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Chesapeake Utilities’ (CPK) CEO Mike McMasters on Q1 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE: CPK ) Q1 2016 Earnings Conference Call May 6, 2016 10:30 am ET Executives Beth Cooper – SVP and CFO Mike McMasters – President and CEO Analysts Nathan Martin – BB&T Capital Markets Operator Good morning. My name is Chrystal and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chesapeake Utilities first quarter financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Beth Cooper. Please go ahead ma’am. Beth Cooper Thank you, and good morning, everybody. I’d like to welcome you to our first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Mike McMasters, President and CEO. And in addition to Mike, we’re joined by other members of our management team. For those on the phone today, we’re actually hosting today’s call live from Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. The call is being held within the Perdue School of Business, so as Mike and I are alumni of that school, and we owe special thanks to Dr. William [ph] for enabling us to have the call here today, and included within our meeting we have members of the local financial community here in Salisbury. We have a board member. We have distinguished faculty and also many students here in the room. We are very happy here as I said. As usual today, presentation can be found on our website under the Investors section, the Events and Webcasts subsection or you can access our presentation via our IR app. One of the things I maybe like to point out on Page 1 of presentation, when trying to think about the themes and typically at the beginning of each year, we try to look at what are themes going to be for this as presentation. I pulled something from actually Mike’s President Letter in the annual report and basically within his letter he talks about that we’re driving growth by focusing on long-term sustainable growth opportunities. And hopefully today you will see that that’s really been the case our past – in terms of our past success, as well as what we think in terms of our future opportunities for continued earnings and dividend growth. Turning to Slide 2, this is the typical forward looking and other disclosures section. This presentation today will include forward-looking information. I encourage everyone to take a look at our Form 10-K, there is a section called Safe Harbor for forward looking information. Because some of the information that we talk about may actually differ from our actual results, and we discuss those factors that could cause our forward looking information to differ from the actual results. Turning to Slide 3, I’m now going to begin to touch on the first quarter results. And so what you’ll see is for the first quarter, we reported net income of $20.4 million as compared to last year of $21.1 million, a slight decline of about $740,000 over the prior quarter of last year. On the surface, earnings are down, yes, but certainly it’s driven by the weather. Weather represented for us about $0.27 in terms of decline in earnings per share for the quarter. Our growth that we experienced across – a good part of our businesses helped offset the weather impact and ultimately resulted in net income only being down by about 3.5% for the quarter — pretty remarkable. And that’s really been driven by – and we’ll talk about it a little bit later on — growth in our natural gas businesses, service expansions and customer growth and also the contribution of a new acquisition that we did last year. I’m next going to touch on our results by our segments. And included in our press release that we filed on Wednesday, as well as in our Form 10-Q that we filed yesterday, we provide detailed information about the accomplishments and results for our segments. And so I encourage you to take a look at that for more detailed information. In terms of our regulated energy segment, you will see that we generated an increase in gross margin growth of about $1.9 million. That $1.9 million of gross margin growth actually made its way to the bottom line to generate $2.1 million in terms of increased operating income. Overall, we saw an increase of $4.3 million in gross margin, that was driven by $1.9 million related to natural gas service expansions, our Florida Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program which we refer to as GRIP, generated an additional $1.1 million of margins, and natural gas customer growth, driven basically about half on the Delmarva Peninsula and half in Florida, contributed to an additional $745,000. The gross margin was up about $4.3 million, weather that was much warmer than the prior year offset that by about $2.4 million, resulting in that $1.9 million of margin increase that we saw. You will see expenses were pretty flat year over year, actually a slight decline which resulted in a $2.1 million increase in our regulated businesses, that once again helped to offset that significant weather impact in the first quarter. Turning to our unregulated businesses, which are certainly more weather sensitive, and you will see that here in the results. Our gross margin was down by $2.2 million. That was comprised of basically lower volumes of propane gallon sold which represented about $4.3 million. Our margins per gallon – we were anticipating that those would begin to return to more normal levels and we saw that start to happen. That represented about $1.8 million. And then weather basically — the combination of those two, when you think about, first, the $4.3 million and then the lower margins per gallon, that’s about $6.1 million. That was partially offset, as I mentioned, with the inclusion of Aspire Energy’s results in the first quarter. We acquired that last year on April 1, April Fool’s Day. And so we didn’t have them in our results for last year and they added about $4.2 million. So ultimately ending in the $2.2 million decline that you see here. Additionally we had about $1 million of higher expenses. Those were the result of Aspire being part of our operations. So overall this business was down about $3.3 million in operating income for the quarter, but all driven by the weather and then the lower retail margins which we had anticipated. The next page is actually a summary of a chart that we include within our 10-Q and also within our press release, looking at the factors from an earnings per share standpoint. And you will see, once again, I started off by saying that earnings last year for the quarter were $1.44. Weather contributed basically to a decline of $0.27. But you will see that growth in our regulated businesses added back $0.15 and the Aspire which is basically $0.06 also added to our earnings. So really a $0.27 per share decline was offset with the exception of $0.11. This is another chart – turning to Slide 7 – that actually shows the weather impact. And on this chart, we actually show a comparison relative to normal weather. Because it’s one thing to show a comparison relative to the prior year but compared to normal, what you will see is that we were down in Delmarva by 13% and down in Ohio by 10%. So we talked a little bit about the growth that we’ve experienced as a company. Strong growth in our natural gas businesses, I know this year, is somewhat offset in the first quarter by weather. But that growth has really been driven by the capital expenditures that we as a company have made, those investments have been made to earn either our target returns or greater than our target returns, and the dollars that we have invested have been very substantial. If you look at last year, we invested approximately $195 million in capital expenditures, $52.5 million of which was related to the Aspire Energy of Ohio acquisition. This year we’re projected to invest another $179 million. And when you look at that just a couple of key points relative to benchmark about those numbers. First, $179 million this year represents just under 30% of our total book capitalization. Our equity long term debt and short term debt are very substantial. When you look at this over the five year period, you will see that we’ve invested — will have invested $679 million. Our total book capitalization today once again is about $700 million. So huge investment that has happened over the last five years and are continuing this year. Our projects this year are comprised of about 82% regulated investments in our natural gas and electric businesses and the key projects that are underway include our Eight Flags combined heat and power plant that we expect to complete mid-year this year. Also, we’re expanding facilities to serve Calpine power plant in Dover, Delaware. We have a reliability project that’s underway and our Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program which replaces qualifying pipes and mains in Florida is another large component of our capital expenditure budget this year. So a very substantial project, the largest of which is our CHP plant, that’s about $40 million. And there are other projects that we’re constantly looking at to hopefully add to our pipeline to add further earnings growth as we move from this point forward. Some of those projects we know will not necessarily be incurred this year but may be incurred next year and we’re constantly looking for new opportunities. So while we have all these capital expenditures, it’s very important for us to have a balance sheet that supports those levels of expenditures. And so as you look at our balance sheet, as I mentioned we’re sitting with about $700 million in total book capitalization at the end of March. Breaking that down, when you look at it from a permanent capital perspective, our equity represents about 71% of that balance. When you look at it from a total capitalization, we’re capitalized about 53% equity and our target is 50% to 60% equity to total capitalization. Wanting to have that strong balance sheet, so we can make the investments that we need for continued future earnings growth. Last year we put into place several facilities with the amount of capital that we’ve expanded. We want to try to align as much as possible of the financing with those projects and those projects coming online. We executed a $150 million revolver agreement with five different banks. Currently at the end of March, we borrowed $40 million under that $150 million revolver. But it’s very important as we’re expanding the levels of capital that we have that short term debt capacity available. We’d also entered into a $150 million private placement shelf agreement with Prudential. And that enables us to basically take that shorter term debt and as those projects are placed into service, we can then finance the long term. And we will seek to utilize those mechanisms, those particular options that we have as well as access the equity markets as needed to always ensure that we’re looking towards that target capital structure that I mentioned. Given the growth opportunities we have, we talked a little bit about on past conference calls and a little bit earlier here in the room, that we recognized last year our ninth consecutive year of record earnings for the company. And we’re hopefully going to continue that trend. But looking at what we’ve accomplished and always trying to align our dividend growth, so it is supported by earnings growth. Earlier this week, our board increased our dividend by $0.07 which represented a 6.1% increase in our dividends, moving it from $1.15 to $1.22. What’s important also to note is that this was a 13 th consecutive year of dividend increases upon the prior year. So it’s not that we’re just increasing our dividend at the prior year’s amount, we’re actually stepping it up beyond that. We paid a consistent dividend for over 55 years. For the last 13, we’ve been constantly increasing each year. And as I mentioned, our focus is on dividend growth that’s supported by earnings growth and we expect a significant growth potential that we see in our businesses to continue to provide the opportunity for superior dividend growth in the future, just as it has in the past. Just a little bit of information, turning to Slide 11 in regards to our gross margin, I talked a little bit about our growth. You will see that last year in the middle of the chart, basically we recognized about $25 million from projects that we had placed into service in 2014 and thereafter. Those projects coupled with new projects that are coming online are expected to result in gross margin this year of about $44 million. So we’ve identified $19 million of margin increase that we’re expecting this year and those same projects are going to add an additional $7 million beyond that next year. So where is some of that gross margin growth coming from? I talked a little bit about the Aspire Energy transaction that we did, and you will see on here that basically that added — third column – that added about $4.2 million of gross margin for the quarter. Serving the Calpine power plant in Dover is at a considerable margin. They’re operating right now under our short term service agreement and ultimately when we place additional services into place next year at the beginning of the year, they’ll be under a long term contract for approximately 20 years. That added additional margin for us. And then last, the Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program added $1.1 million that I talked about earlier. So you will see from projects that have really already been done or set into motion, $15 million. We have two additional projects that are underway, that are going to add some incremental margin, the Eight Flags project, combined heat and power plant, that’s going to add $3.7 million and then next year will add $7.3 million dollars on a fully annualized basis. So a lot of growth that’s happened in the last several years. A lot of growth that we see happening from here on out in terms of projects that we’ve identified, and there are also many other projects on the drawing board. As always, thank you for your support and interest in our growing company. I believe this continues to be very exciting time for Chesapeake, as exemplified by our strong financial results. And certainly the weather was a downer in the first quarter but the amount of growth that the company experienced was able to match a large part of that weather impact. Now I will turn the call over to Mike who will expand on our strategic growth initiatives, our long term performance results and our commitment to continued growth for our shareholders. Mike McMasters Thanks, Beth. I guess I want to turn to Slide 13, 14 I guess – Slide 14, I am going to start talking about our strategic platform for growth. This is a pretty important slide for us as a company. We actually show this to our employees quite a bit, in addition to our board of directors and investors. We start at the bottom and work our way up engagement strategies, basically what we are trying to do is to get our employees more engaged in the company’s efforts. And we do that by allowing them, I guess, the opportunity to get more engaged in the communities that we’re serving. And so what we’re finding. I guess, with our efforts to do that is that we’re getting — I’m going to say — improved community relations. We’re getting improved productivity and therefore improved growth. And one of the key things that we have to do as a company, I guess, the first job really is safety. And so if we can maintain a safe system, we can maintain a reliable system, we take care of our customers and the communities, then we’re positioned for growth. Without those strategic ingredients, growth becomes more difficult. It’s fairly easy to sell services when they look at your track record and see that you’re doing – you’re in a very good development. The next step in the process, moving up the triangle, is developing new business lines and executing existing business unit growth. You think about a utility — as the utility matures, it becomes more and more difficult to grow, and you will see that a lot in the electric industry today. And so what we’re having to do is, so let’s think about things differently. Let’s not just stick to the same services we’re providing, now let’s expand the services that we can provide. In addition, let’s look beyond our current service territories and see if we could grow outside of our territories to help increase our growth, and that’s how you get numbers like the $100 million worth of CapEx et cetera. And then finally, all that shows up in results. And you can see safety awards, community service awards, achieving top quartile growth in earnings, achieving top quartile growth in shareholder return. Turning to Slide 15, there are several things here, and just in a moment ago, I want to point to the last bullet on the slide. This is the fourth consecutive year for the Chesapeake, it was recognized as the Top Workplace. Well the significance of that just says, the engagement strategies are working. It is allowing employees that participate in community service activities. Our executives generally, I want to say almost every time, are also participating whether it’s the Food Bank, Steve is on a couple of different boards, at the time the humanity, for building homes, also and the Food Bank, Steve joined that network as well, these different services. So there is also of different things that our executives are doing and our employees are doing and that’s driving team work and engagement. Turning to Slide 16, I guess to the community side, we get a lot of stuff here but one of the things I will point out here. There are several awards here that were very important to us. The second bullet — Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Business Award for Corporation of The Year. Again, that was based on our community contributions, and the last bullet, just last few months, we got an award — Jefferson Awards in Delaware for Outstanding Service by a Major Company. And so it’s these types of awards that are telling us that we are accomplishing something that our employees –our employees are doing great things and the communities are recognizing what we’re doing. Strategic planning and thinking is one of the key processes that we have for growth. The way we attack I guess strategic planning and thinking is that we set very high growth targets in our strategic planning process – targets that really we could not hit if we kept doing the same thing. So it forces us every year to help — what are we going to do differently tomorrow to help accelerate our growth. We involve every business unit. Just about every employee in the company, at some point of time is involved in the strategic planning process. Every business unit is very much involved in the strategic planning and process. If you roll the clock back probably 10 years, maybe 15, I don’t know how far back it was, we used to do the strategic planning in the corner office. And so the slower speed we’re getting — we would talk about all this stuff and we would write this plan out and we’d put it on the shelf. And next year we go pull it off the shelf. Do it again and nothing ever really happened. So we changed the whole way we approached that and said, okay, let’s get the business units in here. Let’s ask them, what do they see happening in their markets and how can we grow the company, and through that change in the process it took two or three years. But we all of a sudden started getting great ideas coming in the door and the business units were engaged and empowered to execute those plans. That’s a significant change for us. We monitor the conditions that we’ve –or the assumptions that we had in the strategic plan. Constantly, we update the board on that constantly. And we make changes to the plan if necessary when circumstances dictate. Turning to Slide 18, this is another part of the process — part of our growth process. We formed a Growth Council several years ago. The Growth Council — same type of approach. We want to get all the business units involved in the growth council. What the council does is it evaluates the strategic objectives or plans, or actually initiatives that we’re working on, if you bring in specific projects, they’re involved with challenging, the business unit leader that brought the project in, asking good questions, forcing a real thorough evaluation of the project. In that council we had legal counsel, we’ve got engineers, accountants, every business – just operations people, a whole variety of people that you look at the same thing from a variety of perspectives. And that actually is part of our key to sustaining our growth as well. If we’re making good investments we’re going to get returns. We’re going to be able to continue to attract capital. And obviously you can’t grow if you’re not getting the capital. I guess a follow-on here, to give you an idea of how we look at these things – this is a form of illustration but you can see, start with information gathering, identifying opportunities. About 50% of the projects that we’re looking at are in that category. We weed out some of those, we get down to feasibility analysis. About 20% of the project would be expected to be in that category. And then proposal development, offer negotiation, and execution, as you can see, we’re weeding projects out of the opportunities that we see as we work our way down. It was probably a year ago, I think Beth and I were in Boston and somebody asked me, if we ever rejected a project. And I was sitting there, I was actually stumped for a minute, and I think, we reject almost all the projects. And then I’ve been thinking about it, after it occurred to me that, I guess that would be a question if you’re doing a lot of – making a lot of capital investments, the expectation might be from the other side as well. You guys are just doing everything that you come across the table and we do have a strategic set of criteria on these projects as well. So we’re not just doing anything that looks like to be profitable or making sure we’re sticking to things that we understand and that’s what we know how to do with this with our strategic plans. Turning to Slide 19, it’s something about — looking around what are the results of all the stuff. Beth gave you a pretty good picture of that. But this is just something that we look at all the time. So you’re looking at the ROE which is the vertical axis and you’ve got the capital expenditures force horizontally. And you’ll see Chesapeake in the top right hand quadrant, which simply means that we are above the 50% in both ROE and also CapEx, so we’re deploying a tremendous amount of capital. And we’re maintaining returns and that’s a pretty big challenge. You can see how few companies are over there near us and when you do that you’re going to drive EPS growth. All these other dots are just a variety of companies. It’s the electric and combination companies, it’s also an industry index for people that we use in our index for marketing our performance and then Chesapeake. So it’s not cherry picking of the peer group, it’s actually a broad range of companies. So then what happens – Beth talked about nine years of record earnings, so if you look at the blue line, I am on Slide 20, look at the blue line. Record earnings per share, the blue line climbing from roughly, you can see that $1.20 up to almost $2.80. Over this time period, ROEs maintained, actually climbing a little bit which is pretty hard to do in that kind of environment, up to little over 12. So it’s been a very successful process that we’ve been implementing and it requires a lot of discipline. So also shareholder returns, so what happens with this. We’ve looked at broader comparisons. This was something Beth was just I guess thinking about one day and did a lot of work to come up with some numbers. And when we looked at and we thought these numbers were little scary, little high. It was, what we can — nobody’s going to believe us. So we asked one of our investment bankers to tell us – help us with the analysis and they put together their own and so we use theirs. The numbers are consistent. But as you can see 84 th percentile in five years and then after that you get 86 th percentile for one year, 80 th percentile for three and then 89 th , 10. So substantial I guess [indiscernible] measure there. With an annual large shareholder returns, you see the median — we joke around about this too. Utility business sometimes is pretty tough to grow as you get bigger. So you will see a negative 5.1% could be weather related, could be pricing relate type of thing. And you can see Chesapeake over the 75 th percentile in all four periods. Once again we go to the S&P 500 — maybe the NYSEs big in our peer group. If you go the S&P 500 similar type results for 73th percentile in five years and then up over 75 in the other two periods. So it’s just I guess a measurement of our discipline. This is a table that we use periodically on Slide 23. The lightly shaded blue or those metrics where we didn’t hit to 75 th percentile, all the others we were at 75 th percentile. We have another table that shares — we have basically, 18 out of 20 times was 75 th percentile. So again things that we’re very proud of, and again you can go back to the processes that we talked about earlier, that are responsible for that, obviously the people that are executing on those processes. So now what are we doing tomorrow? We talked about what we did yesterday. One of our key I guess brand values is simply that we don’t rest on our laurels and so we like to celebrate the victories but we know that really it’s about what we do today and tomorrow, that’s going to count. And so here’s a few of the projects that we actually mentioned these. You can see we’ve got three projects here on Delmarva, the White Oak expansion, Beth talked a little bit about the impact of that on earnings. That’s just obviously a significant project for us. We’ll be constructing that soon. I guess we’re still working with FERC to get approval to do that. The TETCO capacity expansion in the second row is an interesting opportunity that comes and goes really. With the TETCO, it’s obviously connected to TETCO, Texas Eastern. And there’s lower cost of gas on Texas Eastern than there are on other pipelines that are nearby. And so what happens is customers may not have subscribed to move gas on that pipe, that section of the pipe, but when those prices change and TETCO become significantly cheaper than the other place, all the companies or the major companies are interested in trying to get more gas off of TETCO, that are subscribed to use long term capacity or just to use short term interruptible capacity to do that, so we get some earnings supplements from that line. The next box down, Eastern Shore Natural Gas System Reliability, going back to the polar vortex that showed some weaknesses and some upstream systems, and that’s flowed through to us. We also learned things about our system so we’ve done – we’re working on a distribution system to improve that. We also have a filing with the FERC to improve our transmission systems and we have to be ready for low gas pressures coming into our system lower than we historically had seen in the past. So it’s an important thing and reliability is obviously a critical issue for us. Florida and Ohio. Florida Public Utilities has a Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program, Beth talked about that. Once again that’s about safety and reliability. It was a very little to natural gas prices now. It was an opportune time to look at and is strengthening your system, so we’re doing that. Eight Flags, Beth talked a little about that as well. That project is expected to come online in June or July of this year, so it’s I think over 90% complete, was the last number we heard, just as strong as we get actually. Aspire Energy of Ohio, that was the acquisition we did last year. So all of these things, if you look at these Eight Flags, it’s a completely new service we never provided. Aspire Energy of Ohio, completely new service territory. We weren’t serving — and the services are slightly different than what we provided. So you’re getting two out of the six big projects are either new service or new territories. And it’s a picture of Eight Flags, it’s actually – the picture was taken with them celebrating the safety. I mean there was – I forgot the number of days now per hour – 60,000 hours of — without an injury, without an incident. So there’s safety, there is special celebration going on there. But the significance of Eight Flags, first, it’s a new service, we didn’t know how to do that. I want to go back even to the beginning. We got a phone call, that hey, we’re considering. This is Rayonier on – that we’re considering going off the grid, really electric utility on to the aisle. And so that means okay, we’re not going to use the electricity. And so we were looking at things, concerns about earnings deteriorating. So the team in Florida walked into the plant, just did a tour, brought some experts and got some experts involved to help us look at opportunities in the plant. And they came up with the idea, well, we could build a combined heat and power plant here and lower your steam costs. And we can scale it up on the electric generation side, because we’re the electric utility and we can buy the power cheaper from this facility than we can buy from on the grid — from the grid. So we turned what was a loss into a win. So as a result of this, Rayonier is saving money. They’re actually expanding their facility now. Two big wins are for Rayonier. For us, we have lower cost power coming into our electric system. So that’s going to help the customers on Amelia Island as millions of dollars of savings associated with that, and in early we had higher earnings. So it was a very big deal, very creative, it was a new service, a good job. And on top of all of that, we used a lot of our different capabilities. Obviously the electric utility was involved, had to build a pipeline, reinforced our pipeline there, we had a gas pipeline. So our gas, or distribution company – gas distribution companies involved and then also we have a company that’s marketing — natural gas marketer that was involved in solving the problem as well. So we took a variety of skills that we had across our entire company to help solve that problem. So that’s really talked about our strat plan and what we’re trying to do, be flexible, be able to do a lot of different things, solve customers’ problems has been a key factor in our success. So with that, I’ll turn it over to questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Nathan Martin with BB&T Capital Markets. Nathan Martin Good morning everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, first just kind of given the current gas LDC M&A environment and obviously your clear goals to grow, would it be reasonable to assume you guys would execute possibly another deal or two by the end of this year? And kind of – if so, you mentioned you’re continuing to look at opportunities outside of your current territories. Are there any certain types of geographies you’re prioritizing, or would you basically consider anything if the returns and strategic fit are there? Mike McMasters I guess, let me do the first question first. When it comes to acquisitions, we are constantly looking for acquisitions. And you know how that works, you have a hard time, that you can look at it, 10, 100 — you look at a lot of acquisitions. And it’s very difficult to get anyone in particular to the finish line. And so forecasting out is just extremely difficult to do that. At least we just don’t do that but we are looking at several opportunities in that regard and we’re probably — always will be looking at several opportunities. You know that, funnel when you have that first – the top piece of the funnel, and you’ll have a lot of things in there that fully won’t come to fruition. Very few actually get through. So we can’t really forecast that. I’m trying to think the second question now. Nathan Martin Basically as far as geographies — you guys are continuing to look at opportunities outside of your current territory – Mike McMasters There’s maybe a natural tendency for us to be focusing on primarily the East Coast. We’ve been in Florida since the 80s, and so we are comfortable in Florida. And when we’re comfortable in Florida, that we’re going to be comfortable as we look to Georgia et cetera, in contiguous states. And we’ve got — I think primarily the focus is on the East Coast. If we saw something good that was East Coast – I am including Ohio in the East Coast, in that definition. As we get much further west of Ohio it maybe becomes – I don’t know, we’re having seen anything over there actually, so we don’t spend whole lot of time looking that far west. But that’s not to say that tomorrow if we don’t find something that’s attractive and strategic fit that we would look at it. Nathan Martin Thanks for that color. And then just in the same vein, I mean, looking at these opportunities, just trying to figure out where you lean more towards regulated, unregulated, or again is it just come down to strategic fit? Mike McMasters We are a different right — the regulated and unregulated. Aspire Energy of Ohio has basically gathering system delivering gas to either interstate pipelines or delivering gas to LDCs. And so we’re perfectly comfortable in that business. There is some commodity risk associated with that business. But we’re comfortable with that. So it is not whether it’s regulated or unregulated, it’s really what’s the opportunity and the strategic fit. End of &A Operator [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to President and CEO Mike McMasters. Mike McMasters Thanks everyone for joining us on the call today and for your interest in Chesapeake Utilities. We’re here in Salisbury with members of local community at our meeting, and want to thank Salisbury University again for allowing us to use their facilities. We’re proud of what our team has accomplished for shareholders in the past and remain committed to working hard to deliver superior shareholder returns in the future. Thank you. Operator This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect. Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) So our reproduction policy is as follows: You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha and either link to the original transcript or to www.SeekingAlpha.com. 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DOL Opens The Door To SRI Investing In Retirement Plans

Sustainable, responsible, and impact (SRI) investing is a growing part of the investment landscape. Assets under management using SRI strategies now total $6.57 trillion, or $1 out of every $6 under professional management in the U.S., and these numbers are growing. 1 Between 2012 and 2014, SRI investing grew by more than 76%. 1 A recent survey indicates that the majority of millennials believe business can do more to address society’s challenges in the areas of climate change and resource scarcity. 2 This year Morningstar launched environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores for global mutual and exchange-traded funds. 3 Despite the growing interest in SRI strategies, most retirement plans such as 401(k) plans were slow to incorporate ESG factors in the investment evaluation process. That may be about to change. Last fall the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published guidance that seems to open the door to greater use of SRI strategies in retirement plans. This guidance, in the form of an interpretive bulletin, steps back from prior DOL guidance that appeared to require plan fiduciaries to give economically targeted investments (ETIs) special scrutiny not required of other types of plan investments. While it is too early to tell whether the DOL bulletin will lead to increased adoption of SRI strategies by retirement plans, if you have clients or prospective retirement plan clients who have expressed an interest in SRI strategies, the new guidance provides an excellent vehicle for reexamining this issue. SRIs Defined A variety of terms in addition to “SRI” are used to describe an investment strategy that takes ESG factors into consideration to select investments that will have both competitive financial returns and a positive societal impact (e.g., socially responsible investing, sustainable investing). The DOL uses the term “economically targeted investments” (ETIs), which it defines as investments chosen because of “the economic benefits they create apart from their investment return to the employee benefit plan.” 4 Common types of investments include affordable housing, small business development, community services (child care, health care, education), job creation, expansion of existing businesses, and support of sustainable development initiatives. ETIs appear in a variety of forms including stocks, mutual funds, private equity, real estate, and fixed income. The “All Things Being Equal” Test The first formal position the DOL took on SRI investing, referred to by the DOL as ETIs, was in Interpretive Bulletin (IB) 94-1. In that bulletin, the DOL established the “all things being equal” test. This test had three prongs. A plan fiduciary can never subordinate the interests of plan participants and beneficiaries to a social purpose. The ETI must have an expected rate of return commensurate to rates of return of alternate investments “with similar risks available to the plan.” The ETI must otherwise be an appropriate investment considering the diversification of plan investments and the plan’s investment policy. As long as plan interests were not subordinated and the ETI could be expected to return a comparable rate of return as investments with similar risks, a plan fiduciary could offer ETI as an investment option. In effect, plan fiduciaries could use ESG factors to break a tie with an equivalent non-SRI option. Special Scrutiny Requirement Added in 2008 IB 94-1 remained the DOL’s principal guidance on the topic until it was replaced in 2008 by Interpretive Bulletin 2008-1. The 2008 pronouncement put SRI strategies in a much less favorable light as compared to the 1994 guidance. In the 2008 bulletin, the DOL said that consideration of non-economic, ESG factors Should be rare, and When an ETI is considered, the decision to invest should be documented in a manner that demonstrates compliance with ERISA’s rigorous standards. The 2008 bulletin seemed to require plan fiduciaries to give a level of attention and circumspection to SRIs not required for other plan investments. DOL Restores & Enhances the “All Things Being Equal” Test Recently, the DOL expressed its view that the 2008 bulletin was unduly discouraging plan fiduciaries from investing in ETIs or considering ESG factors, even when the investments were economically equivalent.5 To address these concerns, the DOL withdrew the 2008 bulletin and replaced it with IB 2015-01, guidance more aligned with the position it had communicated in 1994. In its Fact Sheet released with the 2015 bulletin, the DOL said that the “IB also acknowledges that in some cases ESG factors may have a direct relationship to the economic and financial value of the plan’s investment.” 5 The DOL went on to say that, “in such instances, the ESG issues are not merely collateral considerations or tie-breakers, but rather are proper components of the fiduciary’s primary analysis of the economic merits of competing investment choices.” 5 The effect of the DOL’s 2015 bulletin is significant. The three-prong test of IB 94-1 is restored. Plan fiduciaries do not have a “higher level” obligation to scrutinize and document ETIs than they do for other plan investments. ESG factors can be taken into account in determining the economic benefit of investments and to find superior investments. Challenges & Opportunities If you have retirement plan clients or prospective clients who are interested in SRI strategies, IB 2015-01 provides an excellent vehicle for discussing whether SRI strategies are a good fit for their retirement plan’s investment portfolio. Following are some possible discussion points to include in your SRI discussions. Discuss whether your client wants to incorporate ESG factors in their investment evaluation process . Do members of the plan’s investment committee believe that ESG factors will materially impact the financial performance of the plan’s investments? Are there demographic and diversity factors at play that will affect the decision to provide ESG-driven funds such as a high concentration of Millennials? Do members of the committee need additional education regarding SRI investing? Evaluate how an SRI strategy would impact the existing fund lineup . How many investment options are currently provided to participants? Where in the fund lineup would it make sense to add an SRI strategy? Consider how to integrate SRI beliefs and expectations into the existing investment policy statement (IPS) and investment due diligence process . Does the IPS need to be adjusted to incorporate ESG considerations? Will there need to be any changes in the process for selecting and monitoring the plan’s investment menu? Does the documentation retained by the investment committee need to be modified or expanded? These basic inquiries will be a good starting point for discussing SRI strategies with plan sponsors. As with all investment decisions, you play a critical role in helping your plan sponsor clients define and pursue investment objectives that are right for their plans. Clients that elect to adopt an SRI strategy will need your support to Define their investment objectives Develop or amend the IPS that sets out clear rules and metrics for evaluating investment return and risk equivalencies Identify and evaluate investment opportunities Review and evaluate SRI fund prospectuses Document the SRI decision-making process, as they do with other plan investments Educate plan participants about SRIs Footnotes US SIF Foundation, Report on US Sustainable, Responsible, and Impact Investing Trends 2014 Deloitte, The Deloitte Millennial Survey , January 2014 Morningstar, Inc. Press Release, “Morningstar Introduces Industry’s First Sustainability Rating for 20,000 Funds Globally, Giving Investors New Way to Evaluate Investments Based on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Factors,” March 1, 2016 Department of Labor, Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01, October 26, 2015 Department of Labor, Fact Sheet: “Economically Targeted Investments (ETIs) and Investment Strategies that Consider Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Factors,” October 22, 2015 FOR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL, BROKER-DEALER AND INSTITUTIONAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR USE BY OR DISTRIBUTION TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. This material is for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice. Information is obtained from sources deemed reliable, but there is no representation or warranty as to its accuracy, completeness or reliability. All information is current as of the date of this material and is subject to change without notice. Neuberger Berman does not accept any responsibility to update any opinions or other information contained in this document. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm or the firm as a whole. This material is informational and educational in nature, is not individualized and is not intended to serve as the primary or sole basis for any investment or tax-planning decision. Investing entails risks, including possible loss of principal. The material includes copyrighted information of Integrated Retirement. ©2016 Integrated Retirement. Published by permission. All rights reserved. Neuberger Berman LLC is a registered Investment Advisor and Broker Dealer. Member FINRA/SIPC. The “Neuberger Berman” name and logo are registered service marks of Neuberger Berman Group LLC. All rights reserved. © 2009-2016 Neuberger Berman LLC. | All rights reserved) from the feed, and any images/charts as they appear on the original blog article

Clean Energy Fuels’ (CLNE) CEO Andrew Littlefair on Q1 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ: CLNE ) Q1 2016 Results Earnings Conference Call May 5, 2016, 04:30 PM ET Executives Tony Kritzer – Director of Investor Communications Andrew Littlefair – President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Vreeland – Chief Financial Officer Analysts Eric Stine – Craig-Hallum Rob Brown – Lake Street Partners Pavel Molchanov – Raymond James Operator Greetings and welcome to the Clean Energy Fuels first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Tony Kritzer, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Tony Kritzer Thank you, operator. Earlier this afternoon, Clean Energy released financial results for the first quarter ending March 31, 2016. If you do not receive the release, it is available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s Web site at www.cleanenergyfuels.com where the call is also being webcast. There will be a replay available on the Web site for 30 days. Before we begin, we’d like to remind you that some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Words of expression reflecting optimism, satisfaction with current prospects, as well as words such as believe, intend, expect, plan, should, anticipate and similar variations identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance and the company’s actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in the Risk Factors section of the Clean Energy’s Form 10-Q filed May 5, 2016. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this release. The company’s non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA will be reviewed on this call and exclude certain expenses that the company’s management does not believe are indicative of the company’s core operating business results. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with GAAP and should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, GAAP results. The directly comparable GAAP information, reasons why management uses non-GAAP information, a definition of non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP figures is provided in the company’s press release, which has been furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K today. Participating on today’s call from the company is President and Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Littlefair, and Chief Financial Officer, Bob Vreeland. And with that, I will turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew Littlefair Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I’m going to keep my remarks focused on the most important takeaways from what we feel was a strong first quarter. We reported first quarter revenue of $95.8 million, which is a 12% increase over the first quarter of last year. Additionally, we reported $29.8 million of adjusted EBITDA versus negative $5.6 million in Q1 of 2015. The first quarter of 2016 included $6.4 million of VETC and a gain of $15.9 million from buying back some of our converts at a discount. However, even when these real benefits are backed out, our adjusted EBITDA was still positive at $7.5 million, an improvement of over $13 million from the first quarter of 2015. We delivered 77.5 million gallons to our customers. This is a 3% increase over the 75 million gallons we delivered during the first quarter of 2015. On the year-end earnings call, I told you that a primary focus for 2016 would be to conserve cash and de-leverage the balance sheet. To that end, we repaid $60 million of the $145 million convertible notes due in August 2016. In addition, given favorable pricing, we have been opportunistically repurchasing our 2018 convertible debt in the open market through privately negotiated transactions. In the first quarter, we repurchased $32.5 million; and so far in the second quarter, we have repurchased an additional $31.5 million. All told, we have repurchased $64 million of our 2018 convertible notes, leaving $186 million due in October 2018. Our total convertible debt reduction is $124 million. Also to date, in 2016, we have raised $32.4 million of proceeds from public stock sales. At quarter-end, we had $163 million of cash and investments on our balance sheet. Additionally, we reduced our SG&A by 15% year-over-year, while growing our volume and revenues. We are on track with our reduced CapEx budget of $25 million for 2016, which is 50% less than last year, so we are executing on our plan to conserve cash and reduce our debt. From an industry perspective, the pressure for companies to become more sustainable continues to grow. We see natural gas fueling as an economic and realistic solution that a company can utilize to achieve greater sustainability. And we are working with a variety of fleets and shippers like Kroger and Unilever as well as trucking companies, waste companies and municipalities. Fleets continue to look to fuel with natural gas. Here is a noteworthy example. The United States Postal Service is pursuing an initiative to reduce their carbon footprint by 20% by 2020 and have concluded that natural gas is the alternative fuel of choice for their third-party contracted carriers. These carrier carriers are responsible for the majority of all USPS transportation emissions. As part of their contract renewals, the Postal Service is starting to require its outside carriers to use natural gas where it is cost-effective. We are currently working with five other major carriers, who combined have 75 natural gas tractors fueling at several of our highway stations. Additionally, the USPS is considering replacing some of their own Class A tractors and straight trucks with natural gas. Turning now to our renewable fuel business, we continue to see increased interest in demand for our renewable fuel offering. Through our robust network of stations, we have established a pathway to Redeem, our renewable green gas, into vehicles. This is the best way to realize the full value of renewable fuel, which contributed $11 million of revenue in the first quarter. I want to emphasize that our expanding infrastructure has enabled us to benefit from this rapidly growing renewable market and differentiates us from our competitors. Companies like UPS, Ryder, Republic Services and many transit agencies use Redeem and understand its significance. Another important industry innovation, the Cummins Westport low NOx engine has already captured a lot of interest, and these engines are available to order. As a reminder, this low NOx engine reduces NOx 90%. And when combined with our Redeem renewable fuel, it has 90% less carbon. It is cleaner than running an electric vehicle that is plugged into the grid. In the industry, this new introduction is referred to as game changer. Turning now to our station construction, we benefited, during the first quarter, from an increase in full station projects. Currently, we have over 60 projects under contract and in the pipeline. We continue to believe our robust construction pipeline is a solid indicator that our customers continue to make investments in expanding their fleets and remain committed to their sustainability goals. Our virtual pipeline subsidiary, NG Advantage, showed impressive growth, delivering close to 8.6 million gallons to their customers. I’m also pleased to report that we recently signed a follow-on supply deal with Hawaii Gas, which is contracted to purchase over 14 million LNG gallons over the next five years. All told, it was a strong quarter. And I believe it is a testament to our diverse product offering and recurring revenue base. Our largest customers continue to buy new trucks and invest in their natural gas operation and we continue to gain new customers across our markets of transit, refuse and trucking. Our adjusted EBITDA continues to trend positively and we are taking strategic actions to de-leverage our balance sheet and we’re being disciplined with our capital. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Bob. Robert Vreeland Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon to everyone. As Andrew mentioned, we have a strong quarter with continued volume growth, a 12% increase in revenue, and adjusted EBITDA of $29.8 million. Starting with volume of 77.5 million gallons, a 3% growth rate over the first quarter of 2015, impacting this growth rate was a decline in RNG volume of 3.5 million gallons. Most of that decline is the result of no longer owning and operating our former Dallas bio-methane plant, which we sold and then operated through mid-April of 2015. Exclusive of those gallons, our volume growth was 8% year-over-year. As Andrew mentioned, NG Advantage had strong year-over-year growth as did our refuse sector, while the other sectors were level with a year ago. LNG volume was down 2.9 million gallons, principally from lower bulk LNG sales. Bulk LNG sales can be uneven throughout the year as LNG demand is influenced by various external factors, such as, more recently, the slowdown in E&P industry, the variable demand of large industrial customers, and weather. We remain active and compete well in the bulk LNG marketplace as evidenced by our new deal with Hawaii Gas. Our Redeem gallons, which are included in our CNG and LNG fuel gallons, increased 70% year-over-year to 15.2 million gallons for the quarter. Our 12% increase in revenue in the first quarter was driven by a better effective price per gallon on higher volume, increased construction project revenue, and the alternative fuel tax credit referred to as VETC. Our Compression sales were down year-over-year as we remain in this challenging global oil environment together with a strong US dollar, although the related gross margin contribution from our Compression business was better than a year ago despite the lower revenue. Our adjusted EBITDA of $29.8 million was driven by a strong gross profit margin, continued reductions in SG&A spending, and a gain from our opportunistic convertible debt repurchase. Our strong gross profit margin was driven substantially by the impacts of selling our Redeem fuel and the associated environmental credits, which helped take our gross profit margin per gasoline gallon equivalent to $0.36 per gallon compared to $0.28 for the first quarter of 2015. Both quarters include the state and federal environmental credits, the LCFS and RINs. The combined credits amounted to $11 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to $3.2 million in 2015. The economic benefits from the environmental attributes of both natural gas and Redeem remain strong and have more than offset the pressure on retail fuel margins from this low oil and diesel price environment. And finally, on gross margin, we benefited from our increased station construction project sales and the VETC revenue. Our 15% reduction in SG&A to $25.6 million was $4.6 million lower than a year ago and $1 million or 4% lower than the recent fourth quarter. This has been a continuing trend and is the result of the actions we’ve taken given the low oil price environment. And as Andrew mentioned, we recorded a $15.9 million gain on the repurchase of $32.5 million of our 2018 convertible debt. The higher revenues and gross profit margin and lower SG&A, along with the gain on debt repurchase, led to GAAP net income of $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to a net loss of $31 million a year ago. And it also lead to an improvement of $35.4 million in adjusted EBITDA from a year ago. Looking forward, we anticipate our Redeem sales to benefit our results, VETC will be recorded each quarter in 2016 relative to volume, and we continue to expect positive quarterly adjusted EBITDA for the balance of 2016. And with that, operator, we’ll open the call to questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead. Eric Stine Hi, everyone. Nice quarter. Andrew Littlefair Thank you, Eric. Robert Vreeland Thanks, Eric. Eric Stine I want to start with Redeem, especially given the impact that had in this quarter. How do you think about that long-term – limiting factors to growing volumes there? I know part of it is that, right now, what, California and Oregon that have LCFS, have the standards where you can participate. But do you see other states going down the road of California? And ultimately, where do you think that those Redeem volumes can go? Andrew Littlefair Thanks. I think the short answer, Eric, is the – we’ve had tremendous growth in the Redeem business, and so it won’t be easy to keep up on that growth. But it will continue to develop, and so I think you should count on what we’re doing. So what you saw in the first quarter should continue. I really think that in terms of renewable fuel, we’re really at a beginning point as we’ve got a few different – I know you attended the ACT Conference out here. I really believe that the transportation industry, passenger car, and also those in goods movement, I think this being sustainable fuels and sustainable technologies, I think we’re just at the beginning of what’s going to be a very long move toward cleaner fuels and cleaner innovation, cleaner technology. So I think, over time, you’ll see us continue to grow Redeem. Washington State is now looking at Low Carbon Fuel Standards. We’re selling Redeem in Texas now. The Northeast has kind of come in and out of something that feels a little bit like Low Carbon Fuel Standards. Some states will be more progressive than others. But I think you’re going to continue over time to see more and more regulations that incent and begin to put more values on carbon. And so, I think the good news is for our industry and for our company is that we have this renewable fuel, we have the network to be able to dispense it and the pathway to be able to get it into vehicles. That gives us a huge leg up compared to some of the others in this business. And I think that having the technology, the new Cummins Westport engine which I know was highlighted at this big conference out here just this week, it’s a low NOx engine which is very important for tailpipe emissions, but it also – when it’s combined, as I said in my remarks, with Redeem, it’s really cleaner than the grid which is a big deal. So I think we are well-positioned and I think it will be important, Eric, as we go forward. Eric Stine That’s volumes. But in terms of pricing, what I’m looking at or reading, it seems like the thought is that the pricing, the carbon price per ton, that trend, while there may be some near-term volatility, the trend there is higher too. Andrew Littlefair Yes, Eric. And that’s right. So there’s two – there’s definitely two components to that. There’s the volume and then there’s the pricing of the environmental credits. And that environment has been strong and continues to be strong at the moment. Now, like you said, there’s always the chance of some volatility. But just the way – with the standards that have been set and the obligated parties and all of that, it’s making that kind of a strong market. Eric Stine Yeah, okay. Maybe just thinking about your fleet activity, yesterday, at ACT, clear impression that people thinking that the market is probably flat this year, maybe down a little bit, but just curious, are you seeing any movement in your pipelining other than maybe the timing getting pushed out a little bit? Have any fleets dropped out of that pipeline? What are you seeing right now? Andrew Littlefair Eric, when you look at our customer base, the refuse market continues to be strong. It’ll be as big a year as we’ve had. And we’ve been a host of an industry event, which is called the Garbageman’s Invitational. It’s worth 300 refuse industry executives come here a couple weeks ago. And to a company, they’re all fueling natural gas trucks. And so, that’s a really important segment for us. We see the same thing expanding in transit. Now, when we talk about kind of flat year-over-year, the trucking industry hasn’t been as involved. It doesn’t have quite the maturity in terms of putting vehicles in their fleet like the refuse and transit guys who have been at this now for a decade. So it was a newer segment for us. And I would say, Eric, those that – we’re still seeing new fleets come, often in more of a testing mode with handfuls or dozens of vehicles rather than large purchases. But even in that segment, which I think you’re correct, that it will be similar this year to what it was last year, which I would consider to be important that we’re not backsliding. UPS continues to show the way as other big fleets like them. They haven’t turned back and we haven’t really seen any existing customers that have been in this, especially in the trucking, go back. Those that were on the fence when we entered this downturn in the oil price, they continue to review it. But I would say their attitude – and I’ve even probably met some out there at the conference. The attitude is not opposed to natural gas. In fact, I find it refreshing, in that they’re interested in moving forward. But they’re mindful of the fact that they’ve gotten very low diesel price right now. So I think that when that subsides you’re going to see an uptick in the adoption of natural gas for heavy duty trucking. Eric Stine Right. I guess this is kind of tough to quantify, but I’ll ask anyways. Is there an oil price that you look at and say, okay, at that level, then that’s when trucking really pick back up again? Andrew Littlefair It’s hard to pin me down there. But I know this is that, we’ve had some customers begin to model out oil at $40 a barrel, right? And in some cases, that sort of is difficult to make the natural gas equation work as well as it once did. I think, Eric, when you see $50, $55, $60 a barrel, it really gets – it really begins to move up the price of diesel. Look, diesel price has gone up nationally $0.10 in the last two weeks. It’s gone up every week for the last four weeks. And so, we don’t need to see $100 oil. You need to see the price of – we need to get off of people thinking that we’re going to have $40 oil forever. And I think once they see that there’s volatility, again, in their oil price and it comes back up to $50, $55, $60, I think that’s going to be the signal to have people begin to then – natural gas is still – let’s not forget, that’s our big commodity that we use here and it’s low. It’s very low. And so, the economics begin to sing again when you get back up to that oil price. Eric Stine Okay, thanks a lot. That’s it for me. Andrew Littlefair Yeah. Operator Your next question comes from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Andrew Littlefair Hi, Rob. Good afternoon. Rob Brown Congratulations on the EBITDA improvement. I think you said you had 60 stations in your pipeline. Could you give us a sense of – is that all to be delivered this year? And then maybe a sense of the gallon volume that those projects sort of generate ongoing? Andrew Littlefair I don’t know that I have the volume for you, Rob. But most of those stations that we’re talking about in the pipeline will be delivered this year. Rob Brown And then the mix of those, is it refuse mostly or maybe what is the mix there? Andrew Littlefair Big piece of those, refuse that are under contract, some are for our own account, some are for long contracted volumes from anchored tenants for stations that we’re building. Majority of those, though, are for customers – that we’re selling customers. And I hedged just a bit when we use the number over 60 and stuff like that because we get toward the end of the year and some of these – they will be under construction. But you never know if you’re going to get them all – four or five of them, we got it in December and this and that. But it looks to me like the station count should be very similar this year as it was last year, which are some of our biggest years that we’ve had. Rob Brown Okay, great. And then the Hawaiian Gas contract, I assume you’re supplying that out of Boron, but could you give us a sense of, again, what the gallon volume is there and sort of how that works? Andrew Littlefair Well, it starts out slow. And then my friends at Hawaii Gas have been – they’ve been wanting us to be careful about how much we’re saying. But it starts out – as you know, Rob, we’ve sold them some LNG already really more of in a test mode. And we had pieces of this contract done, gosh, maybe as long as a year ago and we were awaiting PUC approval, which came here a little bit ago. They’re now in the process of beginning to go out to bid to receive the containers that will be used for that shipping. Those will be – that’s underway now. Those containers will be delivered throughout this year and I imagine a big slug of those in the back end of this year. So we’ll begin to ramp up. And I think it begins to amount to around 3 million, 3.5 million gallons a year. And there’s a chance we’d do better than that. But it’s a nice additional load. And I hope the experience will be well because even with – you can imagine, all this entailed, we’re still able to bring them a very clean fuel that beats the otherwise imported fuel that they use for the islands. So we’re excited about it. They’re excited about it. And I hope that we can increase that from the number that I gave you in my remarks. Rob Brown Great, thank you. I’ll turn it over. Operator Your next question comes from Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Pavel Molchanov Thanks for taking the question, guys. One of the things that’s really helped you get into positive EBITDA is the reduction in SG&A. So you went from $30 million a year ago to $26 million this quarter. Is there any further room to cut that even more? Robert Vreeland Yes, there is room. And so, we’ve been feeling the effects of actions that we’ve taken as we’ve been going along. So it’s been kind of coming down each quarter. Certainly, on a year-over-year basis, it’s a bigger number. As we go sequentially, it’s coming down. But at some point, it’ll flatten a little bit. Pavel Molchanov Okay, pretty close to where we are right now? Andrew Littlefair I think, Pavel, there’s a little room still left in it. We’re continuing to eye different things to try to bring it down some more. I think there’s still some room left. You’ll see it maybe improve, continue this year. But all the while we’re still growing. And so, there’ll be a limit to how low we can bring it. Robert Vreeland Yeah. So it’s pretty close. Pavel Molchanov Just a housekeeping question, in Q1, you got the VETC catchup cash inflow, how much was that? Robert Vreeland Correct. So we collected all of the VETC that related to 2015. Pavel Molchanov How much is that? Robert Vreeland Yeah, so it was a little bit in excess of about $30 million. Pavel Molchanov $30 million. Thank you, guys. Robert Vreeland Yeah. North of that. Little bit north of that. Andrew Littlefair $32 million. Robert Vreeland Yeah. So it’s a little bit… Andrew Littlefair $32 million, yeah. Robert Vreeland Exactly. Andrew Littlefair Thanks, Pavel. Operator Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d now like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Littlefair for closing remarks. Andrew Littlefair Good. Well, thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone. I want to thank you for listening and – listening in on the call this afternoon. We look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Operator That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. 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