Antero Midstream Corporation (AM) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings. Welcome to Antero Midstream Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Dan Katzenberg, Director of Finance. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you for joining us for Antero Midstream's Fourth Quarter Investor Conference Call. We'll spend a few minutes going through the financial and operating highlights, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. I would also like to direct you to the home page of our website at anteromidstream.com, where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call. Today's call may also contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release for important disclosures regarding such measures. Joining me on the call today are Michael Kennedy, CEO and President of Antero Midstream; Justin Agnew, CFO of Antero Midstream; and Brendan Krueger, CFO of Antero Resources. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Dan. Good morning, everyone. We recently closed the acquisition of HG Midstream for $1.1 billion. This bolt-on asset in the core of the Marcellus shale adds over 400 highly economic undeveloped locations dedicated to Antero Midstream that immediately compete for development capital and infrastructure projects in 2026. This asset is a strategic fit in AM's portfolio and will follow our just-in-time capital investment strategy that generates consistent and repeatable free cash flow. Looking back at 2025, we generated EBITDA growth of 7% year-over-year, which marked our 11th consecutive year of growth since our IPO in 2014. Free cash flow after dividends increased by 30%, driven by capital efficient organic growth and throughput from AR. In 2026, this EBITDA and free cash flow growth continues as we expect 8% year-over-year EBITDA growth and 11% year-over-year free cash flow growth. Looking ahead further to 2027, we expect another year of high single-digit EBITDA growth as we realize the full benefits of the acquisition and synergies, including the integration of the water system and AR running a 3-rig new completion crew development program on our dedicated acreage. Justin will go into the details in his remarks, but the integrated water system, combined with our investment in dry gas assets, provides high visibility into growth at AM. Importantly, we can achieve this growth with very modest capital budgets, which allows us to further expand our free cash flow after dividends in 2027. With that, I'll turn the call over to Justin.

Thanks, Mike. I'll start with our fourth quarter and full year highlights on Slide #4. Adjusted EBITDA was $285 million during the quarter, which was a 4% increase year-over-year, driven by an increase in gathering and compression volumes. During the quarter, we generated $85 million of free cash flow after dividends, which we used to reduce leverage to 2.7x and repurchased approximately $48 million of AM shares. For the full year, we generated a company record free cash flow after dividends of $325 million, which is a 30% increase compared to 2024. This free cash flow growth driven by capital efficiencies from leveraging our existing assets, generated a 20% return on invested capital or ROIC in 2025. Now let's move on to Slide #5, titled 2026 Capital budget. In 2026, we have budgeted a capital investment of $190 million to $220 million. The capital budget includes our blocking and tackling, well connect and water capital, construction and relocation of compression assets high-pressure gathering trunk lines and capital to integrate the water systems. It also includes expansion capital on the dry gas portion of the acreage to enhance downstream deliverability to multiple long-haul pipelines. These projects will unlock significant optionality and improve reliability in the dry gas regime that we don't currently have today. I'll finish my comments on Slide #6 titled 2026 guidance and outlook. This guidance includes the impact of the acquisition and divestiture with contributions to guidance based on closing dates of each transaction. For 2026, we are forecasting adjusted EBITDA of over $1.2 billion at the midpoint or an 8% increase year-over-year. As Mike mentioned, after we finished the integration of the acquired water assets in 2026, we expect further growth in the water business in 2027, as we begin servicing locations on HG acquired acreage. After interest, a capital budget of $190 million to $220 million and an attractive $0.90 per share dividend we are forecasting to generate free cash flow after dividends of $360 million or an 11% increase compared to 2025. Consistent with our historical approach, we expect a balanced return of capital program in 2026 in the form of debt reduction and share repurchases. This allows us to maintain a strong balance sheet with leverage in the low 3x range. Core to AM strategy, the recent acquisition highlights the benefit of lower leverage and debt reduction, which allowed us to flex the balance sheet for the HG acquisition. This improves after tax accretion and more importantly, allows the value to accrete to our existing shareholders without the need for equity financing. In summary, we expect 2026 to be yet another year of EBITDA expansion, high capital efficiency and most importantly, double-digit free cash flow growth. Our organic growth strategy coupled with a highly accretive acquisition that is fully financed, positions us well to build upon the momentum created in 2025. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs.

I want to start on the growth outlook. I understand '26 and '27 have some tailwinds from M&A in the headline numbers. Could you just walk us through a little bit what the kind of longer-term growth trajectory looks like, let's say, once the assets are kind of fully up and running, if you guys are running a 3-rig and 2 crew program.

Yes, John, good question. That 3-rig, 2-rig program does provide continued growth even past '27. It's about a couple of hundred million a day of growth on throughput volumes. So expect that to continue. So I think it'd still be in the mid- to high single-digit EBITDA growth like we've experienced over our time, our last 11 years and will have in '25 and '26. I think that's pretty fair to have us generate those type of growth in '27 and beyond.

That's clear. I appreciate it. And then on the AR side, you guys were talking about some growth upside plans. Could you just -- and you gave the color on the AR call, but maybe just again, like walk us through the thought process there. And then what that means for AM both from an EBITDA growth standpoint, but also a capital standpoint if you move to that higher potential target?

Yes, that's a great thing about it. There's really no capital for AM outside of what we just outlined, Justin did. It's right in the heart of our field. We already have all the big trunk lines. We have whatever pipelines are necessary. We have the water. A lot of this is dry gas. So it doesn't need a further processing. So really nothing different than these capital budgets that we've experienced over the past couple of years for AM. For AR, AR is well positioned, partly because of AM, but also because of firm transport optionality around dry gas being in the right part of the country, but also having the ability to transport our gas to the Gulf Coast for the LNG. So a lot of different demand centers coming AR's way. So AR is the likely company and most well positioned to meet the growing demand over the next 5 to 10 years.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dan for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. Please reach out with any questions that you have a good day.

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.