Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everybody. For those who don't know me, I'm Keith Stanley. I cover Midstream here at Wolfe Research. Very happy to have David Michels, CFO, of Kinder Morgan, come join us. We're going to go right to Q&A. Feel free to throw up -- throw in any questions, just raise your hand. I'm more than happy to throw you into the mix here.

Maybe we could start, David, a lot of excitement around to gas infrastructure and a couple of different ways to play it. What would you say differentiates Kinder Morgan as it relates to positioning for LNG demand, for power demand and execution risks as well?

Okay. Well, first, thanks for having us, Keith. We've had a great set of meetings so far. So looking forward to the rest of the conversations we're having. I think the single most important factor in terms of securing additional infrastructure opportunities, a great landscape out there, great demand growth for natural gas, particularly in the U.S. But the single most important factor in terms of who is going to secure opportunities is existing network, existing assets. And we're fortunately positioned where we have more interstate natural gas miles of pipe in the U.S. than any other competitor. And most of the competitors out there, we have more than double their network -- interstate network miles of pipe. And so we're very well positioned. And I think that's played out over time. We've got -- we touch 40% of all of the molecules, U.S. natural gas molecules that are produced on a daily basis. We supply 45% of all the molecules that are used as feed gas for liquefied natural gas exports today. We supply about 40% of all of the natural gas going to power generation facilities in the Southern states, which is where we're seeing most of the power generation growth, and we supply about 50% of the molecules going across the border to Mexico. So we've got a really, really nice footprint. And I think that is because that's the most critical factor in determining who's going to be well positioned to obtain additional opportunities, I think that positions us very well. And then there were a couple of additional questions you throw...

Just on risks. How you -- execution risks for projects.

Yes. So I think we're going to get our fair share beyond the $9 billion of projects that we've already secured. I think there are going to be more that we will be sanctioning significantly more that we'll be sanctioning. So the risks are permitting risks, construction risks and the competition, of course, but we talked a little bit about that. So permitting, it's been a very favorable environment for federal permitting and some of the other entities that weigh in on permitting generally. So we've seen some streamlining. We've seen some efficiency. The FERC permitting process has been streamlined by 5-plus months. It used to be for a multistate pipeline build. The 7(c) certificate process used to take 24 months, and we've already seen that get accelerated by 5 months and potentially some more. So that's really helpful. The construction and the execution of the actual build is now where we're focused. And so far, so good. We're seeing good availability of contractor labor, skilled contractor labor, which is very important. We've just gone through the construction bids for our 3 largest projects, and we had very good participation in the bidding process. The rates came in at or even favorable to the budgeted cost that we had expected. And so, so far, that portion of the business remains quite robust, and so it's not a limiting factor. The equipment is starting to get a little bit tight. Turbines, compressor units is getting a little bit tight. So we're keeping an eye on that. We're trying to stay ahead of that. And we've done a good job on the existing projects that we have, but we'll need to continue to consider that for future projects. The areas of the country where you're building, that's also a very big factor in terms of the ability to secure the right of way to construct through those areas of the country. There are more favorable areas than others. The coasts tend to be a little bit more tricky, particularly the West Coast. Texas, Louisiana, the Southeast states tend to be a little bit more open in terms of pipeline builds.

You mentioned seeing a lot more opportunity still. So the sanctioned project backlog has gone from, I think, $3 billion, maybe 18 months ago to $9 billion today. Do you expect that to keep rising over the next year or 2? And where are you seeing the most opportunities to grow that?

Yes. So our objective is not to grow the backlog, but to obtain as many sanctioned projects as we can that meet our return threshold. So that means we're going to see some potential volatility in the backlog as we're building the projects that are in that backlog. Once they're built, we bring them out of the backlog, and then we don't put new ones in until we sanction them. But we have identified more than $10 billion of real specific projects that we are currently developing beyond the $9 billion that we have in the backlog. So we have good visibility into ways that we can replenish and potentially even grow the backlog, but there'll be quarters where it will be up and down a little bit. But I think what we're working on right now is a set of opportunities that will give us confidence that we'll be able to extend the growth that we're currently anticipating with that $9 billion of backlog. We'll be able to extend that growth period for years into the future.

And when you say over $10 billion of opportunities on what time line would that be likely that you can move forward on that bucket of projects?

Some are earlier than others. The smaller ones are -- tend to get sanctioned a lot more quickly, the sub-$250 million, but there are a couple of bigger ones in that $10 billion number, $1 billion plus -- those will take a little bit longer. And they're also in different stages of maturity, too. And some of them are a little bit further ahead where we could see Q1, Q2 of next year. I think we have some good opportunities that might be ripe to come to the market at that point. You mentioned -- you asked about geography and where we're seeing some of these. It's really remarkable that we're seeing these opportunities all over. It's not concentrated just in Texas or Louisiana, although we are seeing plenty of opportunities in Texas, Texas being supported by all of the massive LNG build-out on the Gulf Coast, continue to see development of industrial demand, exports to Mexico continue to increase. So all of that is adding to -- and power generation. Now power generation all over the state is adding to the overall demand for natural gas, and that's creating great opportunities for us to debottleneck our system. We've got a massive Texas Intrastate system that runs up and down the Gulf Coast. And so debottlenecking opportunities, connection opportunities along the corridors. Additional gas keeps coming in from the Permian, and that needs to get to a market. So one of our big projects was to take some of that gas over into the Port Arthur area with our Trident project, which has been sanctioned and is under construction. But just great atmosphere to build new projects there and tremendous number of opportunities. Louisiana is an excellent opportunity set, too, because of all of the gas that's coming out of the Haynesville, which is starting to ramp up now, several corridors of pipelines that are being built down into the LNG corridor. And we're working on our own gathering and processing and treating build-out of our Haynesville gathering asset. In the Southeast, we've already established 3 large projects going east, and we're seeing additional opportunities for gas growth on that corridor. So this is the example of where one project leads to another. We're building out South System 4 Mississippi Crossing, our EEC expansion and then our Bridge project all the way into South Carolina. And we're already seeing on the backbone of those committed projects additional opportunities coming to our footprint, which is great. Westbound, we missed out on the Copper State project, but there are other projects that we're going after in Arizona and elsewhere to try to accommodate some additional natural gas demand going westbound. And then our NGPL footprint, which stretches from Texas up into Chicago. That one has the opportunity to accommodate data center demand growth and power generation growth up and down its footprint. And we're seeing it not only in its Texas and Louisiana footprint, but Arkansas all the way up to Wisconsin. So we're seeing these opportunities throughout the country, which is pretty fun.

Go ahead, John.

Maybe can you just provide some context to the $10 billion of development and the $9 billion backlog versus a year or 2 years ago like [indiscernible] just to give us a sense of sizing what you're seeing there versus [indiscernible].

Yes. I would say 3 to 5 years ago, I think our actual backlog was $2 billion or $3 billion. It was small. And the opportunity sets that we were working on were $1 billion or $2 billion worth, primarily numerous smaller projects that you could add up. The beginning of 2024 is when we started really seeing some specific opportunities develop that would help accommodate the very large natural gas demand growth that we're seeing. The natural gas demand growth has been there for that whole 5-year period. But I think the market wasn't ripe yet to start sanctioning the projects to accommodate that growth. And these LNG facilities have been on the drawing board for years as they go through their permitting process, their construction process, their financing processes. And so we saw that visible growth coming to the market, but the infrastructure to accommodate that growth wasn't being sanctioned yet. And then about 2 years ago is when we started seeing a lot of that start really come to market. We sanctioned $6 billion of projects in the last 18 months. And then the opportunity set, the $10 billion of projects that we're working on right now, I think we probably would have said the opportunity set was a similar size 12 months ago. The difference is now that opportunity set has really developed into -- potential into more like [ PUD, ] right, more like more developed specific projects where we're working with a counterparty and we're trying to get contracted terms.

Do you see [indiscernible]?

It could. I think we're pretty happy with the $10 billion. And I think we're going to be able to -- what we're working on right now is trying to secure as many of those as we can. But the next set of projects beyond that, we're starting to have some early conversations on those as well.

Any others? So with that backdrop on growth and just the inflection of investment opportunities, maybe you could walk through the investment proposition for Kinder as you see it as far as growth in the business over the medium to long term, what your expectations are for the base business and how all this investment translates to growth in your EBITDA and your dividend?

Yes. So we've said that it's going to be a little bit lumpy as projects come on and new projects get sanctioned and so forth. But we think we'll spend approximately $2.5 billion a year, and that is sufficient to grow our EBITDA and I should say, our base business has stabilized. We went through a period of time where we had some ups and downs, but it's stable -- stabilized and quite visible growth into the cash flow in our base business. And so we think that those new development projects that we're building will contribute EBITDA that will drop to the bottom line. And we think that, that $2.5 billion will grow our EBITDA in the single-digit annual growth rate area, which then drops to an EPS in the high single-digit EPS growth area. And it will be lumpy. There'll be some years that's higher than others. Some of these big projects come on and hit. Those are nice because the moment you turn the valve on, it's 100% of that -- Mississippi Crossing, for example, 100% of that is going to come on at one time. Some of those are phased, but -- and that will add to EBITDA leverage capacity will increase. And so we're going to be able to afford even more of these projects with internally generated cash flow. And so it's all good. And we actually see our leverage continuing to decline as these projects come on.

If you execute on the $10 billion, though, of potential projects, you have $9 billion already sanctioned. What's the probability that CapEx is going higher than $2.5 billion a year? I would think because that's almost $20 billion of investments that you have some visibility on. I would think the CapEx might start to move up from there.

Yes. I think that's a fair possibility that some of the new projects that we're going to be sanctioning will overlap with some of the projects that we have in the backlog right now that won't be in service by the time we start constructing on some of the new projects. And so I think there'll be a period of time where there's an opportunity for us to see even more growth and more spend on our capital projects. I think we're okay with that. The -- I mean we're great with those projects because they meet the return thresholds that we've set that are well in excess of our cost of capital and are very attractive returning projects. So they're delivering a great deal of value to our shareholders. But what I meant by we're okay with that is we're okay with spending more dollars on these types of projects. We can fund $2.5 billion out of organic cash flow, and that's going to be growing as these projects come on. We've got some spare capacity on our balance sheet today. We're at 3.9x leverage debt to EBITDA and our long-term leverage target is between 3.5x and 4.5x. And so we're a little bit on the favorable side of that, and we expect that to continue to come down with greater -- with good EBITDA growth. So we'll have some balance sheet capacity. before we would need to consider some type of an external funding source if needed.

Maybe we could shift to LNG. So we've had 5 new projects now FID just this year on top of 10 Bcf a day under construction. It looks like there's a few more that might go to. Has this surprised you as a trend, just how many projects are moving forward? Do you think we're going towards an overbuild of LNG export capacity? And what's your positioning for some of these new projects that have recently been sanctioned?

Yes. We have a macro research team -- macroeconomic research team that has a model and they put together their view on likelihood of some of these LNG facilities and have for years. And so it wasn't a real surprise to see the incremental LNG facilities get sanctioned and start getting under construction. Will there be an overbuild, is a difficult question to answer. It depends on geopolitical international and global LNG demand versus the LNG capacity globally. What our research team suggests is the demand globally is expected to be there, but there will be some capacity that will need to go underutilized for some period of time for the next 3 to 4 years, I think. But what they're saying is they think that the U.S. molecules are favorable relative to several other geographies. The Henry Hub continues to be a pretty cheap source of gas. The amount of additional reservoir that's available at just north of $4 appears to be quite substantial. And so while right now, in the $2.50 range, gas, it's very attractive even at $4, you're able to cover your variable costs and some of your total costs on the LNG side in the U.S. The availability of infrastructure, storage, the reliability of the supply is all going to play a big part in the utilization, we think, of the U.S. facilities relative to global facilities. And so our team thinks that the U.S. facilities will continue to be pretty fully utilized and what gets backed out are some of the international LNG capacity. But what we try to do at Kinder Morgan to protect ourselves from that because we can't control that. We can't control how much utilization occurs at the U.S. facilities is to sign up take-or-pay long-term contracts with our counterparties. And to the extent that those counterparties aren't investment-grade counterparties, we'll also secure substantial collateral from them to make sure that our CapEx is secured.

Maybe we -- you mentioned areas where you're seeing demand for new projects. I don't think you listed Appalachia as one of them. I don't know, I kind of think in the Trump administration, someone will take a shot at building a new greenfield Appalachia pipeline. Are there opportunities for you to increase takeaway capacity from Appalachia? And do you think someone else will also try to do it to unlock that basin?

It would make a lot of sense. I hope it happens. The federal government is definitely supportive. They've talked about supporting Constitution specifically and getting it to market. We won't proceed unless there's clear state support. The federal support is very important, and it's helpful, but you need state support in order for those facilities to get constructed. New York has been a challenge in the past. You need air permitting, water crossing permitting and without state support, that makes it very challenging. If that materializes, and I think the current environment is one that it's been as favorable, as it's been in a long time. If it materializes, I think there are opportunities there. But that's the reason I left it off is it's -- the environment has to be favorable from a state standpoint when we haven't gotten there just yet.

Are there projects you're working on, on TGP to try to debottleneck Appalachia at all that you're considering?

There are a couple of projects that we have very early-stage development ideas on, yes.

One quick question on some of the new natural gas bills that we're starting to see. And a lot of it is [indiscernible] facilities. This is sort of an operational question. How -- from your perspective, I'm sure you've covered your cost bite take-or-pay contacts. The first question would be, is the tariff different for a simple site or sort of a [indiscernible] facility versus [ ACGT? ] And then the second question is back up of the line, how do they -- how are we going to handle the volume they get from [indiscernible] going through the system to make sure they're there for that 10% of the time that, that [ power plant ] works [indiscernible] storage, there not that much [indiscernible] not such a big issue about the....

We're in a really fortunate position where we're not -- usually, we're not connecting to one particular power plant. And so we're usually working with the utility to solve a grid as a whole additional gas supply need. Sometimes that does require us to connect directly to individual facilities. But generally, it's in the overall concept of this particular project, we want you to connect to these 2 facilities. But here's the contract we're going to have with Kinder Morgan. And usually, that comes near peak, if not peak demand, which allows them to have firm supply when needed when those peakers do come on. And that's great for us because that's usually a year-round commitment at a pretty high volume level, which is great. And then the second part...

So how do they -- is the incremental new gas fire capacity that's being built [indiscernible] right now. How are we going to -- is there enough new capacity to reason sort of operational problems [indiscernible] getting the molecules [indiscernible] because obviously, [indiscernible] and they run all the time. How do you reach that?

Well, I think that's where storage going to come into play. I think that's the next big area where we've expanded 3 of our facilities -- are expanding 3 of our facilities. We've got projects in that $10 billion. We have got couple of projects in there for additional storage development. And so I think that's the next part of the infrastructure build out to help accommodate that an additional intermittent power generation sources in there to help with the overall relieve some of the peak needs for gas and deliverability issues for gas, the storage is going to be a key factor for that.

I wanted to ask on the Permian gas takeaway situation. We've -- well, we've just had a month where Permian gas was pricing at, I think, $1 or $2 negative, but we also have a lot of pipelines now getting built or committed to being built. Have you been surprised by how many pipelines have been sanctioned at this point? And what do you think happens to the basin? Do we get overpiped on gas takeaway out of the Permian? Or do you think it can be filled up?

Yes, I've been a little surprised by some of the pipes that are getting sanctioned. I think there are some pipes that are getting sanctioned at capacity rates that we wouldn't accept below -- well below full capacity and are just building a little bit more on spec than what we would have preferred. But there's a market demand there. It's interesting because you're not just building it just to the Gulf Coast, but now you've got a West Coast project, potentially one going North. So yes, so I think if those projects, and I think they will get built, I think we'll see relief to the basin first. I think that probably happens maybe towards the end of the year next year as some of those bigger capacity projects come online. And then at some point, you probably -- depending on how the gas-to-oil ratio evolves and how crude oil production evolves in the next few years, you probably have some period of time when you have adequate capacity. You see that basis spread relieve to something a lot more normal than what we're currently seeing. And again, just depending on the forward production levels of gas coming out of the Permian, you probably have adequate capacity for a handful of years.

How much demand are you seeing from the new LNG facilities that are largely in Louisiana to pull from Permian gas directly as a key supply source?

The first area for demand for those Louisiana projects is Haynesville. But you are seeing more demand for some of the gas coming across the border. And that's been a bottleneck, right? It's getting gas across the Texas border. So we're seeing it, and we've signed up a contract to support a couple of projects that we have to move gas from Texas into Louisiana. So you're starting to see it in more size, and I think that will continue to ramp up to some degree.

So [indiscernible] I'm going to say the [indiscernible] dry gas drilling [indiscernible].

It could. I first heard about that just a couple of weeks ago that, that was something that was even possible. Apparently, there is acreage that would be appropriate for some dry gas drilling out of the Permian. I think it just depends on how this gas oil ratio continues to evolve and how the overall drilling activity looks like on the black oil side to see if those projects will proceed or not.

You touched on the regulatory environment and obviously, some of the actions by the Trump administration and the FERC has obviously gotten easier to work with. What's the practical implication as it relates to some of your projects? Like are we going to see projects come on early? And what's kind of like how much is this actually improving the outlook and time frame to complete projects?

Well, the 7(c) certificate is no longer the long pole in the tent and now it's shifted the focus over to equipment availability and construction crews. Construction crews look like they're adequately available, and we've just gone through our contracting process and our bids process, and it looked really favorable on the big 3 projects that we're going through so far. Equipment is getting a little bit tighter, particularly compression units. And so there's a longer lead time for compression units than there has been in the past. Good news is on those projects, we're in queue. And so we put those orders in right away. And so I think we have the opportunity to bring Mississippi Crossing and South System 4 into service early. The -- how early still remains to be seen now that we've gotten pretty clear -- well, we have our clear waiver from the FERC on the 871 portion of the 7(c) certificate. Now we are working to develop with our construction project management team, how much earlier we can bring those into service. And then what do we do with that available capacity. There's a market for it. So we'd have to go and get some interim contracts to market that capacity. But it's all good. I mean it reduces the risk to the extent that we can bring them in early, reduces that construction risk. The longer it takes you to build something, the more possible it is something can get in your way. And then it will bring some incremental economics because of the interim capacity that we'll be able to sell. So it really will come down to how quickly we can secure the equipment needed to bring those into service.

[indiscernible] shortages or challenges that [indiscernible] impact the $10 billion [indiscernible] backlog those competing to a degree where you won't be able to secure enough time frame [indiscernible] backlog in a reasonable time frame that was too...

Yes. It's something we talked a lot about last week actually on these new projects. It's come to the point where we may end up buying some ahead of securing a project, so that we can be at least in queue. And look, a lot of our compression units across our system are getting to end of life as it is. So if we use it for a project, great. If not, we'll have other uses for those. So that's something we're taking a harder look at. And in fact, in our 2026 budget, I expect that we'll have dollars in there for buying units just to get in queue. But it's going to be something that we will put into the construction schedule, the time frame, the backlog that we know is there today. That's what we're -- that's our starting point for how long it's going to take to secure a compression unit. There are -- solar is a major material provider for us for these compression units, and we've been talking to them about their capabilities and their expansion opportunities. The current view is, right now, we think that, that backlog is peaking and will actually improve based on their capacities and based on what they're seeing in the future. So hopefully, it gets better from this point, not worse, but we'll see.

Is it called [indiscernible] more broadly to the [indiscernible] for wind and sanction projects. We find that some of the peers are doing...

This has always been a pretty competitive environment. I think we're very well situated given the massive network that we have, the storage that we have on our system, our ability to secure diverse sets of supply and the ability to provide suppliers to diverse demand markets. But it's always very competitive. And yes, we have seen some particularly newer entrants to the market get really aggressive on the return requirements. We'll continue to take our disciplined approach to it, right? We won't sanction things unless we have an adequate amount of the capacity secured at take-or-pay contracts, long-lived assets, long-lived contracts and look at that means we miss out on a project or 2, and Copper State is the one I'm pointing to, because we thought that -- that's a $5-plus billion project, and it had an adequate amount of risk to it. So we put forth what we thought was the appropriate set of terms for our counterparties to commit to that we thought would be appropriate given the risk profile of that project, and we were out of market, and that's okay, given the opportunity set that we're looking at right now, we've got plenty of other areas to focus on.

Great. We are out of time. So we're going to end it there. David, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Keith. Appreciate it.