Pembina Pipeline Corporation (NYSE:PBA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: And your next question comes from Linda Ezergailis from TD Cowen.

Linda Ezergailis: Maybe we can just expand on kind of the decision set in terms of optimizing your capital allocation between longer lead time and strategic build-out that might be lower multiple, but that kind of delayed contributions versus maybe reacting to opportunistic M&A that falls in your lap. Do you expect to see more opportunities given what’s going on in the broader markets with your peers? And can you also help us understand kind of how you might be not constrained by access to capital, but what your capacity might be for tuck-in acquisitions, including whether you potentially leverage any sort of relationships you have with indigenous groups and other partners to buy certain businesses or packages through consortiums?

Cameron Goldade: This is Cam. I think one of the benefits of the work that we undertook last year, which culminated in, I guess, what you’d call sort of a restamp, a refresh, a revalidation of our strategy was a really defined set of parameters, both sort of qualitatively, but also internally, quantitatively to sort of judge investments, where we wanted to spend our time and capital. And so I would say that as a team, as an organization, we have a much clearer perspective today than we ever have on where we want to be spending time and what sort of gravitates to the top of the list in terms of where we put our capital. And those really are founded on those 4 pillars that we’ve spoken about publicly. And so when we look at those things, at the same time, we continue to want to build a growing enterprise to generate dividend growth for our shareholders and opportunities for our employees and value for our communities.

And so to do that, obviously, you need a balance in a portfolio of opportunities, which are meaningful over time and generate growth. And obviously, you need to be able to sort of recycle capital and recycle cash quickly to be able to generate that growth. And I think that’s a little bit of what you see in our portfolio as we look out for the next 2 to 3 years, which is, obviously, we’ve got something really, really important, really strategically important, really meaningful in Cedar as an opportunity. Longer term, we’ve got some other sort of early-stage opportunities in the New Ventures group, which could be really interesting but are sort of still at the earlier stages. And then you sort of got the type of projects that we’ve done for decades like pipe expansions, like fracs, like debottlenecks on those assets.

And those are sort of the projects that turn capital more quickly. I mean I think that one of the benefits of M&A, obviously, is that you sort of acquire cash flow immediately. But at the same time, it does place a need on the organization to integrate — it’s a new item. And so you have to sort of weigh that against the opportunities that you have internally and the focus. And that’s what we continue to do. So I think in this environment, obviously, capital has gotten more expensive. And I think rates of return have to follow that after move in concert to continue to generate positive economic value. And I think we see that. Obviously, there’s been consolidation among our customers. I have seen less probably activity on a relative sense in the infrastructure side.

How that shakes out over the next few years, I guess, remains to be seen. But we really like the way we’re positioned. We really like our organic portfolio, as Scott mentioned. And if there’s opportunities that we can add, which are additive to all those strategic pillars or complement a number of them, then obviously, we’ll take a look at it. But I think, obviously, first and foremost, the returns have to be there to justify it in this type of environment. And you have to be able to sort of integrate and fold those in without putting additional strain and getting your eye off the core — the ball of your core business.