EnLink Midstream, LLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to M-Link Midstream's fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note that this call is being recorded today, Wednesday, February 17th, 2021, at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Kate Walsh, Vice President of Investor Relations and Tax.

Please go ahead. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to EndLink's fourth quarter of 2020 earnings call. Participating on the call today are Barry Davis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Lamb, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Pablo Mercado, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We issued our earnings release and presentation after the markets closed yesterday, and those materials are on our website. A replay of today's call will also be made available on our website at www.enlink.com. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including expectations and predictions within the meaning of the federal securities laws. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise. Actual results may differ materially from our projections, and a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ can be found in our press release, presentation, and SEC filings. This call also includes discussion pertaining to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these measures, as well as reconciliations of comparable GAAP measures, are available in our press release and the appendix of our presentation. We encourage you to review the cautionary statements and other disclosures made in our press release and our SEC filing including those under the heading risk factors. We'll start today's call with a set of brief prepared remarks by Barry, Ben, and Pablo, and then leave the remainder of the call open for questions and answers. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Barry Davis.

Thank you, Kate, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2020 results. We'll also spend time discussing and unpacking our 2021 outlook. On behalf of NLINK, we hope you, your families, and colleagues are staying safe and healthy as we continue to navigate the ongoing pandemic. I also want to acknowledge those on the front lines battling our most recent significant weather event, where extreme cold is having a severe impact on a number of our home states. I want to personally thank our NLINK team members who have and continue to work through frigid temperatures to get impacted operations back up and running. and to ensure that we all have the energy that we need to power our lives. Thank you for what you're doing. After an incredibly challenging 2020, we are truly proud of NLINK's performance. We took swift and aggressive action at the beginning of the pandemic and our NLINK team continuously stepped up to the challenges all year long to produce strong financial and operational results. And it's the strength of the 2020 results that is the foundation for the solid 2021 guidance targets we have set. For the fourth quarter, InLink delivered another strong, resilient quarter. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of $262 million, and we achieved $92 million of free cash flow after distributions, right in line with our expectations. Fourth quarter rounded out overall 2020 performance where we exceeded the high end of our guidance ranges for both adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow after distributions. We achieved over $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA and over $300 million of free cash flow after distributions for the year. When we drill down into our asset segment performance, all four segments generated free cash flow during 2020. This is a tremendous outcome from one of the most challenging periods in our industry's history. We couldn't have achieved our 2020 results without relentless execution from our team. We reduced our cost structure by 23%, removing over $140 million of costs from what is essentially the same store business. We elevated our return thresholds and reduced total CapEx net to in-link by 65% year over year. And we reduce leverage, improve liquidity, and strengthen our capital structure. Now let's talk about what we're going to accomplish in 2021. We have four key focus areas that our team is executing on today. First is operational excellence and innovation. We have developed a rigorous company-wide program to mine for opportunities, which elevate our efficiency. And we execute the ones with the highest returns. Our goal is to be a leader in innovation and efficiency. and we are well on our way with what our team is accomplishing. We have fully embraced an efficiency mindset and are challenging how to operate our business better each and every day. We have over 100 initiatives identified, which push forward how we maximize asset utilization while minimizing capital spending and achieve substantial improvements in our processes and operations, all of which improve our bottom line. Our second focus area is financial discipline and flexibility. The tremendous cost savings we achieved in 2020 are largely sustainable in 2021 and likely beyond. And with the operational excellence and innovation focus I just discussed, we think we can reduce costs further in certain areas. We continue to sharpen our approach to capital expenditures and are reducing CapEx by 25% this year. And we are forecasting another year of very strong free cash flow after distributions in 2021. similar to what we achieved in 2020. Our third focus area is strategic growth. We are going to be deliberate and disciplined with our approach to strategic growth. Our plan is centered around finding small, highly accretive, bolt-on opportunities around our footprint that are leverage neutral or better. We are dedicating an outsized portion of our business development efforts to finding opportunities that leverage our extensive Gulf Coast infrastructure. and which will increase our natural gas and NGO presence downstream. We also see a number of small-scale, capital-like, tuck-in type of opportunities around our assets that are very capital efficient and that have the types of compelling return profiles we are searching for. As Ben will discuss, we recently completed a small transaction whereby we acquired the Jefferson Island storage and hub assets. These assets provide a unique opportunity for us because of the interplay they have with our Henry Hub assets and our existing Louisiana Natural Gas Network. We will continue to evaluate every opportunity through our return on investment lens and will not execute anything that isn't highly accretive to the strong platform we operate today. And our fourth and final focus area is sustainability and safety. Having high standards for sustainability and safety is in our DNA at NLINK, and we consider sustainability and safety in everything that we do. You will see us ramp up our efforts, both in substance and communication in 2021. We're working on new emission reduction targets, which along with our third sustainability report, we will make public this year. To achieve our goals, we'll use technology and innovation to lower our carbon footprint. For example, we are going to increase the use of renewable energy in our own operations. And one last key point. Despite the distractions and storms over the past 12 months, in-link safety performance continues to be the best it has ever been. With that, I'll turn it over to you, Ben, for our operational update.