Williams Companies, Inc. (The)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Williams Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Just a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and now at this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Danilo Giovanni, Vice President of Investor Relations, ESG, and Investment Analysis. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Beau, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and for your interest in the Williams Company. Yesterday afternoon, we released our earnings press release and the presentation, that the President and CEO, Alan Armstrong, and our Chief Financial Officer, John Porter, will speak to this morning. Also joining us on the call today are Michael Dunn, our Chief Operating Officer, Lane Wilson, our General Counsel, and Chad Dameron, our Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategic Development. In our presentation materials, you'll find a disclaimer related to forward-looking statements. This disclaimer is important and integral to our remarks, and you should review it. Also included in our presentation materials are non-GAAP measures that we reconcile to generally accepted accounting principles. And these reconciliation schedules appear at the back of today's presentation materials. So with that, I'll turn it over to Alan Armstrong.

Okay. Well, thanks, Danilo, and thank you all for joining us today. Another positive story to share with you this quarter, and you can see some of those highlighted here and called out on slide two. First of all, adjusted EBITDA up 8%. Adjusted earnings per share up 5% and our gathering volumes were up 6%. And certainly while this growth and beat is impressive, our resiliency in the face of low commodity prices is even more impressive and gave us another opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the pack, which is largely posted declines this quarter. And our growth continues to compound despite these price swings in natural gas. This quarter was a perfect example where we saw an 8% EBITDA increase on the backs of a very strong 14% increase for the same period last year. John will dive deeper into the numbers in a moment, but let me start out with a few highlights from the quarter. Our financial performance is our track record, but it is the day-to-day focus on execution by our teams that drives these results and really does set us apart. As an example, our teams have done a fantastic job of quickly integrating the Mountain West acquisition into our core business, and in fact, we're pleased to announce that we've already secured binding precedent agreements to support a significant expansion on the newly acquired overthrust pipeline. This project was not even in our upside case for this investment, and the team has identified even more growth to come that is beyond our original expectations. Much of this growth is centered around coal to natural gas conversions in the western states. On Transco, we continue to advance our emission reduction program and recently completed our first large-scale compressor replacement project in Virginia. Our backlog of high return pipeline expansion opportunities continues to progress, driven by a large wave of incremental demand that continues to exceed our expectations. As evidence of this continued wave of increasing demand, we recently concluded a non-binding open season to advance another large-scale Transco project that will provide much-needed capacity to serve our customers south of Station 165 in Virginia. Our customers requested capacity that has been well in excess of the 800,000 decatherms per day that we offered. Importantly, the minimum required term for this service offering was 20 years. This underscores our belief in the durable and fast-growing demand for capacity and the market's confidence in our ability to deliver this capacity with the lowest environmental impact, following the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. We're now working to find a way to serve as much of our customers' needs as possible and hope to have an update on this exciting project soon. Moving on to financial performance, as I stated earlier, despite a weakened natural gas price environment, our financial results not only grew against a difficult comp in a difficult environment, but this quarter marked the 30th consecutive earnings print that either met or exceeded consensus estimates. Within our legacy-based business in the Northeast, we produced record EBITDA and record gathering volumes, delivering growth that far outpaced the total production across the Marcellus. Our strategy to focus on connecting our producing customers to the best markets with the most reliable service available has grown this business to the point it is nearing $2 billion per year of EBITDA. The completion of the Mountain Valley pipeline, our regional energy access project, and continued growth of gas-fired generation in the local market will continue to provide market and volume growth well into the future. In the West, we also achieved record gathering volumes, once again showing that our diverse geographic position is built to weather commodity price swings. In our transmission and Gulf of Mexico segment, we are enjoying the beginnings of a long runway of growth in the deep water, gearing up for a long string of expansions on Transco, and enjoying better than expected growth in our Mountain West acquisition, which speaks to our successful integration. Importantly, the strength of our base business more than offset weaker EMP earnings and expected low seasonal cash flows from our marketing business. The quarter's results continue to prove out the inherent stability and stubborn growth of our business. However, when we see the market fail to appreciate our ability to deliver in low-price environments, We will continue to execute on our authorized repurchase program, much like we did during the second quarter. And finally, a few notes on our sustainability efforts. Last week, we issued our 2022 sustainability report and completed our annual CDP climate questionnaire. These are both important markers that detail our progress on key issues like environmental stewardship, community support, and workforce development. To us, sustainability means running our business in a way that will create value for the perpetual shareholder. So we're proud to also be providing our shareholders with industry-leading returns on invested capital, and we expect our shareholders to further benefit from enhanced capital returns as we execute on our large growth backlog. which, among others, includes seven out of nine major pipeline projects that are coming online in the fourth quarter of 24. And that will be stacked on top of a solid foundation of a sustainable-based business. And with that, I'm going to turn things over to John to walk us through the financial metrics of the quarter. John?