DT Midstream, Inc. Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call

Hello, and welcome to the DT Midstream Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. I will now turn it over to our speaker today, Todd Lohrmann, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Before we get started, I would like to remind you to read the safe harbor statement on Page 2 of the presentation, including the reference to forward-looking statements. Our presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliations to GAAP contained in the appendix. Joining me this morning are David Slater, President and CEO; and Jeff Jewell, Executive Vice President and CFO. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Todd, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. During today's call, I'll touch on our financial results, share details on the latest commercial activity and provide a status update on our key growth projects that are currently under construction. I'll then close with some commentary on the current market fundamentals before turning it over to Jeff to review our financial performance and outlook. So with that, midway through the year, we're continuing our strong performance, giving us confidence to reaffirm our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance range and our 2026 adjusted EBITDA early outlook range. The second quarter was an active quarter for us commercially, and we are announcing today that we've reached FID on approximately $600 million of new organic growth projects from our capital projects backlog, of which approximately 90% of the investment is within our growing pipeline segment. Unpacking the new investment projects, the first is an expansion of Guardian Pipeline, increasing the capacity of the pipeline by 15%. This expansion is anchored by an investment-grade utility customer under a 20-year negotiated rate contract. The next project that we are moving forward with is the first phase of our interstate pipelines modernization program. This initial phase will be predominantly focused on Guardian Pipeline and will improve the reliability of this critical capacity for our valued customers in Wisconsin. Both of these investments are supported by strong fundamentals as there is robust power demand growth throughout the region. They also have connectivity to DTM's broader portfolio, including a pathway to our natural gas storage facility, offering our customers greater supply flexibility and optionality to meet the growing demand. Additional modernization investment opportunities exist across all of our new interstate assets to ensure reliability and maintain a high service level for our customers. Reaching FID on this first phase of our modernization efforts is just step one, and we will keep you updated as we advance the program. We have also executed gathering agreements with private producers in each of the basins we operate in, a positive signal of the strengthening macro environment surrounding natural gas. Turning to our construction activity. During the quarter, we placed 3 gathering projects into service across our footprint, continuing our track record of delivering projects on schedule and on budget. As a reminder, these projects are all expected to have a ramp period following their in-service date with full contribution expected by the end of 2026. Our Haynesville LEAP Phase 4 expansion is progressing ahead of schedule, allowing us to pull forward the expected in-service date to the first quarter of 2026. Finally, I'd like to take a moment to address the current natural gas fundamentals and why I feel DTM is so well-positioned. We've clearly seen a positive shift in the Haynesville over the last few quarters as producers are beginning to drill into the long-awaited LNG demand ramp. To date, private producers have been the most active. However, we expect public producers will also respond as pricing and physical demand increases, and we are forecasting a 16 Bcf per day increase in LNG feed gas demand through 2035 from facilities that have access to our Haynesville system, with the majority of these terminals already reaching FID. In addition to the growing momentum in the LNG market, we continue to have a very constructive view on power demand growth in the country, fueled by the increasing electrification of the economy, onshoring of manufacturing and demand for more AI computing and data centers. Last week, the PJM auction cleared at over $329 per megawatt day, a 22% increase from last year's auction and the highest price ever recorded for a PJM capacity auction. This is a clear signal of the significant power demand growth that is occurring in that region. We continue to advance pipeline opportunities driven by power demand within PJM and MISO, the two primary electric markets our assets reside in. These ISOs expect to see demand growth of more than 40% over the next 20 years. To date, we have commercialized more of these opportunities as in-front-of-the-meter utility scale projects. But we are also in numerous discussions with developers of behind-the-meter projects, providing pipeline lateral proposals to the projects. Moving to the regulatory framework. The current federal administration has also created a more favorable environment for much-needed energy infrastructure projects to advance. We are finally beginning to see initiatives to streamline approval processes, a welcome development that will reduce permit times, increase project transparency and enable investment in critical energy infrastructure throughout the country. I'll now pass it over to Jeff to walk you through our quarterly financials and outlook.

Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $277 million, representing a $3 million decrease from the prior quarter. Our Pipeline segment results were $3 million lower than the first quarter 2025, driven by a planned rate step-down on Guardian Pipeline effective April 1 and seasonally lower EBITDA from our interstate and joint venture pipelines, partially offset by an increase in short-term revenues on LEAP and Stonewall. Gathering segment results were in line with the first quarter 2025, reflecting higher volumes on our Haynesville system, offset by lower volumes in the Northeast. Operationally, total gathering volumes for the Haynesville averaged 1.74 Bcf per day, an all-time record throughput on our system for a quarter and a 16% increase over the second quarter 2024. In the Northeast, volumes averaged 1.17 Bcf per day, which was a decrease from the first quarter, driven by maintenance and timing of producer activity, primarily on our Appalachia and Susquehanna gathering systems. Northeast volumes remain in line with our full year plan and expectation for flat entry to exit volumes. Looking ahead to the third quarter, our plan is for adjusted EBITDA to be relatively in line with the second quarter, followed by a ramp in the fourth quarter, driven by timing of producer activity and typical seasonality of pipeline segment earnings. As David stated, we are confident in our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance range and our 2026 adjusted EBITDA early outlook. We've increased our committed capital in 2025 and 2026 to reflect the new growth projects reaching FID, with approximately $385 million committed in 2025 and approximately $230 million committed in 2026, which is an increase of approximately $150 million from our first quarter disclosure. For our Guardian expansion project, we expect to invest $345 million to $375 million at a 5 to 6x build multiple with the project entailing a combination of compression and looping and expected to be in service in the fourth quarter of 2028. For the first phase of our interstate pipeline modernization program, we are planning to invest $130 million to $150 million with an expected second half 2027 in-service date. The capital associated with this project will be included in the pipeline's next rate case for recovery. So overall, our committed capital has increased for the 2025 to 2029 time period to $1.1 billion out of our total $2.3 billion backlog. Therefore, we are feeling confident in achieving this total investment. We are also pleased to report that during the quarter, we were upgraded to investment grade by both Moody's and S&P, joining Fitch Rating, who upgraded us last year, and solidifying DT Midstream as a full investment-grade entity. Achieving investment grade was a strategic goal we established upon spinning the company, and I am incredibly proud of the entire team in reaching this milestone. On the legislative front, we see several items from the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act that will financially benefit DTM. The Act's extension of 100% bonus depreciation will benefit DTM's unregulated investments. And we also see benefits in increased interest expense deduction. These items provide a favorable impact on our projected cash taxes, and we anticipate further deferral of a significant portion of our federal tax for multiple years. Finally, today, we also announced that our Board of Directors approved our second quarter dividend of $0.82 per share, unchanged from the prior quarter, and we remain committed to grow the dividend 5% to 7% per year, in line with our long-term adjusted EBITDA growth. I'll now pass it back over to David for closing remarks.

Thanks, Jeff. So in summary, we are excited for the growth opportunities ahead for the company and remain confident in delivering on our guidance, continuing our track record of disciplined execution. Our high-quality pure-play natural gas portfolio is well positioned to capture the growing opportunities across our entire network as we are focused on continued execution of our $2.3 billion organic project backlog, of which $1.1 billion is already FID-ed. Sentiment and fundamentals around natural gas infrastructure continue to improve with the LNG export ramp building momentum, strong demand growth in our northern region, increased political backing of natural gas and energy infrastructure and a renewed realization of the role that natural gas plays as a critical fuel supporting the growing power generation fleet that runs the country. And with that, we can now open up the line for questions.

Our first question comes from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan Chase.

Just want to pick up on some of your last thoughts there. Winds have changed and changing views on natural gas. I want to dial in on New York a bit more, given the higher power prices, given some of the issues with de-voltages, what have you. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more what you're seeing in the state. And I guess, any line of sight you might have to specifically water permits there to be able to get comfort in moving forward with Millennium expansion.

Yes, I'll start by sharing our perspective on power generation in New York. Millennium directly serves two plants, both of which are operating at significantly higher load factors than usual. This data point reinforces the strong power demand in New York and indicates a need for additional generation, considering the current performance of the existing fleet. This situation offers a positive and encouraging signal for power generation. Turning to the regulatory environment, we've noticed gradual positive changes, although much of it is tied up in political discussions, which I won’t delve into here. Overall, there appears to be a favorable shift and an acknowledgment of the legitimate need for more infrastructure in the state. We are collaborating with shippers interested in expanding capacity to align all stakeholders, including regulatory agencies and state leadership, around this need. As I mentioned earlier, state support is critical for any expansion project we would move forward with at Millennium.

Got it. I was just wondering also moving south, if we could expand a bit more, I guess, on Haynesville activity and how you think about producers, particularly privates in the Haynesville responding to price signals there and how you think that kind of impacts the ramp in the basin, what pricing, what time frame, how do you see that unfolding?

Yes. I think like I said in the opening remarks, and you can see in the data that we shared here on the second quarter call is that we're seeing our Haynesville volumes ramping, which is very encouraging. The privates seem to be a little quicker on the draw, if I can use that term, in terms of deploying capital and ramping rig activity resulting in volume growth. And we've been a beneficiary of that. And we've been working very closely with a handful of private producers that we brought on to the network over the last couple of years. So very happy about that. The publics are coming around, and I fully expect that the publics will begin to respond to the physical market growth and the price signal that's sitting out in '26 and '27. They're just being a little more cautious. And I think just a function of their ownership sentiment. They want them to be cautious and focused on real disciplined capital execution. And that's fine. So we're seeing the growth. We expect more of that to show up on the network in the second half of the year. And it feels like the Haynesville is pointed in a positive direction right now to exit this year, likely delivering some significant growth and getting the production back to where it was at the peak 2 years ago and then moving beyond that going forward.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Blum from Wells Fargo.

Wonder if you could expand on the comments you made on the potential data center lateral investments that I know you've been working on for a while. Just how are things progressing? What's going on there? And any best guess you have for timing of when some of these could actually move forward?

I'll start by discussing the broader context before diving into specifics. At a high level, we're witnessing significant growth in power demand, particularly in PJM and MISO, where our assets are located. This growth has been reflected in utility-scale expansions within our network that directly support the utilities meeting these increasing demands. For example, we recently announced the AES lateral in the Midwest, a combined cycle plant in West Virginia, and our Guardian expansion. All these projects are driven by the rising power demand. Currently, we have numerous proposals for site-specific behind-the-meter developments, but they haven't commercialized yet. As I've mentioned previously, we've noticed that utilities are capturing a considerable portion of this market. For instance, DT recently projected strong data center growth in Michigan, expecting to achieve 1 gigawatt of capacity, potentially expanding to 3 gigawatts. This represents a significant amount of power, equivalent to two to three combined cycle power plants. Other utilities, like WEC, have also reported successes with data centers. Overall, the utility sector has been quite successful in securing substantial shares of this new power demand. We're pleased with our utility partnerships and aim to support them, as shown by our recent 20-year negotiated rate contract with Guardian, which aligns perfectly with our strategy to expand our gas pipelines. To date, this growth is apparent in our network, and I anticipate more laterals, similar to the AES lateral, will come online as sites become ready. The developers building these projects indicate they prefer to connect directly to the grid and the utilities for reliability and counterparty strength benefits. There's a lot happening right now, and I'd like to emphasize that the demand is genuine and tangible. It will manifest in various ways throughout our network, and we are excited to be part of this growth across the region.

Great. And then just a question on the spend, the CapEx for 2025. Obviously, if I just take the first half, it's pretty light relative to the full year guidance, both for growth and maintenance. So just wondering, do you think you're sort of running more efficiently and you'll end up spending less than the guidance? Or should we just expect a big ramp in the second half?

Yes, I wouldn't read into that. I fully expect we're going to land in our guidance range as we approach the end of the year. And I think as we get into Q3, if we think we're going to be outside of that band, we'll certainly telegraph that. But as we sit here today, I fully expect that we'll deploy that capital.

Our next question comes from the line of Theresa Chen from Barclays.

With the FID of Guardian 3, how do you think about gas sourcing for this project? And are there additional brownfield expansions upstream of Guardian on your other transmission assets that's directly or indirectly tying to the Joliet Hub that could FID on the heels of this?

Yes. I mean you can kind of see our physical network if you look at the map. And that customer will have to procure gas at the Joliet Hub into this capacity. And there's various ways to feed that. Certainly, our pipelines and our pipeline network, we have 2 pipelines that can feed the Joliet Hub, Midwestern and Vector. The Vector pathway can bring you all the way back to Appalachia on NEXUS. So that certainly will be part of the future conversation as they take care of getting critical firm capacity into the state to serve the growing demand in the state. And I think as they look further upstream, we'll clearly be part of that conversation. We have a very large percentage of our Washington 10 storage capacity that's dedicated to Wisconsin utilities. So there is already a very well-established firm pathway between Michigan and Chicago, the Joliet Hub, that today serves a big portion of that Wisconsin market. So we absolutely believe that will be part of the conversation going forward.

Got it. And going back to your earlier comments about LNG, David, clearly, 2025 has been a banner year so far for this part of the energy infrastructure value chain. And your feed gas assets are integral in moving these molecules. Can you share any color at this point on potential additional phases of LEAP from here? And how have the competitive dynamics evolved given multiple infrastructure providers along that corridor and the fierce competition that has resulted?

Yes, that's a good question. I'll begin with the short term and provide an answer. Jeff may have mentioned in his opening remarks that we've observed some short-term benefits from LEAP, which relates to your comment. As volumes have started to increase, we've reached a peak of over 16 Bcf a day, and this demand needs to be sourced from somewhere. This summer, we've benefited from that, and it's encouraging to see the demand for these molecules. Regarding our longer-term plans, we announced this quarter that we're expanding our delivery point connectivity into the LNG header system by 1.25 Bcf a day. A significant portion of this is going to Woodside, with about a Bcf a day allocated there, while the remainder will go to Cameron. We're positioning ourselves for this ongoing increase. Competitively, we've been focused on ensuring that our assets are well-connected with all the demand along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, providing shippers on our system with maximum flexibility and options. Additionally, we've been enhancing our in-basin connectivity from Carthage to Louisiana on the supply side. That's been our strategy for positioning the asset. Moreover, there is healthy competitive tension in the market, and we're confident that we'll capture our fair share. There is substantial demand, as shown by other projects under development. The advantage of our project is that it's operational, flowing today, allowing customers to see how the asset functions in real-time, unlike proposals that are still on paper. These are the factors currently influencing the situation, and we'll keep competing with others in the field. I'm confident we'll secure our fair portion of the market.

Our next question comes from the line of Manav Gupta from USB.

Congrats on the rating upgrades. I wanted to touch a little bit. Last year, obviously, you announced a very smart deal, and the benefits can be seen already. I'm just trying to understand, is there a bolt-on strategy still in place? We saw another bolt-on deal, a smart deal today by another competitor of yours. And so I'm just trying to understand, between all these good growth projects you have, what would be the appetite for small bolt-on deals? And if you're still looking for them, what exactly are the criteria for which you decide this is a good deal and we should move ahead with it?

Yes, thank you for the question. So yes, we are very pleased with how this acquisition is playing out. I think as I've said publicly, we fully expected there would be growth in this region and additional investment opportunity; it's coming at a much quicker pace than I think we expected. And it's a core investment in terms of our core strategy, right, to grow our pipeline segment to do it with long-term, high-quality investment-grade counterparties in a FERC-regulated asset construct, right? So it's absolutely right down the fairway for us, and we're very excited about that. In terms of additional bolt-on opportunities, we're always looking for those. What is the criteria that would guide our activity in that space? I'd go back to our core investment thesis around the company. We're a pure-play natural gas company, long tenure in our portfolio, high-quality counterparties. We've said publicly that our stated goal is to grow our pipeline segment to 70% or higher. Just to remind everybody, when we spun the company, we were at 50%. As a snapshot in time today, we're at 70%. It feels like we're moving to 70-plus now. So those fundamental strategies of having a high-quality portfolio with very predictable cash flows, like Jeff said, growing our dividend as we grow EBITDA, maintaining a real healthy balance sheet and achieving investment grade by all 3 rating agencies was a big milestone for us that happened in the last quarter. So again, it just goes to what I'll call the quality metrics of the portfolio. That's very important to me. I believe that's very valued by our investor base. That's the disciplined strategy that will guide us as we consider any bolt-on that may present itself. And obviously, this goes without saying, bolt-on M&A has to compete with organic growth. We have a very robust organic growth opportunity set in front of us. Our job is to allocate capital and maximize shareholder value. So bolt-on M&A has to make strategic sense and compete with organic capital allocation. So I'll stop there.

My quick follow-up is it's been about 7 months since the new federal government took office. Have things started changing on the ground? Are you finding it easier to get permits? Is it simpler to advance your projects? Could you discuss how this change in the administration has positively impacted DTM?

Yes. The change in administration has been a breath of fresh air. They're working to reduce the friction in large-scale infrastructure investments, and they're working at various levels across agencies, executive orders, Supreme Courts weighed in on a few decisions. So there's this multi-pronged approach that the administration has been taking to reduce the friction that we've seen historically in large-scale energy capital deployment. I was actually in Washington last week, had an opportunity to visit with all 3 FERC commissioners, the permanent commissioners. And again, just a very constructive attitude, very curious and engaged. Clearly, a sentiment there that there is an acknowledgment that we need significant investment in energy infrastructure in this country to meet the growing demand and to compete on the world stage. So a lot of the pieces are all pointed in the right direction, and that's really encouraging. I think it's going to unleash a significant amount of capital into this sector over the next 3 or 4 years, which is really encouraging.

Our next question comes from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury from Bank of America.

When you contemplated your 2026 EBITDA early guidance number earlier this year, I guess there was probably an embedded expectation of how quickly projects in your backlog would move to FID. Can you just kind of speak to whether that movement to FID is kind of happening as you expected or slower even faster?

Yes, that's a good question. I'm just thinking in my mind right now, I want to answer it. I think the simple answer is we reaffirmed our '26 early outlook, and everything that's been happening is happening inside that 2-way. So yes, we are definitely on track, confident in delivering that early outlook. And I think as the year progresses, we're in the second quarter here, as the year progresses, if we need to adjust or change that, we'll be sharing that with the investors.

Okay. And then as a follow-up, congrats on getting the Haynesville and Appalachia gathering expansions online. Can you just remind us how much total capacity that will take you to in each basin kind of compared to the Q2 volumes on Slide 13 that you're at now?

That's a really good question. You're going to stump me on that one because I don't know the answer off the top of my head, but I'm looking at Todd Lohrmann right now, and he's smiling and he will get back to you with that.

Our next question comes from the line of John Mackay from Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to start on the backlog. So you kind of FID-ed about $600 million of projects today. I think you guys were really clear on those. I think they made a lot of sense that you're able to come out with them. But I guess you're keeping the backlog number unchanged. I understand the $2.3 billion is a risk number. But maybe just kind of talk through the moving pieces on kind of what could be coming in there? How do you think about risking the piece that hasn't reached FID yet, maybe just moving pieces.

Yes, I'll start with the overall situation. At the beginning of the year, we updated our backlog, and now in the second quarter, we have 50% of that backlog reaching a final investment decision, which is very positive for both me and the entire organization. This reflects the macroeconomic environment we've been discussing during the call. It's encouraging that we’re six months into a five-year plan and have achieved 50% final investment decisions. This significantly reduces the risk associated with our backlog. In terms of how we will manage this, we plan to update the backlog annually rather than quarterly, as it’s a long-term perspective. You can expect a refresh on the backlog during the year-end call, moving the timeframe forward by a year. As of today, I want to express my strong confidence in executing this backlog, which reflects only the portion we are highly confident in executing. Our confidence has significantly increased over the past six months. I feel optimistic about the market conditions and believe our assets are strategically located to leverage the current momentum driven by growing power demand. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, a significant part of our LNG projects has already reached final investment decisions, and now it’s about ensuring we capture our fair share of this opportunity.

That's clear. I appreciate you walking through that. For the second question, I just wanted to go back to some of the kind of Ohio through Midwest opportunities. Can you remind us, one, I guess, how to think about expansion capacity on NEXUS? And then two, maybe taking that a step further, how you could think about maybe either some of the Midwest utilities participating in something reaching back to the basin versus potentially some of the E&Ps there looking to move their incremental supply out?

Yes, let's start with NEXUS. When we originally designed NEXUS, we included an additional compressor station that we ultimately decided not to build based on the contracts we had secured before construction began. NEXUS is ready for compression expansion. You can think of it this way: each major compressor can deliver between 100 million to 200 million cubic feet per day of capacity, depending on the destination points in Ohio or Michigan. The expansion approach is manageable and align with market demands, similar to our LEAP project, allowing for an increase of a couple of hundred million per day. The regulatory process and construction required for this is straightforward, which makes NEXUS a promising candidate for future expansions. It has the potential to expand up to 2 to 2.5 billion cubic feet per day, based on where the gas will be utilized. There is significant potential for expansion that we are actively pursuing in the market. Regarding Michigan, there is encouraging growth potential for gas and power generation, especially driven by data centers, similar to trends in Wisconsin and other areas we operate in. For instance, if a new combined cycle power plant is established in Michigan, we have numerous pipeline assets and storage capabilities in place that will benefit from the emerging demand. Overall, there are very favorable market conditions that benefit our assets and align with our long-term strategy.

Our next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis from Citi.

First question I want to start with the Midwest pipeline. It's a 2-part question. So David, as I remember when you announced that transaction originally, I think you talked about these 3 growth buckets that you expect to come out of these pipelines, and modernization was certainly one of those. And I think the intention at some point was to provide the market with a sort of broad opportunity set and actually quantify the growth opportunity set for those buckets. Curious where that stands and how to think about that potential update now that you've got modernization underway. Second part of that question, just around modernization itself. You've got this cadence of 1 rate case per year, '26, '27, '28. Is that how we should think about sort of the next phases as you announce them? Are they a year away? Or could you actually do them much sooner?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Spiro. Maybe we'll just start with what we have disclosed, which is between G3 and modernization Phase 1, we've essentially disclosed $0.5 billion investment in these assets 6 months in, which is pretty darn exciting from our perspective. Hopefully, it feels the same way. In terms of how we're going to disclose the total opportunity set, I'll go back to my earlier answer. And I think as we thought it through, we don't want to get in this cadence of every quarter changing this and changing that. The long-term capital backlog, I think we're going to get in a cadence of refreshing that annually so that we're not bouncing it around quarter-by-quarter. And I think that will just be a more stable, predictable way for the investment community to understand our business. We'll continue to talk about how we're doing. Like we talked on the call today, we're 50% of the way there, 6 months in on our $2.3 billion. I think you can infer appropriately how we feel about that $2.3 billion based on where we are 6 months in. And again, we'll refresh at the end of the year. But my goodness, we're feeling very happy with our acquisition. It's coming along nicely. There's really clear line of sight for a significant capital deployment here. The growth that has occurred already is very significant to us in terms of our size and the size and scale of the growth. But the more encouraging part, Spiro, is as I look at that business and as we get deeper and deeper and understand it more and more and get ourselves and the way in which we approach our customer base as we get deeper into this new customer base, we just continue to uncover more and more — or we're seeing more and more growth opportunities. So it's just very encouraging and tremendously happy with the acquisition. I'll just say it that way.

Got it. That's great color. It's good to hear. Second question, kind of picking up on that last point just around a lot of the sort of unexpected growth that seems to be coming forward. As we look at 2026 CapEx, I guess I could call it half full if we're just comparing it to 2025. But I guess as you sit here today, and I know you're not going to guide to '26, but should we consider '26 as a similar CapEx spending year to '25? And I think about that in the context of Millennium Pro and maybe some other major projects that have yet to be sanctioned. And if you could put in that context, once again, just maybe remind us about how you think about any self-imposed capital spending limits in any given year?

Yes. I mean, I'll start at the highest level. Our goal and our experience over the last 4 years and not as constructive of an environment is just deploying our organic cash flow to predominantly greenfield opportunities across the network. We've been able to do that successfully over the last 4 years. Any M&A has really been over and above that, utilizing dry powder that we've accumulated on the balance sheet with those 2 M&As that we've done over the last 2 years or 3 years. So as I look forward, we're looking really at organic investment opportunity using that free cash flow. As I look at where next year FID projects sit in relation to that, we're in no different position today than we were a year ago if we were looking ahead at '25. So we're right on pace. We're right on track. I fully expect we'll deploy that. I think what you're kind of scratching at here, Spiro, is, well, what if the market is more robust and presents opportunities that are above and beyond your free cash flow. I think the nice thing here, and I'm kind of looking at Jeff right now, but the disciplined management of our balance sheet and getting to investment grade and as we continue to grow EBITDA inside of free cash flow, just accumulating dry powder again on the balance sheet. We have $1 billion of undrawn debt capacity on the revolver. So if we have little, what I'll call, timing mismatches, we've got plenty of debt capacity to handle timing mismatches. But if the market does present opportunities that are above and beyond our free cash flow, we are accumulating dry powder on the balance sheet. We will not jeopardize investment grade. But that dry powder in the back of our mind, we're thinking is either going to do greenfield opportunities or, as the question earlier, if an appropriate bolt-on presented that fit the strategy and made sense in the portfolio, we have that dry powder optionality to pursue something like that as well. So it can go to either of those opportunities, Spiro. And that's kind of how I think about it at the highest level. And I hope I answered your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Robert Mosca from Mizuho.

So a lot of positive indicators in the Haynesville and still a lot of expansion potential across your assets there, especially with these additional interconnections. But could you speak to maybe other opportunities you're assessing in the basin, be it last-mile solutions to LNG facilities, storage or whether you've evaluated the potential to connect to power gen in Western Louisiana?

Yes. All of those that you rattled off, Rob, are in our sights right now. We're definitely looking at greenfield storage opportunities. Our customers are asking for that. They're searching for that. Given the LNG demand ramp, that's going to be an element of the ecosystem down there that's going to be required. And required in significantly larger quantities as we look forward in time with this growth coming. So that's one that we're spending a lot of time on. We have storage up here in Michigan. We're very familiar with storage. So that's clearly in our — on our short list. You alluded to the interconnect expansions. That's important. We are talking about last-mile expansions if parties downstream of us, if there's opportunities to participate in last mile expansions, and there will be a number of last-mile expansions required to meet this LNG ramp. In terms of other, what I'll call, incremental greenfield activity, we've been very successful in the private producer space recently, and we continue to focus on that market segment. And there are more and more privates emerging in the basin as the basin is becoming more of a focal point in the near term. So that's a segment of the market up there that we've been — that we will continue to focus on and try to pull them into the broader network there and give them that turnkey solution to go well ahead right to the LNG market.

Got it. That's great color. And then for my follow-up, there's been a couple of announcements this quarter around projects that could drive in-basin demand in the Northeast. Were any of those projects included in your assessment of demand pull opportunities around your network? And do you have the potential to benefit either directly or indirectly from that increased pull in Southwest PA?

Yes. The short answer is yes. Some of these AI data center demands that are dropping, what I'll call, in-basin proper so that they're not caught up in egress capacity constraints. At the highest level, it's going to allow the basin to ramp. So the ones that have been recently announced are going to allow basin production to ramp, call it, Bcf, Bcf plus over the next couple of years as those facilities get constructed. And yes, that will drive incremental drilling across the basin, and we believe that some of that incremental drilling is going to happen on our footprint. It will happen across the basin. But some of those big public companies that have announced and have been very vocal about this are customers of ours. So I'll just leave it at that.

Our next question comes from the line of Zack Van Everen from TPH.

Maybe just starting on the Haynesville. Good to see the record volumes for Q2. I was curious, I know some of those volumes are under acreage dedications as well as MVC style contracts. At this point, are you guys above MVC levels? Or are there a few of those contracts that are still below their contracted levels?

Yes, Zack, that's a great question, and it's a question that we get asked frequently. That's just a level of disclosure that we've not provided because of the sensitivity of a lot of those contracts with those individual customers. What I'll say at a high level is we like to put those floors into our agreements there to protect the downside. And I think over the last 18 to 24 months, we've all lived through the downside of the Haynesville. And they accomplished what they were intended to accomplish, I'll just say it that way. We're kind of on the other side of the valley now. We're climbing the mountain on the other side. And I think that's going to be positive for us. I'll just leave it at that.

Makes sense. Appreciate that. And then a quick one on the Northeast. It seems like volumes and EBITDA are going to ramp into Q4. Is it fair to assume Q3 is relatively flat to maybe slight growth and then all the growth in the Northeast will hit in Q4?

Yes. I think what we're saying publicly is that we expect a flat entry to exit rate in Appalachia. And I think Jeff provided a little color as to what was happening in Q2. We had some timing, drilling timing. You ship drilling timing 3 or 4 months, and it creates dips. And we had some maintenance/construction activity that occurred across the network that also impacted some volume flow. So that's really what happened. And we'll have the typical ramp, the seasonal ramp going into the winter, and we expect entry exit flat rates out of the Appalachian gathering.

Thank you. There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to our CEO, David Slater, for closing remarks.

and have a great day.

The meeting has now concluded. Thank you all for joining. Have a great rest of your day.