Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure Ltd. (TWM) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure Limited and Tidewater Renewables Limited Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 14, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Gracher, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Chloe, and welcome, everyone, to the joint conference call for the second quarter 2025 results for both Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure and Tidewater Renewables. I'm Michael Grasher, Manager, Investor Relations. Joining me today are our CEO, Jeremy Baines, who will provide an update on operations during the quarter; and our CFO, Ian Quartly, who will provide an update on our financial results. We will then open the line for Jeremy and Ian and other members of the Tidewater management team to take your questions. Before I get started, I would like to note that today's call is being recorded for the benefit of individual shareholders, the media and other interested parties who may want to review the call at a later time. The recorded call will be available through Cydia. This morning, both Tidewater Midstream and Tidewater Renewables reported results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2025. A copy of the news release, financial statements and MD&A will be available on SEDAR+ or the respective company websites. Before passing the call over to Jeremy, I'll remind you that some of the comments made today may be forward-looking in nature and are based on Tidewater's current expectations, judgments and projections. Forward-looking statements we may express today are subject to risks and uncertainties, which can cause actual results to differ from expectations. Further, some of the information provided refers to non-GAAP measures. To know more about these forward-looking statements, non-GAAP measures and risk factors, please see the company's various financial reports, which are available on the respective company websites and on SEDAR+. I will now turn the call over to Jeremy.

Thanks, Michael, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I will divide my remarks into 2 sections. First, I'll provide an update on Tidewater Renewables commercial strategy, and then I will walk through the operational performance and project progress for both Tidewater Midstream and Tidewater Renewables. Tidewater Renewables continues to see strong momentum following the government of British Columbia's amendments to the Low Carbon Fuels Act, which doubled the renewable fuel requirement for diesel to 8% for the 2025 compliance period. The amendments also mandated that the renewable fuel content be produced within Canada from April 1, 2025. These policy changes have been a catalyst for increased market activity, reinforcing our view that the demand for low-carbon Canadian produced fuels is not only sustainable but accelerating. As a result of this more favorable environment, I'm pleased to report that during the second quarter, Tidewater Renewables successfully contracted offtakes for over 70% of forecasted production from the HDRD facility for the second half of 2025. Most of these contracts are for the sale of R100, which is renewable diesel with the environmental attributes included. These contracts are priced based on U.S. import parity benchmarks, which aligns the contract pricing with prevailing U.S. market values, positioning us competitively in the North American renewable fuel market. This commercial success is a direct outcome of our strategic focus and supports our belief that Tidewater Renewables is becoming a critical and reliable supplier within the Canadian clean fuels value chain. I will now provide an update of our operational performance for the quarter. At Tidewater Renewables HDRD complex, average throughput for the quarter was 2,164 barrels per day or approximately 72% of design capacity. Utilization was relatively stable quarter-over-quarter as we continue to ramp up following the minor fire incident that temporarily suspended operations in early April. As we shared last quarter, that event was managed safely and repairs were completed using on-hand spare parts. After restarting on April 14, the utilization rates steadily improved up to 2,850 barrels per day, which is 95% of design capacity by the end of June. With continued strong performance, we remain on track to achieve our full year throughput guidance of 2,200 to 2,400 barrels per day, which is inclusive of our scheduled Q3 turnaround. Turning to Tidewater Midstream's Prince George Refinery, throughput averaged 9,942 barrels per day in Q2 2025, which was consistent with 9,936 barrels per day during the first quarter of 2025, but 17% lower than the second quarter of 2024. The second quarter of 2025 had lower throughput compared to the second quarter of 2024, largely due to operational and feedstock composition adjustments that were required to process higher density feedstock entering the refinery. Over the last few months, we have been able to source lower density feedstocks and expect that throughput at the refinery will return to normal levels following the semiannual heat exchanger cleaning and crude heater decoking that is scheduled for October this year. PGR continues to be impacted by lower refined product margins driven by wider commercial wholesale discounts, which stems from an oversupply of diesel in Western Canada, largely due to U.S. renewable diesel imports at 5-year high Western Canadian refinery utilizations. As we have previously disclosed, our offtake agreement with Synovus expired in November 2024, we have successfully transitioned to marketing our refined products in-house. Our team has been actively expanding our customer base, and we are pleased to report steady quarter-over-quarter growth in sales volumes. As discussed on our first quarter conference call on May 6, 2025, we announced the planned acquisition of the North segment of Pembina's Western Pipeline. Integration planning is well underway, and we remain on track to close the transaction in the third quarter. Once complete, this acquisition is expected to generate meaningful cost reductions and operational synergies by enhancing our ability to optimize feedstock procurement and integrating pipeline operations and maintenance within our downstream platform. At our Midstream assets, Tidewater Midstream's Brazeau River complex had throughput of 95 million cubic feet per day in the second quarter of 2025, relatively consistent with 94 million cubic feet per day during the first quarter of 2025 and 5 million cubic feet per day higher than the second quarter of 2024. As previously disclosed, Plant 3 of the BRC facility was temporarily shut down for maintenance and repairs, resulting in lower straddle volumes coming through the facility during the second quarter. The repair work was completed and Plant 3 was restarted as expected in late June. With Plant 3 restarted, we expect the facility to be stronger in the second half of the year. At Tidewater Midstream's Ram River Gas Plant, gas processing remains curtailed with sulfur handling operations continuing. We are focused on cost control at the facility and remain prepared to restart operations as AECO prices improve and upstream producer activity resumes. Moving to project progress. The front-end engineering design at Tidewater Renewables 6,500 barrel per day SAF project in British Columbia is now complete, and we continue to progress further optimization, commercial and regulatory work. As part of this ongoing development, I am pleased to report that Tidewater Renewables recently received approval to amend its initiative agreement with the government of British Columbia. The amendment will provide further support in the form of additional BCLCFS credits, which will partially fund the advancement of the optimization and development efforts as we advance toward a final investment decision, which is now targeted for 2026. We continue to focus on increasing liquidity at Tidewater Midstream and Tidewater Renewables and are making good progress on noncore asset sales. Following the end of the second quarter, Tidewater Midstream announced that it has successfully entered into an agreement to sell the Sylvan Lake gas plant and associated gas gathering infrastructure for total proceeds of approximately $5.5 million. We expect the sale to close during the third quarter of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Inclusive of this transaction, we have successfully closed or executed agreements for the sale of approximately $38 million of noncore asset sales during 2025. We will continue to update the market as we progress with additional asset sales. Looking ahead, we remain focused on maximizing operational efficiency at the PGR and HDRD complex, enhancing netbacks on conventional and renewable refined products, strengthening our commercial platforms, increasing throughput at our Tidewater Midstream facilities and controlling costs, increasing our liquidity and focusing the business by progressing our noncore asset sale program, advancing our SAF initiative while prudently managing capital costs and continuing to advocate for a fair regulatory environment that supports energy security, supports existing domestic energy industry and operations and attracts investment across Canada's low carbon and conventional energy sectors. We believe the building blocks are in place for revenue growth and margin expansion in the second half of 2025 and beyond. With that, I'll now turn it to Ian for the financial review.

Thanks, Jeremy. I'll begin with Tidewater Renewables financial results, and then we'll discuss Tidewater Midstream's consolidated financial results. Tidewater Renewables delivered strong financial results for the second quarter of 2025. The corporation reported net income of $13 million and adjusted EBITDA of $10.7 million, which represents an $8 million improvement in both metrics compared to the first quarter of 2025. This quarter-over-quarter growth was primarily driven by the new R100 sales contracts Jeremy mentioned previously, which allowed Tidewater Renewables to sell the majority of its second quarter renewable diesel and the associated emissions credits at U.S. import parity benchmark prices. From a liquidity standpoint, we also took important steps to further strengthen our financial position during the quarter. We increased the available capacity under the Tidewater Renewables senior credit facility by $7 million, driven primarily by the improved cash flows from the newly contracted offtakes and more favorable Canadian federal emission credit economics. As previously disclosed, Tidewater Renewables also extended the maturity of its senior credit facility to February 28, 2027. This extension pushes Tidewater Renewables' earliest debt maturity out by another year, enhancing our financial stability and providing us with greater flexibility as we execute on our strategic priorities. Turning to Tidewater Midstream. The company reported a consolidated net loss attributable to shareholders of $16.3 million during the second quarter of 2025 compared to a net loss attributable to shareholders of $4.7 million during the second quarter of 2024. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $16 million during the second quarter of 2025 compared to $45.3 million during the second quarter of 2024. The change in both net loss and adjusted EBITDA was largely due to lower refined product margins for the corporation's downstream assets, offset in part by favorable changes in the fair value of derivative contracts and lower general and administrative costs. During the second quarter of 2025, Tidewater repaid approximately $20 million of consolidated debt on its senior credit facilities, resulting in $55 million of combined available capacity on these facilities at June 30, 2025. I'll now ask the operator to open up the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Maurice Choy from RBC Capital Markets.

I just want to start with the Renewables side. You noted that there has been a significant increase in commercial activity reflecting the rising demand and improved emissions credit economics. Just looking at the LCFS prices, we are still at about $200 or so. Given the encouraging commercial and demand activity that you highlighted, how do you see the credit prices over the remainder of this year and into next year?

Thanks for the question, Maurice. When we look through the rest of the year, we've seen a number of positive developments in the U.S. market around their RVO obligations and as well with some of the changes in 45Z, we have seen some supply come out of the market. And obviously, with the changes the BC government made, people are looking to meet their LCFS and CFR obligations with Canadian produced renewable diesel, which has really been supportive in the quarter. Right now, we're seeing that forward combined stack of LCFS and CFR credits better than what I had guided to last quarter when I think I said $450 million to $500 million. We're actually seeing it right now in that $500 to $550 range based on some strength with the CFR credit in particular.

I was going to follow up to that is whether or not you see the credit prices staying at those high levels into next year? Or do you feel like it might wean a little bit from here?

We feel actually like LCFS credits that you're seeing the reported prices in BC are a little bit soft right now, and we actually expect the LCFS side to probably improve. As we look forward into future years, the -- with the increasing CI standards, we actually see that market tightening up. So we think the markets are pretty supportive. Another kind of interesting outcome of our strategy where we're basically backing out U.S. imports, the pricing mechanism gives us an ability to price all of the pieces of those transactions, which is a nice feature. So we might look at doing a little bit of revenue stabilization on some margins on that front as well as we go forward.

Understood. And if I could just finish up on a question on the midstream side, specifically on PGR. You mentioned that you've expanded your customer base now that you've transitioned to marketing refined products in-house. Can you unpack that comment a little bit on the customer base side and whether or not you feel like you are now better placed to have your products in Western Canada versus elsewhere?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Maurice. So as you will recall, and I think everyone will recall, we had basically one customer last year that was taking 90-plus percent of our product being the Synovus offtake that came with the original purchase of the refinery. Over the first half of this year, I mean, we started preparing for this last year as well. We started going out to the market because we knew we were going to be selling direct and marketing all that product. We took the customer list from basically to a significant number of diversified customers. And we're getting better and better at adding customers and finding the various customers. It's a mix. We sell into -- we try to focus and get as much product in Prince George as we can. We sell into downstream retail networks as larger industrial customers, we've had some success, particularly on the mining side. As their supply management programs come up and their fuel contracts come up, we're having some success bidding into those and getting successful there. And we continue to look at various independent distributors. We also, at times, have found opportunities to do some product swaps in markets outside of Prince George that are attractive to us. And so we continue to build and add more and more customers and optimize price that we're able to sell at. So we're feeling, like we said last quarter, we're getting better every quarter, and you can see that in this quarter. So it's been a process, obviously, as we went through the first quarter, you're all aware we built a bunch of inventory. We've been able to clear all of that out in this quarter and generate liquidity, reduce our working capital we're carrying, and I think that's a testament to the team. And now with our inventory levels sort of operationally optimized, we're looking -- we're continuing to optimize that sales book to the customers and try to pull margins up as we move forward a bit.

And when you look at the contract terms or length of the contracts, are they somewhat short term for now and kind of test out the relationship? Or do you envision that this is going to get longer in term over time?

Sorry, Maurice, we couldn't hear you there. You're...

The question was whether or not when you look at the contract terms of some of these potential customers, do they tend to be on a shorter end for now as you test out the relationships? Or is it more ones that will slowly get longer over time?

Yes. We've talked about this before, like in the conventional refined products market, the contracts typically roll between 1 to 2 years out. And so we continue to roll those. Obviously, certain people have entered into various contracts, particularly the industrials like the mines where maybe they'll do a couple of years or more. And so as those come up, we bid into them, and we continue to work. We are having some very interesting discussions on the renewables front on some longer-term RD offtakes and we'll make an announcement as we progress there, assuming we get something across the line there. But typically, conventional, I would call it 1 to 2, I think there's maybe some potential to do a little longer-term RD.