Delek Logistics Partners, LP (NYSE:DKL) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Delek Logistics Partners, LP (NYSE:DKL) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript November 7, 2025

Delek Logistics Partners, LP misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-1.56158 EPS, expectations were $1.11.

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

Robert Wright: 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?

Avigal Soreq: Thank you, Robert. Delek Logistics Partners had another record quarter. We reported approximately $136 million in quarterly adjusted EBITDA. Due to the strong progress year-to-date, DKL has increased its full year EBITDA midpoint guidance of $500 million to the upper end of the range between $500 million and $520 million. Delek Logistics continue to advance its key initiatives in natural gas, crude and water businesses, further improving its position as a 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 operations in our crude and water gathering segments. Both VPG and DTG crude gathering operations had a strong third quarter with record volume for DTG. This strength has continued in the fourth quarter. Between our two water acquisitions in increasing dedication, our competitive position in both Midland and Delaware basins is increasing, and we expect to continue to build on these strengths. Our well-timed and cost-effective acquisition of 3 Bear, H2O Midstream and Gravity Water Midstream have supplemented our organic growth and enable DKL transition to full suite service provider. We will remain consistent with our strategy of growing the partnership through a prudent management of leverage and coverage. Along with seizing the growth of opportunity we see in our business, we intend to remain good stewards of our stakeholder capital.

With that, I’m pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has approved the 51th 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.

Reuven Spiegel: Thank you, Avigal. As Avigal mentioned, we are very excited about DKL’s future and are working to increase our advantaged Permian position. I am very pleased with the commissioning and operation of our Libby 2 gas plant. The plant is performing according to expectations, 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 opportunity 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.

Robert Wright: 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 EBITDA 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 1.24x. 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 was primarily due to the impact 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 drop down 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.

Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Doug Irwin of Citi.

Douglas Irwin: I was wondering if you could maybe expand on the comments in the press release around producers increasing activity on your acreage ahead of Libby 2 coming online. Just curious how you’re thinking about the treating capacity ramp at 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?

Avigal Soreq: Yes, 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 Permian 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 forecast, 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 do 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. And with that, I will let Reuven comment more about the sour progress we are seeing.

Reuven Spiegel: The actual construction and start-up of Libby 2 has been above our expectation on time and on budget. Originally and based on producers’ forecast 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 time line. 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.

Douglas Irwin: Got it. That’s helpful. And maybe as a follow-up on CapEx. You talked about potentially already having expansion opportunities, but also kind of spend some CapEx this year on Libby 2. I guess 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 make you pay down some debt or maybe even buy back some more units from DK next year?

Avigal Soreq: Yes, that’s a very nice question, 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 earnings call like we did this year. So we have something to look looking forward. So we’ll leave it to that.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Gabriel Moreen of Mizuho.

Gabriel Moreen: I 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 investment line. That was clearly a very strong point in the quarter. Can you just talk about that a little bit? And is this current run rate something that’s maybe sustainable going forward?

Robert Wright: Yes. Thanks for the question. Yes, 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.

Gabriel Moreen: Great. I appreciate it. Can you maybe also talk a little bit about the water landscape overall? I think Reuven and Avigal, you both mentioned others trying to emulate your 3-stream strategy here. As far as you see with the landscape, are you seeing new competitors, new opportunities? Just curious kind of with some mergers happening and IPO happening, whether anything has shifted in your view?

Avigal Soreq: Yes. So that’s a very good question. And we should see very important trends that you can see is the gas and oil ratio and the water and crude ratio. Both of them are working extremely well from our position standpoint. And if you go one year back, Gabriel, and you think about the timing that we did the both H2O and Gravity acquisition, we brought 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 trend 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 expectations.

Gabriel Moreen: 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 or whatever volumes you’re going to need to handle at Libby 3 when the expansion comes on, hopefully.

Avigal Soreq: Yes. Obviously, the market is telling us that it needs our sour capabilities and the market tell us that it needs our gas treating and the market tell us that it needs our water treating. All of that are detailed question. Obviously, once we finish the planning session, we will 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. Mohit, do you want to add anything?

Mohit Bhardwaj: Yes. Gabe, thanks for your question. Just to answer your specific question, we are very happy with our permitted capacity on the asset gas side, and we don’t see any near-term restrictions on that.

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

Avigal Soreq: 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.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.