Delek Logistics Partners, LP (DKL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Delecq Logistics Partners first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Robert Wright, EVP and Chief Financial Officer. Robert, please go ahead.

And welcome to the Delic Logistics Partners first quarter earnings conference call. Participants joining me on today's call will include Avigal Sorek, president and chairman, Ruben Spiegel, EVP, as well as other members of our management team. 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 involve 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. Thank you, Robert.

VKL reported $132 million in adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, and we are very confident about achieving fully EBITDA guidance of $520 to $560 million. dollars. DKL saw a strong execution in the first quarter, despite some challenges associated with Winterstone Firm. These results are a reflection of a spanks in all segments, advancing our position as a premier full-service provider of crude gas and water in the permanent basin. Now, let me talk about each one of the business in detail. Starting with gas, we have successfully completed the drilling of our first AGI well, taking additional steps toward completing our industry-leading comprehensive sour gas solution. We are very excited about providing a comprehensive capability to our customers, further supporting long-term oil gas production growth in the Dalairo Basin. Moving to crude, both DPG and DGG crude gathering operations continue to see strength, despite some challenges tied to well shut-in related to winter storm fern. We have increased our overall gathering capacity and look forward to further optimizing and growing the business over the rest of the year. Our water business continues to perform strongly and we are exploring additional opportunities in this space. Ruben will share further insight on these developments. The combined gas, crude, and water offering in the Permanent Basin has increased our competitive position and built a strong platform for growth. We will continue to capture the growth opportunities in a disciplined manner, managing leverage and coverage. We also intend to remain good stewards to our stakeholders' capital. our Board of Directors have approved our 50-thirds consecutive quarterly distribution increase, raising the distribution to $1.13 per unit. This is an extraordinary achievement, and we're extremely proud of our team and the financial prudence that brought us here. DELEC Logistics is firmly positioned as a strong, independent, full-suite, midstream service provider. With the foundation we have built and the opportunities ahead, we are confident in our ability to continue delivering sustainable growth and long-term value for our unit orders. I will now hand it over to Reuven, who will provide more details on our operations.

Thank you, Avigal. As Avigal mentioned, we are excited about DKL's future and recent rally in crude prices, along with the strength of our three-service platform is presenting incremental opportunities to further increase our advantaged Permian position. The strength in third-party business continues to increase our economic separation from our sponsor decay. In 2026, on a performer basis, we expect approximately 80% of our runway EBITDA will come from third parties. Turning to our business, we continue to work hard to bring an industry-leading sour gas solution in the Delaware Basin. The first step in the process was to complete our processing capacity expansion. As Avigal mentioned, we have completed the drilling of our first AGI well and currently we're in the process of completing the build-out of the sour gas gathering infrastructure, such as compressor stations, before transferring the system to operations. We are in sync with our producer customers, and the system is expected to be in line with the producer needs. As we have mentioned in the past, while our ramp-up has been slower versus our initial expectation, post our sour gas system build-out, we expect to see step change in our utilization. The step change in utilization is likely to bring forward the need for additional processing capacity. We are looking at our options and continue to explore innovative ways to add capacity along with making selected investments that will support future expansion of the Libby complex. Our Delaware crude gathering volumes were impacted by whale shut-ins because of winter storm fern and the colder-than-normal temperature during the quarter. We have seen these volumes recover in the second quarter and expect Delaware crude gathering volumes to continue to increase over the rest of the year. Our crude gathering business is in a very strong place, and our combined crude and water offering is yielding great results. Moving to our water business, I am very pleased with the start we have had in our produced water gathering business. Our larger water footprint in the Permian Basin posts our acquisition of Gravity and H2O Midstream, along with the rising water cuts in the basin, accentuating the need for increased innovation to meet customer needs. We believe produced water gathering and disposal will require a platform approach as permitting for new SWDs remain limited and producer activity shifts across the basin. We look forward to updating the market as we bring forward these solutions. With that, I will pass it on to Robert.

Thank you, Reuven. As Abigail and Reuven noted, we began 2026 with strong momentum, continuing to advance the Delic Logistics growth story. While we are delivering meaningful financial and operational progress across the partnership, we remain equally focused on achieving our long-term leverage and coverage targets. Despite approximately $10 million in headwinds from Winter Storm Fern, we outperformed expectations in our growth trajectory and were able to achieve our best first quarter results to date. This performance reinforces our confidence in the outlook for the balance of the year. We continue to make solid progress on our planned growth capital spend of $180 to $190 million, dollars, which we expect will yield approximately $75 million in incremental EBITDA on a run rate basis. From a balance sheet perspective, we exited the first quarter in a position of strength, having upsized and extended our revolving credit facilities to $1.3 billion, now maturing in 2031. This increased available liquidity to approximately $1.1 billion. We ended the quarter with an adjusted leverage ratio of 4.05 times, providing meaningful financial flexibility to execute on on our growth agenda while maintaining a disciplined capital structure. Turning to our results, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was approximately $132 million, compared to $123 million in the same period last year. Distributable cash flow, as adjusted, totaled $72 million, and our DCF coverage ratio remained stable at approximately 1.2 times. We are also pleased to announce our 53rd consecutive distribution increase, bringing the quarterly distribution to $1.13 per unit. In the gathering and processing segment, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $83 million compared to $81 million in the first quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily due to increased margins recognized within the segment. Wholesale marketing and termiling adjusted EBITDA was $14 million compared to $18 million in the prior year. The decrease was primarily due to the impacts of the 2024 amended extent agreement with DELIC. Storage and transportation adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter was 25 million dollars compared with 14 million dollars in the first quarter of 2025. the increase primarily reflects the impacts of the january 2026 related party transaction finally the investments in pipeline joint venture segment contributed 18 million dollars this quarter in adjusted EBITDA compared with 17 million dollars in the first quarter of 2025 driven by strong performance from the wing to webster joint venture moving now to capital expenditures, total capital spending for the first quarter was approximately $50 million. Of this amount, $42 million was gross capital, primarily related to the drilling of our first AGI well, in addition to the build-out of new sour gas gathering infrastructure. The remainder of the spend was directed towards other growth projects, including advancing new connections across our crude gathering systems. Looking ahead to 2026, as Avigal mentioned, we remain confident in our earnings trajectory and are reaffirming our full year 2026 EBITDA guidance to a range of $520 million to $560 million. With that, we can open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Doug Irwin from Citi. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks for the question. I just want to start with the guidance. Hey, I'm good. How are you guys? First question, just wanted to start with the guidance range and how you're thinking about it in today's macro environment. Does the low end of that range look like an easier list today than when you gave it kind of earlier in the year? I'm just curious what you're hearing from producers on your acreage, as well as if you might have any pockets of direct commodity or spread exposure you might be able to take advantage of in the current environment.

Yeah, Doug, you nailed it, right? So our optimism around our guidance is being driven from two things, right? One is the macro environment, and I will talk about it in a second. and second is our execution, our strategy. So on the macro side, obviously the premium risk that you have between Brent and AI is going to change. It's very obvious that the premium risk that we had last year on Brent is not the premium risk we see today. And the second, obviously, is that we see a lingering effect for the macro even after the kinetic event is over, which will emphasize probably the shell, the U.S. shell as a safe harbor for a crude supply around the globe. So that put us in a very good position, both in the Midland area and on the Dallauer area. Our combined offering of gas, crude, and water is a unique offering that give our customer a offering that not many does and that's the position of very well and also the development we see around our gas business it was giving a comprehensive solution is also we are seeing a very encouragement development with that i will have it to woven to uh to give his insights thank you avigal um if we look at our at the segments water is performing above our expectations and the combined water and crude option is opening opportunities for continued growth.

Crude is solid and we are seeing opportunities in our Delaware business and in addition we enjoy some tailwind from the Iran conflict. And finally gas will ramp up in the second half of the year so with that said we feel very comfortable at our guidance range.

Great. Thanks for that. And maybe just following up on the gas ramp in the second half of the year, could you maybe just try to do a little more detail around kind of what's left to do on the gathering side and what that timing might look like? And then just curious how soon after WebE2 ramps you might be positioned to be able to announce the next expansion and just what that build cycle might look like, just given that you've already spent some of that early CapEx on future expansions.

Yeah, thank you for the question. We actually made a lot of progress this quarter, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks. It has been a multi-step process. One of the critical paths was drilling the AGL well, which we completed successfully, and now we're focusing on completing all the associated infrastructure, like the compressor stations. We do expect our gas utilization to reach capacity in the next three to six months. In addition, as you mentioned, we have already made some selective investments, and we're looking at different ways to make additional processing capacity available in the most cost-effective manner.

Got it. Thanks for your time.

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Gabe Maureen from Mizzou. Your line is now open.

Okay. Good morning, everyone. How are you? How are you?

How are you, Gabe?

Good, thanks. Thanks. You tantalized a little bit with some, I think, growing in water comments. So can you maybe just talk about what you're seeing? Are there some systems, whether it's private equity, producer-backed, what you might be seeing out there size-wise, materiality? Just curious on those comments.

Absolutely. I will give some higher view around it. and Mohit, some energy around the topic, you will chime in. So obviously, we are not going to be specific about deals and size until we are fully ready to stay. But the combination of crude water and gas in the area we are operating in a meaningful and sizable way is giving us a tailwind. We are very happy about that. We have a very good strategic discussion. And I think that the strategies and location and execution, that's the combination we are trying to achieve. and we're very happy about that. Ruben, do you want to chime in?

Yeah, thank you, Avigal. We're likely to see continued growing need for water with each barrel of produced oil. Water is already produced on a very large scale and the demand keeps growing. So we believe there is a need for effective treatment, a more comprehensive approach for gathering treatment and disposal in particular with the length of time and complexities that needed to get permits today. So we're looking at ways to come up with creative solution around this, and we'll probably give more color and updates when we are ready in the near future.

Thanks, Ruben.

Thanks, Abigail.

And then you mentioned, I think, the impacts on volumes from some of the winter storms that I think they're recovered at this point. I'm just curious also, Waha seems to be a fairly big factor based on where natural gas is pricing in the basin. Are you seeing any shut-ins that are WAHA-related or producer timing delays because of pricing in the basin?

Yeah, so you are right, your observation, it was a close event. It was not a lingering event, but when it happened, it was meaningful, and then it came back to normalcy. But Robert, we'll chime in and give you more color around it.

Yeah, thanks, Avigol. Well, primary impacts were on crude, both in the Midland and Delaware basins, and also a little bit on the gas processing side. You know, as we stated in our remarks, very limited impact, if any, to our water business overall, but it did have an approximately $10 million headwind to our results for the That said, as you saw, we did have very strong performance throughout the partnership for the first quarter, and our outlook for the remainder of the year remains strong with firm behind us. But I'll pass to Mohit as well to talk about the Waha question.

So we've discussed this in the past, Vaha is an important piece of the permanent story and you covered this very well and you know that a lot of residue gas pipelines are going to start coming up in the second half of this year, which is going to relieve a lot of pressure that some of our producer customers are facing in terms of takeaway capacity on the natural gas side. Overall, these two developments, as Avigal mentioned at the beginning of this call, higher call on shale crude you know as a as a result of the Iran conflict and the Waha gas prices and finding a floor based upon incremental residue gas take away capacity that's going to come online is a very positive development for DKL because we are in the right neighborhoods and as you know producers have capacity to to put this gas into the right market you would see more production come in and all three of our businesses gas water and crude will benefit from that so we are we are excited about how this year plays out as far as the density gas takeaway capacity is

concerned got it thanks i appreciate the time thank you thank you appreciate you thank you for the questions there are no further questions at this time and we have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Abigail Sorek, President and Chairman, for closing remarks.

Thank you. I want to thank my colleagues around the table. I want to thank the investor that joined us today and believe in us and stick to the story. And I want to thank our board of director and most importantly, our employees that does nights and days to make our company the best we can. Thank you, guys.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.