Gibson Energy Inc

TSX:GEI

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Gibson Energy Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Conference Call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Beth Pollock, Vice President, Capital Markets and Risk. Ms. Pollock, please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 operational and financial results. Joining me on the call this morning from Gibson Energy are Curtis Philippon, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Riley Hicks, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We also have additional senior management team members in the room to help with questions and answers as required. Listeners are reminded that today's call refers to non-GAAP measures, forward-looking information and is subject to certain assumptions and adjustments and may not be indicative of actual results. Descriptions and qualifications of such measures and information are set forth in our investor presentation available on our website and our continuous disclosure documents available on SEDAR+.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Curtis.

Thank you, Beth. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. We'll begin with highlights of 2024 followed by Riley discussing our financial results and position, I will then provide some closing comments. This has been a milestone year in Gibson's history as we advanced our infrastructure strategy and set up our team for the next phase of growth. Since joining at the end of August, I've been pleased with the progress we have made. Our strategy is simple. We focus on our great assets, we remove unnecessary distractions and implement a goal execution culture that ensures alignment and accountability. On people: we ensure we have the right people and we are organized correctly, remove low performers and foster an ownership culture. On growth: we prioritize working closely with our customers, growing around our current assets and building the growth muscle to ensure that we have a pipeline of projects competing for capital.

Financially: we are owners and we stay committed to the governing principles that provide us a strong foundation. To deliver on our strategy, it is imperative that we have the right team in place for this next chapter. On this note, I'm happy to have Riley Hicks, our new Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, with me today. Riley joined Gibson in 2018 and has held critical roles across several areas of the business. Most recently, Riley oversaw corporate development, marketing and strategy. After working closely with Riley over the last 6 months, it is clear to me that his financial acumen and proven leadership abilities will be instrumental in driving Gibson forward. Together, we are committed to creating shareholder value and maintaining our strong investment-grade financial profile. I'm looking forward to partnering closely with Riley and I'm confident he will be a difference maker for the organization.

On behalf of the Board and the rest of the team, I would also like to acknowledge and thank Sean Brown for his dedication and time with the company. We wish him the best in his future endeavors. In 2024, we demonstrated the value of the Gateway acquisition to our business and to shareholders. I'm pleased to report that we ended the year on a consolidated basis with adjusted EBITDA of $610 million, an increase over 2023 and a new high watermark for the company driven by full year contribution from Gateway and record adjusted EBITDA from our Infrastructure segment. As we look back on the growth of our Infrastructure segment since the transition of our business in 2017, we have now achieved a compound annual growth rate of approximately 14%. Strong performance from Infrastructure offset a muted year for Marketing, which now accounts for approximately 10% of our adjusted EBITDA and ended the year slightly below the long-term run rate guidance.

Overall strong performance from Infrastructure and the continued growth of our long-term stable cash flows allowed us to end the year within our key financial targets with leverage at 3.5x, within our target range of 3x to 3.5x and a sustainable payout ratio of 71%, within our target range of 70% to 80%. Based on the enhanced quality of our cash flows and strong balance sheet, we have increased our quarterly dividend by $0.02 or 5% to $0.43 per share marking our sixth consecutive dividend increase and continued focus on delivering value to our shareholders. As we look forward to 2025, we're excited to build upon several recent milestones. In January, we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of taking over operations at Gateway and the acquisition has exceeded our expectations and is a key catalyst for our company moving forward.

Gateway is a unique strategically located asset. Its location in the Ingleside Outer Harbor makes it 1 of only 2 export terminals in Texas and 3 in the U.S. with the ability to directly load a very large crude carrier. Its close proximity to the Port of Aransas significantly reduces shipping time and cost for customers. And our unique fungible storage system minimizes diverged costs and inventory carry for our customers. Last year we reached a new record at the facility when we exported just over 2 million barrels in a single day, which represents nearly half of all U.S. crude exports on average. A significant achievement, which demonstrates the strategic and critical nature of our terminal and its value in the U.S. crude supply chain and the value it provides to both our customers and the entire U.S. economy.

In December 2024, we successfully extended and amended a key contract at Gateway while welcoming several new customers to our facility, all of which are major global crude exporters. We also sanctioned dredging, which will increase the depth at our facility and reduce customer shipping time and cost resulting in higher throughput and increased revenue at Gateway. With the benefit of dredging, which is underway and expected to be complete by the end of Q2 and the previously announced Cactus II connection project which is also underway and expected to be placed in service in Q3 and along with the impacts of recontracting some key customers, we are on track to achieve our key Gateway acquisition objectives earlier than anticipated, including growing Gateway EBITDA by over 15% to 20% on a run rate basis by year-end 2025.

In Canada, we placed 2 new tanks at our Edmonton Terminal in service at the end of the year under a 15-year take-or-pay agreement with Cenovus providing an incremental 870,000 barrels of storage capacity and increasing throughput at the facility as we enter 2025. Overall, we expect to deploy up to $200 million between growth and capital projects -- between growth capital projects and share repurchases in 2025, $100 million of which to be predominantly deployed at Gateway. We're also executing on our cost focus campaign, which is targeting over $25 million of cost savings by year-end. To date we have already implemented initiatives that will allow us to achieve approximately 50% of this goal on a run rate basis by year-end with numerous other additional initiatives still being advanced. We are confident that we will achieve this goal by the end of the year.

Turning to sustainability. We are proud to report that we recently received our fifth consecutive CDP score of A- reinforcing our leadership and continued commitment to sustainability. All the while safety remains foundational to everything we do and we are committed to Mission Zero, our goal of 0 harm to people. Thanks to this focus and the commitment of our team to work together to keep each other safe, we achieved a new milestone of 8.8 million hours without a lost time injury for our employee and contract workforce at the end of 2024.

I'll now pass the call over to Riley, who will walk through our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Curtis, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by saying that it is great to meet you. As Curtis mentioned, I joined the company in 2018 and have had the privilege of taking on a number of roles in both the finance and commercial organizations, most recently as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, Marketing and Strategy. While it is early days in this new role, my focus will be on continuing to grow the business in a disciplined manner while remaining committed to our conservative financial management and key financial governing principles. I'm excited to take on the challenge of this new role and look forward to meeting and getting to know each of you more over the next few months. As Curtis noted, 2024 was a year of milestones for our company.

Focusing on our financial results. On a consolidated basis, we delivered another solid quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $130 million driven by strong Infrastructure performance and offset slightly by muted performance within our Marketing segment. Infrastructure adjusted EBITDA of $147 million in the fourth quarter was impacted by several nonrecurring charges related to ongoing commercial matters. Concurrent with year-end, management reviewed outstanding items and accrued for the financial impact although we will note there remains a potential to recover some of these costs through commercial resolutions in future periods. When normalized for these items, Infrastructure EBITDA would have been approximately $153 million, slightly ahead of our third quarter results due to contribution from the 2 new tanks placed in service at Edmonton, but was partially offset by lower volumes at the Hardisty Terminal.

Adjusted EBITDA for the Marketing segment saw a loss of approximately $5 million, which was below the quarterly guidance provided on our Q3 call and represents a $19 million decrease relative to the third quarter. This was a result of reduced opportunities for both our crude marketing and refined products businesses. With respect to crude marketing, increased demand for Canadian heavy oil driven by ample egress out of the basin contributed to narrowed differentials and limited volatility during the quarter. Additionally, the overall market structure for crude remains in steep backwardation. These factors combined to result in fewer quality, location and time-based opportunities than had previously been forecasted. On the refined products side, the business continues to be impacted by tight differentials, higher feedstock costs and compressed margins due to tight crack spreads.

In terms of our outlook for the first quarter; absent a change in market conditions, we would anticipate another challenging quarter as steep backwardation continues to persist in the forward curve and opportunities remain limited for both crude marketing and refined products. Given this outlook, we would anticipate adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter to be around breakeven. That being said, Marketing now represents a smaller proportion of our business at approximately 10% on a trailing 12-month basis, which minimizes the impact of muted segment performance on our overall results and we continue to be well positioned from a balance sheet perspective given our commitment to our key financial governing principles. Further, we anticipate that headwinds facing the Marketing group will be temporary in nature and will begin to reverse as pipeline egress starts to tighten in the back half of this year and into 2026.

In the meantime, market conditions are ever changing and our team is well positioned to take advantage of any opportunities that arise, but we will not in any way change our risk tolerance to chase market upside. With respect to our full year 2025 Marketing guidance, we will look to reevaluate and provide an update on the first quarter conference call. As previously noted, we believe current market conditions will be temporary and we remain confident in our long-term normalized outlook. Turning to distributable cash flow. Gibson generated approximately $71 million in the fourth quarter, which was a $17 million decrease relative to the third quarter. Consistent with our previous commentary, this delta was driven largely by lower Marketing results and partially offset by lower taxes and lease costs.

As the fourth quarter concluded the 2024 fiscal year, I would also like to compare year-over-year results. On an annual basis, the Infrastructure segment set another record generating adjusted EBITDA of $601 million representing an increase of $107 million over 2023, a result of record-setting volumes achieved at Gateway and Edmonton and partially offset by decreased volumes at Hardisty. Year-over-year, Infrastructure volumes increased approximately 25% or 142 million barrels. In the calculation of our adjusted EBITDA, the company has excluded certain onetime nonrecurring items that impacted our 2024 results. At the same time, Marketing adjusted EBITDA decreased from $145 million in 2023 to $63 million in 2024, an $82 million decrease due to the reasons previously discussed.

As such, on a consolidated basis, 2024 adjusted EBITDA increased by $20 million to $610 million, a 3% increase over the prior year and a new high watermark for Gibson. These results contributed to distributable cash flow of $375 million in 2024, a decrease of approximately $11 million related to 2023 primarily as a result of muted Marketing performance. As Gibson has done to date, we will continue to adhere to our financial governing principles; which include maintaining a strong balance sheet, remaining fully funded for all growth capital and ensuring our dividends are fully covered by stable long-term take-or-pay cash flows driven by our Infrastructure segment. At year-end, our debt to adjusted EBITDA was 3.5x compared to 3.7x exiting 2023 and within our target range. On an Infrastructure adjusted basis, our leverage of 3.6x is also below our target of 4x.

Exiting the year our payout ratio, as both a percentage of distributable cash flow and on an infrastructure-only basis, was 71%, at the bottom end of our 70% to 80% target range and well below our Infrastructure-only target of less than 100% highlighting the sustainable nature of our dividend. We have ample headroom with respect to all metrics providing us significant financial flexibility and notwithstanding any continued softness in our Marketing business, this financial flexibility supports the 5% dividend increase we announced yesterday. In terms of capital allocation, we continue to remain disciplined and focused on maximizing shareholder value. In December, we announced our 2025 guidance of up to $200 million in growth capital and share buybacks.

With continued growth in our free cash flow from our Infrastructure segment throughout the year, the quality of our cash flows has improved while we've maintained the strength of our balance sheet and our financial flexibility. Infrastructure results in 2024 marked new highs for the company due both to a successful first full year with Gateway in our portfolio and continued strong and stable performance from our legacy Infrastructure assets. We have great momentum entering 2025 with exciting growth projects underway and expected to be completed in Q2 and Q3 at Gateway. These projects will allow us to achieve our previously communicated EBITDA run rate growth target for this asset of 15% to 20% by the end of the year.

We continue to maintain our strong and conservative financial profile and disciplined approach to capital allocation, which provides us with significant flexibility, including low leverage on both a total and Infrastructure adjusted basis, increasing quality of cash flows as a result of relative growth in our Infrastructure business and significant liquidity with a staggered debt maturity profile. We remain confident that our asset mix and strong balance sheet continue to offer an attractive total return proposition to our investors and supports the sustainability and continued growth of our dividend. We are pleased with both our fourth quarter and full year results in 2024 as well as the strength of our balance sheet and our continued financial flexibility.

I will now turn it back to Curtis for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Riley. In closing, the business delivered another solid quarter, which marked the end of a strong 2024. Despite a complex and evolving energy market, we will remain focused on financial discipline and operational excellence demonstrated by our adjusted EBITDA and Infrastructure EBITDA reaching record highs in 2024. We also see a number of tailwinds for Gibson as we complete our growth projects and are well positioned to benefit from a favorable macro environment for Infrastructure. Globally, we are seeing strong demand for energy, a growing focus on energy security and increased recognition of higher quality assets. Lastly, I would like to express my appreciation to the Gibson team for the organizational progress that is being made and for safely delivering a strong year in 2024. I'm excited to see what we'll achieve in 2025.

And I will now turn the call over to the operator to open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

Just wanted to dive in a bit more on the Marketing. Kind of a big gap versus what we were looking for previously. As far as the conditions that led to this the 2024 Marketing below the $80 million to $100 million range, could you provide a bit more detail on the components? What were some of the bigger drivers to the delta for the quarter and really just more, do you see that persisting in '25? Is there any reason to believe that $60 million or so of Marketing EBITDA would be higher in '25 than what we saw in '24?

Jeremy. It's Riley here. Thanks for the question. In terms of the fourth quarter, the negative quarter is really a result of all kind of key factors within the market working against us. Within our refined products business, we continue to face headwinds including increased feedstock costs and tight crack spreads. In addition, that business is impacted by seasonality. Typically, we see softer demand for paving asphalt in the winter months given the Canadian winters and we would build as much inventory as possible through the winter as we can. This was exasperated this year as we have an upcoming turnaround in Q2 so we built even more inventory over the months than typical. So as such, this business was impacted by both tighter margins, but also we didn't recognize some of the profit associated with the products that we were storing over the months.

In the past, we've seen some of this on the refined products side and typically, we've been able to offset these headwinds on refined products with our crude marketing group. Unfortunately, in Q4 here the opportunities didn't really materialize for us in the fourth quarter as ample egress out of the basin combined with record low inventory levels resulted in steep backwardation and very little volatility within the market. As such, we typically would stay within our risk profile and our current risk tolerances. We opted to remain on the sidelines rather than chasing Marketing upside. In terms of 2025, we would see Q1 facing some of the similar issues not quite as significantly backwardated in 2025 at this point. And moving forward, we're going to reevaluate our guidance for the full year and provide an update on the Q1 call.

Okay. Understood. So we'll wait for that then. And then just for the Infrastructure with the 15% to 20% higher, as you said, by 4Q '25; could you just remind us I guess what base you're working off there or maybe in absolute terms what that number would look like for kind of a regular EBITDA run rate for Gateway?

Jeremy, it's Riley again. So I think when we did the Gateway acquisition, we would have announced it at around 9x multiple. That would imply kind of CAD 40 million of EBITDA at Gateway per quarter when we acquired it. So I would calculate the 15% to 20% growth off that number.

Sorry, what was that number again?

CAD 40 million per quarter.

Our next question comes from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen.

Maybe I'll just kick off with a clarification question. You did address it in the prepared remarks. But leverage exited the year at the high end of the range, you've got the dredging project underway, you've indicated that Marketing could be challenging in Q1. How should we think of the competing objectives of remaining in that leverage range and executing on capital allocation priorities beyond the dredging project specifically as it relates to incremental growth capital or the buyback?

We're still comfortable, Aaron, as we look at the year. We were expecting coming into the year that the front half of the year was going to have a heavier spend related to the growth capital projects with the timing of the dredging work as well as the timing of the Cactus connection. And we also were expecting that coming into the year, the early part of the year was likely going to be a little quieter from a Marketing standpoint. So when we look at the full year, we're still comfortable with how all this goes around and in the front half of the year we weren't planning a lot of share buybacks to begin with. That was always intended to be heavily focused on growth capital in the front half of the year.

Got you. Switching gears. Just on TMX in the event that it gets expanded, can you kind of paint a picture for us in terms of what the potential upside might look like there?

Yes. The immediate impact for us is more throughput through the Edmonton facility and so we're already seeing that today with TMX's current expansion. And as I think about expanding it further, we obviously just added 2 tanks at the end of December and as part of that project, we did the groundwork to get ready for adding 2 additional tanks. And I would have said coming into the year that we really didn't have that in the plan for 2025. We thought that was a little bit further out. It's been interesting as we've seen a lot of talk about sort of accelerating the TMX expansion and fully utilizing the TMX capacity that we're seeing increasing discussions over potentially accelerating some of that Edmonton expansion.

Our next question comes from Robert Hope with Scotiabank.

Curtis, you've been in the seat for almost 6 months now. You did highlight a number of changes in the organization. But what do you think has been the most impactful change or changes so far and kind of what is left for you to do with the organization in terms of restructuring and changes?

The biggest thing that we spent the most amount of time on over the first 6 months is really on the people side of things. Coming in with a fresh set of eyes in the organization, we've really looked hard at who do we have in the organization, what is the structure, how focused are we on the business and had a real push to say let's make sure that we've got the right people in the seats, let's remove low performers, let's also look hard at how we're structured and are we as efficient as possible. And so you see a fairly significant restructuring amount in the quarter and that's related to that. We've made a number of people changes as we've addressed what is the most efficient focused on the business structure, let's remove things that aren't value-added and let's remove low performers. That's the most impactful work. Really that's been a lot of focus on the team and I'm quite confident that's going to pay a lot of dividends over the next couple of years.

I appreciate that. And then maybe just going over to Texas. With the dredging project being announced as well as some other contract wins there, what does the commercial tension look there for kind of further commercial initiatives and further contract extensions?

Yes. So we've been pleased with how that's gone. Good activity in the terminal, good recontracting last year. At the end of last year, we also announced a couple of new customers coming into the terminal that are great. Sort super major oil exporters that were added to the terminal that we're excited about what they'll grow into in time. I'd also take 1 more macro step back and look at everything that's going on in the world right now around tariffs and sort of geopolitical right now and I think you're seeing a significant shift with the new administration where there's a lot of push. There's one sort of drill baby drill, you're seeing a lot of pro-energy sentiment within the U.S., but you're also seeing a significant push to look at trade balances around the world and increase the influence of the U.S. and global energy markets.

And so I expect you will see increases in crude exports coming out of the U.S. and I think we are exceptionally well positioned to be a beneficiary of that. You already see it just recently in the last couple of weeks with India making comments about increasing energy imports from the U.S. One of the prime ways you're going to do that is through crude exports out of Corpus Christi and yes, we're pretty excited about that. So you combine that with the good work the team is doing right now to increase the capacity with the dredging and the Cactus connection, all of a sudden we're really well situated to be able to increase the throughput out of that facility. At the same time, we're expecting you're going to see some increase in demand.

Our next question comes from Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets.

I just want to come back to the Marketing business. You mentioned quite a number of market conditions that you said worked against you in Q4. But were there any decisions that your team took, including on the accounting or accrual or revenue recognition side of things, this quarter that was different from the past? And if I could just have a quick follow-up on that. What is the total fixed cost of this business?

Yes. Maurice, it's Riley here. So there was no onetime accruals or anything like that that we took in the quarter. It was really just a function of challenging market conditions. I'd also say there was no kind of onetime trades that caused us to go negative. In terms of the fixed cost of the assets to run, obviously the refinery is an asset that has to be run; we have employees to pay and fees to cover, including storage points across the U.S. to get to markets. In terms of a dollar number, we don't typically talk about that or release that so we'll keep that to ourselves for now. But there is some fixed costs we have to cover and with conditions in this quarter, we were unable to do so.

I've got to add that we're pretty confident, as we look at the cost structure going forward, that the Marketing business will contribute positively in the year and we look hard at our cost structure and how we're set up for the current market conditions. But I would also caution that this is a business that is a very attractive feature of the Gibson overall business. And if you look at over the last 6 years on average, it's contributed $110 million of EBITDA per year and there will be some volatility in that, but we'll also be very cautious not to overreact to sort of a couple of quiet quarters. We want to make sure we preserve that earnings capability of that business.

So I guess when you say all that and recognizing that you're probably looking for a refresh in the Q1 call, should we walk away thinking that you structurally believe that this business has changed or is this more of you and your executive team trying to ensure that we manage our expectations a little bit more reasonably?

It's more of our managing expectations. The reality is when we look near term, good egress out of the Western Canadian basin is it reduces some of the Marketing opportunity in the near term for us. But if you step back from that, boy, what a great outcome for our customers. And so I think this increasing egress out of the Western Canadian Basin suddenly has been very healthy for our customers. You see all of our customers on the oil side having good strong years, looking hard at expanding their production. All of those things together will ultimately make for a stronger Canadian business, but it also will eventually lead you back to running into some more tightening of egress, which will sort of bring Marketing back into play in a bigger way.

And so I don't view this as a structural change. I view this as a temporary factor that nicely benefits our customers in particular on the Infrastructure side of things that we'll go through for a bit here. And I also think as we grow the Gibson footprint over Canada and the U.S., we suddenly are no longer just a Western Canadian Marketing business. Suddenly we have an ability to have a Marketing footprint in the U.S. as well with our great asset base there. And so I think if anything, I'm excited structurally about having just sort of this full Western Canada right to the coast view of the business and view of marketing opportunities and infrastructure opportunities.

And just finishing up on a follow-up on a past question about the changes in the company. I guess more [ poignantly ], Curtis, do you believe that you have the right team and organization in place right now to execute on your strategy? And if not, what segments do you think requires incremental focus?

We're getting there, Maurice. Obviously you're never completely done. But we've got a very strong team, a very experienced team, we've made a number of changes in the group. We've also done a lot of things in the background just on how we operate from a focus on goals and alignment of the entire organization and driving some accountability and focus around sort of key goals in the organization. I think that's going to set us up really well. For me from sort of getting the team fully in place, we're in the final stages of adding a Chief Operating Officer that we'll expect to have an update for that here shortly. That's really the key outstanding individual that we'll be announcing shortly.

Your next question comes from Anthony Linton with Jefferies.

I just want to revisit some of the questions that have already been asked this morning and maybe just bringing it all together. When you think about that long-term outlook for Marketing of that $80 million to $120 million and just some of the potential for the various pipeline expansions that have been out there, how does that sort of funnel through into how you think about that over the next couple of years? And then it sounds like the offset there is there'll be some incremental tankage. When do you expect to have greater visibility around that?

Anthony, Riley here. I think with the expansions on the pipes out of the basin, I think it's early days and it remains to be seen kind of what projects are going to get done, which grades are going to move out of the basin and we would view that from a Gibson perspective positively. I think egress out of the basin results in extra production and more growth deployed by our customers upstream, which creates opportunities for our Infrastructure business. From a Marketing standpoint, we continue to view these kind of market headwinds as temporal. Even with egress out of the basin, we've seen kind of significant backwardation that we haven't seen in the past. We are starting to see a portion come back to the market a little bit. So we have some positivity around where the back half of the year and into next year go.

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just a couple of cleanup questions. Just on the outlook for growth capital in 2025, it sounds like just reading through your prepared remarks, no changes to the plan or the allocation towards the buyback this year.

No change. I think the one interesting thing from a capital allocation standpoint that's maybe advanced over the last few months is I've been very pleasantly surprised by the number of growth opportunities right around our current assets. And so we've been very deliberate on messaging that we see lots of very good opportunities directly around our Western Canadian and our Gateway asset in particular. And so lots of interesting work to do around that. That is pulling forward more interesting growth projects over and above the dredging and Cactus connection that I expect it will be likely closer to the $150 million of growth capital than the $100 million that we talked about at the tail end of last year and so that's a positive thing. We still have some work to do to go through that and there's some timing of when that will actually be deployed, but it's been encouraging to see how much interesting projects we've got working with our current customers around our current facilities.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then just the last one for me. The $25 million in cost savings that you've talked about previously, you picked up $5 million from that in 2024 from the interest refinancing. Can you just maybe talk about some of the other levers you have available as you look to achieve that?

It's really been a push inside the company to really focus on cost and I think every organization has gone through this that you've gone through an inflationary period and there's a tendency in every company to sort of accept that as the new norm. And what we've taken opportunity here is to say okay, let's pause on that. Let's look hard at what is real cost increases and where are there opportunities for us to rethink about how we're doing things. And we've actually had a significant push right through the entire organization to rally around this and look for opportunities to implement cost savings that save money and sort of no dollar is too small.

And so we've really rallied the entire company around this and encouraging a very high level of participation to the company. So everything from cutting the watering of plants in the head office to making fairly significant operational improvements in the field. But it's really driven around we want everybody focused on this and we believe there's significant cost savings. And so in the script at the start, we talked about the fact that we already implemented over half of that $25 million and not all of those are sort of clicking in quite yet from an impact. But by the end of this year, already half of those savings will be realized. And so we're sort of midway through February and already tracking over half. And so I feel pretty good that we're going to exceed the $25 million by the end of the year.

Our next question comes from Benjamin Pham with BMO.

Maybe start off on Gateway. Like once you execute on this 15% to 20% EBITDA growth end of 2025, how do you think about organic growth of that terminal beyond that period of time?

Sure. I think for me, there's 2 main things I think about sort of next near stage after that. One is additional tankage and so we have room for additional tankage at Gateway. A number of our current customers are pushing us to look at bringing in more Eagle Ford barrels into the facility and with Eagle Ford barrels, you do require additional segregated tankage and we're happy to do that for customers under contract. And so that's an interesting one where you see a fairly rapid sort of deployment of capital to address that tankage situation. I think the second one is a noncapital one that midway through last year or sort of late last year we received approval from the port to do night moves of vessels and the night moves of vessels is a bit of a game changer from an efficiency and throughput of the facility. And so I think that's still something that we're early on truly understanding what is the impact we can do and just how many additional vessels that we can turn through that facility. But we're already seeing the impact of that that you're suddenly able to have some sort of single-day turnarounds of Afra vessels whereas previously, we would have always looked at sort of a 2-day loading window per vessel. We're seeing some opportunity to potentially contract additional slots in the facility without any additional capital.

Are you logistically maxed out at 1 million barrels just given the land position?

Ben, we're not. Right now we're obligated with kind of the regulatory at 1 million barrels, but that's something that can easily be changed and certainly we can do more than 1 million barrels.

Okay. Got it. And I think you did mention the CAD 40 million EBITDA. Can you remind us the hedging program that's feeding that? I think you put on some hedges when you announced the acquisition, just how long that duration is and your overall assumptions?

We obviously have a hedging program in place to derisk our assets and our cash flows. For 2025, we're about 80% hedged at that facility in and around 1.37, call it. For 2026, we'll start to explore putting on further hedges. We're going to pick our spot here depending on what happens with tariff and FX rates.

Got it. And maybe a cleanup question if I may on Marketing. Are you able to share roughly the percent in the quarter between the cracks and the trading side of things? And I'm assuming on the trading side of things, if you're not doing any trades, there's fixed commitments that push it to a loss position. Do those fixed commitments start to roll off more in 2025?

When we think about our trading business in Q4, it would have been slightly above breakeven and really the loss would have been related to our refined products business. So we continue to think that we're well set up from an Infrastructure standpoint to take advantage of market conditions as they change and we're ready to kind of tackle some of those opportunities as they come up.

Just to clarify. So your fixed commitments, it's typically quite ratable then from 2024 to '25?

Yes, fairly ratable over the years for sure.

Our next question comes from Robert Catellier with CIBC Capital Markets.

I just wanted to confirm that given you don't expect long-term change to the guidance at this point for Marketing, I just wonder what level of crack spread and differential do you need to see to get back to the $80 million to $120 million if we assume an environment with normal volatility and no Moosejaw turnaround?

I think, Rob, we work on maybe having some more transparency around those numbers moving forward with an Investor Day, but I don't think we're going to release those type of numbers on a quarterly call.

Right. In terms of the Infrastructure business, what was the nature of the nonrecurring charges for commercial matters that you took there? Is there anything unusual there in terms of provisioning or is this just you took a big bet in the quarter?

Rob, so the onetime items is really driven by my new eyes coming into the organization and a real push to say let's work through some things with some urgency. So we talked about already from a people standpoint that we worked through a number of people things and so you saw a significant people restructuring charge. On the commercial matter side of things, there's no sort of 1 overly material item. But in aggregate what we have here is that we had just a lot of backlog of various commercial matters with customers that have been built up over a couple of years. And you look at that and the thing about those types of situations is they don't tend to get better with time. There's not a lot of upside of not properly recognizing the cost of that and movement of some urgency to get those resolved with your partners and your customers. And so that's what, we've had a real push on that. You hear me talk a lot about our goal is to remove distractions and so I think some of these things become a bit of a distraction and let's go resolve them, let's take those issues away and sort of get back to working well with our customers. And so that's what you see. It's a bit of a -- these have been hanging out there for a couple of years in some cases on some of them and we've got a real push to clean that up and move forward.

That's very helpful context. And then just 1 quick cleanup on Gateway. I think the progress on the project shows it's on schedule. But from what I saw, the documents were silent on the budget. Is it on budget?

It is, yes.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Patrick Kenny with National Bank Financial.

Just on the environmental remediation charge taken in the quarter at the Edmonton Terminal. I know it's a onetime provision as well. But just wanted to confirm, Curtis, if your team has fully completed the review of all potential environmental liabilities not only at the Edmonton Terminal; but also Hardisty, Moose Jaw, Gateway and others?

Yes. So I'll talk first on the Edmonton Terminal one. So this is a pretty unique one in that this is related to a material that we were handling really 30 years ago and there's a soil contamination issue that has been monitored and was flagged as an issue over the last year and over the last year we worked very closely with the regulator to come up with a remediation plan. And just the nature of the remediation will be fairly time consuming and so it's a fairly significant charge. But because we developed a very detailed plan on how to remediate and now we're actioning that, we thought it was important to fully recognize that impact. That charge is related to the cost over the next 10 years. And so just from a sort of a cash flow perspective, I think it's important to recognize sort of the remediation and monitoring costs related to that over the next decade.

We've also, as we've talked about, sort of looking hard at if we do understand all of our exposures around the business. We spend a lot of time looking at what else is out there and I'm quite comfortable with where we're at from an environmental exposure. The team's done a great job. We take a lot of pride in being great stewards of the environment. We've got an outstanding team that works through these things. There's absolutely nothing of the scale of this sort of uniqueness of the Edmonton one out there. There's always going to be little things that you're working at. 70 years in this business, there's always going to be some things that we're working at that's sort of a constant thing, but nothing of this magnitude.

Okay. That's great. And then maybe just back to where the balance sheet is currently. I know in the past, dispositions were required to bring the ratios back on side. Just wanted to get your thoughts around potentially looking at some smaller asset sales to provide a little bit of cushioning going forward on the financial position and what assets in the portfolio you might consider to be noncore?

Really at this point, we've divested. We spent a bunch of time this year to Curtis' point kind of cleaning up our business and divesting our noncore assets. So we sold $30 million worth of noncore assets throughout 2024 and that would have really cleaned up our portfolio of kind of noncritical assets. Everything that would remain, we would consider to be core to our business and tied in synergistically with our main assets at Edmonton, Hardisty or Gateway. So at this point, we're not looking to dispose any more.

There are no further questions. I'd now like to hand the call back to Beth.

Thank you, Liz. Thank you for joining us for our 2024 fourth quarter and full year conference call. Again I would like to note that we have also made available certain supplementary information on our website gibsonenergy.com. If you have any further questions, please reach out to myself or investor.relations@gibsonenergy.com. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. @@part 1