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In Hindsight, Today Will Be Important For HCLP

HCLP and their bank reached a fast agreement on the compliance ratios. This is a big deal and I am very grateful for it. I almost turned tail and ran earlier this month when the threat of a breach surfaced in their earnings report. Sticking around has already proven fruitful (see the relief rally).

Hi-Crush Partners LP Announces Revolving Credit Facility Amendment

Houston, Texas, November 6, 2015 – Hi-Crush Partners LP (HCLP), “Hi-Crush” or the “Partnership”, today reported the completion of an amendment to its Revolving Credit Facility Agreement. The amendment, among other things, provides for a reduction in the commitment level from $150 million to $100 million, waives the compliance ratios through June 30, 2017 (the “Effective Period”), establishes certain minimum quarterly EBITDA covenants, allows distributions to unitholders up to 50% of quarterly distributable cash flow after quarterly debt payments on the term loan, and increases the pricing to LIBOR plus 4.50% during the Effective Period.

Accordingly, when HCLP has to take write offs early next year (they hinted at this) and they breach the old ratio limits, they will have a full two years to get back into compliance. And, as they have just suspended distribution, they should have plenty of cash to make that happen. Any recovery in oil prices over that time will obviously expedite the process, but I don’t have to count on such a hypothetical occurring in any timely manner now.

More importantly, their bank is labeling them a victor and communicating a commitment to making them work. Someone else will be getting the sharp end of the spear of destiny.

I am now all but completely confident that both of my remaining oil investments – HCLP and BAS – will experience full recoveries over the next few years.

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The Other Half of the BAS Earnings Report

Now that I have the filing available, I can see that BAS saw accounts receivables basically hold unchanged from June to September. At June, BAS had account receivables of $126.4 million. By September, account receivables still held at $124.7 million. That’s nothing to worry about.

As a proximity of future business, that BAS has seen account receivables hold steady over the past three months comforts me. The last three months were a dark time in the oil industry and many people are being forced out of business.

Throw in that revenues held up at $189 million from $193 million and I am a happy Cain Hammond Thaler.

The cash issue unsettled my stomach at first, but actually their operations produced more cash in gross. Seeing how spending the ~$40 million on equipment and businesses was a willful decision (although one that gave me intense heartburn), I actually feel pretty good about this quarter.

Actually, at this point I’m more concerned about HCLP, which dropped news that their debt is tied to asinine ratio testing which could blow up in their faces next year.

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HCLP Misses On Earnings, Suspends Distribution

She moves through the darkness, one leg in front of the other, silently across the floor. The cool air wafts around her legs as she begins to climb the stairs. One, two, three… the stone makes hardly a sound; the clattering of footsteps cannot be heard.

The wood does not creak as she steps onto the landing. A light at the end of the hall peaks out of a doorway. She passes through it.

The foot rests in front of her, beneath the desk. Softly, she passes next to it, at the last moment letting her body rest against the flesh, rubbing slowly.

She purrs – a deep loud sound – then soundlessly arrives in Cain’s lap, flexing her claws one of the next before letting his hand stroke her head and long body.

I pass my fingertips through her long hair, ending by twirling the lynx shaped tufts with my forefinger and thumb. Then I turn back to what I was reading.

4:26 pm Hi-Crush Partners misses by $0.04, reports revs in-line; announces temporary distribution suspension (HCLP) :

Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.15 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.04 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.19; revenues fell 20.3% year/year to $81.5 mln vs the $80.9 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
The Partnership reiterated the guidance for capital expenditures in the range of $50-$55 million for 2015 of which $48 million was spent in the first nine months of the year.
Capital expenditures for 2016 are expected to be in the range of $15-$25 million for the continued development of new terminal facilities.
Since August 1, 2015, Hi-Crush has reduced operational and administrative staffing levels by ~16%, including the most recent reductions at the Augusta facility.

Distribution Temporarily Suspended

The Partnership announced a temporary suspension of its quarterly distribution due to challenging market conditions.
Co paid distributions of $2.40 per unit on all common and subordinated units for 2014, $0.675 per unit for the first quarter 2015, and $0.475 per unit for the second quarter 2015.

I had expected something like this, particularly after EMES withdrew guidance. While I had hoped they would only reduce to a more normal percentage, suspending the entire distribution until fairer weather is perfectly acceptable. SLCA and EMES are going to do the same.

The most recent HCLP filing is out and it shows the story: accounts receivables have declined by 35% as business dries up. But the business is hardly over leveraged with Debt/Equity still holding below 2X. Cash levels increased by over 8% and now with the distribution halt, they are staking out the long winter.

HCLP has moved to shrink the business aggressively, cutting staff by 16%. Admittedly this is nothing like one of the services companies or some of the smaller oil drillers. But then again…they don’t have that kind of problem, now do they?

HCLP took a loss this quarter of ($0.49) a share, which was entirely driven by one time write downs. The company is in a similar (though less dire) process as other companies in this industry, cutting dead weight operations and consolidating around profit centers. They are also writing down and taking losses where applicable. In this case, HCLP wrote down some of their long term supply contracts (presumably because the customers aren’t going to live long enough to fill them).

Cash from HCLP’s operations only declined by about 11%. HCLP already spent about $48 million this year on investments in equipment and facilities, but they are looking to pair that back next year to $15-25 million.

Without the distribution and with the lower capital expenditures, HCLP will have expenses of inside $30 million per year. Cash flow is $67 million which even if we continue to impair, should more than cover the costs of doing business.

If HCLP was forced to go the BAS route and write off all goodwill and intangible asset value, they’d still have about $2 per share of equity to work with. That leaves another $69 million of equity as a buffer.

This line in the filing does concern me:

Under the terms of the Revolving Credit Agreement, our leverage ratio (total debt to trailing four quarter EBITDA) may not exceed 3.50. While our leverage ratio as of September 30, 2015, is below this threshold, if current market conditions persist, our leverage ratio will likely exceed this threshold during 2016, which could result in a breach of covenant event and an event of default under the Revolving Credit Agreement. If such a default were to occur, and resulted in a cross default of the Term Loan Credit Agreement, all of our outstanding debt obligations could be accelerated. The Partnership is currently in discussions with the lenders to amend the Revolving Credit Agreement to, among other things, waive the leverage and other compliance ratios. The Partnership makes no assurance that an amendment will be obtained.

So the question becomes, how willing are lenders to play ball? Promise of money is better than no money, no? It’s not as if bankers could run HCLP better than HCLP is. But these things always get messy.

In principle, there’s plenty of time here to ride out the storm. But we need oil markets to stabilize. BAS’ CEO Patterson says he sees signs of oil production going offline and was talking about operations idling after Thanksgiving. It sounds like companies have spent their budget this year and aren’t going to bother asking for more money.

Patterson also said he’s seen competition spike in his local markets, with thirty or more competitors entering to submit bids. In his anecdote, he said about twenty of them are left now.

Although it may not feel like it, the weak are being driven out. The industry is getting their cost to drop and they are learning to compete with the cheaper oil levels. This hurts but the survivors will probably be built to last. Provided, of course, that you are a survivor.

Budgets are being frozen in December. The oil producers are going to take a little recess. We’ll see what oil prices do in response.

Then things will get started again in January.

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Sand Companies Dealt Instant Death

On Thursday evening, EMES withdrew distribution guidance. On Friday, shareholders were treated to a one day ~30% drawdown. HCLP and SLCA fell ~10% each, in sympathy pains. The whole sector was flayed.

The weekend has offered no respite, as HCLP and SLCA are both down another ~8% and EMES is off another ~12% on Monday.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

All three are going to slash their distributions. Of course they are…they’re yielding like 20% and it’s an industry freeze. They’ll walk it back to ~10% yield, those of us who’ve been here from the start will be back to what we were making two or three years ago, and all three companies will be better off for it.

Now things are getting out of hand. I cannot speak for SLCA or EMES, because I don’t own either. I never wanted to own either. But I do speak for HCLP when I say a great company is going for peanuts.

Now, I am not adding to my position. I restructured back in December, I ended up with about 1/2 my account in cash (after factoring in losses into this year) and it has been single handedly responsible for keeping me alive. My losses have been horrific; without that restructuring they would have ended me (and that is not an exaggeration).

So I’m not buying until the recovery is already well underway. If I had been so fortunate to be outside this fire, looking in, then I would be nibbling incrementally, every couple of weeks. But that is not a luxury I personally get to enjoy.

So far for the year, I’m down about 15% – that’s about 40% peak to trough if I’m counting from when this process all started a little over 12 months ago. I guess if I’m looking big picture, I’m fortunate that’s all that’s happened. There are people out there who have lost 70% because of this oil catastrophe.

For the moment, I am more than content to sit on lots of cash and wait this thing out. I’ve dug into my companies and am very confident they’re going to make it. But not everyone gets to say that.

There are vast expanses of the oil and gas industry that are about to be swallowed whole. We have a backwater culture that still crucifies people to thank for this.

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HCLP Overview

One of the reasons – probably the biggest – that I haven’t reshuffled my portfolio since last year is, if I were outside the oil and gas sector when this blowup happened, I’d be buying everything in view right now.

It’s always pretty rough when it’s your carcass getting chewed on, but that realization is pretty important to my overall strategy right now.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the positions I’ve been keeping and their balance sheets.

Take HCLP:

Net cash from operations has actually increased to $58.0 million from $53.6 million. The increase has come from growth of accounts receivables, which sets up a discussion about what future business for HCLP might look like. The company is under hardship, yet they have more customer money on deposit than ever?

Yes, they are offering concessions to customers. The whole sector has to do their part to survive. But the company is clearly not going anywhere, and much of the growth they experienced in late 2013 and early 2014 is here to stay. When will the market price that in?

I also see that HCLP has quadrupled investments into property, plant, and equipment from where they were last year. Again, hardly the mark of a business readying itself for a long winter.

I’m estimating HCLP’s intrinsic value at around $2.30 a share. That puts price to book at 6.5X (admittedly a little pricey) but at current rolling 3 months of earnings, that still leaves a risk threshold of the company at about 10 years (completely reasonable absent any growth).

So we have a company which was growing like a weed up until about 6 months ago, which is seeing cash deposits for future business soar, and which is reinvesting at an attractive rate. Why would earnings continue to stagnate? Even without new drilling, HCLP sand is going to be in high demand to maintain existing wells.

So tell me, if I fled now after the fire is smoldering, where would I go that’s better?

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