Earnings Call Transcript - KNTK Q1 2022

Operator, Operator

Hello everyone and welcome to the Kinetik First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. My name is Sam and I will be the operator for the call today. I would now like to hand the floor over to Maddie to begin. Please go ahead.

Maddie Wagner, President

Thank you. Good morning everyone, and welcome to Kinetik's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Here with me is our President and CEO Jamie Welch, as well as Matt Wall, our COO, and Annie Psencik, our Chief Strategy Officer; Steve Stellato, our CAO; Todd Carpenter, our GC; Trevor Howard, our VP of Finance; and Kris Kindrick and Tyler Milam, our VPs of Commercial. The press release we issued yesterday, the slide presentation, and access to the webcast for today's call are available at our website www.kinetik.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including the question-and-answer section, will provide forward-looking statements and actual results could differ from what is described in these statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks and assumptions. We may also provide certain performance measures that do not conform to U.S. GAAP. We've provided schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures as part of our earnings press release. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to Q&A. With that, I will turn the call over to Jamie.

Jamie Welch, CEO

Thank you, Maddie. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for your continued support of and interest in Kinetik. I'm pleased to be here this morning to review our first quarter 2022 achievements. This call today is important, marking Kinetik's inaugural results as a combined publicly traded company, following the Altus and BCP business combination in February. We reported our first quarter 2022 results yesterday afternoon and are pleased to share them with you this morning. It is worth highlighting that many of the figures today will be reported on a pro forma basis, assuming the business combination closed on January 1st of this year. We believe that is more reflective of our actual results and provides our investors and others with more meaningful information and helps to reconcile our 2022 full year guidance. On Slide 3, let's start with a few highlights. We reported pro forma EBITDA of $191 million for the first quarter. This represents a 17% increase year over year, normalized for winter storm Uri, driven by increased volumes across both the midstream logistics and pipeline transportation segments, as well as higher commodity prices. Processed gas volumes increased 9% year-over-year, averaging 1.11 Bcf per day this quarter. In April, we announced the PHP capacity expansion Open Season, and anticipate an upcoming similar announcement on Gulf Coast Express. Both pipeline expansions are highly capital efficient and will help to address the near-term natural gas takeaway constraints facing the Permian Basin. We're excited to work with Kinder Morgan and our other partners to be a part of this solution on behalf of our E&P customers. We had a successful quarter executing our capital allocation priorities outlined back in February. During the first quarter, we redeemed approximately 25% of the Series A preferred, and we remain on track to redeem the outstanding balance by year-end. This is a key step towards cleaning up the legacy of Altus capital structure and achieving investment grade ratings in 2023. We will look to undertake our comprehensive refinancing this quarter, which will materially improve our current inefficient capital structure and financial transparency. On Page 4 of our earnings slides, let's take a closer look at our financials for the first quarter. We reported pro forma adjusted EBITDA of $191 million. As mentioned, this represents a 17% increase year-over-year, normalized for the effects of winter storm Uri in February 2021. We generated adjusted pro forma distributable cash flow of $145 million and free cash flow of $119 million. On April 21, we declared a $1.50 per share quarterly cash dividend, which is $6 per share on an annualized basis. That represented a pro forma dividend coverage ratio of 1.5 times, free cash flow generated during the period was used to redeem 53,000 units of the Series A preferred at quarter-end. This was in addition to 15% of the preferred being redeemed immediately prior to closing of the business combination. Our leverage ratio exited the quarter at four times, and we remain focused on achieving our leverage target of 3.5 times. We are confident in our ability to achieve our financial goals and capital allocation priorities to achieve investment grade ratings in 2023. In March, Apache successfully closed on the sale of 4 million Kinetik shares. The secondary equity offering more than doubled our public float, and Kinetik's average daily trading volume has doubled from pre-offering levels as well. The public now owns 11% of total outstanding Kinetik shares. In connection with the sale, the first $100 million of proceeds received by Apache is earmarked for Alpine High development activity over the next 24 months. Apache has guided to a single rig program in the Alpine High beginning in summer of 2022. After the completion of its drilling operations in the DXL area, which commences on November 1st, is also dedicated to Kinetik for long-term high-pressure gas gathering and processing services. Looking at segment-specific EBITDA contributions on page five of the earnings slides, Midstream Logistics EBITDA was $124 million, up 22% year-over-year when normalized for winter storm Uri. This was primarily driven by increased volumes across three commodities: gas, oil and water. Gas process volumes were up 9% year-over-year and exceeded gas gathered volume growth due to several top dedications, which began on January 1st. Crude volumes modestly grew, and produced water volumes grew by 7%, largely driven by a new volume tranche dedication beginning in March 2022. Importantly, approximately 80 new wells were turned to sales in the first quarter, more towards the back end of the third quarter than on the front end – meaning January, early February. So – and those 80 new wells were provided midstream services. Our pipeline transportation EBITDA was $17 million, up 24% year-over-year. This growth was largely due to record volumes on both Shin Oak and EPIC Crude this past quarter, as well as the reversal of winter storm Uri related expenses in 2021 at PHP. Shin Oak’s throughput volumes in the first quarter were just shy of 500,000 barrels per day, a record quarter for the pipeline. Given the strong volume growth on Shin Oak, the operator may look to optimize pipeline hydraulics to further increase the pipeline capacity to over 600,000 barrels per day, allowing for future growth. EPIC Crude also continues to improve its performance by shipping a record 500,000 barrels per day as its shipper customers seek to access the premium Corpus Christi markets. Based on our forecast, we expect to exceed the high end of our 2022 guidance range provided in February. As a reminder, our 2022 guidance included an EBITDA range of $770 million to $810 million and CapEx including maintenance and growth of $125 million to $150 million. We will look to revise upwards our guidance this quarter and provide an update at or before our second quarter results call. Moving on to operations, our capital projects continue to be on budget and on time. We have locked in the majority of our capital costs for this year, largely insulating 2022 operating and capital costs from higher inflation levels widely seen across the economy. We have also inflation escalators with our customers in our gathering and processing agreements that allow us to absorb future cost pressures we may experience. Turning to Slide 9, I would like to provide an update on our Altus and EagleClaw integration efforts. We have made significant progress since closing integrating both assets and personnel. The surface system interconnect pipeline, which connects the legacy Altus and legacy BCP systems, is on track to be in service by late June. This will provide us with the ability to move 500 million cubic feet a day of rich gas directionally and allow us to use latent capacity at the Diamond Cryo complex. This project is ahead of schedule and on budget. We will look to begin replacing system-wide rental compression with legacy Altus owned compressor units throughout the year. A number of locations representing 37,000 horsepower have been identified for this year alone. Additionally, we're in the detailed engineering and design stages to install the legacy Altus owned treating units at the front end of the East Toya, Pecos Bend and Pecos. This allows us to expand our service offerings to gas treating as well as receive a wider range of gas with respect to gas quality specifications. Since the closing, we have already locked in a number of integration-related cost savings. The Apache and Altus construction operations and maintenance agreement was terminated at closing, which resulted in $9 million of annual cost savings. We are in the process of implementing operational best practices at Diamond Cryo and across our broader gathering system, which will harvest additional cost efficiencies. Finally, we completed our back office transition, including IT, HR and accounting earlier this month, and terminated the Apache transition services agreement on April 30th. As part of our integration efforts, we are looking to implement our EagleClaw ESG best practices at the Altus assets. We will green the legacy Altus facilities and source electricity from renewable energy sources. In April 2021, we did exactly that. We moved EagleClaw's processing complexes to 100% renewable energy sources and have realized a large reduction in Scope 2 emissions. We will look to achieve similar results when we transition the Altus assets over to a new renewable energy sourced electricity agreement later this year. On the topic of ESG, we will be publishing our 2021 Sustainability Report this summer. Our 2021 greenhouse gas emissions data was not readily available at the time that Altus released its full year 2021 results. We would like to take a moment to share our successes from last year on Slide 11 of the earnings presentation. We have made great progress in reducing our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Between 2019 and 2021, we have seen a 41% reduction in absolute greenhouse gas emissions. This was largely driven by compression optimization. Future Scope 2 emissions will be significantly reduced once Altus facilities are migrated to renewably sourced energy. We are committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and strive to be good stewards of the environment, the communities in which we operate, and our industry. I would now like to pivot and share a few updates on our tremendous recent commercial successes on Slide 7 of the earnings presentation. Starting with our midstream logistics segment, we signed two new high-pressure gas gathering and processing agreements with large capital investment grade counterparties. These agreements will contribute 360 million cubic feet a day of volume and are supported by approximately $300 million cubic feet a day of minimum volume commitments. The full financial impact of these contracts will be reflected in 2023. However, they will provide a nice upswing in the fourth quarter as we exit 2022. Expected volumes from the new agreements represent 45% of our $800 million cubic feet a day of latent processing capacity that we had highlighted, and clearly demonstrate the intrinsic and extrinsic value of available processing capacity in today's environment. We have consistently said that Delaware basin processing capacity appears to be much tighter than may be appreciated by the market. Labor constraints and significantly longer than normal lead times for new processing equipment only exacerbate processing capacity tightness, making our latent processing capacity that much more valuable. Having sold out 45% of our latent capacity in two months, which surprised even us, it means that we have now accelerated plans to expand our Diamond Cryo's processing capacity by 120 million cubic feet a day by adding additional revenue compression. This capacity expansion is low risk and is expected to cost approximately $12 million. That represents 80% less than the equivalent cost of adding greenfield processing capacity today. Following the completion of the expansion in the first quarter of 2023, our processing capacity will increase to over 2 Bcf a day. This Diamond Cryo expansion is a highly efficient capital project and will allow us to refill our operating leverage. And certainly, before people ask, yes, we've already started engineering work to analyze what additional capacity we can get from every other processing train on our system. So today, we know that we will have at least 600 million cubic feet a day of pro forma remaining processing capacity. Therefore, we remain uniquely positioned to meet new and existing customer needs and support continued future growth. Turning to Apache related activity, our new 10-year high-pressure gathering and processing agreement with Apache for their DXL acreage in Central Reeves County begins November 1 of this year. Apache will be turning to sales a new six well pad in the third quarter. Apache's fourth rig dedicated to the Delaware basin will be moving from DXL to Alpine High this summer to resume drilling activity following the successful Willow State and Mohican World brought online in the first half of 2021. Given commodity prices, it is realistic to expect more upside from Apache related activity. Turning to our pipeline transportation segment, we announced along with Kinder, the binding Open Season for the Permian Highway pipeline expansion, providing nearly 650 million cubic feet a day of incremental capacity. Additionally, we expect to announce a similar Open Season for an expansion of the Gulf Coast Express pipeline. These two pipelines combined will provide over 1.2 Bcf a day of new incremental capacity from the Permian to the Gulf Coast. Both the PHP and GCX expansions will likely come online in the second half of 2023. We view these brownfield expansions which add additional compression capacity and involve limited pipeline construction as the quickest and most cost-effective solutions to address the natural gas takeaway constraints in the basin. Given the current troubling world events and results in additional need for U.S. sourced energy, we see the Permian as uniquely positioned. As such, we're excited to be a part of the solution to address the critical future call to support our European allies. What is quite astounding is the significant impact from the additional EBITDA contributions from potential PHP and GCX expansions together with the expected volume upside to Shin Oak’s capacity. Those projects alone will increase our pipeline transportation segment EBITDA by over 25%. As a result, the pipeline transportation segment would then represent 40% of our total EBITDA. As you can see, we really have hit the ground running, had a strong quarter delivering results, and setting up Kinetik for future long-term success. In closing, I'm extremely proud of what Kinetik has been able to accomplish this quarter. I want to thank all the hard work and effort by our employees. This success is because of you. I also want to commend them for their commitment and dedication to continued safe and reliable operations. I look forward to sharing more results with all of you in the future. And now I'll turn the call back over to Maddie.

Maddie Wagner, President

Thank you, Jamie. Sam, would you please open the lines for Q&A?

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Spiro Dounis from Credit Suisse.

Spiro Dounis, Analyst

Jamie, I want to start with the Cryo expansion, if we could. It looks like you guys are surprised by the acceleration there, so were we, just given all that latent capacity you all have. And even if I look at Slide 7, there’s just still a lot of capacity left to fill. So, I'm curious how we should be reading the decision to expand so quickly; curious what your commercial team is telling you about what's remaining from here.

Jamie Welch, CEO

So let me explain. I think we knew that the Diamond Cryo expansion was the single largest potential expansion across our entire processing fleet. It’s relatively modest cost. We have a lot of commercial activity, and I think we surprised ourselves. When you sell out almost half your latent processing capacity in two months following the closing of the merger, it tells you that you better have additional processing capacity on hand. Because the level of activity and the number of conversations we've got going with customers and others concerning that capacity, we could see it all filled up on a much more accelerated timeframe, which we thought originally would take us three to five years. We could be sitting here in 12 to 18 months and we could be fully sold out. So we want to be ready. It's really important to be prepared. The long lead times, we think that continued supply chain disruptions extend the timeframes. We know that the long lead items have gone from about 26 weeks to 40 weeks today, increasing the timeline, looking at a year just to get on incremental revenue for sales compression. We thought for $12 million it’s better to be safe than sorry in the current environment. Our success is indicated by the fact that our conversations are driven by our excess capacity, and others just don’t have that. So we want to capitalize on that, creating tremendous value for all of our stakeholders.

Spiro Dounis, Analyst

Switching gears a bit and just thinking about funding a lot of this new growth coming forward. It sounds like this Cryo project is very achievable on a $12 million cost. So that's fine. I guess you also have the two Permian gas pipelines potentially coming and then maybe any sort of associated gathering that goes along with this processing. So, I'm curious, as you look forward, you're obviously in the middle of refinancing now, how you are thinking about funding some of this growth?

Jamie Welch, CEO

I think as it relates to the pipeline transportation segment, it's a little different than on the Gathering and Processing side. For the PHP and GCX, there will be a period of 15 to 18 months during which we will have spending related to that particular investment. On the pipeline transportation side, it's fair to say our blended multiple around 5.5x is what you would be looking at. When you think about it against our long-range forecast, you’ve only got two multiple points relative to our overall leverage threshold that we are now talking about. I think there are multiple means and approaches to get that incremental equity out, whether it’s in the form of thinking about the drip into 2023, or whether it involves an at-the-money program for some modest amount because we want this equity to be in lockstep with the ratable spend. As for the gathering side, we are evaluating what the incremental amounts are, based on some aid in construction from customers, which basically gives us capital. We have some operational flexibility to focus on the capital resulting from connections for one of these new contracts. We can defer some of the other planned capital as emphasis will be placed on this particular area as opposed to another. So, it’s always dynamic, and we don’t expect a significant increase in the overall spend. Most importantly, the biggest spend on our G&P business is processing, and we have that in spades. So, these incremental well connects, short laterals and connections really don’t require significant capital.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Gabe Moreen from Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Gabe Moreen, Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Jamie, if I can start off with the guidance raise. Without the guidance raise, if I determine maybe as such, can you just talk about what sort of factors are causing you to be hesitant to raise guidance right now, officially, and only do so after Q2 in terms of adjusting guidance? Just sort of the give and takes about maybe some items you are looking for visibility before you do that.

Jamie Welch, CEO

Sure. So I think, Gabe, it's a multitude of factors. First off, we want to get the PHP and GCX FIDs done, right? They are significant, particularly given that we own majority control of PHP. That – at 650 million cubic feet a day, you’re dealing with something that is probably close to $450 million to $500 million of total spend. So, that's a big one. We also want to finalize the refinancing. With the refinancing, we plan to implement a hedging program to ensure that we've got things secured as we assess the overall commodity price curve. We have other commercial aspects being negotiated. We wanted to tackle all of this within the second quarter and say, 'Okay, now we know all the precincts have reported. This is everything we can possibly know' – there will still be factors evolving, but that magnitude of what we're dealing with will be unprecedented. Rather than offering a guidance raise now and then shortly after coming back with updates on GCX and PHP, we wanted to do it after Q2 so we can communicate thoughtfully and clearly.

Gabe Moreen, Analyst

And then maybe if I could just follow-up on PHP. Can you discuss, within the broader context of ensuring your customers have adequate takeaway capacity, your confidence in all these processing and additional contracts that your customers do need to secure egress? Will Kinetik itself be taking any capacity either on PHP or GCX to facilitate customers getting out of the basin?

Jamie Welch, CEO

Let me start with your last question first. Yes, we are an anchor shipper on PHP today. We will continue to ensure that we take up additional capacity with the expansion. On GCX, we are not a shipper today, but our intention is to become one pro forma with the expansion. It is crucial that we have that egress. We can confidently state that we have the egress capacity for our customers, making our service offering more unique than others. We’ll continue to have more capacity going forward with multiple players, GCX and PHP.

Gabe Moreen, Analyst

If I could just squeeze in one last question. Given the better growth than expected underway, I'm just wondering where the Grand Prix potential dropdown fits in your order of priorities at this point, whether that's changed at all in the past couple of months?

Jamie Welch, CEO

No, I don't think it's changed at all. It's an ongoing conversation with Blackstone; they have to determine the right timing to potentially harvest that investment. It has been a great investment so far, and they know that we're managing a lot currently. It's a conversation ideally suited for the latter half of the year.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Neal Mitra from Bank of America.

Neal Mitra, Analyst

I wanted to understand the cadence of growth for the 360 million cubic feet a day agreement. Where are we starting from in late '22, and at what point do you expect to fully ramp to the full 360? And then just as a follow-on to that, are there other reasons for the Diamond expansion, such as a Shin Oak interconnection that would give you better team FPS versus what you're getting from other interconnects from the legacy cross systems?

Jamie Welch, CEO

So, Neil, good morning, thank you for the question. The short answer regarding the new contracts with the two large cap investment grade counterparties is that they actually start approximately 85% of the 360. It begins almost immediately at the end of this year in the fourth quarter of 2022 and will hit 360 by mid-next year. As far as Shin Oak is concerned, we have Lonestar, we have Grand Prix, and we have Shin Oak. Shin Oak is connected to Diamond, and we’ve the ability to move volumes on Shin Oak, in which we own a third. This situation provides us an outlet and an additional option for customers.

Neal Mitra, Analyst

And I wanted to switch to the pipeline section. You know that you're an anchor shipper on PHP, and I wanted to understand a little bit more detail around that. Do you plan to hold the capacity and kind of play the marketing game, because it seems we have Permian blowouts kind of every two years or the plan to sleeve that to customers? And what percentage of the pipe are you holding?

Jamie Welch, CEO

On the original pipeline, the 400 million cubic feet a day, we had sleeved or assigned to our various customers. We had actually reached back to our customers, and each of them have been allocated either on a basket or an outright assignment of some of the capacity. So that is available for all of our customers whether it is related to EOG, Diamondback, or Colgate. It’s still too early to discuss the expansion since we are in the binding Open Season. As I stated, we intend to take up some of the expansion capacity to maintain available access downstream as we have more and more volume on our system and an increasing demand for egress to Gulf Coast markets.

Neal Mitra, Analyst

Got it. So just so I understand, you typically want to sleeve the capacity to customers, but do you want to hold some of it for yourself so you can push some equity barrels from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast when spreads widen?

Jamie Welch, CEO

With our equity gas, which is gas associated with a small component of PHP contracts, yes. We treat ourselves on our equity gas the same way we treat all of the other customers in the basket of PHP. Those who want Gulf Coast pricing as part of their weighted average sales price for revenue, we treat ourselves the same way. We're not looking to capitalize this. It's not a marketing business from our standpoint; this is a customer-directed segment of our business.

Neal Mitra, Analyst

Got it. And if I can just squeeze one more in, is there any update on P3? It seems like these expansion projects will be a temporary fix and we will need Greenfield projects pretty soon. So, what's the timing of FID on that project and will you participate at all?

Jamie Welch, CEO

Short answer on P3 is that we have to get through PHP and the GCX expansions, which will bring 1.2 Bcf a day of capacity to the Permian by the second half of 2023. As it relates to P3 or any potential pipeline or other projects, I think there’s room for several, not just one, all of which need to be commercialized. I believe we will be discussing commercialization of these projects toward the end of next year rather than anytime sooner. We need large anchor customers to make it happen, and we need to establish value for money in relation to the current build cost, which is significantly higher than it was back in 2017.

Operator, Operator

We have no further questions on the call, so I will hand the floor back to Maddie.

Maddie Wagner, President

Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining us this morning. That will conclude our call.

Operator, Operator

Thank you all for joining Kinetik’s first quarter 2022 earnings call. You may now disconnect your lines.