Western Midstream Partners, LP (NYSE:WES) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 3, 2022 2:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Daniel Jenkins - Director, Investor Relations

Michael Ure - Chief Executive Officer

Kristen Shults - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Neel Mitra - Bank of America

Keith Stanley - Wolfe Research

Jeremy Tonet - JPMorgan

Gabe Moreen - Mizuho

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Dennis and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Western Midstream Partners Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [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 am glad you could join us today for Western Midstream’s third quarter 2022 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 and Kristen Shults, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Ure

Thank you, Daniel and good afternoon everyone. Yesterday, we reported another quarter of solid operational performance at Western Midstream. We continue to experience robust activity from the Delaware Basin as we achieved record-breaking throughput for both natural gas and produced water for the second consecutive quarter in the basin. However, we experienced reduced excess natural gas liquids volumes in combination with lower natural gas liquids pricing, lower distributions from equity investments and higher operation and maintenance expense, which were the primary drivers behind the sequential quarter decrease in adjusted EBITDA.

From an M&A perspective, we are pleased to announce both the acquisition of the remaining interest in the Ranch Westex natural gas processing plant in the Delaware Basin and the divestiture of our Cactus II equity investment. These activities align with our M&A strategy that has focused on adding processing capacity in our core basins, allocating capital efficiently and generating strong returns for our unitholders. Additionally, in conjunction with the Cactus II divestiture, the board has also agreed to materially increase our unit repurchase program, which Kristen will discuss in more detail shortly.