You mentioned strategic alternatives you were looking at and you said you couldn't go into much detail. Maybe just since no one asked, what can you tell us about what you're thinking about there? That potentially reduce to reduce more debt or is that for something else?

Speaker 2

No, that would be to reduce more debt, Greg. It's Todd. The, you know, we've said for a long time that, that we're, you know, willing to sell, you know, assets that aren't, you know, core or integrated into the business as long as they bring an accretive value. And we've had interest there. People have heard that.

Speaker 2

And so I'd throw that out there as one. I think last quarter we talked about a number of other things, but yes, you should be thinking of any cash that comes into Calumet, the use of that is debt pay down. That's our number one priority all the way up until we ultimately monetize Montana renewables and achieve our restricted debt target of $800,000,000 So And

Speaker 6

you're not putting a goalpost here to give us a sense of how big that can be ex monetizing some MRL either through a loan or sale, which I think is pushed out, right?

Speaker 2

No, I think it's the same buckets that we had talked about before. You know, more than, you know, sits ahead of us for the 2026 notes. You know, as we look at our debt reduction strategy, our goal is not to, you know, just inch by the 20 or, or anything like that. We're, we're out looking at ways that we can, you know, bring in additional cash to, to knock out the 20, start to dig into the 27s. And like I said, ultimately set us up for the Montana Renewable sale.

Speaker 2

If, you know, like we talked about a little earlier, if that ultimately can happen in 2026, then that would be great, but we'll let the markets guide us on that.

Speaker 6

Got it. And I think Dave said he expected some working capital benefit in the second quarter. Maybe you could just trying to understand how large that can be and just in general, should we think about any way how should we think about you potentially reducing 26s going forward as any guidance or will it be end of quarter decision?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think the, well, don't know that it'll be an end of quarter decision. I think what David was saying was, you know, there was a lot of movement. We saw, we saw commodities all over the place, during the quarter, We've got 3,000,000 barrels of inventory in the system when you're seeing $10.15 dollars moves and correct spreads in crude. Crude, you could see that fluctuate $50,000,000 60 million dollars throughout the quarter. So that was kind of volatility range that he was talking about there as well as we want to get some PTCs just sold, right?

Speaker 2

So now with the quarter under our belt there, we're moving that forward. Then just a little bit more economic certainty about where we're at. But those are kind of the three things we're watching here in the near term future. And then we'll just go ahead and use the rest of the proceeds to make the next step down into 26 calls. And after that, we're looking at cash flow generation from the business and potential strategic activity as talked about earlier.

Speaker 2

Got it. And then just a follow-up on the DOE loan.

Speaker 6

You mentioned in the presentation about having to go back to the loan office to qualify your changes in the expansion. Does that mean that you're not necessarily going access that facility in the interim? Is there basically no spending going to take place as a result? And just help us think through like how that process works? And where are you?

Speaker 6

Hey, Greg. It's Bruce. Yes. Just one subtle thing, Bruce. Have you actually accessed that fund that tranche at all at this point?

Speaker 6

And I'm sorry to interrupt, I'll let you explain.

Speaker 5

Yeah. I want to reset the premise of your question. We did not say we have to requalify anything. We said that stuff that was in the plan is going to be done sooner and cheaper.

Speaker 6

You don't need to go back to the

Speaker 5

we go to the DOE every time we want to draw from the loan facility for the purpose of construction in the field. The the only thing that's changed here is an enormously positive, development, which is less spending and more SaaS sooner. You know, this is hugely credit accretive to the to the loan underwriter.

Speaker 6

Yeah. We I completely understand how advantage it is to drop 200,000,000 of CapEx. What I'm what I'm trying to understand is, do you have access to the fund today?

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 6

And are there any any constraints? So and and are you using it?

Speaker 5

So it again, it's a public document. The conditions precedent to proceed with the second phase of the loan, the tranche two are differentiated, and they require engineering advance to a certain, you know, a definitional level, etcetera. So, you know, that's all underway. We're talking regularly to the engineering and technical people both in the DOE and in their third party advisor. And, you know, as Todd said, the spending that we envision here, this this interim accelerated step of 20,000,000 or $30,000,000 is back end loaded later this year.

Speaker 5

So we're we're not drawing it to give you a direct answer nor did we ever intend to at this point in the process. So that'll be coming up in, you know, six months from now.

Speaker 6

That's great. And you don't see any issue accessing it. The reason why I asked just from press reports that just to and I appreciate that your fund is different. Your funding may be different than press reports that government's looking at not allowing people to get access to their loans. I think yours was fully approved.

Speaker 6

I don't think that applies to you. I'm just trying to confirm that figures.

Speaker 5

Yeah. So Greg, I may have sort of misinterpreted the thrust of your question. So if what you're saying is, is the government gonna give us the money when we ask for it? The answer is yes. They are.

Speaker 5

Remember how we got here. You know, we've that that we've been talking to the DOE for three years before they issued the first tranche. Two of those years were, you know, high high, quality technical diligence on a really complicated undertaking here that was in service. So this was not your, you know, your father's old mobile. And just because of an accident of timing, we straddled an administration change.

Speaker 5

We fully supported, and we said so at the time, the pause that the incoming administration put on this to review and reconfirm, and it it didn't take them very long, three or four weeks if memory serves. And so this is actually a loan that was approved by the Trump administration.

Speaker 6

Great. And one last question for you so I finish this up. I know we'll get this with the queue. Can you just tell us what the intercompany payables are from MRL to Calumet? And can you also just clarify the additional equity investment that you had to make?

Speaker 6

Did that add to that amount or did it not?

Speaker 5

Yeah. So David's pulling up the numbers as he does that. Let me set a definition. So there is a junior term loan in place between Calumet and MRL. We put that in place back around the time of the Warburg investment.

Speaker 5

So three, four years ago, that is an intercompany payable because it is a term loan. And I think I'm going to set that aside and treat your question as what about the, the operational interface where we have a master services agreement MSA, and there are some monthly payables that flow under that agreement. That amount came down sharply as part of the tranche one funding. The The current balance, we have it here, I'm looking at David.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, the current balance came down materially during the quarter. I'm pulling up the actual number. If

Speaker 2

you actually look at in Slide 16 on the earnings presentation deck, we've actually added the intercompany line, to show how that totally impacts the company's total recourse debt and then we show the intercompany and then we show the amount of debt, adjusted for the intercompany. So there was $375,000,000 of intercompany. And to Bruce's point, that's a number of different things. But as a whole, Montana Renewables owes Calumet three seventy five million dollars that's down from $540,000,000 at the end of the year.

Speaker 6

And if I see that number now, so that looks like the 150,000,000 you put in added to that number.

Speaker 5

That number definitely includes the term loan, yes, the junior term loan.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks guys. I appreciate all the time.

Speaker 2

Thanks Greg.

Operator

This concludes the question and answer session. I will turn the conference back over to John Kompa for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thanks Debbie. And thanks to everyone for joining our call today. Certainly appreciate your interest in Calumet. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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Key Takeaways

  • Calumet completed a $350 million DOE loan funding and an accretive sale of its Royal Purple Industrial business, and launched a $150 million partial call of its 2026 notes, reducing annual debt service by ~$80 million.
  • The Specialty Products segment achieved one of its highest Q1 volumes ever (~23 kbd), cut operating costs by ~$1.50/barrel year-over-year and delivered margins near its $60/barrel mid-cycle target despite winter turnaround and rail challenges.
  • Montana Renewables generated positive adjusted EBITDA-plus-tax attributes of $2.4 million in Q1 (Calumet’s 87% share ~$16.9 million), driven by a $20 million production tax credit and lowering op costs to $0.50/gallon.
  • A major MaxSAF 150 breakthrough allows Calumet to add 120–150 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel capacity by early 2026 for just $20–30 million of CapEx—much faster and cheaper than the originally planned $150–250 million expansion.
  • With $347 million of liquidity and ongoing strategic asset reviews, Calumet is focused on driving its recourse debt down toward an $800 million target ahead of its final Montana Renewables monetization.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Calumet Specialty Products Partners Q1 2025
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