Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Keith Stanley: Got it. Thanks. Separate question. Just on the buybacks and how you’re thinking about it for this year. So, it’s a little bit more of a growth year in terms of spending in 2023. So your DCF is only a little bit above, I think, your CapEx and your dividends. So, when you think about buybacks and obviously, you’re opportunistic, but would you be willing to increase debt or issue debt more short-term borrowings in order to buy back stock if the opportunity was there since you’re well under your leverage target for this year?

David Michels: Yes, we would. We think about our capacity for buybacks or other opportunistic opportunities as being our balance sheet capacity as well as the excess cash that we generate in the current year. And so, we would be willing to increase our leverage a little bit. We’ll be real cautious around it, we’ll measure and make sure that we’re being — we’re using that capacity in an appropriate manner, but that is the way that we think about our available capacity.

Operator: The next question is from Neal Dingmann with Truist Securities.

Neal Dingmann: You all hear it mostly, I’m just — my question is around first on the renewable diesel specifically. Just what future opportunities you see there beyond the Carson terminal and the committed projects? And you touched around this as well, maybe the second question, just hit this now as well, just the same thing on opportunities you see around the CCS.

Steve Kean: Yes. So Dax, if you’ll comment on the R&D part of it, and John, if you’ll talk about the upstream, the feedstock part of it as well.

Dax Sanders: Yes. So just to comment, I mean, as we’ve said before, right now, every drop of renewable diesel in the United States wants to go to California. I think we expect that as additional state governments later on a third level of the tax credit similar to the one that California has in other states have them, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia that there will be more enthusiasm for projects there. We’ve got terminals there. We are having conversations with people. And so, I think that’s probably other areas in the West Coast or probably next places to potentially develop. And then certainly, with the two hubs that we’re developing in both Northern and Southern California, I think there are additional opportunities to potentially expand those. So, that’s the majority of it from the refined products perspective.

Steve Kean: Okay. And feedstocks.

John Schlosser: Sure. I mean we said last year when we announced the Neste deal that we felt that all boats would rise and there has created a number of opportunities to high-grade our assets, high-grade our customers at Harvey bring additional products in their raise rates, but it has also attracted other customers. And this is what we hope is the second of many projects we’ll be looking at, great opportunity to connect with a neighboring facility that’s involved in an expansion project, where we’ll be handling all the feedstocks into the facility under a long-term10-year take-or-pay. The other area to actually help us too is on our Jones Act vessels. We’ve seen a lot of movement as it relates to renewable diesel from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast and interest in that, which we think will further tighten an already tight Jones Act market.

Operator: And I’m showing no further questions at this time.

Rich Kinder: Okay. Thank you very much. Everybody, have a good evening. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.

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