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AI Earnings SummaryQ4 2025
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Earnings Call Transcripts

Q4 2025Earnings Conference Call

Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Genesis Energy Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call Webcast. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Dwayne Morley, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Dwayne.

Dwayne Morley: Good morning, and welcome to the 2025 Fourth Quarter Conference Call for Genesis Energy. Genesis Energy has three business segments. The Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment is engaged in providing the critical infrastructure to move oil produced in the long-lived world-class reservoirs from the Deepwater Gulf of America to onshore refining centers. The Marine Transportation segment is engaged in the maritime transportation of primarily refined petroleum products. The Onshore Transportation and Services segment is engaged in the transportation, handling, blending, storage and supply of energy products, including crude oil and refined products primarily around refining centers, as well as the processing of sour gas streams to remove sulfur at refining operations. Genesis' operations are primarily located in the Gulf Coast states and the Gulf of America. During this conference call, management may be making forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The law provides safe harbor protection to encourage companies to provide forward-looking information. Genesis intends to avail itself of those safe harbor provisions and directs you to its most recently filed and future filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We also encourage you to visit our website at genesisenergy.com, or a copy of the press release we issued this morning is located. The press release also presents a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. At this time, I would like to introduce Grant Sims, CEO of Genesis Energy, L.P. Mr. Sims will be joined by Kristen Jesulaitis, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer; Ryan Sims, President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Louie Nicol, Chief Accounting Officer. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Grant.

Grant Sims: Thanks, Dwayne, and good morning to everyone. Thanks for listening to the call. As noted in our earnings release this morning, our fourth quarter results came in slightly ahead of our internal expectations. As our Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment saw strong growth driven by steady base volumes, a full quarter of volumes from Shenandoah well above its minimum volume commitment, along with continued ramping volumes from Salamanca. Our Marine Transportation segment returned to a more normalized level of operating performance as our refinery customers increased runs of heavy crude oil, which drove higher volumes of intermediate black oil available for transport. In addition, the transitory market conditions and supply pressures that impacted our blue water fleet last quarter, now appear to be behind us, all of which should provide for a constructive outlook for our Marine segments we look ahead. The strategic actions we took in 2025, combined with the strong operating performance from our underlying businesses and new offshore volumes enabled us to exit the year with effectively zero outstanding under our $800 million senior secured revolving credit facility at the end of the year after giving effect to cash on hand. With ample liquidity and an increasingly clear line of sight ahead of us, the Board made the decision to increase our quarterly common unit distribution to $0.18 per unit, representing a 9.1% increase year-over-year. Furthermore, just last week, we opportunistically purchased an additional $25 million of our corporate preferred units in a privately negotiated transaction. Taken together, these actions demonstrate our disciplined approach to capital allocation. As we look ahead to 2026 and assuming our other businesses perform as expected, the Genesis story at this point is largely a deepwater Gulf of America growth story. Based on our ongoing discussions with our offshore producer customers and the conversations we have with them during their year-end budgeting cycle, we have been provided with lots of information, including expected production volumes for 2026 and beyond, along with current and future expected drilling schedules. We were also notified a certain planned and routine turnaround they have scheduled for 2026, a couple of which will take place at production facilities where we handle the hydrocarbon molecules more than once, and thus can be more financially impactful. While we benefited from no significant turnarounds in 2025, these are absolutely normal and customary. And in some cases, unfortunately, they can last upwards of 30 to 45 days each. These are their plans. And as I believe everyone can appreciate, we ultimately do not control our customers' operations nor the precise timing of them drilling, completing and bringing new high-impact wells online. We fully understand the plans and schedules offshore change, deepwater drillship schedules change, weather throughout the year changes, planned turnarounds can be delayed or extended for a variety of reasons outside our control. What is important, though, is that despite all of this and the heavier than normal mine dry docking schedule, which we'll go into more detail in 2026, we still reasonably expect to deliver sequential growth and adjusted EBITDA of plus or minus 15% to 20% over our normalized 2025 adjusted EBITDA of approximately $500 million to $510 million. We obviously hope to exceed the top end of that range in 2026. And quite frankly, we could easily make a case for such an outcome. To the extent our actual results differ in any significant way, we would simply view that as more of a timing issue with ultimate cash flows just sliding to the right rather than any fundamental degradation in the long-term cash flows expected from the field's contracted to access or offshore infrastructure. Even if certain offshore activity slips to the right, 2027 should be meaningfully stronger than 2026 based upon our producer customers' current development plans that we've seen. And as a result, the opportunities available to us and '26 become even more compelling in 2027 and beyond. With that, I'll go into a little more detail on each of our business segments. As noted in our earnings release, our Offshore Pipeline Transportation segment delivered another quarter of strong sequential growth with both segment margin and total volumes increasing across our CHOPS and Poseidon pipeline rising approximately 19% and 16%, respectively, versus the third quarter marking the third consecutive quarter of sequential improvement. In fact, from the first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2025, segment margin increased by roughly 57% with total volumes across both systems growing approximately 28%. These results were driven by steady volumes from our legacy fields, strong contributions from Shenandoah and the continued ramp-up in volumes from Salamanca. During the quarter, volumes from the Shenandoah FPU remained steady as the facility continued to operate at our nearest 100,000 barrel per day target rate from four Phase I wells. At Salamanca, volumes continue to ramp from its first three wells, and we remain encouraged by both reservoir performance and the remaining development plans. An additional well at Salamanca is scheduled for completion in the second quarter with the potential for a fifth well as early as the fourth quarter. Together, these wells are expected to result in total production of 50,000 to 60,000 barrels a day per day from the Salamanca production facility. Looking ahead, we expect the monument development a two-well subsea tieback to Shenandoah to be completed and flowing through our facilities by late this year, certainly early 2027. Following Monument, a fifth well at Shenandoah is scheduled to be drilled which could increase total throughput across Shenandoah FPU to as much as 120 kbd with potential upside of an additional 10,000 to 20,000 barrels per day in early 2027. In addition to the five development wells between Salamanca and Shenandoah, we are aware of at least eight additional development or subsea tieback wells at legacy production facilities, served exclusively by our pipeline infrastructure that are planned to be drilled over the next 12 to 15 months. Taken together, this activity underscores that producers in the Gulf of America continue to prioritize long cycle, high-return deepwater developments. We remain actively engaged in commercial discussions around future tieback and development opportunities that could access our offshore systems as projects are sanctioned. Given the competitive economics and long planning cycles associated with these developments, we do not expect near-term commodity price volatility to materially impact offshore development activity in the Gulf. As we look beyond 2026, we would be remiss not to highlight the results of BOEM's most recent lease sale, Big Beautiful Gulf 1 or BBG1, which was held on December 10, 2025. The outcome of this sale further reinforces our view and that of the broader upstream industry that there remains strong long-term interest in the Central Gulf of Mexico. BBG1 generated over $300 million in high bids for 181 tracks, covering approximately 1 million acres in federal waters with roughly 65% of the acreage located in the Central Gulf of Mexico. When combined with lease sales 259 and 261, which took place in March and December of 2023, respectively, more than 4.4 million acres have been leased in federal Gulf waters over the past 3 years. Approximately 2.4 million acres or 53% of the total of which are located in the Central Gulf where our offshore pipeline infrastructure is located as existing capacity. The breadth of current development activity, the scale of recent lease sales and the long-cycle nature of deepwater investment all underscore our conviction that the Gulf of America remains a world-class basin with decades and decades of existing inventory. We believe Genesis is uniquely positioned as the only truly independent third-party provider of crude oil pipeline logistics in the region, offering producers with flow assurance and downstream market optionality along the Gulf Coast. Our differentiated asset footprint, deep customer relationships and decades of existing and future inventory ahead position us for continued growth and decades and decades of opportunity in this world-class basin. Our Marine Transportation segment returned to a more normalized level of operating performance during the quarter. Market conditions across both our brownwater and blue water fleet stabilized as refinery runs of heavy crudes increase and broader equipment utilization improved. Demand for our inland or brownwater fleet recovered as Gulf Coast refiners responded to the widening of light to heavy differentials and increased runs of heavy crude oil, which allowed the supply of intermediate black oil needing to be transported to return to more normalized levels. Looking ahead, we remain optimistic that our Marine Transportation segment could benefit over time from additional volumes produced in the Gulf of America and incremental crude imports into the Gulf Coast, including volumes from Canada, the resumption of exports from Kirkuk, Iraq and the potential for additional volumes from Venezuela should they all materialize. At a minimum, all of these additional heavier medium sour volumes showing up on the Gulf Coast should cause heavy to sour differentials to continue to widen providing refiners the incentive to process increasing volumes of heavier crudes. To the extent, these additional heavy volumes come to fruition. This should result in additional intermediate refined products volumes that need to be kept heated and moved from one refinery location to another, which should drive demand for our inland heater barges, providing a constructive backdrop for increasing rates as we move through the year and into next year. Recent commentary from Gulf Coast refiners would reaffirm they are, in fact, starting to see additional heavy sour discounts as additional volumes arrive on the Gulf Coast. To quote from Valero's recent earnings call, looking at differentials not only with Venezuela, but we've had several beneficial factors that have occurred to kind of help move this market weaker. After last year, with discounts fairly tight, most of these markets moves are making differentials increasingly favorable for refiners with high complexity refiners such as ours, "we are pushing to maximize heavy crude processing in the system going forward with better differentials." Meanwhile, conditions in our blue water fleet have normalized as incremental capacity that migrated from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast and Mid-Atlantic trade lanes has largely been absorbed by the market. As we noted in our earnings release, 2026 is expected to be a higher maintenance year for our blue water fleet with four of our nine offshore vessels scheduled to undergo regulatory dry dockings in the first half of the year. These planned shipyard periods will temporarily reduce vessel availability and may mute the near-term benefit of any improvement in day rates. Importantly, however, we expect these vessels to reenter the market against a more constructive backdrop and be well positioned to recontract the day rates that are consistent with or modestly above their current levels when they exit the shipyard. In addition, the American Phoenix remains under contract through early 2027. Based upon prevailing market rates for comparable assets, we would expect American Phoenix to recontract at a higher day rate than recurrent charter when that contract expires. Overall, we remain confident in the long-term fundamentals of the marine transportation sector with effectively zero net new supply of our classes of Jones Act vessels and the high cost of long lead times required to construct new equipment, the market remains structurally tight as demand continues to improve across both our brown and blue water fleets, we expect our Marine Transportation segment to deliver stable to modestly growing contributions in the years ahead. Our Onshore Transportation and Services segment performed in line with our expectations during the quarter. Throughput volumes continued to increase across both our Texas and Raceland terminals, and pipelines as new offshore volumes ramped and moved onshore through our system. Our legacy refinery services business also delivered results largely consistent with our expectations. As we have mentioned in the past, our Refinery Services business has faced certain structural headwinds over the past several years. Specifically, we have been supply constrained in part because refineries move to run more light sweet crudes as a result of the Shell revolution over the last 10 to 15 years. As shell production is peaking and/or the gas-to-oil ratios are increasing from the shale plays and as the heavy sours we mentioned above are returning to the Gulf Coast, we believe we should have the opportunity to make more NASH or sodium hydrosulfide at several of our existing facilities in future periods. We, generally speaking, can sell every ton we make, and we look forward to restoring some of our supply flexibilities. As our financial performance continues to strengthen over the coming years, and we generate increasing amounts of free cash flow, we will continue to reduce debt in absolute terms, redeem our high-cost corporate preferred securities and thoughtfully evaluate future increases in our quarterly distributions to common unitholders over time. Importantly, we will pursue these objectives while maintaining the flexibility to evaluate future organic and inorganic opportunities as they may arise. Finally, I would like to say that the management team and the Board of Directors remain steadfast in our commitment to building long-term value for all of our stakeholders, regardless of where you are in the capital structure. We believe the decisions we are making reflect this commitment and our confidence in Genesis moving forward. I would once again like to recognize our entire workforce for their individual efforts and importantly, unwavering commitment to safe and responsible operations. I'm extremely proud to be associated with each and every one of you. With that, I'll turn it back to the moderator for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Michael Blum from Wells Fargo.

Michael Blum: So I wanted to start with the guidance for 2026. If I simplistically just annualize Q4 '25 EBITDA and compare that to the midpoint of the '26 guidance, there's a delta there of, call it, $35 million to $40 million. So I'm wondering if you can just give us a rough ballpark for how much of an EBITDA deduct you're assuming for typical hurricane disruptions and then the higher-than-typical marine maintenance because if I just remove those and don't even assume volume growth, which in the offshore, which I'm sure you'll have, just wanted to get a sense of like where the low end of the guidance could come.

Grant Sims: Yes. No, I mean, it's a good question. And as we basically tried to explain, we think that we're being conservative, especially based upon some of the things that we've been told by our producing customers. But again, yes, we are assuming 10 days' worth of anticipated downtime for -- in essence, treating the third quarter is an 82-day quarter instead of a 92-day quarter for our offshore business. We probably net expect $5 million to $10 million reduction on segment margin line, if you will, from the heavy dry docking schedule on the marine side. So I think that, as I said in the commentary that I just gave that we fully expect and we can make a case that we can comfortably exceed it. But we're -- the only reason that we're not pulling out a larger number, the primary reason is basically just taking into account that things can happen beyond our control and try to emphasize to make sure that everybody understands that it's really just a timing of recognition of the future cash flows out of the Gulf of Mexico and has nothing to do with structural issues or subsurface issues. So hopefully, it will turn out to be a conservative range that we throw out.

Michael Blum: Great. Appreciate that. And then on capital allocation, really have like a two-part question first. Can you just remind us where you'd like to take the leverage ratio and what time frame you think you'll get there? And then as it relates to distribution growth, how do we think about the cadence of increases going forward? Is this something you'll be evaluating once a year every fourth quarter? And will the growth in EBITDA, is that a good proxy for how we should think about growth and distribute?

Grant Sims: Well, I mean, again, on a bank calculated basis, I think at 12/31, it was 5.12. So as we continue to use our increasing amounts of free cash flow to pay down debt in absolute terms at the same time that we're seeing increase in our calculated LTM EBITDA, I think that it's -- in essence, it's the debt ratios are going to improve because we're paying down the numerator and while at the same time that the denominator is increasing. So our long-term target has always been in the neighborhood of four and again, it's -- we have a pretty clear line of sight on it and assuming that everything holds up and the producers do -- the quicker they do things, the quicker that we hit those targets. But it's pretty obvious that we can get there. So depending upon the performance, it dictates the time schedule under which we get there. Relative to distribution growth, it's something that the board discusses every quarter. There is no hard and fast program that, in essence, we can talk about at this point. But I do think that it's -- it's clear that the Board has committed as are we as a management team to kind of an all of the above approach. As you -- as we said, we were also successful in negotiating a redemption of another tranche on a negotiated basis of the outstanding corporate preferred. So we will evaluate it on a quarterly basis. And let the market know how -- how things are going at that point in time.

Operator: The next question today is coming from Wade Suki from Capital One.

Wade Suki: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you all taking my questions. Just wanted to -- it's a question I've probably asked you guys before, repetition is always a good teacher. But wondering if you might be able to sort of revisit how you think about potential opportunities to pick up, let's say, the remaining interests in some of these offshore systems that you have, how that might fit with your longer-term priorities and -- of course, I appreciate any insight you might have there or how the counterparties might be looking at it. But yes, to the extent you could sort of clarify or revisit that for us, that would be great.

Grant Sims: Well, again, we're not going to comment in one form or other, you would expect on the potential for M&A activity or other things. I mean, obviously, you can you understand from our enthusiasm that we very much like our existing position to the extent that from an ownership position, it would be possible to increase that exposure, that's something that we would be very comfortable with. But as I want to point out, and you mentioned repetition is a good thing that we have substantial existing capacity on our two major pipelines, the 64% owned and operated Poseidon pipeline and 64% owned and operated CHOPS pipeline. And so we are in a very comfortable position and arguably an enviable position that depending upon developments in the right place that we could have substantial increases and see substantial increases in segment margin and basically flowing to the bottom line in terms of incremental EBITDA without spending any capital. So it's a good runway of continued opportunities in the Central Gulf that we think that we've positioned ourselves for.

Wade Suki: No question. I appreciate that color. Just switch gears a little bit. I think I know the answer here, but obviously, some M&A among a customer or maybe soon to be two customers. Just wondering if you could sort of speak to impact expectations. I would expect some maybe acceleration potential, but any kind of longer-term impact you might see from that would be great.

Grant Sims: Can you repeat it? I'm sorry, I didn't quite fully understand the question.

Wade Suki: I was asking about some of the consolidation we've seen among your customers in the Gulf. And I think there soon to be one more possibly. So just wonder what the implication might be for you all longer term. I imagine positive acceleration or whatnot, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Grant Sims: Yes. No, it's a very good question. And I think that a transaction just closed yesterday, which was basically Harbor Energy out of the U.K. closed on the acquisition of LOG. LOG is obviously an extremely important customer of ours. To the best of my knowledge, we actually moved 70% of LOG's operated production through our pipelines with most of it of those coming through or the large portion of that coming through our SECO lateral and then downstream transportation, which is 100% owned and downstream transportation on our 64% owned Poseidon line. It is in the public domain, as Harbor said, that it is their intent to double that production from the asset base that they're acquiring in the LOG acquisition to double that between now and the end of '28. So that's a positive read-through on things. So if anything, we view that as an extreme positive of a large -- significantly large public company acquiring a private company and with the full intent of doubling its production over the next 2 years is a very good outcome for us, especially given our existing relationship with LOG.

Operator: Your next question today is coming from Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets.

Elvira Scotto: I just wanted to go back to the guidance. And -- can you maybe provide a little more detail around what specifically are you embedding in offshore for Salamanca and Shenandoah. Then you also mentioned kind of the development of eight additional tieback wells planned at legacy facilities. Like is any of that in your 15% to 20% guidance I'll stop there, and then I have some follow-ups.

Grant Sims: Yes, I mean, basically, Elvira, again, yes, based upon what we've been able to ascertain in terms of talking to our producer customers that we are extremely comfortable that we will meet or achieve the 15% to 20% off of the baseline that we talked about. So -- and again, we are trying to set expectations to under promise and over deliver on a prospective basis and -- but to make sure that to reemphasize that to the extent that there's any failure to achieve over performance is really -- is just a timing issue and not an underlying ultimate value consideration. So that's the approach that we're taking as opposed to formal guidance. It's more of an informal guidance that we could easily construct a case, as I said in the prepared remarks, based upon what we know to significantly exceed that range that we just -- we threw out there.

Elvira Scotto: Okay. Great. And then just going back to the dry docking. I think you said the expectation there was $5 million to $10 million kind of impact to margin. Is there an impact to maintenance CapEx on that?

Grant Sims: Yes. I think we made reference to it in the earnings release itself. But because of that, yes, we would expect this to be a heavier maintenance capital here than we experienced in 2025.

Elvira Scotto: Is there any quantification of the impact that you can provide?

Grant Sims: I think, and generally speaking, you looked at a $15 million to $20 million increase that would be within the ballpark.

Elvira Scotto: Okay. Great. And then just -- just one last question for me. You mentioned how the refineries are increasing runs of heavier crude and importing more Venezuelan crude. What do you think -- how much incremental inland barge utilization could this drive this year?

Grant Sims: Well, utilization has remained fairly high, but as -- which is the necessary condition before rates start going up. So as we anticipate whether or not -- we gave a specific example of Valero, but P66 and others have also mentioned that as we see more and more of the heavies run, whether or not it's Venezuela or incremental Gulf of Mexico medium sours or other imports of Canadian and other things that the total black oil pool or the total supply of intermediate refined products, which were specifically designed to move will go up. And so in an already, in essence, close to 100%, if not practically 100% utilization world, we anticipate being able to move prices up, day rates up as we progress through this year and on into next.

Operator: We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor over to Grant for any further closing comments.

Grant Sims: Well, as always, I appreciate everybody listening in, and we look forward to delivering more good news as we progress through '26. So thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.