Enterprise Products Partners L.P.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2023 Enterprise Products Partners LP earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Randy Burkhalter, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Enterprise Products Partners conference call to discuss fourth quarter 23 earnings. Our speakers today will be co-chief executive officers of Enterprise's general partner, Jim Teague and Randy Fowler. Other members of our senior management team are also in attendance for the call. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, based on the beliefs of the company, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available in Enterprise's management team. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Please refer to our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forelooking statements made during this call. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jim. Thank you, Randy.

We generated $7.6 billion of distributive cash flow in 2023, providing 1.7 times coverage, and we retained $3.2 billion. We set nine financial records and 13 operating records in 23. Our 23 operating results included records in NGL pipeline transportation, ethane exports, total NGL marine terminal volumes, NGL fractionation volumes, fee-based natural gas processing volumes, and crude pipeline and natural gas transportation volumes. Barrels of oil equivalent per day, Enterprise transported a record 12.2 million barrels a day in 2023, compared to 11.2 million barrels a day in 2022. During the fourth quarter, we transported 12.7 million barrels a day, compared to 11.5 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2022. We exported a record 2.3 million barrels a day of liquid hydrocarbons, and that includes everything from crude oil to LPGs to ethane, refined products, and basic petrochemicals, ethane and propylene. When you look at our exports, it's clear that Enterprise is not a one-trick pony. It's quite remarkable that volumes across all our pipes and facilities increase sequentially each quarter in 2023, supported by the strong supply and demand fundamentals for hydrocarbons from the Permian and other basins we serve, integrated with the midstream services that we have, including exports that we just discussed. Relative to commodity markets, 2023 was a relatively weak year, especially for natural gas and natural gas liquids. Nonetheless, Enterprise proved once again that we don't need really high prices to make substantial returns. The financial records and 13 operating records summarized were achieved in a commodity price environment where natural gas prices were down almost 60 percent from 22, crude was down nearly 20 percent, propane was down 36 percent, ethane was down almost 50 percent, and the NGL processing basket was down 35 percent. Relative to the several 23 records at our marine terminals, we have long said that hydrocarbons would price to export proven once again in 2023. In growth capital during 23, we completed construction of $3.5 billion of projects. Significant assets put into service include two new natural processing plants in the Permian Basin and our 12th NGO fractionator in Chambers County. All of these assets were essentially full after operations began. While production of our PDH2 facility was completed in the third quarter of 23, we spent much of the remainder of the year addressing startup issues. As a result, this plant did not meet our expectations in earnings in 23. We believe most of these issues have been resolved and we anticipate much higher utilization rates this year. We began 24 with We begin 24 with $6.8 billion of major organic projects under construction, with three projects representing approximately $1.1 billion in capital investment expected to be completed this year. Major 24 projects include our Texas Western Products pipeline system and two additional processing plants in the Permian. We have considerable amount of growth capital underway. All of these projects provide strategic growth to our system and can add considerable visibility to new sources of cash flow. I wanted to take a minute to talk about Project 9.3. We started this project in 22 as an incentive for all employees to find innovative ways to improve the bottom line. This was especially important as we in the industry were re-engaging after COVID and faced the challenges of a slower global economy in 23. We achieved the goals we set for ourselves both in 2022 and 2023. We are very proud of our employees for that accomplishment. That said, we will not have a project nine type program for 2024. You've always heard me say if you want to know where we're going, look at what we're doing. The Permian Basin has been the cornerstone for much of our growth capital. As we look at 2024 and beyond, we see supply and demand opportunities as the Permian continues to grow and the world continues to have an ever-increasing appetite for U.S. hydrocarbons. We noted in the press release that these may be the most geopolitically challenging times since World War II, but it's abundantly clear that all of this chaos is leading itself to a growing appetite for the most stable hydrocarbon supplies in the world, the USA, in spite of government and regulatory challenges. Without a doubt, relative to energy, our nation's biggest geopolitical challenges continue to be self-inflicted. Enterprise has one of the world's leading natural gas liquids franchise, and we have the liquids hydrocarbon storage and export franchise. On top of all of that, we have a dedicated employee base that creates value regardless of the environment. 2023 marked our 25th anniversary as a public company. It's been a great quarter century. It has been for the US energy industry. It included the downfall of the energy merchants, the great financial crisis, the innovation of the EMP and oil field service industries to unlock the potential of the shale plays, which is still continuing. It included the near-death and remarkable renaissance of the U.S. petrochemical industry, from having the highest-cost feedstock pre-shell to now the lowest cost. It included two OPEC price wars, a once-in-a-century pandemic, and the reemergence of geopolitical upheaval. During this time, we stuck to our objectives of investing capital at reasonable returns, providing reliable value-added services to customers, consistently returning capital to our partners, and increasing the value of the partnership for the long term. During this time, the enterprise value of the partnership has grown from $1.2 billion to almost $90 billion. The value of our partnership units has increased almost 400%. We increased our distribution 25 consecutive years at an approximately 7% compound annual growth rate. We've returned $52 billion of capital to investors through distributions and buybacks. We have high quality employees. and we thank our employees, we thank our customers, our service providers, our banks, and our investors for the contributions to this success. We're looking forward to the exciting opportunities and challenges for the next 25 years as the world's population, quality of life, and demand for energy reaches new heights. Put frankly, Based on what I see in the future for energy, I'd give anything if I could turn the clock back and be 50 years old. With that, I'll turn it over to Randy.

All right. Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. Starting off with the income statement, the net income attributable to common unit holders for the fourth quarter of 2020 2023 was 1.6 billion or 72 cents per common unit on a fully diluted basis. This compares to 1.4 billion or 65 cents per common unit for the fourth quarter of 2022. Adjusted cash flow from operations, which is cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital, was 2.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 23 compared to 2.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 22. We declared a distribution of 51.5 cents per common unit for the fourth quarter of 2023, which is a 5.1% increase over the distribution declared for the fourth quarter of 22. The distribution will be paid February 14th to common unit holders of record as of the close of business on January 31st. In the fourth quarter, the partnership purchased 3.7 million common units off the open market for $96 million. Total purchases for 2023 were $187 million or 7.2 million of common units, bringing total purchases under our buyback program to over $900 million. I mentioned it on the last call, looking at our five largest midstream peers by market cap. Since 2019, enterprise is the only midstream energy company to reduce absolute outstanding units outstanding without significant asset sales. In addition to buybacks, our distribution reinvestment plan and employee unit purchase plan purchased a combined 6.6 million common units on the open market for $172 million during 2023. For 2023, Enterprise paid out approximately $4.3 billion in distributions to limited partners. These distributions combined with the buybacks for the year, resulting in our having a payout ratio of adjusted cash flow from operations of 56% and a payout ratio of adjusted free cash flow of 94%. Total capital investments in the fourth quarter of 2023 were $1 billion, which included $823 million for growth capital projects, $65 million for the acquisition of a small natural gas storage facility that we have historically leased, and $129 million of sustaining capital expenditures. Capital investments for the year of 2023 were $3.3 billion, which includes 2.7 $5 billion of organic growth capital projects, $100 million in asset acquisitions, and $413 million of sustaining capital expenditures. During the third quarter call, we estimated $3 billion of organic growth capital expenditures in 2023 and a range of $3 to $3.5 billion in 2024. Due to the timing of expenditures, we had approximately $250 million of CapEx shift from 2023 into 2024. Therefore, we now expect our 2024 growth capital expenditures to total $3.25 to $3.75 billion. We expect 2024 sustaining CapEx will be approximately $550 million, which includes dollars for planned turnarounds at PDH-1, our IBDH, and our high purity isobutylene facility. These scheduled turnarounds typically occur every three to four years for these type plants. Our total debt principal outstanding was approximately $29 billion as of December 31, 2023. Assuming the final maturity date of our hybrids, the weighted average life of our debt portfolio was approximately 19 years. Our weighted average cost of debt is 4.6%. At December 31st, approximately 96% of our debt was fixed rate. Our consolidated liquidity was approximately 3.9 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, which includes availability of our credit facilities and unrestricted cash. Adjusted EBITDA, as Jim mentioned earlier, was 9.3 billion for 2023. We ended the year with a consolidated leverage ratio of 3.0 times on a net basis after adjusting debt for the partial equity treatment of our hybrid debt and reduced by partnerships unrestricted cash on hand. Our leverage target remains three times plus or minus a quarter term, so 2.75 to 3.25 times. In January, we issued $2 billion of senior notes. comprised of $1 billion of three-year notes at a coupon of 4.6% and $1 billion of 10-year notes at a 4.85% coupon. The proceeds from this offering will go toward an upcoming $850 million debt maturity in February, I guess this month, and funding our capital expenditure program. We appreciate the continued support of our debt investors. Moving on to future events, Enterprise will host an analyst and investor call on Wednesday, April 3rd. This will be in lieu of our in-person analyst day. This call will include overviews on our current outlook, near-term objectives, allocation of capital, as well as a fundamentals update from Tony. Q&A will follow our prepared remarks. More information will be provided in the coming weeks. Before we open the call up to questions, Jim and I would like to take a moment to recognize Randy Burkhalter, our Vice President of Investor Relations. After a 46-year career in the energy industry, Randy has announced his retirement for April of this year. Randy has led our investor relations effort for the past 21 years when he joined us shortly after our acquisition of the MidAmerican Seminole Pipelines. Through the annual Institutional Investor Magazine All-American Team Surveys, Enterprise and our investor relations team have been consistently recognized by the sell-side and buy-side community as one of the best in the midstream sector. Randy has been integral to leading this effort. We are grateful for Randy's service, his integrity, his attention to customer service, and his industry-renowned social prowess. Please join us in congratulating Randy on his 46-year career and a job well done. Most of you have met Libby Strait. Libby will succeed Randy in leading our IR effort. Libby is one of our young all-stars who joined the company in 2013 and worked in commercial roles of increasing responsibility across several of our business units before joining the IR team 2019. She and Michael Cesarek, another one of our all-stars, will comprise our IR team.

Randy, as it relates to Randy Burkhalter, I think it's fair to say we have already scheduled a quarterly visit by Randy to the building to have a couple of scotches bar downtown at least once a quarter.

With that, I think we're now ready to open the call up to questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up.

One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Michael Bloom with Wells Fargo.

You may proceed.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and congrats, Randy, and Jim, please send me the invite for the scotch. I wanted to start with maybe your latest views on Permian growth in 24, both for oil and for gas, and then kind of a related topic. Clearly, there's Seems like there will be need for another Permian gas takeaway. You had talked about a brownfield project a little while back. It's been kind of quiet lately. So I wanted to get your latest thoughts on a Permian gas takeaway solution in light of your growth outlook.

Hey, Michael. This is Tony. In our last analyst meeting, which was March of 2023, we talked about growth in the United States of call it 1.8 million barrels. I'll just go to oil right now. We gave you some basic metrics. as to what happens with the oil. But 1.8 million barrels in the 23, 24, 25 timeframe. Obviously, there was a lot of pushback when we published that forecast from all sides, including producers that hadn't looked at the number like we had. And what I'll say about that number now, of that 1.8, we said 1.5 in the Permian Basin. Certainly, given the performance of producers during 2023, the producer community is on track to meet and likely beat those numbers. And I don't know how that changes at this pace. And then the combined growing wedge of PDP that a lot of people forget about in key basins, coupled with the continuous improvement in efficiency and productivity that we see from the producer community. So we'll talk about it more in early April, but I think the cliff notes now for what we know is it's really going to be hard not to at least meet and likely beat that number as we look at the three-year period. Very much Permian dominated. Relative to gas pipelines? We've talked about a simple metric before for every million barrels incremental that you have with oil. You have somewhere in the neighborhood of available 400,000 to 500,000 barrels of NGLs, and for rich gas, call that anywhere from 3.25 to 3.5 BCF. Okay? So you do the math. You look at... And what we have today in incremental capacity over the next two years coming on is appreciable. Will there need to be more between now and 2030? Yes. The answer to that is yes, in some form or fashion. Whether it be brownfield on existing pipes or another greenfield pipe.

Okay, great. Thanks for all that. Tony, maybe we'll just stay on gas. My second question, I just wanted to ask about the

pause in LNG permitting and well I know you're not you know you don't have an LNG asset per se curious how if at all this would impact your business in 24 and beyond thanks okay Michael this is Jim and I guess I wonder is it truly a pause or is it something more and with those will those projects that are not under construction but going through the regulatory process be allowed to to continue to go through that process during this, quote, temporary pause, or will all work stop? Our fundamentals group says we'll have 75 years of reserves at current production with current technology. You look at it, our LNG has had a huge difference to our allies. In 2019, we averaged 1.85 BCF a day to Europe. In 2023, we exported on average seven and a half BCF a day with a winter peak of over nine BCF a day. We went from less than 10% market share LNG into Europe to 50% market share. Now Rusty Brazil in his RBN blog this morning has an excellent write-up on this issue. So really you have to sit back and wonder, Is this a temporary pause or is it a political pause?

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Neil Mitra with Bank of America. You may proceed.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations, Randy. First question was on the NGL exports and hitting a quarterly record. Could you maybe comment on the export dynamics right now, just with weaker PDH demand and the plants coming up slower than normal, but also lower NGL prices in the U.S. and how that is trending for 2024?

Yeah, this is Tug Hanley. So we've had strong operational performance on our EHT asset, which has led to healthy volumes going across the dock. There's also been a decrease in freight values we've seen, which is continuing to support stronger FOB values. With respect to the weaker PDH margins on an international level, The PDH margins have improved, but there's still a lot of overcapacity, so necessarily weak margins don't lead to decreased NGL demand because the demand is still ultimately there.

Got it. And then my second question is related to Bahia, and I was just wondering if you could maybe give some puts and takes as to where you can see additional volumes picked up. I believe Navitas isn't going through your system right now. Maybe the Lucid volumes come up for recontracting and kind of later in the decade and where you could see some additional opportunities to pick up volumes that aren't contracted onto your system right now.

Neil, it's Justin Clyder. Yeah, so kind of like three buckets of Bahia that we think about first and foremost is our growing GMP footprint. So you think about a metric of every new gas plant we put on, we yield about 40,000 to 45,000 barrels a day of NGLs into Bahia. So we're growing our footprint both in the Delaware and the Midland. So that's always the baseload as we think about Bahia. And then on top of that, we have a robust set of third-party agreements. You know, we've got 40 connections on our Y-grade system. That gives us a lot of diversity to go capture incremental third-party volumes as that market ebbs and flows. And we've got a good runway of contracts on those that get us to the back end of the decade without having to really worry about any contract roll-off. And then third, kind of our expectation is that Seminole won't be an NGL service once Bahia comes online. You add all those up, and that's kind of how we landed on the capacity that we created out of the gate at 600 a day.

And Natalie, do you think we're through building processing plants out there? I don't think we're through.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Teresa Chen with Barclays. You may proceed.

morning uh like to echo the congratulations to randy on his retirement after a stellar career we wish you continued social prowess and also congratulations to libby and michael um when we look at your organic projects backlog um it's a robust set of opportunities and as we look beyond 2025 Just trying to think about what a run rate should be, knowing that you still do have projects under development and some of them sizable. Is that three or three plus billion dollar number a good run rate, or how should we think about that?

Teresa, I'll start off. We're $6.8 billion worth of projects under construction. Again, this year it will range from $3.75 billion to $3.75 billion. 2025 is $3 billion. And then there's a little bit of a roll-off with that $6.8 billion that creeps over into 2026. The one thing I would just note is in that $6.8 billion, we've got two lumpy projects. being Bahia Pipeline and also the export facility that we're building on the Neches River. And so if I come in and look forward and the expectation will continue to see build out with natural gas processing, with the gas gathering and compression that supports that, I keep coming back that I really think that going forward, absent spot, that we're more in the $2 billion range is where I keep coming out. Again, because we've had some lumpy projects. We just put PDH-2 into service in 2023. That was another lumpy project. So just don't foresee a lot of those lumpy projects coming, with the exception of SPOT.

Got it. Thank you.

I think with SPOT, that's probably a three-year construction cycle.

Understood. And in terms of projects that are coming online near term, for your Texas West product system, can you remind us how much of that is underwritten by third-party commitments versus open capacity that you hope to market and capture that ARB, especially in light of the fact that, you know, since you announced the project, one of your midstream competitors who also has significant marketing capabilities bought a huge, refined product system and is also looking to close PAT-2 and PAT-4 ARBs.

Hey, Teresa, it's Justin Kleider again, and Tug may chime in on a piece of that as well, but, you know, As we develop the project, it really has developed into really a rack marketing model. You know, we had the first phase of startup really impending, and the timing of the rest of it should be lined out in the deck. You know, but we've got significant interest. We've got 40 third-party contracts agreed to across the terminals, and we're signing up more seemingly daily. So people are just itching for it to come on. But we do think similar to Dixie and our legacy propane long-haul pipelines being sort of an uncontracted rack-based model, that that's the model that we're going to see on TW.

Thank you. Thank you. One moment for questions.

Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonette with JP Morgan Securities, you may proceed.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. And Randy, I want to wish you congratulations here. Good luck with everything going forward. You will be missed, and thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy.

And I just wanted to start off, I guess, with the recent Houston Ship Channel enhancements that we've seen over time here. I'm wondering if you could comment on how that's impacted your LPGA export capabilities. Have you seen any kind of improvements there, given the changes? Just curious how that has developed.

Yeah, this is Bob Sanders. Late in the fourth quarter last year, the Houston pilots removed the daylight restriction on LPG ships so we can sail 24 hours a day, loaded or empty. And we are incrementally picking up the number of vessels we're bringing in to try to maximize the utilization of the refrigeration units that we've got right now. So we are seeing a direct benefit.

Got it. Just curious if that's a minor or maybe, you know, bigger expansion. And also, Tony, I guess I'm curious, I guess with thoughts on LPG pricing here, I guess there's a concern in the marketplace that LPG exports might be maxed out and that could dislocate domestic pricing relative to international price markers. So just wondering how you see that playing out.

I'll answer the first piece a little bit. We're seeing about a 5% to 7% gain at this point.

I think on pricing, you've seen NGLs catch a bit here recently. I think some of what Bob mentioned has helped with pricing. As rates come off, there's been a benefit certainly to propane and butane on the flat price. If you look at the growth that Tony mentioned earlier, we have NGLs growing at a faster pace than crude oil. We're seeing it across our system. Storage is going to become more increasingly valuable. These expansions don't come on until 25, 26 timeframe. So we expect the docks to remain at capacity. And then ultimately, the flat price of NGLs will be reflective of that.

Yeah, I'll just add that we're actually seeing that already manifest itself on our spot doc values. They're upwards in the double digits right now.

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you for that.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Brian Reynolds with UBS. You may proceed.

Hi, good morning, everyone, and Randy, thanks again for all the time you spent with me and the community over the last 21 years, and thanks for leaving the team in good hands with Libby and Michael. Thank you, Brian. Maybe to start off on the NGL macro, Jim, on the last call, you kind of talked about competitive market dynamics, you know, right now, where EPD seems to be threading the needle of maximizing return while preventing some new entrants into the integrated NGL value chain. Well, I appreciate some of the opening remarks from Tony to Michael's question around Permian growth. Just kind of curious how we should think about maybe, you know, volume growth is going to be really attractive over the next few years. But kind of curious if we can talk about how transportation fracking export rates, you know, should look relative to, you know, what they've been the past decade. Just really attractive. Thanks.

Hey, Brian, this is Brent. I mean, it kind of varies based on the service. I think everything that you see on a processing side, certainly on the kind of long haul pipeline, is a new build economic type number. Fractionation is probably in that group too. I think when you look across NGL docs and you look at the entrants that are in that space right now, I think anybody who wants to be in that space is going to have to compete with Brownfield Economics. And if you look at where FOB values are going for both ethane and LPGs, it is incredibly, incredibly difficult to make a project accretive that's a new entrant in that space.

So, Brent, put directly, while Tug says on our spot deals we have double-digit terminating values, what can you do a five-year deal at?

I think when you look at, I don't want to be totally specific on this, but the fees on LPGs are considerably less than what we're seeing today. I don't think anybody's going to go out there and try to justify a project based on values that we see today because we have capacity that we're contracting. I think others have capacity that are contracting. And then on the FAN piece, that's a very competitive market. I would have a hard time thinking Enterprise would be in that market if we hadn't been one of the first ones in that market.

So you couldn't build a Greenfield terminal based on what we think the terminaling fees are going to be? Absolutely not. Okay.

Great, thanks. Appreciate all that. You know, as my follow-up, maybe just an update on the spot license and permit process. You know, you alluded to some comments around LNG and maybe having some impacts on the upcoming U.S. elections. Just kind of curious if we should see any risks to the timeline around the spot licensing and permitting process relative to maybe expectations from last year. Thanks.

Hang on, Bob. Brian, I didn't... I didn't say anything about the elections, by the way. Right now, we've got a record of decision, and I'll let Bob tell you what else we've got. But right now, we don't see anything that should preclude us getting that license.

So where we are with MIRAD, we have completed all the requirements to receive the license. We're in constant contact with MIRAD. Matter of fact, we have seen a draft of the license, which they asked us to comment on, which we've commented on, and they've accepted our changes. So everything is basically done. We're just waiting on knowledge that we've got the license.

Great to hear. I'll leave it there. Enjoy the rest of your day, and thanks again.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Neil Dingman with Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Thanks for the time. Randy, congrats and look forward to hearing what's next for you. I can only imagine. My first question is on guys on marketing. Specifically, I just wanted to capture some of the commodity price volatility experience with this last, I guess I'd call it the January cold snap, perhaps in Waha or the HSC spread.

This is Brent. We were able to capture some. There were some Kind of put some takes on that whole weather event. There were some operational issues that we had in Midland that are getting fixed. But from a marketing perspective, there was some arbitrage capture on our side.

We pulled all our levers, is what you're saying.

That's right. Great. And then my second question, just on the PDH plans. Just wondered, it sounded like for the second quarter row, you all mentioned a bit of operational challenges, maybe with the reactor and licenses issue. I'm just wondering, I think, Randy, you mentioned, I think, last quarter, you thought they'd maybe be more one-off. And just wondering, has something changed here? And maybe just talk about your sort of future view of the ops there.

This is Graham. Yes, we did have some operating issues in the fourth quarter with the PDH plants. Some of those are related to some construction-related startup issues, some design issues. At this point, we think we've got the unit is up and operating. We're not quite at 100% capacity, but we've got line of sight on the fixes that will be taking place here soon, and I think at that point we can expect we'll have a a good operating unit. All the other parameters of the unit that we look at in terms of robustness and ability to maintain operation are really looking good right now. There's just one more issue we've got to get past, and I think we'll be looking at a good unit there.

Very good. Thanks for the details, Cass.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Tristan Richardson with Scotiabank. You may proceed.

Hi, good morning, guys. Congrats to Randy. We appreciate all the time you've spent with us over the years. Mr. Fowler, you guys have framed up the return of capital slide for a long time, and we've seen that payout ratio, that adjusted payout ratio, increase over time. And I'm just curious, with the stability you're seeing in the earnings base and the stability you're seeing in CapEx sort of, as you mentioned, over the long term, do you see that payout ratio changing meaningfully over time? Or is there a way to think about a long-term target for that adjusted cash flow ratio, particularly when you sit in such an advantage position from a leverage standpoint?

Yeah.

I'm thinking of how to frame that because you had quite a bit in there. You know, Several of our peers in the energy sector have come in with a formulaic approach on returning capital. And I think we've just been hesitant to doing that because we live in a very dynamic world. And opportunities come up. And so really coming in and locking into a formula of so much distribution and so much buyback More often than not, when I've seen companies come in with those formulas, they're forever tweaking them or rescinding them. And they really have a short shelf life. I really just come back and look at, you know, Jim went through some of our history of returning capital for our first 25 years. You know, we're going to continue to come in and do that. As far as distribution growth, I think you've seen over the last two or three years, we're back to mid-single-digit distribution growth, which is good to be there. And then we've been doing buybacks steadily on this. And I think, obviously, if we come into an era where we're not spending as much CapEx, then we'll have more flexibility to come in and do buybacks. They'll still be opportunistic buybacks. And I think you saw that in the third quarter, the unit price was really pretty strong and we just opted not to come in and do any buybacks in the third quarter of 2023. But when we got into year-end tax selling and saw the weakness in 2024, we executed buybacks at a better level, even considering the distribution that we, the November distribution, we still executed at a better buyback level in the fourth quarter than what was available in the third quarter. So I think we'll continue to be opportunistic going forward. And then I think we just need to see what kind of opportunities that we have in the future. But again, I come back in and I don't know of another midstream maybe other than Canadian or Pembina, that has successfully returned capital the way that we have over the last 25 years. So that was long-winded, but I hope that helps. I appreciate it, Randy.

And then maybe just on the Bahia question, to ask it a different way, I think know given the pace of ngl pipeline volumes today plus tony's forecast and justin's earlier comments is there an opportunity for the capacity of bahia to expand as you progress through construction as we go into 25 or are we seeing enough competing pipes in the market where this is this should be pretty balanced in 25. yeah tristan we this justin we

We picked 600 for the reasons before, but, you know, you think of a 30-inch pipeline, if it's fully horsepower, it could do upwards of a million. But we're trying to be capital efficient about how we phase into it. So if our forecasts are right and we need more than what we have today, we can add pumps on it to upsize it.

Appreciate it. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolf Research. You may proceed.

Hi. Good morning, and congrats as well, Randy. You've definitely been one of the most helpful and friendly IR people that I've gotten the chance to work with, so thank you. Thank you. I wanted to start just on the outlook for the year. So understanding you're not giving the employee goal for EBITDA for 2024, At a high level, though, you had a lot of momentum exiting 2023 in your results. You have a fair amount of capital entering service with PDH-2 and a couple of plants. You know, you're still constructive on volumes. Is it fair to say 2024 should be a relatively stronger growth year, or are there any headwinds or things you would point to versus 2023 that could be an offset?

I think, this is Jim, I think 2024 is shaping up to be a better year than 2023. It's not just the assets we've brought on. We're seeing, for example, and Brent's got some information, our processing margins on what is not fee-based is looking better. You might want to address that.

Yeah, if you just look at the fourth quarter on what, you know, we have floors in our processing contracts, especially around the Midland Basin. So in the fourth quarter, I think those floors were at around, they were all hit at about 97% of those contracts hit the floor. In fact, December was 100%. So as things get more constructive on gas, we'll see if that happens. Certainly we were, there were some benefits in January. We're seeing some benefits in the current month on NGLs, but that number is probably around 62% in January that hit the floor. So I think from a processing standpoint, there's definitely benefits across the portfolio that we'll see.

Thank you. It seems like each quarter we transport more and more hydrocarbons. Right. Yeah, Q4 volumes are definitely strong.

And, Kate, this is Randy. I think the other thing is, you know, just as you, you know, I think we've, again, we've got a pretty good track record that if you look out over time, you know, our average return on capital has been, I mean, it's when you look at the total company has ranged from 10 to 13%. And then when you come in and you look at the capex, specifically the projects that we're putting into service and the level of capital expenditures that we have, I think what that translates to over a three-, four-year period is probably mid-single-digit EBITDA growth. Now, you're not going to be able to use a ruler on that number, but that's about what it works out to be. And then you may have some variability in and around that kind of number. But I think if you come back in and just look at what we've been able to do in the past and look at the amount of capital investment that we're making, I think that's where it would take you.

The other thing is look at our people are relentless in visiting customers and getting new deals. I've been shocked at the appetite, for example, for our ethane export dock. So we're probably going to build new processing plants in the Permian, and I would expect that we're going to fill up our ethane export docks and our LPG docks. The other thing we're seeing is more crude flows to Houston, so we're seeing more crude across our docks.

That's all very helpful. And Jim, if I can kind of follow up on that last point, the NGL export volumes were very strong in Q4, and you noted the removal of the daylight restrictions helping you. Can you give a sense of how close the company is to its capacity based on that Q4 export number? Are you able to keep increasing exports this year before some of the expansions start up in 2025?

I think if you look at NGLs as a whole and maybe crude oil, yes. If you look at LPG, I think things are going to be tight in terms of dock space on LPG. That gets resolved probably mid-next year, but for 24 and maybe part of 25, LPG is going to be pretty tight. Do you have something?

Thank you. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bernstein. You may proceed.

Hi. Good morning. Do you forecast Permian processing utilization staying as tight as it is now over the next couple of years? Said another way, is it a stretch to say that the timing of processing coming on will dictate the pace of Permian growth in your view?

We'll just take that.

I think, Gina, and this is Brent, I expect it to stay tight. When we look at our build-out and the contracts that come on, there may be a short little window that there's excess capacity, but it fills up very quickly. We'll lean on Tony for his forecast, but what Tony has told us in years past has certainly come true. If not, it's been even more prolific. And then When you look at capacity right now, I think there is gas that's being held back in the basin. It's waiting on compression, and it's waiting on processing capacity.

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's not just processing. Some of it's gathering compression in the field that's behind. So once we see that bottleneck kind of get fixed, we'll see processing get full very quickly.

That's very helpful. Thank you. And then one more, there's some discussion of upcoming Haynesville gas pipelines possibly being delayed due to legal issues. Is there any further expansion potential on Acadian or is that maxed out here?

We're maxed out after our last expansion. I'd say the only, I mean, we may be a benefactor if that project's late. However, Haynesville's flat to staying flat. Would you say that, Tony?

Yeah. You know, Jeannie, there's so much discussion about the Haynes bill and what's going to happen. And honestly, I'm somewhat befuddled by it. And I think that's the right term. We've got LNG coming on in the Louisiana area. The call it is four and a half to five BCF over the next two years. Okay. And that's a big number. And it has, there's nothing that the whole permitting thing that has recently happened that Jim addressed so well this morning, it impacts that. So we think that, or we talk like Louisiana and the Hainesville has a chance to go to hell in a handbasket. And I'm sorry, I just don't see it. Unless I'm missing something. The Hainesville, last but not least, has a, is one of the primary basins for a massive amount of long-term storage of gas reserves, no question about it. So we still see it as an ideal and kind of a cornerstone basin for us relative to natural gas.

Great. Thanks for that, Tony. And thank you, Randy, for all of your help over the years. You'll be missed. That's all for me.

Thank you.

One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Spiro Dunas with Citi.

You may proceed.

Thanks, operator. Morning, team. Two very quick follow-ups from me. One, Randy, just want to go back to the distribution growth and follow up on Tristan's question. You know, the cadence the last, call it two years or so, has been an increase about every two quarters, tracking around that 5% annual growth. I know you like to keep us guessing, so as we think going forward, you know, how opportunistic is the distribution growth from here, or is that something we should really kind of expect going forward?

Yeah, Spiro, again, I just go back to our track record. We don't like to get out and front run our board, but, you know, again, I think with the CapEx, you know, with the CapEx we're deploying and the return on capital that we're expecting to get, you know, I think coming in and, you know, we've been increasing distributions 25 years in a row, and I feel pretty good about 26. So, you know, and, you know, we've been doing it around, you know, mid-single digits.

All right, fair enough. Second one, just around M&A, you all purchased some natural gas storage assets around the quarter. Pretty small for you, so I don't want to read into it too much, but Just curious, is this sort of the beginning of a bigger push into natural gas storage, or is it more opportunistic? As you look at the rest of your asset base, are there more opportunities like this to bolt on?

That's a Wilson storage that we've leased for years and years, and in the contract they had the right to put it to us, and they put it to us. And it was a reasonable price, so we weren't upset.

And that was legacy going back to Golterra Energy Partners. We sort of inherited that when we acquired Golterra.

Okay. Perfect. Thanks, guys. I will save my Project 10 question for the April call. Thanks, everyone.

Josh, this is Randy. Let me cut in. We have time for one more question.

Thank you. One moment for questions. And our next question comes from John McKay with Goldman Sachs. He may proceed.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for the time. I just wanted to touch one more time on the export side. Understand that FOB spreads, FOB improvements are really high right now, but you talked about kind of outer coming down farther. Is it really just we are going to see these rates stay high until yours and your kind of competitors' projects come online in 2025? or would you expect some benefit there once or if the Panama Canal starts to clear up?

Go ahead. Yeah, we expect the rates to remain elevated until the expansion comes online from us and our competitors, call that mid-25. But with respect to the Panama Canal issues and even issues in the Red Sea, really I haven't seen that impact the FOB values too much. The VLGC fleet has done a really good job at repositioning itself. There's over 380 VLGCs on the water to help mitigate those issues. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, we've seen freight come down, so don't really see that impacting the FOB values too much from the canal. How many VLGCs came on in 23, and how many do we expect in 24? Yeah, I was calling around north of 40 VLGCs came online in 2023, and there's going to be another 22 or so come online in 24.

All right. That's great. Appreciate that. And maybe just one more clarification from earlier. Appreciated the color on the fee floors on processing in the Permian. Just one thing we wanted to try to frame up. I mean, if we look year over year, Permian processing volumes are up about half a B, but margins effectively flat. Just curious if you can comment, is that all commodity impact or is there some kind of underlying deflation on the fee side as well.

It's all commodity.

All right. Makes sense. That's it for me. Thanks again.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Randy Burkhalter for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Josh. Before we close out, I'd like to thank Randy for the kind comments and the offer from you, Jim. And You know, and many thanks to all of you I've worked with through the years.

He's getting a little emotional, y'all. Thank you. And I guess with that, we'll end the call.

Thanks to everyone for your participation.

Thank you. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.