“Our 2018 unadjusted net income, earnings per unit (EPU) and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) all include a $79 million gain from the hurricane insurance proceeds in the first quarter of 2018 for the cost of repairing property damage at our St. Eustatius terminal, and a non-cash charge of $43 million from the sale of our European operations in the fourth quarter,” said Tom Shoaf, NuStar Energy L.P.’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

“Further, our unadjusted EPU for the full year 2018 include a non-cash charge of $377 million in the third quarter related to the recent completion of the simplification transaction for the merger of NuStar GP Holdings, LLC and NuStar Energy,” said Shoaf.

“Without adjusting for those non-operational items, NuStar generated net income of $2 million for the fourth quarter of 2018 and $206 million for the year ended December 31, 2018,” said Shoaf. “NuStar’s unadjusted EBITDA was $122 million for the fourth quarter of 2018 and $701 million for the year ended December 31, 2018, and NuStar’s EPU was ($0.31) and ($2.77) for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2018, respectively.

Comprehensive Plan to Reposition NuStar For Continued Strength Successfully Completed

“This time last year, we presented our comprehensive plan to reposition NuStar during 2018,” said Brad Barron, President and Chief Executive Officer of NuStar Energy L.P.

“We recognized at the time that, in order to continue to build on the strength of our superior asset base, we would need to take the steps necessary for NuStar to achieve strong distribution coverage and low leverage, while at the same time, simplifying our structure, eliminating our Incentive Distribution Rights (IDRs) to lower our cost of capital, and minimizing our need to access the equity capital markets.

“I am happy to say that we did all that and more. We finished 2018 with a 1.42 times coverage ratio, far better than the 1.1 to 1.2 times we projected when we filed our Form S-4 for the simplification last March,” Barron said.

“And, due in part to our successful divestiture of our UK/European assets, we were able to lower our debt ratio to 4.05 times, which allowed us to achieve our three-year deleveraging target in a single year. Thanks to our simplification transaction, we are now a single publicly traded company with no IDRs. And due to the combined impact of all of these self-help measures, we do not anticipate the need to access the equity markets prior to 2022.

“We took all these steps to ensure that NuStar has the healthy balance sheet needed to execute on our organic expansion opportunities and produce strong, stable growth. This proved to be a solid strategic decision because today we are poised to take advantage of more high-return organic growth projects than at any other time in our history, while remaining laser- focused on capital efficiency.

“So 2018 was a truly transformational year for NuStar. Not only did we reposition the company for long-term success, but we delivered significantly higher quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year financial results, with higher adjusted net income, EPU and EBITDA, while significantly improving our debt metrics and distribution coverage,” he concluded.

Executing on Opportunities to Optimize NuStar’s Existing Asset Base

“Outside of the Permian’s extended reach, we are also executing on projects to optimize and increase utilization of our existing assets across our footprint,” Barron said. “We have some great projects with healthy returns in progress, from our projects to facilitate exports of refined products to Northern Mexico, to our bio-fuel strategy projects on the West Coast.

“In addition to project execution, our acquisition last year of our Council Bluffs system offered us a small, bolt-on acquisition to our Central East Products system that, for a small amount of capital at a low multiple, allowed us to expand our footprint to reach new markets and to meet evolving market demands.”

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