Delek Logistics Partners LP (DKL) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jay, and I'll be your conference operator today. I would now like to turn the conference over to Robert, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to the Delek Logistics Partners third-quarter earnings conference call. Participants joining me on today's call will include Avigal Soreq, President; and Reuven Spiegel, EVP.

As a reminder, this conference call will contain forward-looking statements as defined under the federal securities laws, including statements regarding guidance and future business outlook. Any forward-looking statements made during today's call will include risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from today's comments. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included in our SEC filings. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Avigal for opening remarks. Avigal?

Thank you, Robert. Delek Logistics Partners had another record quota. We reported approximately $136 million in quarterly adjusted EBITDA. Due to the strong progress here to date, DKL has increased its fully EBITDA midpoint guidance of $500 million to the upper end of the range between $500 million and $520 million.

Delek Logistics continued to advance its key initiative in natural gas, crude, and water businesses, further improving its position as the premier full-service provider in the Permian Basin. After successfully completing the commissioning of the new Libby 2 plant in the third quarter, DKL advanced its ongoing effort on acid gas injection and sour gas handling capabilities. The AGI and sour gas handling capabilities are enabling DKL to fill the plant to capacity and paving the way for further processing capacity expansions.

We are also seeing solid operation in our food and water gathering segments. Both DPG and DDG crude gathering operations had a strong third quarter with a record volume for DDG. This strength has continued in the fourth quarter.

Between our two water acquisitions in increasing dedication, our competitive position in both Midland and Delaware Basin is increasing, and we expect to continue to build on these strengths. Our well-timed and cost-effective acquisition of [three bare] H2O Midstream and Gravity Water Midstream have supplemented our organic growth and enabled DKL transition to full suite service provider. We will remain consistent with our strategy of growing out the partnership to a prudent management of leverage and coverage.

Along with seizing the growth of opportunity we see in our business, we intend to remain good steward of our stakeholder capital. With this, I'm pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has approved a 50th consecutive increase in the quarterly distribution to $1.12 per unit. This is an extraordinary achievement, and we're extremely proud of our team and the financial prudence that has gotten us in.

To conclude, Delek Logistics is making great progress in becoming a strong, independent, full suite, midstream service provider and expect to continue on our value creation path well into the future.

I will now hand it over to Reuven, who will provide more details on our operations.

Thank you, Avigal. As Avigal mentioned, we are very excited about DKL's future and are working to increase our advantage Permian position. I am very pleased with the commissioning and operation of our Libby 2 gas plant. The plant is performing according to expectation, and we are completing the associated sour gas AGI infrastructure to fill the plant in the most efficient manner.

The planned CapEx for Libby 2 included investments that will support future expansion of the Libby complex, and our confidence in these expansion opportunities is increasing as we progress our AGI infrastructure. We continue to believe that our expanded gas processing and sour gas handling capabilities provide a unique offering to our customers and provide us with a long runway of growth in the Delaware Basin.

Our crude gathering volumes had a record third quarter, and we expect to continue to see this trend going forward as we close out the year. On the Midland side, the integration of the two water gathering systems from H2O and Gravity is progressing well, and we expect to use our larger footprint to enhance our combined crude and water offering in the Howard, Martin, and Glasgow counties.

Finally, we continue to look for opportunities to make our operations more efficient and robust and are looking for ways to increase our margin profile throughout our operations.

With that, I will pass it on to Robert.

Thank you, Reuven. As both Avigal and Reuven highlighted, we continue to make meaningful progress in advancing the Delek Logistics growth story. While we drive forward expansion across the partnership, we remain equally focused on achieving our long-term leverage and coverage targets.

Over the past 12 months, we've successfully closed two acquisitions: H2O Midstream and Gravity Water Midstream, which were well timed from a purchase multiple perspective. And we also completed the construction of the Libby 2 gas plant. Our focus now shifts to capturing the full value of these investments by optimizing synergies and realizing the associated EBITDA uplift as we move toward our strategic goals.

Importantly, we maintain a strong financial position with approximately $1 billion of availability on our credit facilities, giving us flexibility to continue executing our growth agenda.

Moving on to our third-quarter results, adjusted EBITA for the quarter was approximately $136 million, up from $107 million in the same period last year. Distributable cash flow as adjusted totaled $74 million and the DCF coverage ratio as adjusted was approximately 1.24 times.

We expect this ratio to continue to strengthen through the remainder of the year as our recent growth projects, including the Libby 2 gas plant, begin to make a more meaningful contribution to our financial performance.

For the Gathering and Processing segment, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $83 million compared to $55 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily due to the acquisition of H2O and Gravity. Wholesale marketing and terminalling adjusted EBITDA was $21 million compared to $25 million in the prior year. The decrease is primarily due to the impacts of [last summer's] amend and extend agreements with DK.

Storage and Transportation adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $19 million, compared with $19 million in the third quarter of 2024. And lastly, investments in Pipeline Joint Venture segment contributed $22 million this quarter, compared with $16 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily due to the contribution from the Wink to Webster dropdown in August of last year, in addition to stronger performance by the venture in the current period.

Moving on to capital expenditures, the capital program for the third quarter was approximately $50 million. $44 million of this capital spend relates to growth CapEx, which included spend to optimize the Libby 2 gas processing plant. The remainder of the capital spend for the period was other growth projects, namely advancing new connections in the Midland and Delaware gathering systems.

Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, as Avigal mentioned, we remain confident in our earnings trajectory and are raising our full-year EBITDA guidance to the upper end of our range, now expected between $500 million and $520 million.

With that, we can now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Doug Irwin, Citi.

Hey, thanks for the time. I was just wondering if you could maybe -- yeah, thanks. Wondering if you could maybe expand on a comment from the press release around producers increasing activity on your acreage ahead of -- with the two coming online. Just curious how you're thinking about the treating capacity ramp in the year end as well as maybe some of the benefits you might be seeing across your broader gathering system just as you bring that sour gas offering to your customers.

Yeah, absolutely. So why don't I take a minute or two to give you a bit broader overview? As you saw on our numbers, crude and water are extremely strong, and we are very happy about that. And I think we also can be proud of the strategy we set to be a premier crude gas and water provider.

In the heart of the Perman Basin, I think that we were pretty much the first one to put that strategy together and it's starting to give us a very nice yield. That's part of the reasoning that we are increasing our focus, our guidance for the year, and we are very proud of the timely manner acquisition and build we did.

We saw a record crude. We did not see any material change in the drilling activity in our acreage and with the discussion we have with our producer. And we are seeing more and more synergies between the different streams that we are actively managing.

With that, I will let Reuven comment more about the sour progress we are seeing.

Thank you, Avigal. The actual construction and startup of Libby 2 has been above our expectation on time and on budget. Originally, and based on producers' forecasts that we anticipated to fill up the plant, with sweet gas, but as they were drilling, the landscape has changed, and the producer needs solutions for sour gas as soon as possible. As a result, we accelerated some sour programs to provide solution in a more rapid timeline.

We have very high confidence in not only filling up Libby 2, but because of the full suite -- sour gas, crude, and water solution that we provide -- we will need to expand processing capacity earlier than our previous expectations.

Got it. That's helpful. And maybe as a follow-up on CapEx, he talked about kind of potentially already having expansion opportunities, but also kind of spent some CapEx this year on Libby 2. Where do you see '26 trending in general now that you have Libby 2 online? And I guess to the extent that it's trending lower next year, how are you thinking about just your flexibility to maybe pay down some debt or maybe even buy back some more units from DK next year?

Yeah, and that's a very nice question there, Doug. While the macro and the strategy going very well, we still have some tactics to finish for planning for next year and budgeting, and we plan to give you another guidance on the next earning call like we did this year. So we have something to look -- looking forward, so we leave it to that.

Fair enough. We'll wait for next quarter. Thank you.

Absolutely, thank you, Doug. Appreciate you.

Gabriel Moreen, Mizuho.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I just want -- good, Avigal. How are you?

Doing well, thank you. Just good.

Just want to ask on the equity income line. I think Robert mentioned some -- I mean, better performance or improving performance. Clearly, that was equity investments line that was clearly a very strong point in the quarter. Can you just talk about that a little bit in this -- is this current run rate something that's maybe sustainable going forward?

Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, most of that line item was impacted by strong performance in the quarter by Wink to Webster. I think when you look at our JV results on an annualized basis, like year to date, I think that's a good run rate of what to expect going forward. I think we're pretty happy with our JV results overall.

Great, thanks, Robert. I appreciate it. Can you maybe also talk a little about the water landscape overall? I think, Reuven and Avigal, you both mentioned others trying to emulate your three stream strategy here. As far as you see with the landscape, are you seeing new competitors, new opportunities? Just we're curious kind of with some mergers happening and IPO happening, whether anything has shifted in your view.

Yeah, so that's a very good question. And we see a very important trend that you can see is the gas and oil ratio and the water and the crude ratio. Both of them are working extremely well from our opposition standpoint. And if you go one year back, Gabriel and you think about the timing that we did at both H2O and Gravity acquisition, we bought that pretty much at half price versus what we've seen the market trending today.

So we are very happy about the timing and the drive in the market. Obviously, as you can see in the Delaware Basin, it's almost impossible to get SWDs permitted in a timely manner. So we were very fortunate to have the position we are at, and it's going very well to our expectation.

Thanks, Avigal. And if I could just squeeze one more in relative to Reuven's comments about Libby 3 earlier than expectations, I'm just wondering if you'd be able to define what that would mean from a timing standpoint and then also on the AGI disposal front as well, whether what you've done here to handle the sour gas at Libby 2, whether that gives you really the runway for whatever volumes you're going to need to handle at Libby 3 when the expansion comes on hopefully.

Yeah, obviously, the market is telling us that it needs our sour capabilities and the market tells us that it needs our gas treating and the market tells us that it needs our water treating. All of that are detailed questions.

Obviously, we'll -- once we finish the planning session, we'll come to you with a very detailed and the execution plan like we did in the past -- all the time in the past we'll do that again this time and -- but the very good news here that we are on the right timing. And I would say with the right product basket to give to our customers. Do you want to add anything?

Yeah, Gabe, thanks for your question. Just to answer your specific question, we are very happy with our permitted capacity on the acid gas side, and we don't see any near-term restrictions on that.

Thanks, guys. We look forward to more details. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Gabe. Appreciate you.

With no further questions, that concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Avigal for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you to my colleagues around the table. Thank you for our Board of Directors for trusting us. Thank you for the unitholder. We're enjoying a very good return and growth story. And most importantly, thank you for our employees for making that partnership as good as it is. Thank you guys. We'll talk again.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.