Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to the quarterly earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. [Operator instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr.

Rich Kinder, executive chairman of Kinder Morgan.

Rich Kinder -- Executive Chairman

Thank you, Jordan. And as I always do, before we begin, I'd like to remind you that KMI's earnings release today and this call include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as well as certain non-GAAP financial measures. Before making any investment decisions, we strongly encourage you to read our full disclosure on forward-looking statements and use of non-GAAP financial measures set forth at the end of our earnings release as well as review our latest filings with the SEC for important material assumptions, expectations and risk factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated and described in such forward-looking statements. Let me start by saying that in these turbulent and volatile times, it seems to me that every public company owes its investors a clear explanation of its strategy and its financial philosophy.

In these days, platitudes and unsubstantiated hockey stick growth projections don't play well. To my way of thinking, despite the pronouncements of celebrities, fortune may not favor the brave so much as it favors the cash. The ability to produce sizable amounts of cash from operations should be viewed as a real positive in picking investments. But I believe that generating cash is only part of the story.

The rest is dependent on how that cash is utilized. At Kinder Morgan, we consistently produce solid and growing cash flow, and we demonstrated that once again this quarter. At the board and the management level, we spend a lot of time and effort deciding how to deploy that cash. As I've said ad nauseam, our goals are to maintain a strong investment-grade balance sheet, fund expansion and acquisition opportunities, pay a handsome and growing dividend and further reward our shareholders by repurchasing our shares on an opportunistic basis.

As Steve and the team will explain in detail, we used our funds for all of those purposes in the second quarter. To further clarify our way of thinking, we approved new capital projects only when we are assured that these projects will yield a return well in excess of our weighted cost of capital. Obviously, in the case of new pipeline projects, most of the return is normally based on long-term throughput contracts, which we are able to negotiate prior to the start of construction. But we also look at the long-term horizon and we're pretty conservative in assumptions on renewal contracts after expiration of the base term and on the terminal value of the investment.