That’s why I kind of just generically call it mid-single-digit, just as a generic number. But we’re really thinking for our size of partnership that if we can continue to grow 300, 400, 500, those kind of numbers we think is sufficient to keep what we think is a very steady growth in return of capital, which we think the market would like. So we look at all of it, we look at our self-help, we look at efficiencies, we look at different things that are occurring as far as capital. But up until this point, that’s about the level that we’ve needed to spend to be in that range. To your point, if we thought, at times we need to deploy more capital, that’s something that we would have at our, at our hand, at our toolbox, so to speak. So, we look at it all, we try and figure out our plan.
I know it’s probably frustrating for your side of the fence because you don’t get to see them all the year, but that’s what we’re trying to do. And it’s all to try and show that the market that, we’re going to continue to grow the cash flows, we’re going to continue to increase the distribution, we’re going to continue to return capital and hopefully that, is a good day for investors. Last year we talked about total unit holder return of 22%. We’re pretty proud of that and hopefully, investors have found that to be a good outcome.
Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Blum with Wells Fargo.
Michael Blum: Wanted to ask, there’s been a lot of M&A consolidation in the upstream space and I’m wondering if that’s had any impact on you either directly or indirectly. Some of your producer customers maybe are involved in some of those, and just curious if there’s positive or negative or maybe no impact, but just curious if that’s had any impact on you guys.
Greg Floerke: This is Greg. I would say that there really has been no impact, or at least no material impact. We have — there is consolidation, but for the most part we have agreements with one party or the other, and in some cases longstanding agreements. So I would, the answer would be really no impact there.
Dave Heppner: Yes, Michael. Similarly on the accrued side, and there hasn’t been anything that we could say directly correlates to that. Obviously, we gather in a lot of basins and whether it’s a single producer or a consolidated producer, it’s really the area and the dedications that come with that really impact it as opposed to who the owner is.
Mike Hennigan : And I might add with one of the recent consolidation activities we saw, we actually did see an uptick in credit profile. So that was actually helpful to us as we thought about our credit profile.
Michael Blum : And then, I know this has been asked on prior calls, but you’re sitting there with a billion dollars of cash on the balance sheet. You didn’t do any buybacks in Q4. It sounds like you’re going to maintain the same level of debt, so you’re not, it’s not going to go away. So just maybe just some comments on how you’re thinking about maintaining that level of cash and what type of financial flexibility that will give you.
Mike Hennigan : I think you hit it on the head with your last comment, Michael. It gives us flexibility. As we started into the year, as I said, we always have a plan in place, but we had a pretty strong year. We had record throughputs in the L&S side of the business as well as the G&P side of the business. EBITDA turned out to be 9% year-on-year growth. So it falls into the category of a good problem to have. Like you said, at the end of the day, we spent a little bit of money on the acquisition that we talked about. We deployed capital, and I made the statement that last couple years we’ve been generating, roughly about $800 million beyond our commitment. So it’s been a good problem to have. I know people are wondering what our plan there is and short-term, it’s just having that flexibility.
We haven’t done a lot of buybacks. We’ve told the market that we’re going to [indiscernible] on the side of distributing through increasing the distribution, which we’ve done a couple years in a row. We still think that’s our primary tool, is the term that we’ve used. We’ve talked on previous calls about volatility in the equity price. It’s been a factor in some of our decisions, but at the end of the day, it does give us a little bit of flexibility and hopefully over time you’ll get to see how we deploy it.
Operator: And our final question for today will come from Neal Dingmann with Truist.
Neal Dingmann: My questions on the Permian that you’ve talked a bit about specifically, I’ve seen a little bit I guess year-to-date on some weather weakness just in some areas. I’m wonder, have how you had any impact there? And then secondly, sounds like and I just want to double check, are your longer-term, you’ve got a lot of attractive projects such as our plans such as Wink-to-Webster and others. Are those still right on plan?
Mike Hennigan : To your first question, Neil, obviously there’s always weather issues that occur every year, but nothing significant compared to what we’ve seen in the last years. But certainly, it’s the type of thing that we battle at this time of the year in general. But I wouldn’t say there’s anything major that we needed to discuss and —
Shawn Lyon : Regarding your question regarding Wink-to-Webster, we continue our plea with the ramp up and the volume we’ve seen come across Wink-to-Webster in ‘23. And likewise in ‘24, we expect to see a little bit of increase. So, going forward. So really pleased with that investment in that JV partnership going forward in ‘24 and beyond.
Neal Dingmann: And then just secondly, you guys touched already on the Utica, but I’m just wondering, it looked like you’re spending a bit more on the Utica gather. I’m just wondering is it perceived growth there or what’s driving this project?
Greg Floerke: It is perceived growth. We’ve already seen growth in the Utica. We’re filling up existing processing capacity, liquid capacity and transmission and compression. But there is also always going to be in areas where we gather additional capital to connect new well pads, which is a sign of growth from multiple producers. So that is a sign of more growth and we’re excited to see it.
Neal Dingmann: Look forward to it. Thank you all.
Kristina Kazarian: All right. Well, thank you for joining us today and thank you for your interest in MPLX. Should you have additional questions or would you like clarification on any of the topics discussed today, members of the IR team will be available to take your call.
Operator: Thank you. That does conclude conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.
