Western Midstream Partners, LP (NYSE:WES) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 9, 2023 2:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Daniel Jenkins - Director of Investor Relations

Michael Ure - Chief Executive Officer

Kristen Shults - Chief Financial Officer

Danny Holderman - Senior Vice President, Southern Operations

Conference Call Participants

Brian Reynolds - UBS

Jeremy Tonet - JPMorgan

Keith Stanley - Wolfe Research

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Brent, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Western Midstream Partners Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Daniel Jenkins, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Daniel Jenkins

Thank you. I'm glad you could join us today for Western Midstream's Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. I'd like to remind you that today's call, the accompanying slide deck and last night's earnings release contain important disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP reconciliations. Please reference Western Midstream's most recent Form 10-Q and other public filings for a description of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we discuss today. Relevant reference materials are posted on our website. With me today are Michael Ure, our Chief Executive Officer; Kristen Shults, our Chief Financial Officer; and Danny Holderman, our Senior Vice President Southern Operations.

I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Ure

Thank you, Daniel and good afternoon everyone. During the second quarter, we experienced increased natural gas and crude oil and NGLs throughput, which was driven by continued throughput growth from our Delaware Basin assets, a recovery in volumes from our assets in Utah and Wyoming and higher throughput from our equity investments. In fact, this was our second consecutive quarter of record-breaking natural gas and crude oil and NGL throughput in the Delaware Basin and the inclement weather that impacted our Utah and Wyoming assets during the first quarter subsided during the second quarter.

While our natural gas and crude oil and NGLs throughput, and the associated adjusted gross margin increased on a sequential quarter basis, our adjusted EBITDA declined slightly, primarily due to higher operation and maintenance expense due to the seasonal increase in utilities and higher field level personnel expenses and increased property and other taxes. As a reminder, our first quarter property and other taxes decreased substantially due to a reduction in the ad valorem property tax accrual.