Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund (TSX:CHE.UN) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Before we proceed, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from both expressed or implied. Additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as well as information on certain non-IFRS and other financial measures referred to today, can be found in our disclosure documents, filed with the securities regulators, and available on fidarplus.com.

0:51 One of the non-IFRS measures we'll refer to today is adjusted EBITDA, which is EBITDA modified to exclude non-cash items that have underlies foreign exchange gains and losses. While our slide deck and disclosure documents refer to adjusted EBITDA, we may refer to it as EBITDA during the call. With that, we'd now like to open up the line for your questions. Vincent, you may open up the line for Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, for questions, you have to press star 1 on your telephone keypad to queue up. Again, that will be star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad to queue up. Your first question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

1:36 Hi, team. Thanks for the time. It's Robert on here for Steve. So just wanted to start off on the water solution side. So you noted that sulfur has risen further in Q3. although you're seeing some softening through the balance of the year. So just given the leg and repricing the water solutions book, when do you now expect the maximum margin pressure from sulfur to kind of occur? And then as contracts roll over, when should we expect the margin profile to begin showing a meaningful sequential recovery? Good morning, Robert. So appreciate that. This is Scott. So sulfur, as we know, has risen significantly. It's jumped up considerably close to all-time highs, and so the outlook for sulfur is that it's at its peak, and then at some point here before long, it's going to come down.

2:30 We obviously don't know that. We'll see. Our expectations are that sulfur is not going to go higher, so that's our expectation, and that it will fall. We are, as you know and others know, as we sell to city municipalities across North America, we sell on annual fixed prices. And we sell to over 1,000 customers. Our contracts are being renewed all the time, every month. And so the contracts that are being renewed right now are built and based off of our outlook for sulfur, which is at an all-time high. and so those contracts are rolling on and they'll be they'll be good for a year and so our team as you know our team we work very aggressively to raise price as we can based on on raw materials and then in our water business especially we tend to hold on to those pricing increases over time as raw materials fall so So we're not expecting future increases, but every contract that's coming on is based off of the latest high raw material profile.

3:49 Okay, got it. Thanks. That's great color there. And then just shifting to North Van quickly. So of that $75 to $105 million capital requirement that you guys disclosed, can you help us just frame the expected phasing of that spend over the next several years? and then how much should we think of that balance as truly incremental capital versus maintenance or growth spending that would otherwise have kind of been incurred there in North Van over those years? Yeah, so I understand. Our plan had been to deploy that capital over roughly a four-year period, and that would be done primarily in conjunction with our turnarounds, which would be every other year. So our plan had been to deploy...

4:34 that capital primarily in 28 and in 30. And so as we deploy that capital, we would also be spending a little bit less on our maintenance capital there. And so there is some overlap between the capital that we have here for the safety upgrades, as well as, let's say, our normal turnaround costs. So that's what we had planned. With the injunction that's been filed, um you know that's uh what we're expecting is that there's going to be a hearing based on that injunction we believe next year in 27 and then a decision would uh would come four to six months uh after that um so if the decision is favorable for that that would still work out for us with the with the plan that we had to deploy capital in 28 and 30.

5:28 if there were if If that timing did not work out, then that could have an impact on the 28th spend. I think the one thing I'll add to that is part of our capital that we have put in place is to put in liquefaction capabilities on our own land. So that'll be brand new equipment, and we will stop using the older equipment on the port side. So that just tells you in the future that will require less maintenance for the first several years because of the bad meal coaching. Okay, great. Thanks for the color. I'll pass the line. Thank you. Your next question comes from Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Peaks.

6:13 Please go ahead. Hi. So if we do that CapEx plan at North Van, the 28, 23rd, the kind of lumpy would we expect capex the next four years to look like something like 185 million next year 235 and 28 185 and 29 what did i say 235 and 2030 something like that so uh joel one of the things is uh they'll be wanting this slide there could be one disconnect between us recording capex and cash flow because We may be ordering some long lead time items, etc., so it's hard to tell you exactly how the cash flows will line up, but as we get further into the engineering in the next few months, we can definitely provide a little bit more granular timing for you to see and model it out.

7:05 Yeah, that's right. I think we can be clear with that, but I do want to emphasize that Yeah, the spin, particularly in 28, will be impacted based on the outcome of the injunction or the hearing that would be next year. Okay. So your guidance is that EBITDA would be about flat with last year. You're trailing down, I think, 15 to 20 million EBITDA year-over-year for the first half of the year. So you have to make that up in the second half of the year. Can you talk about which the businesses of segments, sorry, are you going to see that EBITDA growth the most? And maybe you can talk about Q3 versus Q4 cadence further growth.

7:55 So maybe, so I think one thing to keep in mind is in the EC segment, prices for chloralkali were trending down all through last year, so all through 2025. which means that the first half comparisons in 26 were up against tougher comparables in 25. But as those prices were declining during the back half of 25 and now they're kind of stable, we were picking up some of that gap just because those lower prices were reflected in the second half of 2025. So most of what we are talking about, that normalization happened within the EC segment and We expect right now that the asset segment will continue to outperform last year, so there'll be some of that coming from there, but a big chunk of that will come from EC.

8:56 And just to add on to that, we had a relatively heavy turnaround schedule in the first half of this year. and so yeah and so that will be lighter and that's in our news release as well as we look at the second half of this year. Just sneak one more in if we think about 2027 just building blocks for our bridge you know we don't know what cost of price it'll be things like that but do you think of things that are clear for block bridge items like of course the seven million dollars for the north band buying turnaround won't be there next year Can you just give some building blocks for what 27 puts and takes, ignoring commodity price moves? That's right. So I'll start with water. And I think that based on the movement of raw materials and the fact that where our contracts are and what's happening with contracts that are rolling on right now, I think it's fair to say that the outlook for water will be will be strong so I think as you build your model I would start with with that I would I would also build in and say that as we've highlighted ultra pure is we are ramping up supply to two fabs two chip producers in the second half of this year so I think that's that goes in there

10:28 I think that acid will continue to be strong. The regen should continue to be strong. That's good. We're obviously not going to have a turnaround in North Vancouver. So that's that. And then I think it's fair to say no one, we don't know and no one know what's going to happen with chloral alkaline in particular caustic pricing. But what we can share, what we can share is what the industry experts look at, the market experts for coral alkali show, and what we know is that caustic pricing over time, it has a very high correlation with oil, naphtha, and natural gas prices coming out of the Middle East.

11:21 And I think you go and look at it, there's very high correlation there. And so that would lead to some general, let's say, the outlook is that there will be some modest pickup with caustic, and I think that's a reasonable assumption. Okay, thank you. The next question comes from Hamir Patel with CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Scott, the potential hydrochloric acid demand growth that you pointed to as a substitute for sulfuric acid in certain industries, how meaningful could that be?

12:30 I'm trying to think what comment I might have made. I can follow up with Rohit after on that. The other question I wanted to ask about was I know Canfor is closing their Northwood Mill later this year. I'm guessing you're freight advantage to have been a supplier there. What percent of your EC volumes would likely need to be repositioned and I'm guessing perhaps less favorable margins on wherever else you have to position it. We won't comment on any specific with customers, but what we will say is that as we shared in our guidance, our volume outlook for chlorate for this year is generally flat with the outlook for this year, maybe slightly ahead.

13:23 and that's unchanged for the rest of this year. And as we look out into next year, won't give specific comments other than to say that it's possible that, so it is in the news that Canfor is closing the Northwood Mill. Possible that some of that volume might be moved to one of Canfor's other mills. give that, or any specifics on that, but it's possible some volume would move there. But we and the industry have seen mills continue to close one to a couple a year for the past many years. And so that has continued to be built in to our model. And over the past several years, the industry with the The industry has been rational, and I would expect that to continue to happen.

14:29 And the only thing I'll add is, as you may recall from last year, we actually did discontinue producing sodium chlorate at Prince George, which is on site with Canfor. And that was a decision we took actually last year, and so we're supplying chlorate from our one plant that is in Brandon, Manitoba. We do some dissolving, as we had said, in Prince George, but The trade advantage that you referred to is not as significant because we did discontinue producing it up in short. Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. That's all I had. I'll turn it over. The next question comes from Gary Ho from . Please go ahead.

15:14 Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to go back to the North Fan injunction and hearing. I'm just curious if you can elaborate who the other party is. You know, is it residents of the region or someone else? Just wanted to see how confident you are in kind of getting a favorable decision there. What we can do is, I mean, we can, sorry, we can point you to the, you know, you can actually, the applications for judicial review is actually a public document that you can look at. I don't think we want to get into, you know, kind of the specifics other than saying that what we said in the news release is that We will, you know, we intend to become joined to that action and basically defend it and oppose the release being sought.

16:00 But I don't think we want to get more specific on that. But if you are unable to find the judicial review, we can, after the call, we can send you a link to it. But it is public information. Okay, great. And then just going back to the 75-125 issue, Million CapEx. Just any risk of that CapEx spend moving higher or cost overruns, et cetera. I just wanted to see the work you've done to lock down the scope and our pricing just as you spend this over the next couple of years. Yeah. So, Gary, I would say that we feel comfortable with that range. That's a fairly broad range, and we do feel comfortable with that. That's initial number we are right now our team is moving and we're moving ahead and we're pretty far along in the design phase of that capital of those several capital projects and then the next step after the design phase is to move into what we call the detailed engineering and from that we get a cost estimate and we've we would start to pinpoint that number with a more narrow range than what we have there.

17:15 So with that, I think we feel comfortable with that range. We are moving ahead with the detailed engineering work. We are also moving ahead to request the building permits from the district. So we wanna go ahead and move quickly, request the building permits, get those approvals and then make decisions about how we move forward with that spend primarily for 28. Okay. And then maybe as a related question, as this construction and upgrades are being done, any risk that the facility needs to be kind of paused as you're doing these upgrades or kind of business as usual?

18:05 our plan is to be business as usual. So the plan that we have would be to do, our plan has been to do the majority of the work in 28 and 30, as I mentioned. And then with our plan with that, there would be minimal to no impact on our regular business cycle. Okay, and if I can sneak just one more in. Scott, you mentioned just on the caustic side, very high level comments, but anything else that you can share in terms of dynamics there, expectations for pricing recovery later this year into next year, etc.? ? Yeah, look, the outlook is for gradual and modest increase in caustic soda, which I think that makes sense and is rational, and we'll see if that plays out.

19:05 The caustic market has been somewhat volatile. I think a lot of the volatility has been coming from increased production of PVC in China. We don't need to go into too many details there, but if you have questions, we could follow up with that. But there has been an increase in production for what we've seen in China in PVC, and that has been having an impact. As you and others know, in May of this year, we saw caustic prices jump by $150 a ton, so they had been at at $350 or a little lower in Q1. After the campaign in Iran started, those prices jumped up to $500, and there was a view that that was going to be in place for a while.

20:03 And then what we saw is that China got involved in the market, particularly with PVC, and then caustic prices have fallen. So I'll just leave it with that. The outlook is for gradual increase in cost of soda prices, and we're hopeful that that's the case. And if you want to discuss that further, we can certainly follow up with you. Okay, great. Those are my questions. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Zachary Evershed with National Bank of Canada.

20:51 Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Understanding that you wouldn't want to speculate on potential outcomes at this point, can you maybe comment on why you weren't named as a respondent in the judicial review? So the judicial review is what the applicant is asking for is that the courts will do this review into the decision-making of the city council. So we are not part of that decision-making, so that's why we were not named. But we are going to be asked to be joined to that, and so we can, in the end, it does pertain to our facility. But it's not unexpected that we wouldn't be named because it's really a review of the decision-making of the council.

21:43 I understand. Thanks. And then with the last of the convertible debentures eliminated, do you plan to accelerate your buybacks under the NCIB? So when we look at our capital allocation, we look at organic growth opportunities in front of us, we look at our distribution policy, and we look at obviously for buybacks, and we look at leverage. So we were buying very aggressively when our leverage was 1.7, but then we obviously did a very value-added acquisition of Polytech, So our leverage now is 2.5. So when we allocate stuff, we do kind of balance the whole thing. So at this point, we feel the current rate of buying is consistent with our leverage targets and all the other uses of capital we have.

22:28 But that's the only reason why we've tempered it a little bit from where we were when we were 1.7 times leverage. Gosh, thanks. I'll turn it over. Thank you. Your next question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for the quick follow-up here. So just on Cairo, how should we think about the utilization ramp there kind of over the next – through the back half of this year into next year? And then the release mentioned that you're progressing with a couple additional kind of manufacturers. How should we – Think about that as far as like, do you need those customers basically to hit your return utilization metrics or is your existing kind of book of business sufficient to hit that? Thanks.

23:18 Yeah, so like what I'll, the color that I'll add is we are ramping up in the second half of this year sales to two of the advanced node chip producers in North America. We're very excited with that. I think this puts us on schedule that we had for the ramp up of the plant. I think that's exciting news. And so we're qualified, if you will, to supply assets to the most advanced chips that are being produced in North America. And so I won't comment on, I'm not going to share comments in terms of what's going to be the rate of the facility.

24:10 But as we go into 2027 and into 2028, our view is that KRO will be filling up quickly. I'll just leave it at that. It's very exciting. to be selling those to two of the most advanced node producers in North America. And then we continue to work with others, and we would expect that we'll have other qualifications as we move into 27. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over. Okay. There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to Scott.

25:02 Thank you, Vincent. And I'd just like to say thanks to everyone for joining the call today. Thanks to the ChemTrade team for the very strong results in Q2 and wish everyone a nice day. Thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.