Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. (NYSE:MMP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

On the marketing side of the business, that’s much more of what’s happening today, much more of a spot market. So you don’t see that same term structure necessarily in the optimization that we’re trying to do with the spot movements in our marketing affiliate. So there’s just a little bit of difference in perspective and the types of customers that are interested in working through our marketing affiliate, and those that want to make sure they’ve got capacity out of the basin. And when you take those two different perspectives, you have different price sensitivities to both of them with the ones wanting term typically willing to pay a little more for that as a result. So does that answer your question, Praneeth?

Praneeth Satish: Yes, it does. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Jeremy Tonet of JPMorgan.

Jeremy Tonet: Just wanted to come in on oil product margin a little bit more, if you might be able to dive in as far as what specific activities benefited 4Q? And do you see them repeating in 2023 and is that factored into the guidance?

Aaron Milford: So as we said, I’m trying to not be super specific because more specific we are the less opportunity we’re probably going to have, and I think it’s pretty much that simple. But the broad bucket, it was pretty broad, really, it’s quality differentials and it’s locational differentials. And those are where the opportunities are, and we do expect them to continue. We can’t predict the level but we expect to continue to find opportunities. But just to hopefully make this answer a little more satisfying, if you look at 2022, our accrued marketing activities contributed, call it, $25 million, $30 million, and we are — in our guidance basically assuming we’ll find a similar level of opportunities next year.

Jeremy Tonet: And then just want to pivot towards the CapEx. I think you said $150 million might be a reasonable placeholder there. I’m just wondering, I guess, the suite of potential growth project opportunities as you see it now. Would you say that’s kind of more or less than where it’s been maybe earlier in 2022? Just trying to see, I guess, how that could be — the growth opportunity as you see it might be evolving over time?

Aaron Milford: Well, I would say generally, the potential for investment opportunities for us. I would say today is probably, I mean, more optimistic today than it was even a year ago. And a lot of that really has to do with our customers and what they’re seeing and what they’re trying to accomplish in the conversations we’re having. I would not describe it as saying that we’re going to a completely new environment and we’re going back to the high levels that we saw in the recent past, I don’t see that but I do see some more optimism. And we have customers that certainly have some objectives that we can help them with. So I’m certainly more optimistic as I sit here today than I was a year ago, but we’re not in a totally different ZIP code.

So the $150 million this year was really driven by, we’re already spending in excess of $100 million in what we’ve already committed a really good projects and we expect to find a few more things to do this year. So we wanted to at least give you some idea of the magnitude of that. So does that answer your question?

Jeremy Tonet: Yes, that’s very helpful. And just if I could ask a quick bonus around one, if I could. Just if you had any opinion about the delta we’re seeing in the weekly versus monthly EIA product demand numbers and how if that impacts Magellan?

Aaron Milford: I really don’t have an opinion on it. We are focused on really what our customers are doing. And I just don’t have a direct opinion on it.

Operator: The next question comes from Spiro Dounis of Citi.