Western Midstream Partners, LP

Good afternoon. My name is Emma and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Western Midstream Partners first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, Again, press the star 1. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Daniel Jenkins, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'm glad you could join us today for Western Midstream's first quarter 2023 conference call. I would like to remind you that today's call, the accompanying slide deck, and last night's earnings release contain important disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and non-gap reconciliations. Please reference Western Midstream's most recent Form 10-Q and other public filings for a description of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we discussed today. Relevant reference materials are posted on our website. With me today are Michael Ure, our Chief Executive Officer, and Kristen Schultz, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Michael.

Thank you, Daniel, and good afternoon, everyone. During the first quarter, we continued to experience strong producer activity levels in the Delaware Basin, resulting in higher throughput across all three product lines, including record-breaking natural gas and produce water throughput. Despite continued throughput growth in the Delaware Basin, our first quarter adjusted EBITDA declined sequentially, primarily due to decreased distributions from Cactus 2, which was sold in the fourth quarter of 2022, reduced margin from our South Texas assets due to a contractual step down in demand fees, which we previously communicated on last quarter's call, and reduced natural gas throughput and margin from our assets in Utah and Wyoming, mostly due to weather. Although our adjusted EBITDA declined sequentially, we expect quarterly profitability to gradually improve as throughput increases for the remainder of the year. Kristen will go into more detail regarding our first quarter performance and our second quarter expectations shortly. Operationally, I'm very pleased to highlight that our commercial team continues to generate substantial value for WES. Subsequent to quarter end, we executed long-term amendments to Occidental's natural gas gathering and processing agreement in the Delaware Basin, increasing their firm capacity on our system and extending the gathering agreement by three years to 2035. Over the past year, we've executed multiple amendments to Occidental's natural gas processing and gathering agreements in the Delaware Basin. increasing their firm processing capacity by up to 800 million cubic feet per day. Moving to the balance sheet, in March we obtained investment grade status and subsequent to quarter end we issued 750 million dollars of senior notes to refinance existing revolver borrowings and to enhance our liquidity position. This was our first debt issuance since early 2020 and I'm very pleased it was well received by the market. In addition, We executed an amendment with our bank group that extends the maturity of our credit facility to 2028 and solidifies $2 billion of commitments. These capital market transactions have fortified our liquidity position, improved our debt maturity profile, and enable us to be opportunistic regarding future capital allocation decisions, which is a real strength when considering today's volatile and uncertain market conditions. Finally, The board approved the payment of $140 million or approximately 36 cents per unit in an enhanced distribution that will be paid in conjunction with our first quarter base distribution of 50 cents per unit for a total of approximately 86 cents per unit. We view our capital allocation strategy and especially our ability to pay an enhanced distribution as a way to build long-term value for our unit holders and to further differentiate WES relative to our peers. With that, I will turn it over to Kristen to discuss her operational and financial performance.