Conferencia de resultados del T3 de 2026 de NRP: La distribución aumenta a 2,34 $ a medida que cae la deuda

Puntos clave

• Natural Resource Partners L.P. generó 27 millones de dólares en beneficio neto, 44 millones de dólares en flujo de efectivo operativo y 45 millones de dólares en flujo de efectivo libre en el tercer trimestre de 2026.
• La sociedad aumentó su distribución trimestral a 2,34 dólares por participación ordinaria, frente a la distribución de 0,75 dólares por participación pagada en agosto correspondiente al segundo trimestre.
• NRP amortizó 13 millones de dólares de deuda durante el trimestre y señaló que está previsto amortizar los 14 millones de dólares restantes el próximo mes.
• El segmento de Derechos Minerales generó 47 millones de dólares en flujo de efectivo libre trimestral y 185 millones de dólares en los últimos 12 meses, manteniéndose como el principal generador de efectivo de NRP.
• La dirección no prevé cambios sustanciales en los precios del carbón en 2027 según las condiciones actuales. También señaló que la debilidad de los fundamentos del carbonato de sodio hará que 2027 sea más difícil que 2026.
• NRP no prevé que se reanuden las distribuciones de Sisecam Wyoming hasta que se recupere la demanda de carbonato de sodio o el mercado deprimido registre una respuesta significativa por el lado de la oferta.

Datos financieros clave

Rendimiento comercial y operativo

Derechos Minerales

Los mayores precios y volúmenes de carbón metalúrgico en determinadas propiedades, junto con los plazos de pago, respaldaron el incremento interanual del flujo de efectivo del segmento. Estos beneficios se vieron parcialmente compensados por las tarifas de modificación de arrendamientos recibidas en el tercer trimestre de 2025.

El carbón metalúrgico representó aproximadamente el 70% de los ingresos por regalías del carbón y el 45% del volumen de ventas de regalías del carbón en el 3T 2026.

La dirección señaló que la demanda mundial de acero sigue siendo débil y continúa limitando los precios del carbón metalúrgico. Las condiciones del carbón térmico también se mantienen flojas debido a los bajos precios del gas natural y a los elevados inventarios de carbón en las centrales eléctricas. El aumento de los costes del diésel añade presión a los márgenes de los operadores.

Carbonato de sodio

El beneficio neto del segmento de Carbonato de Sodio disminuyó 2 millones de dólares interanual, impulsado por los menores precios de venta en un mercado internacional con exceso de oferta y una menor demanda de vidrio plano.

La dirección indicó que los precios internacionales han dejado de caer, pero siguen estando por debajo de los costes de producción para la mayoría de los productores. Se prevé que los precios nacionales bajen a medida que se reajusten los contratos y se reduzca la prima respecto a los precios internacionales.

La empresa sigue considerando a Sisecam Wyoming como una de las operaciones de carbonato de sodio de menor coste del mundo. Su socio gestor está buscando reducir costes sin dejar de mantener operaciones seguras y fiables.

Perspectivas de la dirección

La dirección señaló que los indicadores actuales no apuntan a un cambio significativo en los precios del carbón durante 2027, aunque los conflictos geopolíticos podrían mover los precios en cualquier dirección.

En cuanto al carbonato de sodio, la dirección prevé que el reequilibrio del mercado lleve años en lugar de trimestres. Los cierres de plantas han comenzado, pero la respuesta de la oferta sigue siendo lenta. Se espera que los menores precios contractuales nacionales hagan que 2027 sea más desafiante que 2026.

Las distribuciones futuras serán determinadas trimestralmente por el Consejo de Administración en función de los resultados, las necesidades de liquidez y los usos alternativos del efectivo, incluidas las recompras de participaciones o las adquisiciones de oportunidad.

Riesgos y aspectos a vigilar

• La débil demanda mundial de acero está limitando los precios del carbón metalúrgico.
• Los bajos precios del gas natural y los altos inventarios de carbón en las centrales eléctricas están pesando sobre las condiciones del carbón térmico.
• La incertidumbre geopolítica y el aumento de los costes del diésel podrían afectar a los precios de las materias primas, los costes de la cadena de suministro y los márgenes de los operadores.
• El exceso de oferta global de carbonato de sodio y la débil demanda continúan presionando los precios.
• No se espera que las distribuciones de Sisecam Wyoming se reanuden hasta que la demanda mejore o la oferta se reduzca de forma significativa.
• El flujo de efectivo libre trimestral y las distribuciones pueden variar considerablemente entre períodos.

Puntos destacados de las preguntas y respuestas de los analistas

La dirección declinó revelar su estimación del valor intrínseco de NRP en respuesta a una pregunta sobre posibles recompras de participaciones.

NRP también afirmó que su enfoque sobre la captura de CO2, la energía solar, geotérmica y otras oportunidades relacionadas con las energías renovables no ha cambiado tras el desapalancamiento del balance. La sociedad sigue buscando arrendatarios que puedan desarrollar proyectos en la totalidad de sus terrenos.

Transcripción completa de la teleconferencia de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Natural Resource Partners L.P. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Tiffany Sammis, Investor Relations. Tiffany, please go ahead.

Tiffany Sammis

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Natural Resource Partners third quarter 2026 conference call. Today's call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our website.

Joining me today are Craig Nunez, President and Chief Operating Officer; Chris Zolas, Chief Financial Officer; and Kevin Craig, Executive Vice President.

Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting NRP's views about future events. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in NRP's Form 10-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our third quarter press release, which can be found on our website.

I would like to remind everyone that we do not intend to discuss the operations or outlook for any particular coal lessee or detailed market fundamentals.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Craig Nunez, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Craig Nunez

Thank you, Tiffany. Good morning, everyone. NRP generated $45 million of free cash flow in the third quarter of 2026 and $166 million of free cash flow over the last 12 months before the investment in our soda ash business earlier this year. Last quarter, I said that [ barring ] something unforeseen, we intended to raise distribution significantly in November. We are delivering on that. A decade of work to pay down debt and derisk the partnership has brought us to the point where we can pay out free cash flow beyond the unitholder tax liability. We generated $45 million of free cash in the quarter. We paid down $13 million of debt, leaving $32 million or $2.34 per unit available to distribute.

Our free cash flow can move around a lot from quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. Our Board will decide on distributions each quarter weighing our results, our liquidity needs and other uses of cash, which could include unit repurchases or opportunistic acquisitions. If the Board decides to retain cash rather than pay it out, we will hold ourselves to the same test as always, more than $1 of intrinsic value per unit for every dollar we keep.

Last quarter, I said our Mineral Rights segment was our most dependable cash generator. It delivered again this quarter, producing $47 million of free cash flow and $185 million over the last 12 months. Spot prices for metallurgical coal bumped up modestly in the quarter before pulling back. Global steel demand remains weak, and that keeps a lid on prices. Similar story with thermal coal. Natural gas is cheap, power plants are sitting on plenty of coal, and we do not see anything on the horizon to change that. The geopolitical backdrop remains bumpy and diesel is up more than 75% this year which raises costs all along the supply chain and squeezes operator margins. For 2027, nothing we are watching points to a material change in coal pricing. If geopolitical conflicts drag on, prices can move in either direction, and I will not pretend to know which.

Now to Soda Ash. The picture is the same as a quarter ago, too much supply, too little demand and no quick fix. Increased natural soda ash exports from China are pushing older synthetic plants to modernize, shutdown or both. Producers are doing what you would expect. Running plants at lower rates, shedding higher-cost capacity, cutting discretionary spending and hunting for efficiencies. International prices have stopped falling, but have settled at levels that are below the cost of production of most producers. As we explained last quarter, domestic prices should move lower as contracts reset and the premium over international prices narrows. That will make 2027 harder than 2026.

Closures are beginning to occur, however, but slowly. We continue to think rebalancing the market will take years, not quarters. Our investment in Sisecam Wyoming is -- holds one of the lowest cost of soda ash operations in the world and low cost is what carries you through a downturn. Our managing partner continues to aggressively pursue cost savings while keeping operations safe and reliable and protecting the plant's competitive position. This cycle may take years to turn, but we are confident in the quality of the asset and its ability to generate competitive returns when the market returns to balance. So to sum it up, Mineral Rights keeps generating strong free cash flow. We have $14 million of debt left to repay next month, and we are finally at the point where we can return the cash this business generates to you, our partners, subject to the Board's quarterly decision.

With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.

Christopher Zolas

Thank you, Craig. In the third quarter of 2026, NRP generated $27 million of net income, $44 million of operating cash flow and $45 million of free cash flow. Of these consolidated amounts, our Mineral Rights segment generated $37 million of net income, $46 million of operating cash flow and $47 million of free cash flow. When compared to the prior year third quarter, our Mineral Rights segment net income decreased $4 million primarily due to increased DD&A expense. Operating cash flow and free cash flow each increased $2 million as compared to the prior year period, primarily due to higher met coal pricing and volumes at certain properties and timing of payments, partially offset by lease amendment fees we received in the third quarter of last year. Regarding our met thermal coal royalty mix, met coal made up approximately 70% of our coal royalty revenues and 45% of our coal royalty sales volumes for the third quarter of 2026.

For our Soda Ash segment, net income for the third quarter decreased $2 million compared to the prior year quarter. This decrease was driven by lower sales prices due to the oversupplied international soda ash market and weakened demand for flat glass. Operating and free cash flow was flat when compared to the prior year period due to not receiving a distribution of third quarters of 2025 and 2026. NRP does not expect distributions from Sisecam Wyoming to resume until the sodas market demand rebounds where there is a significant supply response to this depressed market.

Moving to our corporate and financing results. Net income, operating cash flow and free cash flow for the third quarter of 2026, each improved $1 million as compared to the prior year period. These improvements were due to lower debt resulting in lower interest costs and less cash paid for interest. Regarding our quarterly distributions, in August, we paid the second quarter distribution of $0.75 per common unit. Also during the third quarter of this year, we fully repaid the remaining $13 million balance on our Opco credit facility. As a result, and consistent with our communications throughout the year, the partnership increased the distribution to $2.34 per common unit with respect to the third quarter of 2026.

In our recent earnings release, we have included a reconciliation of this Q3 distribution amount from the operating cash flow we generated in the third quarter.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to our operator for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Robert Lu.

Unknown Attendee

This is Robert Lu. I'm an independent investor in NRP for the last few years. I'm curious, you talked about the potential for share buybacks when you saw that the intrinsic value is below or above the current market price. I'm curious, would you be able to share your thoughts on that and where that might be?

Craig Nunez

No. We will not give you guidance on what we think is the intrinsic value of our units. But thank you for your support.

Unknown Attendee

Yes. Thank you for following through on what you said you do and excited about the news today.

Craig Nunez

You bet. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Balsam with Yellow Gate Capital.

Preguntas y respuestas

Steven Balsam

I just wanted to say congratulations on reaching this point. It's really rare to see such a long-term decision taken and made and follow through consist really been fantastic [indiscernible] on long-term sale trend feels great to get to this point. I'd like to just one question regarding...

Craig Nunez

Thank you for being with us for a long time and supporting us. We couldn't have done it without all of our partners.

Steven Balsam

You bet. I was hoping maybe you guys could comment a little bit on potential activities that you're looking at, whether it be carbon sequestration or any other sort of actions that your debt that are going on with respect to the various properties.

Craig Nunez

I would tell you that our activities with respect to CO2 sequestration, solar, geothermal, all of the renewable type activities that we look at they're not changing at all as a result of the change in our capital structure and the change in our cash allocation strategy, capital deployment strategy here now that we've paid off our debt or about to pay off all of our debt. There's no changes to that. We're attempting to maximize the acreage that we have, find lessees that are willing to come in and and develop projects on our acreage for all the various types of initiatives. And we've been doing that even before we've reached this point with our -- with respect to our capital structure.

Steven Balsam

Excellent. I love the approach and really happy with the approach taken on it as far. And I realize there's nothing -- no statements made about future distribution like the way it was set out in the financials being that variable distribution paid out of free cash flow feels great. Congratulations, again.

Craig Nunez

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Craig Nunez for closing remarks.

Craig Nunez

Thank you, operator. And again, thank all of you for your support over the years. We're still on the journey. But being able to raise our distribution today and pay out a larger share of our free cash flow now that we have practically delever the entire balance sheet. It was a joint effort, and we couldn't have done it without you. So now we got to look ahead and add value in the next period. So with that, thank you, and have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.