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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Q3, 2020 Calumet Specialty Product Partners LP Earnings Conference call. [Operator instructions]
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Joe Caminiti, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Kaus. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings results call. With us on today's call are Steve Mawer, CEO; Todd Borgmann, Interim CFO; and Bruce Fleming, EVP of Strategy and Growth; and Scott Obermeier, EVP of Commercial.
Before we proceed, allow me to remind everyone that during the course of this call, we may provide various forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Such statements are based on the beliefs of our management as well as assumptions made by them and, in each case, based on information currently available to them. Although our management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, neither the partnership, its general partner, nor management can provide any assurances that the expectations will prove to be correct. Please refer to the partnership's press release that was issued this morning as well as our latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a list of factors that may affect our actual results and could cause them to differ from our forward-looking statements made on this call.
As a reminder, you may now download a PDF of the presentation slides that will accompany the remarks made on today's conference call as indicated in the press release we issued earlier today.
You may access these slides in the investor relations section of the website at www.calumetspecialty.com. Also, a webcast replay of this call will be available on our site within a few hours, and you can contact Alpha IR Group for Investor Relations support at (312) 445-2870.
With that, I'll pass the call to Steve. Steve?
Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everybody. And thank you for joining us. First of all, I'd like to recognize the efforts of our employees in the third quarter. For all of us, the pandemic has progressed from what was an adrenaline fueled leap into the unknown during the second quarter, to the reality of an ongoing extended campaign. Our team's transitioned well, learning to adapt to this new way of working while keeping ourselves and our colleagues safe. The most crucial measures in this business are environmental and safety performance. And I'm pleased to say that we're tracking materially ahead of 2019. This shows that we're keeping our eyes on what really matters and is a testament to the commitment and focus of my colleagues at Calumet. So thank you. Thank you very much.
We'll start our presentation on slide 3. Overall, the message of the third quarter is one of recovery led by the resilience of the US consumer together with a rebound in the industrial sector. This resilience allowed Calumet to deliver great results in our core specialty business, which was topped off with a record year-to-date performance from our Finished Lubes and Chemicals unit. Overall, July was the bottom for Calumet and the month since then has shown steady improvement. We're very pleased with our specialty results. With the segment's adjusted EBITDA so far trending ahead of the pre-pandemic 2019.
As we've discussed before this year- over-year outperformance has been led by strength across all of our consumer facing products and brands. Separately, our more industrial facing specialty products and brands showed a marked recovery in demand across the third quarter. While, some end markets and products still show the impacts of lower demand. Total specialty sales volumes are at 90% of last year's levels, and encouragingly the September months or industrial volumes returned to where they were in September 2019. The recovery of volumes has allowed us to resume our lean supply chain and apply a philosophy of running the business with less inventory which is conducive to improving margin performance.
At industry level, we believe that the tightness we're seeing across several specialty markets comes from a combination of strengthening demand, restocking post lockdown and disruptions from an exceptionally active hurricane season. These factors explain why as of today, we haven't yet observed the typical signs of the historical seasonal slowdown that we tend to see in our specialties businesses. It could still come but there are indications that the overall uniqueness of this year has somewhat altered typical seasonal patterns.
The Fuels market is of course grinding along at the bottom of its business cycle. And like everyone else in the refining business, we focused on what we can control. In the case of Calumet, this focus has been led by deliberate actions, specifically maximizing value from our local niche markets, bringing 2021 turn around work forward into 2020, better spreading our system wide workload and leveling multi year spending. And also we continue to aggressively re-optimize our run rates and yields as the markets evolve. So the more in 2020, we also run a hedge book which was proportionately larger than many in our industry. Given the top fuel environment, many have commented that if one is to be in refining right now, then the two best places to be are in the Northern Rockies, or to have a focus on specialties and chemicals.
And we are fortunate enough to be two for two with our assets in Montana and northwest Louisiana. And we'll take a little deeper into our Northwest Louisiana complex later in the presentation. Taking you back to late in the first quarter, and the start of the lockdown, Calumet stepped into the unknown of a pandemic and a global economic collapse, carrying a debt load that is relatively high for our industry. As such, it was immediately clear that our financial objective was going to be to get through this pandemic without burning excessive amounts of cash.
Extreme disruption and down cycles tend to take out the most leverage competitive and we were and are determined that it would not be Calumet. Decisive actions were taken in order to see that challenge through to reality. We reduced our capital budget of the year by 35%, immediately accelerated our planned SG&A reduction strategy, reducing those costs by approximately 20% versus last year. And we removed $30 million of fixed operating costs; we reset yields and inventories for the new operating environment. And finally, in very short order, we significantly added to our hedge book.
Throughout this period of decisive action, and throughout this year, we've operated with a foundational thinking that we would not compromise on safe and reliable operations. The net consequence of these decisive actions by the team that we end the third quarter far from burning cash, but rather cash positive so far this year, which is a good place to be and an extremely credible achievement by our team.
So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Todd, who will give you a more detailed look at our financial results for the quarter. Todd?
Thank you, Steve. Let's turn to slide 4 where we provide third quarter highlights. Calumet generated $25.4 million of adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter. Our core specialty segment produced $56 million and our fuels business generated negative $13.5 million. Year-to-date, our specialty segment has generated nearly $177 million of adjusted EBITDA. And as Steve mentioned, this business is trending ahead of 2019 levels through the first three quarters of the year. We finished the quarter with a cash of $109 million and total available liquidity of $269 million, both figures improving from the prior quarter.
Since early in the pandemic, we've been focused on ensuring cash flow neutrality, and in the third quarter Calumet generated $15 million of cash flow from operations and $8 million of free cash flow. We're also encouraged by recent trends we've seen in the credit markets, which indicate investors recognize the value of our specialty business and its ability to succeed even in the most challenging environments. As improving margins in our specialty business has been a strategic priority over the last two years. Specialty gross profit was $38.32 a barrel in Q3 while specialty adjusted EBITDA margin was 19.9%.
These results are due largely to our diverse product offering, management of the volume margin dynamic and brand recognition in both consumer facing and industrial markets. At quarter-over-quarter, specialty gross profit grew despite crude prices increasing 47% from the second to third quarter.
On slide 5, we provide a bridge to our consolidated adjusted EBITDA total versus this year second quarter. An important development in the quarter was the return of industrial volumes. As this occurs, margins on a per barrel basis shrink due to the mix effect. But we are encouraged by the volume increase as total profit will benefit.
Slide 6 compares our year-to-date adjusted EBITDA to the same timeframe last year. In total, we have a $62 million bridge, of which $116.7 million is the negative impact of fuels margins, fuels volumes and RINs. On the contrary, the combination of specialty margins volumes and transportation net to a $4.2 million improvement versus the same time period last year.
Last, controllable operating costs and SG&A reductions represent a $45.6 million improvement compared to 2019. To reiterate, on an annualized basis, our SG&A expense is $36 million less than 2019. We don't take this lightly, and we are extremely proud of our employees for their bold and proactive response during this pandemic.
Let's turn to slide 7. Third quarter specialty EBITDA of $56 million was a $4.4 million or 8.5% improvement to last year's third quarter. The business continued to demonstrate margin expansion of 540 basis points compared to the same period last year. This was fueled by consistent growth in our consumer facing brands and good recovery in our industrial brands. The Finished Lubricants and Chemical segment, including TrueFuel, Royal Purple and Bel-Ray continue to track and pace. But the retail business has also performed well as food grade and pharmaceutical demand has been robust. And the Paralogics wax business is integrating well and outperforming expectations.
Our sales team's been effective managing volumes and margins throughout the pandemic in a laser focus on product placement and the industry diversification will continue as industrial demand returns to normal.
Slide 8 details the quarterly results in our fuels segment. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of negative $13.5 million was down compared to both the prior year and sequential quarter, driven largely by the compression and crack spreads. We continue to benefit from our geographic advantages in this business with a focus on what we can control. For example, this quarter, the fuels business achieved record volumes of rack sales into our local markets, which is an advantage we continue to have -- we intend to continue benefiting from when markets recover.
Turning to slide 9, we bridge the sources and uses of cash here today. You can see that our cash position has improved from the $19.1 million where we began the year. Most importantly, we produced $53.5 million of cash flow from operations year-to-date. Working Capital Management and CapEx discipline also contributed to the generation of $30.1 million of year-to-date free cash flow, which led to finishing the quarter with $109.4 million of cash on hand.
On slide 10, we provide a snapshot of our credit metrics. With $109 million of cash I just mentioned, we finished the quarter with over $269 million of total liquidity, up $20 million versus this year second quarter. We continue to operate the day to day business with a focus on cash flows, while leverage reduction and balance sheet improvement remain key components to our overall strategy.
With that, I'll turn the call back to Steve.
Thank you, Todd. Let's go to slide 11. In last quarter's call we reviewed two focus items, one covering our TrueFuel business, and another covering how our specialties margin versus volume envelope have been performing through the pandemic. The deeper dive received a lot of appreciated investor feedback. And so our intent is to continue sharing in order to further help you understand what we are up to and our story. So for today's call given the recovery in industrials, we thought it might be good to spend a couple of minutes on our integrated complex of facilities in northwest Louisiana.
Calumet interconnected specialty product sites at Shreveport, Princeton and Cotton Valley are collectively the largest high yield specialty petroleum product complex in the US. Cotton Valley's focus is the production of solvents, marketed under our Conosol and Magiesol brands. Princeton is on naphthenic base oil production facility, and that includes such industry known brands as CalTran electrical oils, and HydroCal processed oils.
Shreveport, our largest Louisiana facility serves three distinct roles for us. First, Shreveport is focused on parafinic base oils, particularly our CalPar brand, which is sold into a variety of industrial specialty applications, together with Orthex, which is branded agricultural spray oil. Shreveport is also at the heart of our rapidly growing wax business most well known through a Titan brand which is sold into the candle industry.
The second role Shreveport plays is it's the flywheel around which these other sites exchange intermediates for optimization value. And third, Shreveport is a feedstock platform for other Calumet businesses further downstream, which includes our businesses in white oils, blended and formulated waxes, petrol items and specialty gels, all manufactured at other Calumet locations.
The strength of our interconnected Louisiana sites coupled with Shreveport extended reach further downstream into other Calumet businesses provides the operating flexibility to deliver stable performance and growing specialty segment results even in 2020. What brings these facilities together, other than the geographical proximity is the collectively, we have an extremely flexible asset base focused on custom distillation hydro treating across the entire pressure envelope, together with catalytic and solvent extraction, most particularly in dewaxing. Within the specialty petroleum product business, this gives us a real scale and flexibility. And we continuously work on how to optimize this unique set of flexible assets.
So now on to our outlook on slide 12. US consumer data remains remarkably good. And as long as that holds up, it is our expectation that our positive trajectory on consumer facing specialty should hold. Our industrial brands appear to be well into recovery mode, inventories and supply chains are in a good position. And the seasonal slowdown that we often see is not yet upon us.
Fuels is currently near the bottom of its business cycle. And we will continue to focus on controllable actions. Our decisive actions on costs, marketing strategies, and hedging have got us this far through the pandemic without cash burn, and have helped for Calumet in a good position to emerge strongly once the business cycle turns.
And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to open up the line for Q&A. Operator?
[Operator Instructions]
Your first question comes from the line of Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs
Good morning, guys. And we do appreciate that incremental color that you provided around Shreveport here. Look, the first question that I have is around the lubricants business. And, of course, we don't want to enter the world of speculation here. But there were press reports about the potential to monetize some of your assets for a certain amount of money yet? Just your thoughts on those -- on that lubricants business? How core is it and the potential for monetization to try to unlock value that might not be being reflected in the unit price right now?
Great, Neil. Steve, how you doing? It's good to have you on our call. As you know, I mean, the finished goods and chemicals business has really taken COVID in its stride, has power through, set a year-to-date record. And we believe that the future growth potential of all the brands inside this business is substantial. As responsible stewards of the business management, the Board continuously reviews what the value of any product Calumet is to us. And I think as it would be for any company, Neil, that valuation is a synthesis of cash flows, growth potential and strategic importance.
It's clear from market reaction commentary that people understand that this hypothetical situation would potentially change out leverage and debt quantum significantly. And I think that right now, given it's highly speculative, as you hit on, I really can't comment further on speculation beyond that.
Yes, no, very clear. I'm sure there'll be other questions around this today. And the follow up I have is around is Great Falls. And it is a good asset in the sense that it runs a lot of WCS, which is a differentiated crew grade right now. Results came in a little softer than I think what most investors were expecting out of that asset. Just talk about anything that could have been unusual or one time or if it's just a function of the product and crude environment. And then how do you think about minimizing losses from the fuels business as you're going into 2021. At the forward curve, what levers do you have before WCS prices start to wind back out over time?
Hi, Neil. This is Bruce. Good morning. Of course, we're reporting Great Falls and Shreveport fuels together. So I would not want you to leap to a conclusion about either facility, but in aggregate, over the summer, we have had softer fuels environment for everybody than last year. Great Falls is incrementally affected by that, as you noted and the WCS business is actually a key contributor to the gross margin environment up there. And of course, it's been narrower, which is adverse. So with all the obvious points being made, that is a good part of the country to be a refiner. And the proof of that is that the facility has run fall on a volume basis, throughout this -- throughout this pandemic.
And then steps that you guys are taking in order to, as you go into 2021, what levers do you have to pull in order to drive to minimize losses as we work through the pandemic?
Well, I think the operational levers are the same for us as everybody; we're pretty nimble given our two positions on re-optimizing and tracking closely, matching output from the facilities to the local market demands and customer demands. It's been very volatile for everybody. But I think we've hung in there pretty well, I'll tell you, most of what you're seeing is the $64.5 million hickey from RIN prices skyrocketing this year, as opposed to a fundamental change in our operational competencies.
Your next question comes from the line of Roger Read with Wells Fargo.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Okay. Yes. You're a blank, you all getting a little nervous. I guess what I'd like to kind of get out. And it sounds like things are definitely improving in specialty. I mean, I'm sure a lot of this is volume driven. I was just curious, as we look through thinking about what you were able to do in terms of pricing, right; we had a tremendous amount of crude volatility early in the year kind of a little more stable since mid year. And so how has that affected your pricing? And then with the recovery, and what we've heard in a lot of places across the business, all across everywhere, that there have been run down of inventories.
And then everybody, all of a sudden demand popped up, have you been able to or do you expect to capture any sort of extra margin on fixing the just in time issues that have crept up out there? We just maybe that's a mixed question. But I was just curious if any of that was coming through.
Good morning, Robert. Scott here let me take the first crack at it and Todd to weigh in, if needed, but when we look at the product mix, Roger, first on the profit per barrel type of view, and it was mentioned during the presentation, but results were still over $38 a barrel. So I think what we saw during the quarter, as the volume started ramping back up really led by those industrials, the margin for barrel came back a little bit more to closer to normalization. But just for perspective, Roger, if you just go back even two years ago it's still up basically $10 a barrel above where we were just a few years ago.
So $38 plus two barrel is still solid margin. And I think as we're in Q4 the inventories remain relatively low out there. There's some lower refining rates, the hurricane impact, et cetera. I think overall the supply demand and the overall supply chain and the market is pretty firm out there overall.
Yes, I appreciate that. I guess I'm -- you did a lot of things, cut back on a lot of low margin, or low priced type product offerings to improve that margin. So I'm not really sure when I've looked at it, I can compare the high 30s to previously the high 20s and recognize whether that was changes you already made, or we were actually seeing changes in the market. So that's what I was really trying to get at with the question there.
Yes, I guess, Roger, this is Todd. I can chime in a little bit too on this. Like you said crude prices vary substantially. And when you look at Q2 versus Q3, and we see a 47% increase in crude prices, yet margins hold all while industrial demand returns, I think tells you something about kind of the market and the resilience of the consumer side. And we don't think that this is just some sort of crude anomalies. This is the specialty markets are strong right now.
And this is, Roger, Steve, if I could add to Todd, I mean, just a couple observations, maybe to give you some more anecdotal feel as to how we think about it. I mean, first of all clearly we had a period a few days back when we had a material sell up on the crude complex. And we didn't see price cuts in any of specialties from anyone. So I think that just shows you generally, there's a feeling that supply chains are tight. And then I think one of the best, to me, one of the best indicators that supply chains have tightened sustaining that way, is we're facing the good news, bad news problem, but it's very difficult to get trucks and truckers. And so that tells us just how tight situation is right now.
Okay, good. That kind of dovetails what we've been hearing. And then I guess my completely unrelated follow up question for you, Todd. Obviously, the company's come through what's been a brutal year for most companies we cover on the cash flows, y'all come through, I'll just say strong. What if anything do we need to look at into the, I'll say the end of this year, the beginning of next in terms of expectations on cash flow, or cash management? And then is there any potential as an MLP, for Calumet to participate under the CARES Act in terms of any tax recoveries? I mean, I know it's generally speaking, not a tax business, but I just didn't know if there were anything wrinkles in the tax laws or something like that, that could benefit the company.
Sure, enough. Thank Roger. As far as what to expect in 2020, the rest of 2020, it's quite an uncertain world out there. So I'd hesitate to look forward too far. Our goal does remain to be cash flow neutral in 2020. No change on that. We're committed to that. What I can tell you is what we've seen so far into the fourth quarter is more of the same on specialty. So industrial, the industrial return continues, consumer facing strength continues to be strong; we don't see any reason for that relative strength to change.
As you know it's difficult because we do see seasonality in the fourth quarter, typically, in the -- particularly in the industrial brands. But like I said earlier, we have not seen those yet. So far so good, we may see something different. And so far, so good.
Probably as good a forecast as anyone can make these days. Gentlemen, thank you for the time.
Your next question comes from the line of Gregg Brody with Bank of America.
And just following up on the question about the finished lubricants business. I know that this is market speculation, but just to assess it what you think about it? Is it easy to separate these businesses from your other businesses? Are there any limitations to doing that?
So I guess the way we would kind of frame it up is that currently the businesses are integrated, but they're not strategically integrated. So simplest, maybe the key point geographically, we don't have any kind of shared facilities, primarily between the finished lubes business and our other asset base. So we talked a little bit about the integrated complex in Shreveport just now Gregg, I mean because of slide real estate we didn't put on there but obviously we have a major packaging and distribution facility as well for the finished lubes business and that's where we have the TrueFuel production line, that's in Shreveport, but it's like 15 miles away, so there's no pipes or anything like that integrated from an asset base.
Got it. So it is strategically aligned. So they are interrelated. If so, how do you, what would they be the steps to get I guess separated? Is it just that; is there anything that's arduous? Or is it fairly simple to do?
Hey, Greg, this Bruce, I might give a little more context around this. So first of all, the general structure of the company isolates each of our assets legally, we isolate them for P&L purposes internally, we roll that up, obviously, to a high level and we report but we have the ability to have a very clear look at how the business is performing. Part of that is we've got absolute arm's length separation, if there are molecules moving back and forth. Now, the speculative interest in finished lubes is probably getting a little overheated here. But if you want to, if you want to keep thinking about it as a separable component, everything we've got is separable in that way. Think of it as virtual integration, not physical, and I think you'll be on the right track.
Got it. Just intuitively, I appreciate all the color on the specialty chemical business, is there -- one of the challenges of forecasting this year has been just volumes knowing exactly how COVID is attacking. It sounds like you said for this year, for this quarter, as of October, you're back to last year's volumes. Is that -- did I hear that correctly?
I think we were -- we said September specifically. We've had an upward trajectory. We've had an upward trajectory, sorry, I struggle to pronounce that word. During the third quarter and the lines met in September the 19th and 20 lines.
So is it fair to say that based on what you're telling us, you're not seeing the normal seasonality that you historically have seen in the fourth quarter? And you were at last year, September numbers that theoretically volumes and specialty could be higher this quarter than last year?
Gregg, Scott. I would say theoretically, yes. And I think the wild card becomes if seasonality comes into play or not. We haven't seen it yet. So that at a minimum that appears it may be delayed. And we just don't know if it's going to come or not and the seasonality but yes.
And if I could just add a technical accounting comment that the numbers, the volume, like on like we're giving you is pro forma, because in 2019, we had a processing deal. So if you want to forensically attack the Q, you need to bear that in mind.
Got it. And then just last question for me. Actually, maybe I could add two more. First of all, I'll say is RINs headwinds. How should we think about that, on a steady state, impacting your refining business? If we stay around here, for this quarter, and thereafter.
We accrue against the shortfall; the system operation blends as much ethanol as we can. We like to blend in ethanol. We wish we could do more. But at least I assured I would not want you to think that we have any insights on where that market is headed. RINS, prices and markets are just absolute chaos, strongly reactive to political or policy developments. So all I can tell you is that we're waiting before the RFS reform like the rest of the world.
Got it. No, I appreciate that. And just last one for you. So you talked about the substantial SG&A savings you had this year. Is it your sense that's sustainable at those levels? Does it necessarily need to go up? If there's a recovery? Does it kind of go down further?
Yes, no. Gregg, it's Todd. We think mostly it's sustainable. There's been some kind of structural changes made in the business as far as outside contract services, headcount, and those types of things that are sustainable. Naturally as travel comes back, and as we hit the road more and things like that, we'll see a little bit of regression. But I'd say for the most part, we've made a step change in SG&A. And we expect to keep the majority of it.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gabelman with Cowen.
Good morning. I wanted to first ask just about how to think about that longer term you have, I think the next notes due are $150 million in a couple of years, so maybe thoughts around how you plan on attacking that. And then just a long term view on where you want debt-to-EBITDA levels to be and if you think you can get there organically, or if you do think there needs to be some -- something on the inorganic side. And kind of tangential to that thinking about there's obviously been a lot of questions about this finished lubes part of the business, but you previously refer to Great Falls as non core. And it seems like that's something that you're going to be holding on to at least for now, just given the difficulty in transacting refining deals, is there anything on the specialty side that you consider less core relative to the other parts of the business? Thanks.
Thanks, Jason. This is Todd. Let me take the first part of your question, if that's all right, on the kind of the upcoming debt, and I'll turn it over to Steve to talk a little bit more about some of the longer term questions you mentioned. So as far as the 2022, remember, we did exchange in Q2, so we're just left with $150 million, maturing in 2022. We think that's a very manageable amount, and we have some flexibility. So we just talked about $269 million of liquidity. It's the cheapest debt we have at the moment, we've been generating cash. So we're willing and comfortable to go current, as we kind of give ourselves some time to optimize our options. So I guess that would be hopefully part one of your questions and Steve, do you want to speak a little bit, some of the longer term?
Yes, on the deleveraging, forgive me, if I make an answer that might sound a little facetious. I mean, let me use a golfing analogy, right, I could sit here and tell you that I'd like to be a scratch golfer, or I'd like to be a better golfer. And let's kind of talk about leveraging from I want to be a better golfer, rather than I want to be a scratch golfer. So I'm not going to give an aspirational target from that perspective. But clearly managing the board, look at what our cost of capital is, and say that some combination of deleveraging. And clarifying our mixed business model is the path forward.
If you go back to January, February, I think there was a very clear organic path forward. And right now I say that organic path forward is much less. So we're thoughtfully continuing to look about how we can reduce our cost of capital through a combination of addressing those two issues. So I hope that kind of covers the second one and then on the third one. You have to refresh me.
Just I mean, yes, it was kind of tied to the last question, which it was just around, you kind of refer to Great Fall as non core historically, is there something within -- in the specialties business that you consider not necessarily non core, but not as core I guess there's other parts of the business just along the lines of the conversation about the finished lubes segment?
Yes, this may not be a very satisfying answer. I mean, we like I think pretty much everything we're doing in specialties we like, everything we look at has got some difference in growth opportunity, but we see growth opportunities across all of it. So just kind of maybe pivot back to what I said earlier, and then hand over to Bruce to get his take which is whenever we look at valuation, it's obviously going to be some synthesis of cash flows, growth, potential and strategic importance. And that strategic importance is a kind of tactical overlay, but I think all of it is particularly has a relative degree of strategic importance. Bruce, you want to add?
Sure, Steve, thank you. Appreciate the kind of longer term strategic journey, nature of your interest. And if we maybe give a little bit of a foundation if you go back to December 31, 2016, we had $2 billion of debt. And this quarter, the report that Todd's putting out has that at $1.2 billion. So we made that $800 million inroad against our long term debt structure over that period of time, and it was a good balance between us improving at the site level at the individual business level, and M&A activity. Those two things took care of the debt that I just mentioned, and also funded a great deal of inward investment the organic part.
So we're actually pretty reasonably pleased with the balance. And as Steve indicated, that was going really well, until we sailed into the Covid storm. So we'll see. But we do like to think about balance. And so when people want to take look at list of our assets and draw a line somewhere and say core versus non core, that's probably a little inflexible compared to how we think about it. So the diversification that we've got is a strength, pieces of the business a bit rotational, this, the cycles don't sync up. And if you think about it that way, we're just looking at the mix. We're looking at the portfolio. If something was to bolt-on, or both off, it would be against that backdrop, that context.
And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Joe Caminiti.
Joe, you want me to wrap?
Go ahead, Steve, it's your call.
Thanks. Okay. Well, again, I appreciate everybody being on the call. I would point out I was talking about golf earlier. And I can assure you, now when Calumet has time to play golf these days, we're working hard on getting through the pandemic. I want to thank you all again for your interest in Calumet. The team has executed at a high level throughout 2020 in the face of significant challenges and uncertainty. We've taken proactive actions to both protect the business and position at the long term success. I'm extremely proud of everybody at Calumet. I look forward to seeing what we can do in 2021. Appreciate your time. Have a great day and good weekend. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you for your participation.