Earnings Labs

Western Midstream Partners, LP (WES)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 28, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Steve, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 Western Gas Partners and Western Gas Equity Partners Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Benjamin Fink, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Benjamin M. Fink

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Thank you, Steve. I'm glad you could join us today to discuss Western Gas' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Results, as well as our outlook for 2013. Please note that on this call, we will be referring to Western Gas Partners as WES and Western Gas Equity Partners as WGP. Joining me on the call today are Don Sinclair, our President and CEO; Danny Rea, our COO; and other members of the management team who will be available to answer your questions later in the call. Before I turn the call over to Don, I'll remind you that this presentation contains estimates that are based on the best information available to us at this time and we believe that these estimates are reasonable. However, a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we discussed. You should read our full disclosure on forward-looking statements, our presentation slides, our latest 10-K, our other SEC filings and our press releases for the risks associated with our business and other relevant information. In addition, we'll be referencing certain non-GAAP measures on the call, so please be sure to see the reconciliations in our earnings release. As a reminder, you can view and download all of these materials including the slides that we will refer to on this call at www.westerngas.com. Lastly, for those of you who are unitholders of WES in 2012, I'm pleased to inform you that your K-1 will be available on our website by next week with paper copy that will be mailed to you later in March. For those of you who are unitholders of WGP in 2012, your K-1 will be made available on our website in mid-March, with paper copy to be mailed to you towards the end of the month. And with that, let me turn the call over to Don.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Thanks, Ben. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to welcome those of you who are new investors in WGP and therefore, first time participants on our earnings call. On this call, I will be posting my comments on Western's operation and financial performance and we'll discuss the implications to WGP where appropriate. Yesterday, we announced our fourth quarter and full year results for 2012. For the full year, WES adjusted EBITDA was in line with the low end of our most recently announced guidance range, our full year results for total capital expenditures and maintenance capital as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA, were in the middle of the announced ranges. 2012 was an important year for WES highlighted by 2 acquisitions, consistent performance despite weak natural gas and NGL markets, the launch of a robust growth capital program and the receipt of our second investment-grade rating. We ended the year with over $1 billion in liquidity and raised our fourth quarter distribution to $0.52 per unit, an 18% increase over the last year, while maintaining healthy coverage ratios. Now let's talk about WES' fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $83.3 million and distributable cash flow was $67.2 million, which enabled us to raise our distribution for the 15th straight quarter. Note that WES' fourth quarter coverage ratio of 1.02x includes all the units it issued in conjunction with the initial public offering of WGP in December, the proceeds of which were in our cash balance at the end of the year. From comparative purposes, if the WES units issued in December were excluded from the coverage ratio calculation, the fourth quarter coverage ratio would have been 1.12x and the full year coverage ratio would have been a very healthy 1.23x. The drivers behind our fourth…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Brett Reilly with Credit Suisse. Brett Reilly - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Just a quick question on the drop down and third-party acquisition. Can you maybe give us a little color on why you chose to go after the Marcellus assets versus some of the other areas in which Anadarko is operating?

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Credit Suisse

I want to make sure I understand the question, are you asking about the Anadarko drop and/or the Chesapeake acquisition? I want to make sure before I answer the question. Brett Reilly - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Just, I guess, more generally, why the Marcellus -- I guess, on the drop down side of things relative to maybe some of the systems in the Eagle Ford or other areas that Anadarko is really ramping?

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Well, as you know, we look at numerous variables before we determine what's going to be the next acquisition from Anadarko. There's capital maturity, quality of resources, contracts, and scale and scope. And when we went to the inventory and looked at where we are in time, we thought the Marcellus assets based on the quality of the contracts and the scale and scope fit us best at this time. Brett Reilly - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Okay. And then maybe just a little color on expected ramps in cash flow from those assets throughout the course of the year. It sounds like you're expecting volumes to grow pretty significantly throughout the course of the year.

Benjamin M. Fink

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Brett, this is Ben. You can see on our pie chart, we're spending a big chunk of CapEx on those assets and we expect to realize some pretty good returns on those assets due to the cost of service model. So as we mentioned, we think the 2014 multiples will be a lot lower than the 2013 multiples.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets.

Elvira Scotto - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets

A couple of questions from me. So it looks like with this drop down, the assets required may be a little before reaching capital maturity and we're seeing some more, I guess, organic growth. How should we think about that maybe going forward? I know WES is a drop-down story, first and foremost, but should we be thinking about sort of maybe some sort of base level of kind of organic growth built into the model now?

Benjamin M. Fink

Analyst · Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets

This is Ben, again, Elvira. I think when we talked about it last year, when you saw the big step up in our growth CapEx, we asked is this kind of a onetime aberration and what we said at the time is this is more like the new normal. Well, we're now a year into that and what you're seeing is that as WES has increased its own scale and scope, we are capable of having a larger growth CapEx burden, so we're comfortable at these levels. I think capital maturity will always be a factor in terms of attractiveness of near-term drop-down candidates. But we're certainly more comfortable spending a lot more CapEx than we used to.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets

Elvira, one other thing. If you think about the organic growth projects, the multiple on them, is lower than the -- the estimated multiple is lower than what are usual acquisition is. So for us, we like where it fits relative to accretion. And in our mind, it's just part of prepaying for future growth.

Elvira Scotto - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets

Right. Now that makes a lot of sense. The other question that I had is really around ethane rejection. Maybe talk a little bit about -- because you've kind of mentioned how it impacted fourth quarter, maybe talk a little bit about how if at all you think it's going to impact 2013 and if you've built some of that into the guidance?

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Elvira Scotto from RBC Capital Markets

Elvira, I'd like to first start, if you think about how our processing portfolio sets up, the majority of that portfolio is fee-based. So the ethane rejection component doesn't impact us that much, as you could tell by $900 million was not a big number in the fourth quarter. So I think you can see from those variables that ethane rejection is not going to have a big impact on us and we have put all that, all our thoughts around ethane rejection in our 2013 guidance as well.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners.

Louis Shamie

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

So just want to talk a little bit -- you mentioned that the, I think, both assets that you're acquiring here are under this cost of service model that Chesapeake had instituted with Access, where you spend capital and basically get a fixed rate of return on the capital spent with adjustors and is that -- can you talk a little bit about the mechanisms of how that works and that 18% return that you mentioned, how frequently that's trued up or what the mechanics are there?

Danny J. Rea

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Yes, Louis, this is Danny Rea. Basically, as we stated on the script, it is a 18% before tax on invested capital. We look at a longer-term view of over 15-year type period in doing that and forecasting our forward years -- forward views of both capital and cost. We also redetermine that annually and revisit it.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

The other thing in that redetermination, Louis, one thing is important is, it takes previous performance and rolls into your future projections to determine those rates. So you always have a true-up mechanism that allows you to stay on path for that 18%.

Louis Shamie

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Got it. So if in 1 year your volumes fell a little bit short of projection, you'd make it up in the future?

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Exactly.

Danny J. Rea

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

That's correct.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Or if you over earn, it goes both ways.

Louis Shamie

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Right. And so when you're spending capital, say, in 2013, are you realizing a benefit of that in '13 or does that all come out like a 1 year lag?

Danny J. Rea

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

It's all built in to the model that give you that average rate that we're currently utilizing in '13.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

So it does take in consideration Op year capital.

Louis Shamie

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Okay. Great. And the other question I had, first off, definitely like seeing more growth capital as part of the model. The other thing was something like $600-plus million of acquisition and drop down announced today or last night, it seems like you guys are being, I guess, a little -- taking a little bit of a faster pace of growing the MLP asset-wise, I guess, now that your asset base is a little bit bigger. Can we expect like a little bit of acceleration of the drop downs or third-party acquisitions relative to what we've seen over the last few years?

Benjamin M. Fink

Analyst · Louis Shamie from Zimmer Partners

Louis, this is Ben. I would say that, and as I've said in the past, sizes is only one factor that we look at when we determine what is the next appropriate asset for drop down and you'll continue to see a lot of variability in size. Obviously, all of the cash that went into WES in conjunction with the WGP IPO was a factor in determining which assets to drop this time. And in the future, we'll just determine accordingly.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Sharon Lui from Wells Fargo.

Sharon Lui - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Sharon Lui from Wells Fargo

For the acquisitions, you did indicate that there are a lot of wells waiting on pipe. Just wondering if you can give us a sense in terms of maybe Anadarko's capital spending or activity in that region relative to 2012 levels?

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Sharon Lui from Wells Fargo

Sharon, this is Don. What I would suggest you do, as I mentioned on the script, you can go back to the Anadarko investment -- Investor Conference on the 20th. There are slides in there for all their onshore North American resource plays and it has what they expect relative to increase in wells from '12 to '13 and what they expected to -- I don't think they break it down specific capital by region, but it will give you an idea of what's going to show up in the well count between '12 and '13.

Operator

Operator

I'm showing there are no further questions at this time.

Donald R. Sinclair

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Thank you again for joining us and for your interest in Western Gas. We look forward to seeing, hopefully, all of you all before too long. Steve, thank you today.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.