Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript January 17, 2024 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Rich Kinder - Executive Chairman

Kim Dang - CEO

Tom Martin - President

David Michels - VP and CFO

Dax Sanders - President, Products Pipelines

Sital Mody - President, Natural Gas Pipelines

Conference Call Participants

Jeremy Tonet - JPMorgan

Brian Reynolds - UBS

Jean Ann Salisbury - Bernstein

John Mackay - Goldman Sachs

Tristan Richardson - Scotiabank

Neel Mitra - Bank of America

Theresa Chen - Barclays

Zack Van Everen - TPH & Company

Harry Mateer - Barclays

Operator

Welcome to the Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference. [Operator Instructions] I would like to inform all parties that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Rich Kinder, Executive Chairman of Kinder Morgan. Thank you. You may begin.

Rich Kinder

Thank you, Sheila. Before we begin, as usual, 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 and 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 disclosures 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 that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated and described in such forward-looking statements.

As we look at our financial outlook for 2024, we are projecting very healthy growth in EBITDA, EPS, and DCF per share. While there are always headwinds and tailwinds for a company as sizable as Kinder Morgan, it appears that our strategy of expanding our assets through expansion CapEx and acquisitions, primarily in our Natural Gas segment, is delivering real benefits to the bottom-line. Kim and the management team will be taking you through our '24 budget in great detail at the Investment Conference next week.

In my remarks on these calls over the last few quarters, I've tried to outline the tremendous growth that we and most energy experts expect in natural gas production and demand over the coming years, driven primarily by LNG exports and exports to Mexico. To the obvious relief of all of you on this call, I won't be repeating the details supporting our outlook, but that growth is leading to extensive opportunities to grow our system, which already delivers about 40% of the nation's natural gas throughput. Through selective expansion and extension of our enormous system, we can benefit from this expansion. Thankfully, most of these opportunities are concentrated along the Gulf Coast, where permitting and construction usually moves more quickly than elsewhere.