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Text: Now to kick this off, the beginning of a new year, I believe, is a good time to take stock of where KMI stands as an investment opportunity for its present and potential shareholders.
Whether you look at the results for the fourth quarter of 2021, the full year '21, or our budget outlook for 2022, which we released in December, it's apparent that this company produces substantial cash flow under almost any circumstances.
In my judgment, this is the bedrock for valuation because it gives us the ability to fund all our capital needs out of the recurring cash flow.
As I've stressed so many times, we can use that cash to maintain a solid balance sheet, invest in selected high-return expansion capex opportunities, pay a very rewarding and growing dividend and buy back shares on an opportunistic basis.
But I believe there's more of the story than that.
While we demonstrated by assets that we acquired during 2021 that we are participating meaningfully in the coming energy transition, it's also become apparent, particularly over the last several months that this transition will be longer and more complicated than many originally expected.
In short, there is a long runway for fossil fuels and especially natural gas.
Investing in the energy sector has been very lucrative recently with the energy sector, the best-performing sector of the S&P 500 during 2021.
We expect that favorable view to continue in 2022, and the year has started out that way.
Within the energy segment, I would argue that midstream pipelines are a good way of playing this trend.
They generally have less volatility and less commodity exposure than upstream and most have solid and growing cash flow underpinned by contracts to a large extent with their shippers.
We believe KMI is a particularly good fit for investors.
We are living within our cash flow.
We paid down over $12 billion in debt since 2016 and 2022 marks the fifth consecutive year we have increased our dividend, growing it over those years from $0.50 per share to $1.11 per share.
In addition to returning value to our shareholders through our dividend, our board has approved a substantial opportunistic buyback program, which we have the financial firepower to execute on during this year if we so choose.
Finally, this is a company run by shareholders for shareholders with our board and management owning about 13% of the company.
I hope and trust you'll keep these factors I have mentioned in mind when making investment decisions about our stock over the coming year.
More to come on all these subjects at our Investor Day conference next Wednesday.
As to 2021, we wrapped up a record year financially.
Much of that was due to our outperformance in Q1 as a result of the strong performance of our assets and our people during Winter Storm Uri.
Putting Uri aside, we were running a bit shy at plan in the full year guidance that we were giving you through our quarterly updates.
But by the end of the year, we closed the gap and met our EBITDA target, even excluding Uri, but including the benefit of our Stagecoach acquisition.
We also set ourselves up well for the future, getting off to a fast start in our energy transition ventures business with the acquisition of Kinetrex renewable natural gas business and adding to our already largest in the industry gas storage asset portfolio with the acquisition of Stagecoach.
Both of those acquisitions are outperforming our acquisition models.
Third, as we'll cover in detail at next week's conference, our future looks strong.
Our assets will be needed to meet growing energy needs around the world for a long time to come.
And over the long term, we can use our assets to store and transport the energy commodities of tomorrow.
And we have opportunities, as we have shown you, to enter into new energy transition opportunities at attractive returns.
We're entering 2022 with a solid balance sheet, including the capacity to repurchase shares with well-positioned existing businesses and with an attractive set of capital projects.
Our approach to capital allocation remains principled and consistent.
First, take care of the balance sheet, which we have with our budget showing net debt to EBITDA of 4.3 times, then invest in attractive return projects and businesses we know well at returns that are well in excess of our cost of capital.
Our discretionary capital needs are running more in the $1 billion to $2 billion range annually, and at $1.3 billion, we're at the lower end of that range in our 2022 budget, not at the $2 billion to $3 billion that we experienced in the last decade.
We're also generally seeing -- or we're continuing to tilt, I guess, I would say, toward generally smaller-sized projects that are built off of our existing network, and we can do those at very attractive returns and with less execution risk.
The final step in the process is return the excess cash to shareholders in the form of an increasing and well-covered dividend that's $1.11 for 2022 and in the form of share repurchases.
As we said in our 2022 budget guidance released in December, we expect to have $750 million of balance sheet capacity for attractive opportunities, including opportunistic share repurchases.
Given the current lower capital spending environment we are now experiencing, we would expect to have the capacity to repurchase shares even if we add some investment opportunities as the year proceeds in the form of additional projects, etc.
As we've always emphasized when discussing repurchases, we will be opportunistic, not programmatic.
We believe the winners in our sector will have strong balance sheets, invest wisely in new opportunities to add to the value of the firm, have low-cost operations that are safe and environmentally sound and the ability to get things done in difficult circumstances.
We're proud of our team and our culture.
And as always, we will evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities in the years ahead.
Starting with our Natural Gas business unit for the quarter.
Transport volumes were down 3% or approximately 1.1 million dekatherms per day versus the fourth quarter 2020 that was driven primarily by continued decline in Rockies production, the pipeline outage on EPNG and FEP contract expirations, which were offset somewhat by increased LNG deliveries and PHP and service volumes.
Physical deliveries to LNG facilities off of our pipeline averaged about 5 million dekatherms per day that's a 33% increase versus the fourth quarter of '20.
Our market share of LNG deliveries remains around 50%.
Exports to Mexico were down in the quarter when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 as a result of third-party pipeline capacity recently added to the market.
Overall deliveries to power plants were up slightly, at least in part, partially driven by coal supply issues, while LDC deliveries were down as a result of lower heating degree days.
Our natural gas gathering volumes were up 6% in the quarter.
For gathering volumes, though, I think the more informative comparison is the sequential quarter.
So compared with the third quarter of this year, volumes were up 7%, with a big increase in Haynesville volumes, which were up 19% and Bakken volumes, which were up 9%.
Volumes in the Eagle Ford increased slightly.
In our products pipeline segment, refined product volumes were up 9% for the quarter versus the fourth quarter of 2020.
Compared to prepandemic levels using the fourth quarter '19 as a reference point, road fuel, gasoline, and diesel were down about 2% and Jet was down 22%.
In Q3, road fuels were down 3% versus the prepandemic number, though we did see a slight improvement.
Crude and condensate volumes were down 3% in the quarter versus the fourth quarter of '20.
Sequential volumes were down approximately 1%, with a reduction in Eagle Ford volumes, partially offset by an increase in the Bakken.
If you strip out Double H pipeline volumes from our Bakken numbers that pipeline is impacted by alternative egress options.
And you look only at our Bakken gathering volumes, they were up 7%.
In our Terminals business segment, our liquids utilization percentage remains high at 93%.
If you exclude tanks out of service for required inspection, utilization is approximately 97%.
Our rack business, which serves consumer domestic demand is up nicely versus Q4 of '20 and also up versus prepandemic levels.
Our hub facilities, primarily Houston and New York, are driven more by refinery runs, international trade and blending dynamics are also up versus the Q4 of '20.
But those terminals are still down versus prepandemic levels.
We've seen some green shoots in our marine tanker business with all 16 vessels currently sailing under firm contracts.
On the bulk side, volumes increased by 8%, and that was driven by coal and bulk volumes are up 2% versus the fourth quarter of '19.
In our CO2 segment, crude volumes were down 4%, CO2 volumes were down 13% and NGL volumes were down 1%.
On price, we didn't see the benefit of increasing prices on our weighted average crude price due to the hedges we put in place in prior periods when prices were lower.
However, we did benefit from higher prices on our NGL and CO2 volumes.
For the year versus our budget, crude volumes and price were better than budget, CO2 volumes and price were better than budget and NGL price was better than budget.
So a good year for our CO2 segment relative to our expectations and CO2 volumes have started the year above our '22 plan.
As Steve said, we had a very nice year.
We ended approximately $1 billion better on DCF and $1.1 billion better than our EBITDA with respect to -- our EBITDA budget.
And most of that was due to the outperformance attributable to winter storm or all of it was due to the outperformance attributable to Winter Storm Uri.
If you strip out the impact of the storm and you strip out roughly $60 million in pipe replacement projects that we decided to do during the year that impacts sustaining capex, we ended the year on plan for both EBITDA and DCF.
So for the fourth quarter 2021, we are declaring a dividend of $0.27 per share, which brings us to $1.08 of declared dividends for full year 2021, and that's up 3% from the dividends declared for 2020.
During the quarter, we generated revenue of $4.4 billion, up $1.3 billion from the fourth quarter of 2020.
That's largely up due to higher commodity prices, which also increased our cost of sales in the businesses where we purchase and sell commodities.
Revenue less cost of sales or gross margin was up $107 million.
We generated net income to KMI of $637 million, up 5% from the fourth quarter of 2020.
Adjusted net income, which excludes certain items, was up -- was $609 million, up 1% from last year, and adjusted earnings per share was $0.27 in line with last year.
Moving on to our segment performance versus Q4 of 2020.
Our Natural Gas segment was up driven by contributions from Stagecoach and PHP, partially offset by lower contributions from FEP where we've had contract expirations, NGPL because of our partial interest sale and EPNG due to lower usage and park and loan activity.
Products segment was up due to refined products volume and favorable price impacts.
Our terminals segment was down driven by weakness in the Jones Act tanker business and an impact from a gain on sale of an equity interest in 2020.
CO2 was down, as favorable NGL and CO2 prices were more than offset by lower CO2 and oil volumes, the oil volumes were above plan.
G&A and corporate charges were higher due to larger benefit costs, as well as cost savings we achieved in 2020 driven by lower activity due to the pandemic.
Our JV DD&A was lower primarily due to lower contributions from the Ruby Pipeline.
And our sustaining capital was higher versus the fourth quarter of last year that was higher in natural gas, terminals, and products, and that is a fairly large increase, but we were expecting the vast majority of it has -- much of the spend from early in the year was pushed into later in the year.
For the full year versus plan on sustaining capital, we are $72 million higher and roughly $60 million of that is due to the pipe replacement project that Kim mentioned.
The total DCF of $1.093 billion or $0.48 per share is down $0.07 versus last year's quarter, and that's mostly due to the sustaining capital.
On the balance sheet, we ended the year with $31.2 billion of net debt with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 3.9 times, down from 4.6 times at year-end 2020.
Removing the nonrecurring Uri contribution to EBITDA, that ratio at the end of 2021 would be 4.6 times, which is in line with the budget for the year.
Our net debt declined $404 million from the third quarter, and it declined $828 million from the end of 2020.
To reconcile the change for the quarter, we generated $1.093 billion in DCF.
We spent -- or paid out $600 million in dividends, we spent $150 million in growth capex, JV contributions, and acquisitions, and we had a working capital source of $70 million, and that explains the majority of the change for the quarter for the year.
We generated $5.460 billion of DCF.
We paid out dividends of $2.4 billion.
We spent $570 million on growth capex and JV contributions.
We spent $1.53 billion on the Stagecoach and Kinetrex acquisitions.
We received $413 million in proceeds from the NGPL interest sale, and we had a working capital use of approximately $530 million.
And that explains the majority of the $828 million reduction in net debt for the year.
But if you've got more questions, get back in the queue, and we will come back around to you.

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qtrly adjusted earnings per share $0.27.

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