Advertisement
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/14/13 -- Canexus Corporation (TSX: CUS) (the "Corporation" or "Canexus") today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2012.
Highlights:
-- Cash Operating Profit was a record $134.1 million (net of cash settled share-based compensation of $1.5 million) for the year ended December 31, 2012, 9% higher than the prior year. Record cash operating profit was achieved in both our North America Sodium Chlorate and Chlor-alkali business units in 2012. Cash Operating Profit was $35.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2012.-- Distributable Cash was $26.2 million ($0.19 per common share) and $87.6 million ($0.70 per common share) for the three months and year ended December 31, 2012, resulting in payout ratios of 70% and 78%, respectively.-- Record sodium chlorate production at our flagship Brandon plant of over 302,200 metric tonnes ("MT") in 2012. The upgraded power line completed in late Q3 2012 is expected to add as much as 5% to our low-cost capacity before additional debottleneck opportunities.-- In December, Canexus announced the expansion of its North American Terminal Operations ("NATO") at Bruderheim, Alberta to include pipeline connected unit train operations. The Corporation also announced that formal agreement had been reached with MEG Energy Corp. ("MEG") to connect the Canexus Bruderheim terminal ("Bruderheim" or "Bruderheim terminal") with pipelines which interconnect with the MEG Energy Stonefell Terminal, and to provide terminalling services to MEG for the loading of bitumen blend for transport by rail and the receiving of diluent shipments by rail. We are making solid progress on this $125 million project and expect to commission this expansion late in the third quarter of 2013. Significant progress is also being made on both a potential second pipeline/terminal connection to Bruderheim and on contract negotiations with additional customers for unit train shipments from Bruderheim under multi-year, take-or-pay terms.-- The Corporation continues to advance its other initiatives at the Bruderheim terminal. Hydrochloric acid blending capability and the expansion of diluted bitumen and crude oil ("DBCO") truck-to-rail transload capacity to 30,000 bbls/day, are expected to be completed late Q1 2013 and Q2 2013, respectively. In the month of February, we transloaded about 16,000 bbls/day of diluted bitumen and crude oil. We are also on track to increase our hydrochloric acid transloading capacity in Q2 2013, in time for the start-up of the next phase of hydrochloric acid capacity expansion at our North Vancouver chlor-alkali facility.-- Canexus' hydrochloric acid capacity expansion projects at its North Vancouver chlor-alkali facility are on track for start-up in the first and third quarters of 2013 and will each add an additional 110,000 wet metric tonnes ("WMT") of capacity, increasing our total hydrochloric acid capacity to 370,000 WMT's per year. The output from the first of the two expansions is sold out under multi-year contracts.-- The Board of Directors declared the regular quarterly dividend of $0.1368 per common share payable April 15, 2013 to shareholders of record on March 31, 2013.
