News Releases Details

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 2018-- Natural Resource Partners L.P. (NYSE:NRP) today reported first quarter of 2018 results as follows:

Craig Nunez, President and Chief Operating Officer, commented: "We delivered solid operating performance and continued to generate significant amounts of cash during the first quarter. As our leverage profile continues to improve, we remain focused on maximizing cash generation, strengthening our balance sheet and increasing our liquidity."

At the end of the first quarter of 2018, NRP had liquidity of $76.2 million, consisting of $21.2 million in cash and $55.0 million of borrowing capacity available under its credit facility. NRP's consolidated Debt-to-Adjusted EBITDA ratio at March 31, 2018 was 3.5x.

NRP continues to focus on reducing its debt while maintaining sufficient liquidity to operate its business. NRP's goal is to achieve a leverage ratio, defined as Debt-to-Adjusted EBITDA, of less than 3.0x, while maintaining minimum liquidity of $100 million, which may consist of a combination of cash and/or available borrowing capacity.

With respect to the first quarter of 2018, NRP declared a cash distribution of $0.45 per common unit and a distribution of $7.5 million in cash on NRP’s preferred units. NRP's distribution coverage ratio over the last twelve months was 6.0x before taking into account the $30 million annual distribution on NRP's preferred units, and 4.6x after taking into account the preferred unit distribution.

Net income from the Coal Royalty and Other segment increased primarily due to lower depletion expense as a result of lower production and prior year asset impairment. Overall coal related revenues were essentially flat, as the impact of lower production was offset by higher coal prices. Distributable cash flow increased during the period primarily as a result of increased cash flow from our natural gas royalty properties.

Net income from the Soda Ash segment decreased primarily as a result of lower international sales and higher selling, general and administrative costs.

Net loss from the Construction Aggregates segment increased primarily due to unfavorable weather and higher repair and maintenance and fuel costs. Distributable cash flow decreased as a result of these factors as well as increased capital expenditures.

Net loss from corporate and financing activities decreased primarily due to prior year debt modification expense and performance based awards related to the completion of our recapitalization transactions in March 2017. In addition, interest expense decreased as a result of debt reduction. Distributable cash flow increased primarily as a result of prior year payment of performance based awards related to the completion of our recapitalization transactions and lower G&A costs, partially offset by the timing of interest payments on NRP's 2022 Senior Notes.

Conference Call

A conference call will be held today at 10:00 a.m. ET. To join the conference call, dial (844) 379-6938 and provide the conference code 55454888. Investors may also listen to the call via the Investor Relations section of the NRP website at www.nrplp.com. Audio replays of the conference call will be available for approximately one week. To access the replay, dial (855) 859-2056 and provide the conference code 55454888 or visit the Investor Relations section of NRP’s website.

Company Profile

Natural Resource Partners L.P., a master limited partnership headquartered in Houston, TX, is a diversified natural resource company that owns interests in coal, aggregates and industrial minerals across the United States. A large percentage of NRP's revenues are generated from royalties and other passive income. In addition, NRP owns a construction aggregates company and an equity investment in CinerWyoming, a trona/soda ash operation.

For additional information, please contact Kathy H. Roberts at 713-751-7555 or kroberts@nrplp.com. Further information about NRP is available on the partnership’s website at http://www.nrplp.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes “forward-looking statements” as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission.All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that the partnership expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements.These statements are based on certain assumptions made by the partnership based on its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances.Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the partnership.These risks include, but are not limited to, commodity prices; decreases in demand for coal, aggregates and industrial minerals, including trona/soda ash; changes in operating conditions and costs; production cuts by our lessees; unanticipated geologic problems; our liquidity, leverage and access to capital and financing sources; changes in the legislative or regulatory environment, litigation risk, and other factors detailed in Natural Resource Partners’ Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Natural Resource Partners L.P. has no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

“Distributable Cash Flow” is a non-GAAP financial measure that we define as net cash provided by operating activities of continuing operations plus distributions from unconsolidated investment in excess of cumulative earnings, proceeds from sales of assets, including those included in discontinued operations, and return of long-term contract receivables (including affiliate); less maintenance capital expenditures and distributions to non-controlling interest. DCF is not a measure of financial performance under GAAP and should not be considered as an alternative to cash flows from operating, investing or financing activities. DCF may not be calculated the same for us as for other companies. In addition, DCF presented below is not calculated or presented on the same basis as Distributable Cash Flow as defined in our partnership agreement, which is used as a metric to determine whether we are able to increase quarterly distributions to our common unitholders. DCF is a supplemental liquidity measure used by our management and by external users of our financial statements, such as investors, commercial banks, research analysts and others to assess the Partnership's ability to make cash distributions to our common and preferred unitholders and our general partner and repay debt.

“Free Cash Flow” is a non-GAAP financial measure that we define as net cash provided by operating activities of continuing operations plus distributions from unconsolidated investment in excess of cumulative earnings and return of long-term contract receivables (including affiliate); less maintenance and expansion capital expenditures, cash flow used in mitigation payments and acquisition costs classified as financing activities and distributions to non-controlling interest. FCF is not a measure of financial performance under GAAP and should not be considered as an alternative to cash flows from operating, investing or financing activities. FCF may not be calculated the same for us as for other companies. FCF is a supplemental liquidity measure used by our management and by external users of our financial statements, such as investors, commercial banks, research analysts and others to assess the Partnership's ability to make cash distributions to our common and preferred unitholders and our general partner and repay debt.

"Adjusted EBITDA" is a non-GAAP financial measure that we define as net income (loss) from continuing operations less equity earnings from unconsolidated investment; plus total distributions from unconsolidated investment, interest expense, net, debt modification expense, loss on extinguishment of debt, depreciation, depletion and amortization and asset impairments. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered an alternative to, or more meaningful than, net income or loss, net income or loss attributable to partners, operating income, cash flows from operating activities or any other measure of financial performance presented in accordance with GAAP as measures of operating performance, liquidity or ability to service debt obligations. There are significant limitations to using Adjusted EBITDA as a measure of performance, including the inability to analyze the effect of certain recurring items that materially affect our net income (loss), the lack of comparability of results of operations of different companies and the different methods of calculating Adjusted EBITDA reported by different companies. In addition, Adjusted EBITDA presented below is not calculated or presented on the same basis as Consolidated EBITDA as defined in our partnership agreement or Consolidated EBITDDA as defined in Opco's debt agreements. Adjusted EBITDA is a supplemental performance measure used by our management and by external users of our financial statements, such as investors, commercial banks, research analysts and others to assess the financial performance of our assets without regard to financing methods, capital structure or historical cost basis.

“Adjusted Net Income” is a non-GAAP financial measure that we define as Net income attributable to common unitholders and general partner plus restructuring transaction expenses that include debt modification expense, loss on extinguishment of debt and restructuring-related incentive compensation expense, asset impairments and income (loss) from discontinued operations; less gain on sale of assets. Adjusted net income should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for operating income (loss), net income (loss), cash flows provided by operating, investing and financial activities, or other income or cash flow statement data prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our management team believes Adjusted net income is useful in evaluating our financial performance because restructuring transaction expenses are one time charges, gains on asset sales are not related to the operations of our business and asset impairments are non-cash charges. Excluding these from net income allows us to better compare results from ongoing operations period-over-period.

-Financial Tables, Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Measures and Recap of Metrics Follow-