Sunoco LP Q2 FY2023 Earnings Call

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. On the call with me this morning are Joe Kim, Sunoco LP's President and Chief Executive Officer; Karl Fails, Chief Operations Officer; Dylan Bramhall, Chief Financial Officer; and other members of the management team. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements that include expectations and assumptions regarding the partnership's future operations and financial performance. Actual results could differ materially, and the partnership undertakes no obligation to update these statements based on subsequent events. Please refer to our earnings release as well as our filings with the SEC for a list of these factors. During today's call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow as adjusted. Please refer to the Sunoco LP website for a reconciliation of each financial measure. Sunoco LP delivered record results for a second quarter that demonstrates the earnings power of our business. The partnership generated adjusted EBITDA of $250 million compared to $214 million a year ago, an increase of 17%. Fuel volumes for the quarter were 2.1 billion gallons, up 5% from the second quarter last year. Fuel margin for all gallons sold was $0.127 per gallon compared to $0.123 per gallon a year ago. Total second quarter operating expenses were $137 million, an increase of $9 million from the same period last year. This year-over-year increase was attributable to the Peerless and Zenith acquisitions. During the second quarter, we spent $35 million of growth capital and $15 million in maintenance capital. Second quarter distributable cash flow as adjusted was $175 million compared to $159 million in the second quarter of 2022, yielding a current quarter and trailing 12-month coverage ratio of 1.9x. On July 25th, we declared an $0.842 per unit distribution consistent with last quarter. As you may recall, we increased our distribution by 2% last quarter and expect to evaluate future distribution increases annually in the first quarter. Turning to the balance sheet. At the end of the second quarter, we had $990 million outstanding on our revolving credit facility, leaving approximately $500 million of liquidity. Leverage at the end of the quarter was 3.6x unchanged from last quarter. Our results year-to-date support the strength of our business model and our firm belief that Sunoco LP offers a very compelling investment opportunity. Our consistent results over the past few years throughout a variety of operating environments demonstrate our financial stability. This performance has allowed us to both strengthen our balance sheet and maintain strong distribution coverage, underpinning a sustainable and growing distribution to our unitholders. Finally, we see a long runway of high-quality investment opportunities that will enhance our existing operations and generate attractive returns for our unitholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to Karl to walk through some additional thoughts on our second quarter performance and recent growth initiatives.

Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter, demonstrating that our formula of profitably investing capital, gross profit optimization, consistent expense discipline and solid operations across our business continues to deliver results. Volumes were up about 5% in the second quarter versus the second quarter of last year. If you take a step back and think about our volumes, there are a few points worth making. This quarter was the first quarter since the fourth quarter of 2019, where our volumes were above the 2 billion-gallon mark for a quarter. One of the big contributors to that growth was our capital investments that we have made, both organic and through acquisitions. In addition, we have also seen some data points in the second quarter that are encouraging on gasoline demand for the country as a whole and inside our network as well. It definitely helps that retail gasoline prices were more than $1 per gallon cheaper this quarter versus last year. We have capitalized on these factors and grown market share while maintaining strong fuel margins. With respect to margins, the margin performance over the last few years continued in the second quarter as we delivered margins of $0.127 per gallon. While the price of fuel fell slightly during the quarter, we continue to benefit from higher industry breakeven margins as well as continued volatility in the fuel markets. Once you layer in our margin optimization strategies, and growing volumes, our gross profit performance continues to be strong. And the final point to remember is that our business is resilient enough to perform in various volume and margin environments. Turning to expenses. Controlling expenses remains one of our core strengths, and we continue to demonstrate this in the second quarter as our year-over-year expense increases were almost entirely attributable to our business growth and recent acquisitions. I also want to provide an update on our Zenith terminals acquisition. We closed on the 16 terminals from Zenith Energy on May 1st and now have a few months of operations under our belt. Our midstream team has done a great job of quickly integrating these assets into our portfolio, including building relationships with new customers and welcoming new employees to our team. Overall, integration is proceeding as planned, and we expect to deliver on our expectations with the addition of these terminals to our asset base. By now, our track record should speak for itself on our ability to appropriately value acquisitions, deliver synergies and successfully integrate into our existing network. Finally, a comment on capital. We continue to efficiently spend maintenance capital on our assets as well as reinvest increasing amounts of growth capital back into the business. The end result is accretive growth from these investments, which leads to increased distributable cash flow, which we can then reinvest while preserving a strong balance sheet. Both maintenance and growth capital remain in line with our revised 2023 guidance we provided in May. Before turning the time over to Joe, I will wrap up by stating that we will continue to execute on delivering results for our stakeholders through our proven strategy of gross profit optimization, tight expense control, solid and efficient operations and growing our business.

Thanks, Karl. Good morning, everyone. We delivered a record second quarter. Scott and Karl have discussed the key details. However, there are a few items that deserve some additional commentary. First, our strong year-to-date results have been driven by a holistic combination of the following key drivers: volume growth, strong margins, disciplined expense management and a growth program that is delivering expected returns. Second, given our performance in the first half of this year and the continued strength of our business model, we're well positioned for another strong year. Thus, we expect to be on the high end of our EBITDA guidance with the potential to surpass it. And finally, we remain in a position of strength to further build on our three capital allocation priorities: providing growth of our distribution, maintaining a strong balance sheet and capitalizing on growth opportunities. Bottom line, our business model continues to demonstrate resiliency and deliver on growth, and we expect this to continue. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. You may open the line for questions.

In your 2023 outlook, you indicated $0.12 per gallon as the baseline for margins. While this may serve as a lower limit for the current year, do you consider your outperformance this year solely a result of reduced volumes? Or do you believe you are moving towards a new equilibrium margin based on your performance thus far?

Yes. This is Karl. If you look at our margins, and we talked about our guidance at the end of last year, in the past, we've given guidance ranges on both volume and margin. And in December, we really gave 7.8 billion gallons and $0.12. We thought that represented the fat part of the curve in terms of what was possible. Clearly, in the first half of the year, we've trended above both those numbers on both volume and margin. If you look at the margin piece, I mentioned in my prepared remarks the big contributors to that. And if you break that down, you have higher breakeven margins due to the overall inflationary environment, you look at the volatility in the fuel markets and then the other factor that can impact margin is the overall movement of prices. And those first two factors, we don't see changing. And as we look into the near future, again, my crystal ball is not perfect, but I don't see anything that would change the path of those factors. Clearly, you look at the movement of markets, we had a little bit of a tailwind in the second quarter with prices falling; at the beginning of the third quarter, you've had kind of the opposite effect with prices rising. So that can impact margins as we've seen in the past, but the other two factors we think will carry forward into the end of this year and even into next year.

Great. That's helpful color. And then for my follow-up, wondering if you could provide an update. And I know you touched on it in your prepared remarks, but just how the Zenith integration is coming along and maybe your overarching view on the market for midstream assets as an acquirer since transaction multiples seem to have come down a little bit this year?

Yes, I'd be happy to talk about Zenith. And one of the points I tried to touch on in my earlier remarks really gets to the point of properly valuing acquisitions, getting the deals done and closed and then integrating them and delivering on the financials. That's really just become a core competency of what the team does. And so Zenith is just another example of that. There's nothing outstanding to the upside or the downside of Zenith; it's done well and delivering, but that can be true of the other acquisitions we've done: Peerless, Gladieux, NuStar, and then others going backward. So I'll let Joe talk about the market.

Robert, this is Joe. I probably sound like a broken record, but the M&A environment for us in the field distribution and the refined product market looks the same as it did two years ago, last year, and looks the same right now. It is definitely, I would say, a buyer's market. And especially with companies like Sunoco, which bring a history of delivering on synergies. So when the right opportunities come up, I think we're in a great position to capitalize on it.

Just kind of going back to the margin performance, and you talked about a couple of the drivers that you expect to see going forward. So my question directly is, should we be expecting that to continue higher and eventually get into the $0.13 plus range, $0.14 plus range as you look out over the next several years?

Yes. Selman, again, I don't know that we're as confident in terms of what the absolute numbers are going to be. I think it's fair to say that of those factors they'll probably stay steady or increase over time, and then you'll have some quarter-to-quarter variability that relates to the movement of prices. So that's probably a fair assumption.

Good to see quarterly volumes above the 2 billion-gallon mark again. Can you maybe just talk about volume trends in the first month of the third quarter?

Yes, Ned, we are pleased with our volume performance, and surpassing the 2 billion threshold was significant for us. When considering our volumes, three factors contributed in the second quarter and are likely continuing in the third quarter. The first factor is acquisitions. Year-over-year, the Peerless volumes contributed to our second quarter this year but were not part of last year's second quarter. The second factor is growth capital, which we have invested in signing up new customers, renewing existing customers, and improving our assets. The third factor, which is likely the least significant, is the positive signs of consumer demand. Looking at industry benchmarks and EIA data, while weekly data may not be completely reliable, monthly comparisons and reports like Opus show that in the first quarter, our volumes were still below last year's. This changed around April, particularly for gasoline, as since then, our volumes have outpaced those of last year, both industry-wide and within our network. Furthermore, there are encouraging indications that some of our maintenance capital and other asset investments are leading to volumes performing better than industry benchmarks. Overall, we are satisfied with our volume performance across these aspects.

That's great. And maybe any update on additional growth opportunities around the Puerto Rico acquisition?

Yes. I would like to build on my comments from last quarter, Ned. In the context of our overall portfolio, this is a relatively small portion of our income, but it demonstrates that our strategy and business model, particularly in the domestic U.S., are effective in other regions. The combination of midstream assets and fuel distribution, along with a strong focus on managing expenses and investing capital wisely, fosters growth. The team has been performing well for many years, and we've added more capital, processes, and scalability. While this won't materially impact the overall company performance, this asset is performing as we anticipated, and there are further growth opportunities in nearby islands and other areas of the Caribbean.

So we've seen volumes looking like they're recovering nicely, but we don't have all the visibility on the ex-acquisition side, let alone on the side. So to the extent you're willing to disclose, my question is, are we out of the period of makeup payments for 7-Eleven? Should we expect next March that there won't be a makeup payment? Or is maybe that's a better expectation to just think about a smaller one year-over-year?

Yes, as it directly relates to 7-Eleven, I won't give too much detail on their volumes. I'll leave it to them. I think just given the pattern of where we are and where we've been in the last few years, I think probably the idea of a slightly smaller makeup payment is where I'd probably put my money right now versus going the opposite way. As far as our overall volume performance, I think the only additional comment I'd make that I think applies maybe to all of our customers is it's really about the overall gross profit performance. So we're in a good environment now where we've been able to deliver on both volume and margin, but I think my comments earlier, at least from our business model, regardless of what 7-Eleven volumes have with the take-or-pay regardless of the path of volumes or margins going forward, our business model will deliver.

Great. And then my next one is on the guidance, and I don't want to read too much into anything, and maybe I am. But clearly, as you mentioned, you're tracking well ahead of both fuel metrics and it would take a pretty bad environment to get either down to that point estimate. So understanding you moved it up to the high end for EBITDA, but why not move the whole range up? Is there a realistic risk of hitting the low end or even hitting the midpoint for the full year?

Joe here. We provide guidance on an annual basis because there will always be some level of quarterly fluctuations. Last December, we gave guidance for the entire year, indicating that we expected it to be a very strong year. As I reflect on where we are today, I'm reaffirming that Sunoco is set to have an excellent year. Our approach has been to update guidance only when a significant event occurs. For instance, last quarter, we acquired Zenith and updated our guidance. Currently, we are not facing any material events, but our business model is functioning effectively and generating strong results, which we anticipate will continue. Therefore, 2023 is shaping up to be a really good year for us. We don't traditionally provide quarterly guidance updates; instead, we focus on having a good year and if we perform well, you can expect another solid year when we deliver guidance in December. That said, I was careful in my prepared remarks to mention that we expect to be at the high end of our EBITDA guidance and possibly exceed it. The main takeaway for the market should be that Sunoco is having a fantastic year, and we are very optimistic about the latter half of the year and our future business.

Well, thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call this morning. As always, feel free to reach out with any follow-up questions. We look forward to talking to you soon.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.