Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Global Partners Fourth Quarter 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the call (Operator Instructions). With us from Global Partners are President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Eric Slifka; Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Daphne Foster; Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Mark Romaine; Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Mr. Charles Rudinsky; and Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Mr. Edward Faneuil. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Faneuil for opening remarks. Please go ahead sir.

Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this morning, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities Laws. These statements may include but are not limited to projections, beliefs, goals and estimates concerning the future financial and operational performance of Global Partners. Estimates for Global Partners' future EBITDA are based on a number of assumptions regarding market conditions, including demand for petroleum products and renewable fuels, commodity prices, weather, credit markets, the regulatory and permitting environment and the forward product pricing curve. Therefore Global Partners can give no assurance that our future EBITDA will be as estimated. The actual performance for Global Partners may differ materially from the performance expressed or implied by any such forward-looking statements. In addition, such performance is subject to risk factors including but not limited to those described in Global Partners' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Global Partners undertakes no obligation to revise or publically release the results of any revisions to the forward-looking statement that maybe made during today’s conference call. With Regulation FD in effect, it is our policy that any material comments concerning future results of operations will be communicated through press releases, publicly announced conference calls or other means that will constitute public disclosure for purposes of Regulation FD. Now please allow me to turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Slifka.

Thank you, Edward, its pleasure to be with all this morning to discuss our accomplishments in 2014 update you on our strategic initiatives and share our outlook for the year ahead. Global delivered record full-year net income, EBITDA and distributable cash flow in 2014. Our results benefited in part from significantly colder weather and a favorable gasoline blendstocks market in the first quarter and from the steep decline in wholesale gasoline prices benefiting our gas station business during the second half of the year. Our ability to capitalize on favorable market opportunities reflects the breadth of our asset base and the diversity of our products and businesses. In the fourth quarter, our Gasoline Distribution and Station Operations segment reported a record 86 million product margin, 42% higher than Q4 of 2013 due to sharply declining gasoline prices. In our Wholesale segment, gasoline and gasoline blendstocks product margin declined due to less favorable market conditions. Crude oil product margin, on the other hand, nearly doubled year-over-year to 43.7 million from 22.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Turning to our recent highlights, in January we closed on the acquisition of Warren Equities, the integration is proceeding on plan and we’re already seeing anticipated synergies from the transaction. This is a transformational addition to our gas station and convenience store network which now includes approximately 1,500 locations in 10 states, 8 in the Northeast and 2 in the Mid-Atlantic and round numbers our retail gasoline volume in 2014 was approximately 1 billion gallons and with Warren that figure increases by roughly 500 million gallons a year. With Xtra Mart, we’ve added an extremely well recognized regional brand to our convenience store portfolio. There are 147 Xtra Mart stores in New England, New York and Pennsylvania with quick service restaurants at a…

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. Let me give you some color on our fourth quarter performance. Gross margin was up about 6.6 million or 5% from the same period of 2013 to 141.5 million. Gross margin benefited from year-over-year margin improvements in our GDSO segment and crude oil operations partially offset by less favorable market conditions in the wholesale gasoline and gasoline blend stock market. In addition, please keep in mind that our Q4 2013 results benefited from a 9.9 million decrease in [indiscernible] related liabilities. Fourth quarter EBITDA was 51.9 million a decrease of approximately 3 million from the prior year period reflecting higher expenses associated with investments in our wholesale and GDSO businesses which offset the increase in gross margins. Net income attributable to Global for the fourth quarter was 27.9 million compared to 34 million in the [Technical Difficulty] of the prior year reflecting higher depreciation from additional investments in our business and higher interest expense due to the issuance of high yield bonds midyear. EPS was 44.4 million approximately 8 million less than the same period in 2013. The larger variance in EPS compared with that in EBITDA was due primarily to increased maintenance CapEx in our GDSO segment and higher interest expense related to the bonds. Looking at our segments in more detail, wholesale segment product margin was down approximately [15.4 million] to 55.9 million. As Eric mentioned this was primarily due to less favorable market conditions in gasoline blendstock as well as a 9.9 million favorable impact from land related liabilities in the fourth quarter of 2013. Crude oil product margin was up approximately 21.4 million to 43.7 million due to increased volumes and higher margins. Fourth quarter commercial segment product margin was up about 600,000 from the prior year period to…

Thank you, Daphne. Let me close by saying that we have several key organic projects on horizon and that our diverse mix of products and business lines, expanding terminal portfolio and strong balance sheet will serve us effectively as we move through this year and beyond. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we’ll be conducting the question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Gabe Moreen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please state your question.

Just follow up on the expansion opportunities, is there any guidance you’d give us I guess in terms of overall CapEx spend for ’15 I guess just how big the major buckets of expansion CapEx kind of would be on individual business?

I think in terms of expansion in last year we spent about 61 million, so 24 million of that was in crude, 20 million was in the retail side and then 5 million including the propane and some other investments. I think looking forward into 2015 the latter part of the year we will start to spend on the West Coast -- hope to start to sell on the West Coast projects and on the Port Arthur projects and [indiscernible] 2016 and beyond. I think in terms of our GDSO segment it’s likely we will be around the same number as last year although we evaluate each project separately and look to get at least 15% return and so none of those expenditures are really baked into our performance in 2015. I don’t know if that helps.

And I guess mentioning kind of Q4 versus this year versus last in the wholesale gasoline segment I guess I am just curious kind of the lack of market opportunities and how that came in. Can you elaborate a little bit more in terms of I know there was a rinse benefit last year that you didn’t get this time around but I guess I was under the impression of the gasoline market may have been in contango two for at least part of the quarter so I am just curious if you can give us a little more color on what you are seeing whether you expect those conditions to persist?

With regard to Q4 2014 versus 2013 you really had -- first of all 2014 on a gasoline blendstock side Daphne talked about it and we saw some very unusual logistics conditions in Q1 and into Q2 of 2014, so we saw some volatility in that gasoline blendstock market. As markets came out of backwardation in the ethanol they continued to slide into contango so really a different environment than we had in ’13 when we had really strong market conditions for ethanol in 2013 so in one case you had markets coming out of backwardation going into contango and then the other the point that you’re trying to compare to in 2013 was I wouldn’t say unusually strong but I would say it was very strong. So, you had markets going in different directions on the gasoline side actually both Q4 of ’14 and ’13 were strong from a supply standpoint, you had supply disruptions in the really up and down the East Coast you had some refinery issues and you had a lack of cargos coming into that market, so it created for -- '13 may have been stronger than '14 but they were both on the gasoline side.

Okay, thanks Mark. And then I guess last question for me just is in terms of kind of the weather upside that was obviously 1Q last year, clearly it's been cold so far on 1Q thus far, it doesn’t seem like it’s quite as some of the same price [flexes] you saw this time last year but the new guidance for '15, does that incorporate what you know about weather thus far or for this year, so in other word that hasn’t been pretty cold in February?

Yes, I think what we're getting today Gabe is, our guidance will reflect what we see today and what we’re seeing for the balance of the year.

Our next question comes from Cory Garcia with Raymond James. Please state your question.

Turning back to the GDSO business clearly very strong results this quarter and obviously gave reasons why on the margin front, is it fair to say that we’ve already seen sort of that return to more of a normalized fee store retail type of margin at this point in the year?

I think when you look at markets and as they settle if you will, you typically go back to more normalized margins overtime.

Okay so we have sort of that settling point by this time of the year.

Market's been bouncing around in about $5 or $7 range and so I’d say that is sort of more normal.

Okay great and sort of incorporating that into your full year guidance, I want to say looking through my prior notes that sort of the pre-Warren run rate for that business was in 80 million to 90 million EBITDA range, is that still the right figure to sort of use despite the fact you guys are obviously continuing to push and drive towards enhancing just your core business as well through merchandizing and some of the other initiatives?

Yes, we have in the past said that the GDSO segments generate 80 million to 90 million and certainly we’ve made investments in that business whether it’s new to industry [or ready to retails] and our merchandising efforts, so I think it’s safe to put it above that level.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Randy Saluck with Mortar Rock Capital. Please state your question.

Couple of questions, one with respect to Warren, I know your synergies I know the gentleman before asked questions about synergies but with respect to synergies you talk about migrating the one system onto your sort of supply system which generates synergies that you can identify, what about the combination and the scale associated with that, have you looked into I am sure you’ve looked into it but have you sort of quantified what the additional synergies might be? And I have one other question.

Yes, we’ve -- Randy, this is Mark, we’ve spoken in the past when we announced the acquisition about our expectation of our ability to recognize some synergies by combining the Warren sites into our own network, some of those synergies will be driven by our ability to run barrels through our terminal network, to benefit from our supply efforts and it’s not just limited to the fuel supply end of the business. At the fee store level, there is certainly opportunities to drive synergies and through the scale of the combined operations, yes we went on a very detailed basis, we went -- when we were looking at this portfolio, we went through a very detailed analysis of where we thought the synergies were at and I think we’re encouraged by what we’ve seen so far. Our expectation is still to hit the numbers that we spoke about.

And yes, Randy, just to be clear, we had said 50 million to 60 million in the second year and I think following up on what Mark just said and also Eric [Slifka] earlier in terms of feeling good about what we’re seeing thus far in synergies and we said this before as well that we are hopeful to get more than 50% of the way there in the first full year.

Okay that’s good and then secondly more generally philosophically dividend increases what are your thoughts over the next year or two? Where would you like to be things work out?

Yes, we deal with the board on that every quarter so we’ve come up and sort of said we’re going to work with the board to talk then what that looks like moving forward.

Is there certainly coverage ratio that you’re comfortable with that you won’t go below or target coverage ratios or anything like that?

Yes, Randy, we said that we feel comfortable with 1.2 to 1.3 times coverage. I mean obviously we’re running well below that now, it’s little over two times at the end of the year, but we’re comfortable with 1.2 to 1.3.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from James [indiscernible] please state your question.

A couple of questions, first on the contango in the crude oil market, am I correct in assuming that that has little or no effect on you guys in general? And then the second question relates to if we see a situation in the Bakken where production levels off or even declines in a couple of the years, if you could go through sort of a thought experiment on how that would affect your operations up there vis-à-vis how other operations might deal with it potential fall off in production?

You had two questions there, the first was relative to contango in the crude markets and we do have -- we do benefit somewhat from contango in any market to the extent that we have storage and we can store a barrel and hedge it forward then there will be some uplift from that. So I wouldn’t assume that it’s nothing. In markets like this you never have enough but we do have some crude storage that we can pick up some uplift. As far as looking down the road on the crude business and it’s awfully tough to predict where volumes are going to go in this environment, I think our bias Eric stated it earlier, our bias is that the barrel coming out of North Dakota long term should want to move to the east and west it’s not our expectation that the Gulf Coast will be calling for that barrel so to the extent that the barrels are coming out of the ground in North Dakota it’s our expectation that the highest netback to those barrels will be on the East and West Coast. And again I think we’re well positioned to facilitate that movement. If you look at when we get into this business in 2011 maybe which as a reminder was kind of on the heels of our ethanol business which in entails moving ethanol unit trains out of North Dakota into our Albany facility. When we started this engaging the crude logistics [a chain] crude production was probably somewhere around 400,000 barrels a day in North Dakota and now it’s well over 1 million barrel a day so I do believe that in baring a complete shutdown of North Dakota that there is going to be opportunity for us to participate and grow the business through our St. Pete and Beulah assets to our East and West Coast assets as well as we continue to grow the business outside of that network as well so our North Dakota assets can ship a barrel anywhere. I mean it’s our preference and it’s our belief that our system provides a great netback for those barrels but the fact of the matter is we can ship them anywhere out of those rail terminals.

So is your view then that crude by rail to East Coast and West Coast will remain full while pipelines to the south would suffer first?

It’s tough to say what I can’t speak to first or second what I think is that crude by rail to the East and West Coast will remain a high netback for producers and will remain relevant under any market condition.

So let me try to clarify a little bit there, it is still our belief that there is excess sweet production in the south for what the refining capacity, the nearby refining capacity is so that’s really the Gulf Coast. So because of that it is our belief that the highest netback will be both east and west because you’re competing with imported barrels that have to travel further to get to the market.

And in terms of your projections for this year, have you included in those projections the benefit from contango on your crude assets?

I think our guidance really is as we said before really takes in to consideration the forward pricing curve as well as the commodity prices et cetera so that is where our’15 guidance reflects.

And lastly to refresh me also, your Port Arthur operations are focused on crude by rail to the south are they not?

That’s correct, but it’s truck primarily okay, heavies [indiscernible] Mark want to add a little bit on to that.

Let me add to that because I think when we -- we’ve been looking at this Port Arthur project for quite some time and our initial business model contemplated the movement of heavy crude by rail into that market so that’s an undiluted barrel of heavy crude. So when you look at the economics of an undiluted barrel by rail versus a [dilbit] by pipe I think it can compete on an economic basis to those markets. What we’ve since determined or what we’ve since we started looking at it, we can’t understand that that Port Arthur project will likely be a lot more than crude, so we’ve seen tremendous interest from the ethanol market in that facility. I think there is going to be some opportunity and it may be on an opportunistic basis but I think there is going to be some opportunity to handle refined products through that facility so when we look at Port Arthur now we’re looking at it as a multiproduct rail to water scale storage facility.

Hey James, one other piece there is a really nice dock facility there as well so when you just think about an infrastructure play, we look at the Gulf Coast we look at capacity and availability on the Gulf Coast and we think Port Arthur because of its geographic closeness to refineries as well as its ability to access water from docks that currently need some investments. We look at that as really having a unique position in that marketplace for potential customers to use to get to the water.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back to Mr. Slifka for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining us this morning. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Have a great day everyone.