Genesis Energy 4Q 2025 Earnings Call - Deepwater production ramp lifts outlook, guidance conservatively tempered by downtime and dry-docks

Conference Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Genesis Energy Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed in the question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Dwayne Morley, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Dwayne.

Dwayne Morley, Vice President, Investor Relations, Genesis Energy: Good morning, and welcome to the 2025 fourth quarter conference call for Genesis Energy. Genesis Energy has three business segments. The offshore pipeline transportation segment is engaged in providing the critical infrastructure to move oil produced from the long-lived world-class reservoirs from the deepwater Gulf of America to onshore refining centers. The marine transportation segment is engaged in the maritime transportation of primarily refined petroleum products. The onshore transportation and services segment is engaged in the transportation, handling, blending, storage, and supply of energy products, including crude oil and refined products, primarily around refining centers, as well as the processing of sour gas streams to remove sulfur at refining operations. Genesis’s operations are primarily located in the Gulf Coast states and the Gulf of America.

During this conference call, management may be making forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The law provides safe harbor protection to encourage companies to provide forward-looking information. Genesis intends to avail itself of those safe harbor provisions and directs you to its most recently filed and future filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We also encourage you to visit our website at genesisenergy.com, where a copy of the press release we issued this morning is located. The press release also presents a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. At this time, I would like to introduce Grant Sims, CEO of Genesis Energy LP. Mr.

Sims will be joined by Kristen Jesulaitis, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer, Ryan Sims, President and Chief Commercial Officer, and Louie Nicol, Chief Accounting Officer. And with that, I’ll now turn the call over to Grant.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Thanks, Dwayne, and good morning to everyone. Thanks for listening to the call. As noted in our earnings release this morning, our fourth quarter results came in slightly ahead of our internal expectations as our offshore pipeline transportation segment saw strong growth driven by steady base volumes, a full quarter of volumes from Shenandoah well above its minimum volume commitment, along with continued ramping volumes from Salamanca. Our marine transportation segment returned to a more normalized level of operating performance as our refinery customers increased runs of heavy crude oil, which drove higher volumes of intermediate black oil available for transport. In addition, the transitory market conditions and supply pressures that impacted our Blue Water Fleet last quarter now appear to be behind us, all of which should provide for a constructive outlook for our marine segment as we look ahead.

The strategic actions we took in 2025, combined with the strong operating performance from our underlying businesses and new offshore volumes, enabled us to exit the year with effectively zero outstanding under our $800 million senior secured revolving credit facility at the end of the year, after giving effect to cash on hand. With ample liquidity and an increasingly clear line of sight ahead of us, the board made the decision to increase our quarterly common unit distribution to $0.18 per unit, representing a 9.1% increase year-over-year. Furthermore, just last week, we opportunistically purchased an additional $25 million of our corporate preferred units in a privately negotiated transaction. Taken together, these actions demonstrate our disciplined approach to capital allocation.

As we look ahead to 2026, and assuming our other businesses perform as expected, the Genesis story at this point is largely a deepwater Gulf of America growth story. Based on our ongoing discussions with our offshore producer customers and the conversations we had with them during their year-end budgeting cycle, we have been provided with lots of information, including expected production volumes for 2026 and beyond, along with current and future expected drilling schedules. We were also notified of certain planned and routine turnarounds they have scheduled for 2026, a couple of which will take place at production facilities where we handle the hydrocarbon molecules more than once, and thus can be more financially impactful. While we benefited from no significant turnarounds in 2025, these are absolutely normal and customary, and in some cases, unfortunately, they can last upwards of 30-45 days each.

These are their plans, and I, as I believe everyone can appreciate, we ultimately do not control our customers’ operations, nor the precise timing of them drilling, completing, and bringing new high-impact wells online. We fully understand that plans and schedules offshore change, deepwater drill ship schedules change, weather throughout the year changes, planned turnarounds can be delayed or extended for a variety of reasons outside our control. What is important, though, is that despite all of this, plus or minus 15%-20% over our normalized 2025 Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $500 million-$510 million. We obviously hope to exceed the top end of that range in 2026, and quite frankly, we could easily make a case for such an outcome.

To the extent our actual results differ in any significant way, we would simply view that as more of a timing issue, with ultimate cash flows just sliding to the right... rather than any fundamental degradation in the long-term cash flows expected from the fields contracted to access our offshore infrastructure. You know, even if certain offshore activity slips to the right, 2027 should be meaningfully stronger than 2026, based upon our producer customers’ current development plans that we’ve seen. And as a result, the opportunities available to us in 2026 become even more compelling in 2027 and beyond. With that, I’ll go into a little more detail on each of our business segments.

As noted in our earnings release, our offshore pipeline transportation segment delivered another quarter of strong sequential growth, with both segment margin and total volumes increasing across our CHOPS and Poseidon pipelines, rising approximately 19% and 16%, respectively, versus the third quarter, marking the third consecutive quarter of sequential improvement. In fact, from the first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2025, segment margin increased by roughly 57%, with total volumes across both systems growing approximately 28%. These results were driven by steady volumes from our legacy fields, strong contributions from Shenandoah, and a continued ramp-up in volumes from Salamanca. During the quarter, volumes from the Shenandoah FPU remained steady as the facility continued to operate at or near its 100,000 barrels per day target rate from four phase one wells.

At Salamanca, volumes continued to ramp from its first three wells, and we remain encouraged by both reservoir performance and the remaining development plans. An additional well at Salamanca is scheduled for completion in this second quarter, with the potential for a fifth well as early as the fourth quarter. Together, these wells are expected to result in total production of 50,000-60,000 barrels a day per day from the Salamanca production facility. Looking ahead, we expect the Monument development, a two-well subsea tieback to Shenandoah, to be completed and flowing through our facilities by late this year, certainly early 2027.

Following Monument, a fifth well at Shenandoah is scheduled to be drilled, which could increase total throughput across the Shenandoah FPU to as much as 120 KBD, with potential upside of an additional 10,000-20,000 barrels per day in early 2027. In addition to the five development wells between Salamanca and Shenandoah, we’re aware of at least eight additional development or subsea tieback wells at legacy production facilities, served exclusively by our pipeline infrastructure, that are planned to be drilled over the next 12-15 months. Taken together, this activity underscores that producers in the Gulf of America continue to prioritize long cycle, high return deepwater developments. We remain actively engaged in commercial discussions around future tieback and development opportunities that can access our offshore systems as projects are sanctioned.

Given the competitive economics and long planning cycles associated with these developments, we do not expect near-term commodity price volatility to materially impact offshore development activity in the Gulf. As we look beyond 2026, we would be remiss not to highlight the results of BOEM’s most recent lease sale, Big Beautiful Gulf One or BBG One, which was held on December 10, 2025. The outcome of this sale further reinforces our view, and that of the broader upstream industry, that there remains strong long-term interest in the central Gulf of Mexico. BBG One generated over $300 million in high bids for 181 tracts, covering approximately 1 million acres in federal waters, with roughly 65% of the acreage located in the central Gulf of Mexico.

When combined with lease sales 259 and 261, which took place in March and December of 2023, respectively, more than 4.4 million acres have been leased in federal Gulf waters over the past three years. Approximately 2.4 million acres, or 53% of the total, of which are located in the Central Gulf, where our offshore pipeline infrastructure is located and has existing capacity. The breadth of current development activity, the scale of recent lease sales, and the long cycle nature of deepwater investment all underscore our conviction that the Gulf of America remains a world-class basin with decades and decades of existing inventory. We believe Genesis is uniquely positioned as the only truly independent third-party provider of crude oil pipeline logistics in the region, offering producers with flow assurance and downstream market optionality along the Gulf Coast.

Our differentiated asset footprint, deep customer relationships, and decades of existing and future inventory ahead position us for continued growth and decades and decades of opportunity in this world-class basin. Our marine transportation segment returned to a more normalized level of operating performance during the quarter. Market conditions across both our Brown Water and Blue Water fleets stabilized as refinery runs of heavy crudes increased and broader equipment utilization improved. Demand for our inland, or Brown Water fleet, recovered as Gulf Coast refiners responded to the widening of light to heavy differentials and increased runs of heavy crude oil, which allowed the supply of intermediate black oil needing to be transported to return to more normalized levels. Looking ahead, we remain optimistic that our marine transportation segment could benefit over time from additional volumes produced in the Gulf of America and incremental crude imports into the Gulf Coast....

including volumes from Canada, the resumption of exports from Kirkuk, Iraq, and the potential for additional volumes from Venezuela, should they all materialize. At a minimum, all of these additional heavy or medium sour volumes showing up on the Gulf Coast should cause heavy to sour differentials to continue to widen, providing refiners the incentive to process increasing volumes of heavier crudes. To the extent these additional heavy volumes come to fruition, this should result in additional intermediate refined product volumes that need to be kept heated and moved from one refinery location to another, which should drive demand for our inland heater barges, providing a constructive backdrop for increasing rates as we move through the year and into next year. Recent commentary from Gulf Coast refiners would reaffirm they are, in fact, starting to see additional heavy sour discounts as additional volumes arrive on the Gulf Coast.

To quote from Valero’s recent earnings call, "Looking at differentials, not only with Venezuela, but we’ve had several beneficial factors that have occurred to kind of help move this market weaker. After last year, with discounts fairly tight, most of these market moves are making differentials increasingly favorable for refiners. With high complexity refiners such as ours, we are pushing to maximize heavy crude processing in the system going forward with better differentials." End quote. Meanwhile, conditions in our Blue Water Fleet have normalized as incremental capacity that migrated from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast and Mid-Atlantic trade lanes has largely been absorbed by the market. As we noted in our earnings release, 2026 is expected to be a higher maintenance year for our Blue Water Fleet, with four of our nine offshore vessels scheduled to undergo regulatory dry dockings in the first half of the year.

These planned shipyard periods will temporarily reduce vessel availability and may mute the near-term benefit of any improvement in dayrates. Importantly, however, we expect these vessels to reenter the market against a more constructive backdrop and be well-positioned to recontract at dayrates that are consistent with or modestly above their current levels when they exit the shipyard. In addition, the American Phoenix remains under contract through early 2027. Based upon prevailing market rates for comparable assets, we would expect the American Phoenix to recontract at a higher day rate than her current charter when that contract expires. Overall, we remain confident in the long-term fundamentals of the marine transportation sector. With effectively zero net new supply of our classes of Jones Act vessels and the high costs and long lead times required to construct new equipment, the market remains structurally tight.

As demand continues to improve across both our Brown Water Fleet and Blue Water Fleet, we expect our marine transportation segment to deliver stable to modestly growing contributions in the years ahead. Our onshore transportation and services segment performed in line with our expectations during the quarter. Throughput volumes continued to increase across both our Texas and Riceland terminals and pipelines as new offshore volumes ramped and moved onshore through our system. Our legacy refinery services business also delivered results largely consistent with our expectations. As we have mentioned in the past, our refinery services business has faced certain structural headwinds over the past several years. Specifically, we have been supply constrained, in part because refineries moved to run more light sweet crudes as a result of the shale revolution over the last 10-15 years.

As shale production is peaking and/or the gas-to-oil ratios are increasing from the shale plays, and as the heavy sours we mentioned above are returning to the Gulf Coast, we believe we should have the opportunity to make more NaSH, or sodium hydrosulfide, at several of our existing facilities in future periods. We, generally speaking, can sell every ton we make, and we look forward to restoring some of our supply flexibilities. As our financial performance continues to strengthen over the coming years and we generate increasing amounts of free cash flow, we will continue to reduce debt in absolute terms, redeem our high-cost corporate preferred securities, and thoughtfully evaluate future increases in our quarterly distributions to common unit holders over time. Importantly, we will pursue these objectives while maintaining the flexibility to evaluate future organic and inorganic opportunities as they may arise.

Finally, I would like to say that the management team and the board of directors remain steadfast in our commitment to building long-term value for all of our stakeholders, regardless of where you are in the capital structure. We believe the decisions we are making reflect this commitment and our confidence in Genesis moving forward. I would once again like to recognize our entire workforce for their individual efforts and, importantly, unwavering commitment to safe and responsible operations. I’m extremely proud to be associated with each and every one of you. With that, I’ll turn it back to the moderator for questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you’d like to be placed into the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you’d like to remove your question from the queue. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Michael Blum, from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thanks, good morning.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Morning, Michael.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: I wanted to start with the guidance for 2026. You know, if I simplistically just annualize Q4 2025 EBITDA and compare that to the midpoint of the 2026 guidance, there’s a delta there of, call it $35 million-$40 million. So I’m wondering if you can just give us a rough ballpark for how much of an EBITDA deduct you’re assuming for typical hurricane disruptions, and then the higher than typical marine maintenance. Because if I just remove those, you know, and don’t even assume volume growth, which in the offshore, I’m sure you’ll have, just wanted to get a sense of, like, where the low end of guidance could come. Thanks.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s a good question, and as we basically try to explain, we think that we’re being conservative, especially based upon some of the things that we’ve been told by our producing customers. But again, yeah, we’re assuming 10 days’ worth of anticipated downtime for in essence, treating the third quarter as an 82-day quarter instead of a 92-day quarter for our offshore business. We probably net expect a $5 million-$10 million reduction on the Segment Margin line, if you will, from the heavy Dry Docking schedule on the marine side. So, you know, I think that you know, as I said in the commentary that I just gave, that we fully expect, and we can make a case that we can comfortably exceed it.

But, you know, we’re the only reason that we’re not, you know, pulling out a larger number. The primary reason is basically but just taking into account that things can happen beyond our control, and try to emphasize to make sure that everybody understands that it’s really just a timing and recognition of the future cash flows out of the Gulf of Mexico and has nothing to do with structural issues or subsurface issues. So, hopefully it’ll turn out to be a conservative range that we throw out.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Appreciate that. And then on capital allocation, really have, like, a two-part question. First, can you just remind us where you’d like to take the leverage ratio and what timeframe you think you’ll get there? And then as it relates to distribution growth, how do we think about the cadence of increases going forward? Is this something you’ll be evaluating, you know, once a year, every fourth quarter? And will the growth in EBITDA, is that a good proxy for how we should think about growth and distribution?

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Well, you know, I mean, again, on a bank-calculated basis, I think at 12/31, it was 5.12. So, as we continue to use our increasing amounts of free cash flow to pay down debt in absolute terms, at the same time that we’re seeing an increase in our calculated LTM EBITDA, that, you know, I think that it’s in essence, it’s the debt ratios are going to improve because we’re paying down the numerator and, and while at the same time that the denominator is increasing. So our long-term target has always been in the, you know, in the neighborhood of 4.

You know, again, we have a pretty clear line of sight on it, and assuming that everything holds up and the producers do, you know, the quicker they do things, the quicker that we’ll hit those targets. But it’s pretty obvious and that we can get there. So, depending upon, you know, that performance dictates the time schedule under which we get there. Relative to distribution growth, it’s something that the board discusses every quarter. There is no hard and fast program that, in essence, we can talk about at this point. But I do think that it’s clear that the board is committed, as are we as a management team, to kind of an all-of-the-above approach.

As we said, we were also successful in negotiating the redemption of another tranche on a negotiated basis of the outstanding corporate preferred. So, you know, we will evaluate it on a quarterly basis and, you know, let the market know how things are going at that point in time, so.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thank you.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Sure.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Wade Sukhi from Capital One. Your line is now live.

Wade Sukhi, Analyst, Capital One: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Appreciate you all taking my questions. Just wanted to... It’s a question I’ve probably asked of you guys before, but you know, repetition is always a good teacher. But wondering if you might be able to sort of revisit how you think about potential opportunities to pick up, let’s say, the remaining interests in some of these offshore systems that you have. You know, how that might fit with your longer-term priorities? And, of course, appreciate any insight you might have there or, you know, how the counterparties might be looking at it. But yeah, to the extent you could sort of clarify or revisit that for us, that’d be great. Thank you.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Yeah. Well, you know, again, we’re not going to comment in one form or another, as you would expect, on the potential for M&A activity or other things. I mean, obviously, you can... You understand from our enthusiasm that we very much like our existing position, to the extent that, you know, from an ownership position, it would be possible to increase that exposure, that’s something that we would be very comfortable with. But, you know, as I want to point out, and you know, you mentioned repetition is a good thing, that we have substantial existing capacity on our two major pipelines, the 64% owned and operated Poseidon pipeline, and 64% owned and operated CHOPS pipeline.

And so we are in a very comfortable position and arguably an enviable position, that depending upon developments in the right place, that we could have, you know, substantial increases and see substantial increases in Segment Margin and basically flowing to the bottom line in terms of incremental EBITDA, you know, without spending any capital. So, you know, it’s a good runway of continued opportunities in the Central Gulf that we think that we’ve positioned ourselves for.

Wade Sukhi, Analyst, Capital One: No question. Appreciate that, Colin. Just switch gears a little bit. I think I know the answer here, but obviously some M&A among a customer or maybe soon to be two customers. Just wondering if you could sort of speak to, you know, impact expectations. I would expect some maybe acceleration potential, but any kind of longer-term impact you might see from that would be great. Thanks again.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Can you repeat it? I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite fully understand the question. Apologies.

Wade Sukhi, Analyst, Capital One: No, no, I was asking about some of the consolidation we’ve seen among your customers in the Gulf.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Oh.

Wade Sukhi, Analyst, Capital One: I think there’s soon to be one more possibly. So just wondering what the implication might be for you all longer term. I imagine positive acceleration and whatnot, but love to hear your thoughts on that.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Yeah, no, it’s a very good question, and I think that you know, a transaction just closed yesterday, which was basically Harbour Energy out of the U.K. closed on the acquisition of LLOG. LLOG is obviously an extremely important customer of ours. To the best of my knowledge, we actually move 70% of LLOG’s operated production through our pipelines, with most of it those coming through, or the large portion of that coming through our Psycho lateral and then downstream transportation, which is 100% owned and downstream transportation on our 64% owned Poseidon line.

It is in the public domain, as Harbour said, that it is their intent to double that production from the asset base that they’re acquiring in the LLOG acquisition, to double that, between now and the end of 2028. So that’s a positive read through on things. So if anything, we view that as an extreme positive of, you know, a large, significantly large, public company acquiring a private company, and with the full intent of doubling its production over the next two years is a very good outcome for us, especially given our existing relationship with LLOG.

Wade Sukhi, Analyst, Capital One: Perfect. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hey, good morning, everyone. I just wanted to go back to the guidance, and can you maybe provide a little more detail around, you know, what specifically are you embedding in offshore for Salamanca and Shenandoah? Then you also mentioned kind of, you know, the development of eight additional tieback wells planned at legacy facilities. Like, is any of that in your 15%-20% guidance? I’ll stop there, and then I have some follow-ups.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically, Elvira, again, yes, based upon what we’ve been able to ascertain in terms of talking to our producer customers, that we are extremely comfortable that we will meet or achieve the 15%-20% off of the baseline that we talked about. So, and again, we are trying to set expectations to underpromise and overdeliver on a prospective basis, and but to make sure that to reemphasize that to the extent that there’s any failure to achieve overperformance is really, is just a timing issue and not an underlying ultimate value consideration. So that’s the approach that we’re taking.

As opposed to formal guidance, it’s more of an informal guidance that we could easily construct a case, as I said in the prepared remarks, based upon what we know, to significantly exceed that range that we just—we threw out there.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Okay, great. And then, just going back to the Dry Docking. I think you said the expectation there is $5 million-$10 million kind of impact to margin. Is there an impact to maintenance CapEx on that?

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Yes. I think we made reference to it in the earnings release itself. But, because of that, yes, we would expect this to be a heavier maintenance capital year than we experienced in 2025.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Is there any quantification of the impact that you can provide?

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: I think, generally speaking, that if you looked at a $15 million-$20 million increase, that that would be within the ballpark.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Okay, great. And then just, just one last question for me. So you, you mentioned how the refineries are increasing runs of heavier crude and importing more Venezuelan crude. What, what do you think? How much incremental inland barge utilization could this drive, you know, in this year?

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Well, utilization has remained fairly high, but which is the necessary condition before rates start going up. So as we anticipate whether or not, you know, we gave a specific example of Valero, but P66 and others have also mentioned it, that as we see more and more of the heavies run, whether or not it’s Venezuelan or incremental Gulf of Mexico medium sours or other imports of Canadian and other things, that the total black oil pool or the total supply of intermediate refined products, which were specifically designed to move, will go up.

In an already, in essence, close to 100%, if not practically 100% utilization world, we anticipate being able to move prices up, day rates up as we progress through this year and on into next.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Great. Thank you very much.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We’ve reached the end of our question and answer session. I’d like to turn the floor over to Grant for any further closing comments.

Grant Sims, CEO, Genesis Energy LP: Well, as always, I appreciate everybody listening in, and we look forward to delivering more good news as we progress through 2026. So thank you very much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. Let me just disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.