8/7/2025

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Good morning. My name is Angeline, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Kira's 2025 second quarter 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, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Krakbritsen, General Manager of Investor Relations. You may begin.

speaker
Dan Krakbritsen
General Manager of Investor Relations

Thank you, and good morning. Joining me today will be Dean Sadeguchi, President and CEO, Eileen Merikar, Senior Vice President and CFO, Jamie Urquhart, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, and Jared Bastoni, Senior Vice President, Operations and Engineering. We'll begin with some prepared remarks from Dean and Eileen, after which we'll open the call to questions. I'd like to remind listeners that some of the comments and answers that we'll give today relate to future events. These forward-looking statements are given as of today's date and reflect events or outcomes that management currently expects. In addition, we will refer to some non-GAAP financial measures. For additional information on non-GAAP measures and forward-looking statements, please refer to CAER's public filings available on CDAR and on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dean.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. CAER delivered strong results in the second quarter and advanced its long-term strategy. Strong commercial momentum led to the sanctioning of key growth projects. We also secured more access to LPG exports off the West Coast and announced a transformational acquisition that significantly increased expands our scale, and enhances our service offering for customers. So far in 2025, we've sanctioned three capital-efficient growth projects. These are the PRAC 2, the bottleneck, PRAC 3, and CAP Zone 4. In the last several months, we've also secured over 100,000 barrels per day of new long-term contracted volumes on CAPs Zones 1 to 4. These have been mostly integrated deals. And as a result, including both expansions is now substantially contracted. These developments keep us well on track to achieve our growth targets of seven to 8% annual fee-based adjusted EBITDA from 2024 to 2027. And they'll continue to drive growth well beyond that timeframe. This continued visibility to fee-for-service growth gives us the confidence to continue to sustainably raise our dividend. Yesterday, the Board approved another 4% annual increase. In June, we announced the transformational acquisition of Plains Canadian NGL Business, a defining step that expands our scale, reach, and service offering across the NGL value chain. This acquisition creates a much larger integrated network, adding more efficient connectivity to key demand hubs across the Prairies, Ontario, and the U.S. It also strengthens our ability to serve customers across all NGL products, specifically enhancing our propane market access. For customers, it means better connectivity, optimized product flows, increased diversification, and stronger netbacks. For shareholders, the deal is expected to be mid-teens accretive to DCF for share in the first full year, assuming $100 million in near-term synergies. Our fee-based adjusted EBITDA will increase by approximately 50% over that period. It's also important to note that this transaction is a great Canadian story. This deal will bring strategic infrastructure under Canadian ownership supporting energy security, and ensuring that value creation and decision-making remain right here at home. With this expanded footprint, Kiara is in an even better position to enable the next phase of volume and growth. The basin continues to benefit from low-cost, long-life resources in the Montney and Duvernay. Increased demand for energy and petrochemical development is driving sustained increases in mass gas, and NGL volumes. Our combined platform will play an important role in meeting that demand efficiently. With that, I'll turn it over to Eileen to walk through our financial performance this quarter.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

We delivered solid financial results in the second quarter, driven by continued strength in our gathering infrastructure segments. Adjusted EBITDA was $200 million, which includes $12 million in one-time transactional acquisition. This is compared to $326 million. Distributable cash flow was $159 million, or 69 cents per share. Net earnings were $127 million compared to $142 million last year. Our fee-for-service segments, which are GNP and liquid infrastructure, together contributed $255 million in realized margin. This is up over 8% from the same period last year. This steady growth in high-quality contracted cash flow continues to strengthen the foundation of our business and underpins the long-term sustainability of our dividend. The gathering and processing segment delivered real-life margin of $111 million, up from $102 million last year. The increase was driven by strong performance in the North region, including a new daily throughput record at Boffet East and higher throughput at Simonette. Liquid infrastructure delivered $143 million in realized margins, up from $133 million in the same period last year. This segment benefited from continued growth in long-term contracted volumes on caps and strong utilization at our fractionation assets and condensate systems. Marketing realized margin was $60 million compared to $136 million last year. The decline mainly reflects softer commodity pricing, as both periods included outages at AEF. Annual impact of the 2025 AEF outage remains estimated at $50 million. We ended the quarter with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of two times, well below our 2.5 to 3 times target. This is excluding acquisition-related costs. Our strong financial position enabled us to pursue the plane's acquisition while preserving our investment-grade credit ratings and long-term leverage targets. Turning to 2025 guidance, we are reaffirming our marketing realized margin range of $310 to $350 million. Growth capital is now expected to range between $275 million to $300 million. compared to the previous range of $300 million to $330 million. The difference is mostly related to project timing. Maintenance capital and cash tax guidance are unchanged. With that, I'll turn it back to Dean for closing remarks.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Thanks, Eileen.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Our strategy is clear, and we're executing it. We're advancing capital efficient growth projects, securing long-term contracts, expanding our integrated platform, and creating value for both customers and shareholders. The plane's acquisition builds on this momentum and positions us for the next phase of growth. Combined with the strong macro tailwinds of line growth, we are very confident in our long-term outlook. On behalf of Cura's board of directors and management team, I want to thank our employees, customers, shareholders, indigenous rights holders, and other stakeholders for the continued support.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the number 1 on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the number 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Rob Hope . Please go ahead.

speaker
Rob Hope
Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Regarding the next wave of the unsanctioned growth projects, what's looking most attractive currently, whether it be kind of a GNP expansion in the north, some real expansions, or C2 extraction projects?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Good morning, Rob. It's Dean.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Thank you for the question. We're very excited about our entire business, to be honest. And, you know, first of all, I'd start with the macro outlook. We see a lot of continued growth across our basin, both for natural gas and crude oil growth, which obviously we support with the other wind. So with that, we just see a lot of opportunity. You know, we're looking at our rail logistics options, and some of that might be through the planes acquisition and optimizing it. or it might mean building a new unit train facility on our Doseberg site. And so that's a project that we're doing some early stage engineering work on. Certainly, we're very excited about opportunities in our G&P business up in the Montigny-Duvernay fairway. And certainly, we see a lot of growth up in that area. So we're looking at opportunities where We may be able to acquire some assets and enhance them, certainly looking at ways that we can expand our capacity at our existing facilities and potentially a new greenfield facility. So, again, lots of opportunity. I would emphasize that any opportunity that we pursue on the G&P side will be based on very solid contracting for any assets or investments we make in that part of our business. but also the contracts will be integrated contracts with our, you know, our downstream caps, fractionation and marketing business as well. So we just see tremendous opportunities to provide a lot of great service for our customers to enable them to grow. Outside of that, I might also mention that some people have made note of a condensate fractionator, a license that we applied for very recently. And again, you know, what it is, is it's a fractionation, a fractionator that would process condensate into various hydrocarbon products. And that would include light to mid-weight condensates, NGLs, and also crude oil. And anyway, this is still early stages, so we're working on engineering and also, you know, contracts with customers to potentially toll through a facility like that. So anyway, those are just some examples of the opportunities that we see long-term. But at the same time, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. And we do have a lot of projects, as you know, that we need to execute well on in addition to the planes acquisition. So we have a very full place, but we have a team that's very eager to do a great job. And I hope that we'll do it too.

speaker
Rob Hope
Analyst

I appreciate that. And then maybe sticking with contracting, so good to see the KFS has largely contracted now. You know, looking forward, how do you expect your contracting strategy to evolve as you layer in the Plains assets as well as kind of, you know, what you would target for people?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Well, one thing I'd like to point out, you know, maybe I can throw it over to Jamie as well, but I just point out that, you know, to your point, we've signed a lot of long-term contracts across our business. The demand for our services is very strong, as you saw. You know, 100,000 barrels of contracting on cap zone one to four, I'm very pleased with that. But again, a lot of those contracts tie to volumes in through our frack and into our marketing business. So on an enterprise level, we can generate superior results. When we look at the combination of planes, And with those growing contracted fee-for-service cash flows, overall our business is going to be roughly 70% fee-for-service and 30% marketing with the Plains assets too. So the overall composition isn't going to be significantly different. We're going to apply a very disciplined and rigorous risk management strategy to the the planes straddle business. And, again, no different than the discipline we apply to our marketing business today. So, yes, it's a bit different, but overall the composition of our business doesn't change that much, and we think that the marketing piece will, again, be a differentiator that helps us generate best-in-class return on capital metrics. Anything else you want to add to that?

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Yeah, the only thing I'd add, Dean, is that, you know, we – are confident that with the acquired assets with planes that does have some commodity exposure, that we will adhere to the same discipline risk management process that we do in our existing business, and we're very comfortable with the assets that we're bringing in through the plane's acquisition.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

That's great. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good day. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

The next question comes from Robert Cattelier with CBIC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Robert Cattelier
CIBC Capital Markets Analyst

Hey, good morning. I wondered if you could just comment on any initial customer feedback you've had on your agreement to buy the planes and VL assets and how that might influence the competition bureau strategy.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, good morning, Rob.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, thanks for the question and You know what, I can tell you that our customers have been very supportive generally overall. I think that they can see what we're trying to do for our industry, which is to create very efficient solutions for our customers that maximize their netbacks. And they can see that it's still a very competitive space Any customers that, you know, if you look at a situation like where we have our caps and Pemina's Peace Pipeline, and that fairway knows that, you know, we compete very hard with Pemina. And our goal is to be the most integrated midstream operator. And with that, we aim to provide our customers the very best service and, again, to maximize their net back. So I think that they can see that. It's not to say that they don't have any concerns, but certainly we're addressing any questions that they might have. As for the Competition Bureau, all I can say with that is that we're certainly, you know, working with the Competition Bureau. It's a process that is necessary to get to closing. We'll provide an update when it's appropriate. And I just want to reiterate that we're very confident that we'll close this deal as this goes in every material aspect.

speaker
Robert Cattelier
CIBC Capital Markets Analyst

Yeah, that's great. Obviously, there's a lot more to it than, you know, just price. Obviously, the entire net back and flexibility matters a lot. And I'm just curious, you're still very confident in the timeline as well, given that you've just started up with the Competition Bureau. Is that timeline still on the high level of competency?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, you know, we believe in the timeline, but, you know, obviously some of that is out of our control. It's, you know, we're going through the process. We're working very closely with them and planes through this process. So, we believe Q1 is a sweet spot, but again, we'll provide an update when it's appropriate.

speaker
Robert Cattelier
CIBC Capital Markets Analyst

Okay, great. Last one from you then. Just on the Duvernay, I wondered what your specific plans are there. It just gives a sense that maybe activity there is picking up and they need to add any capacity or services to help support the DuVernay. Sure.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

I'll turn that one over to Jamie.

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Yeah, Ross, thanks for the question. I guess I want to get specific on what portion of the DuVernay you're referring to. Is it the West Shale around our Rimby gas plant, or are you talking more up around our Simonette gas plant, or both? I was thinking more Simonette. Yeah, so... You know, the Simonette gas plant, we actually, I think people will have noticed, we had more throughput through that facility over the last couple of quarters than we have historically. And we've had some good success in being able to track additional volumes. But we're also consciously looking to see what that facility can do. It originally wasn't built for a Montney Duvernay type gas plant. And so we've actually gotten some comfort that we're going to be able to get the effective capacity at that facility up by about 50 million a day from about the low 200s to the higher 200 million a day range and the associated liquids that come with it. And ultimately, obviously, that is destined for the caps pipeline and downstream markets. So, we, you know, we're right now have a higher level of confidence in being able to contract with the DuVernay or Monty producers in that area. And then we're also doing some further work to see how we can unlock even more natural gas and liquids capacity over the next year or two.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Okay, that's excellent. Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. The next question comes from Erin McNeil. With Judy Cohen, please go ahead.

speaker
Erin McNeil
Analyst

Hey, morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. Dean, maybe to build on Rob Pope's question, with fractionation capacity now fully contracted, does that make it more challenging for you to provide that sort of full path service and contract incremental volumes on caps? And then just as an extension of that, how should we think about spare capacity on the planes, fractionation assets, and What potential connectivity to CAPS might that create if you're able to successfully?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, no, thanks for the question, Aaron.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

And certainly we're very pleased with the long-term contracts that we signed on our FRAC complex at KFS. What I'd say is that it's not 100% contracted. You know, when we say substantially all, you know, we're kind of saying, you know, around the 90% and greater mark. So we do have some capacity. Most of the contracts are long-term, and when I say long-term, 10-plus years, but we do have a few shorter-term contracts that will be expiring over the next few years. So we will have some capacity available to work with. Certainly we are going to, when we integrate the planes assets in, One of our objectives, too, will be to improve reliability overall between both complexes. Some of that is with utilizing our storage more effectively between the two complexes to manage any short-term outages, but also keep the reliability run rates super high. Some of the things we're looking at in capacity, certainly we're here to provide the capacity that the the industry needs. So if there's more demand in the future, we're going to be looking for the most capital-efficient way between the planes and carrier assets to add that capacity when it's needed. So I certainly believe we could bridge that time period when we see growth above and beyond, you know, what we're building already. Go ahead, Gene.

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Yeah, the only thing I'd add, Aaron, is that you made reference to CAPS and PFS, Planesport Saskatchewan. We're already in the process of having Plainsport Saskatchewan be connected to CAPS. That commitment was made a couple years ago to help support customers on CAPS and our commitment to customers that they're allowed to connect to any fractionator that they so choose off of the CAPS system. It's an open system for our customers.

speaker
Erin McNeil
Analyst

Makes sense, and that's what I was expecting in terms of, you know, other contracts potentially rolling and allowing you to re-up. And then maybe just keeping with the, you know, 100,000 barrels per day of contracting capacity on caps, can you give us a sense of how those contracts layer in by quarter or year and if we need to see any compression adds to the bite in order to accommodate those contracts?

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Hi, Erin. It's Eileen. I can try to answer that question. You know, I think just really stepping back, it is, you know, we have that 7% to 8% EBITDA growth, and that's from our existing, you know, up to 2027. That's our existing cap, 1 to 3. And beyond that, our new projects, like Zone 4 and all of this additional contract, whether it's on the fractionation expansions as well as Zone 4, those will continue to ramp up. all the way into even the next decade. So again, but the ramp on Zone 4 will be quicker than what we saw on Zones 1 to 3 when we initially brought caps on. So it will be a quicker ramp as we bring on Zone 4. But again, this will just help to push out growth well beyond that 2027 timeframe and well into the 2030s.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, and so just to further add on to Eileen's comments is that, you know, when we look at our profile, it's really in the early into the new decade is where we reach the max capacity of the contracts that we sign, not the max capacity, the max production flow of the contracts that we sign, early 2030s.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. I'll turn it back. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. The next question comes from Maurice Toy with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Maurice Toy
RBC Capital Markets Analyst

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Speaking of the theme about contracting here, you've highlighted that over the past several months, you've added more than 100,000 barrels a day of new long-term contracts at caps and also a fully contracted at GFS. Can you give us a flavor as to what generally are the top reasons your customers choose you and also take the opposite direction where what are some of the reasons why they don't choose you, which perhaps offer you upside if and when a deal like Plains is closed or through other deals that could improve your offering?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

That's a great question. They love us now. Listen, I think there's a number of reasons why customers deal with us. You know, I do think that they appreciate the fully integrated service offering that we do provide. And with that, we can be very competitive when we're offering a bundled deal. So I think that they appreciate our ability to access high-value markets for their NGLs, which help them maximize – you know, their netbacks. And as we said with the planes acquisition, this is going to enhance that market access out to Eastern markets, both in Canada and the United States. So it's going to give them a lot more optionality overall. I think that they, they like the reliability of our system and, and it's something that we continue to improve and we're going to be able to improve reliability and, and and again, optionality with the combined assets of Plains. So this is only getting better for our customers with the combination. So, you know, lastly, you know, we try to be very customer focused. You know, it's not like one solution fits all. We try to understand what our customers' needs are, what's important to them, and what we can offer to help them successfully execute their business plan. So, you know, While we're smaller, I feel like we can be more custom-fitting to the needs of our customers and hopefully nimbler. Jamie, if there's anything else you want to add.

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Well, I think you hit the reasons why they choose us. Maybe I'll touch on why historically they haven't supported or chosen us. And that's just uncertainty of whether we had a project or not. And now that we have the project, you'll see that when we announced the sanction of Zone 4, we had 75,000 barrels and we're now at 100. So once you have a real project, I think the greatest momentum that we've got is yet to come.

speaker
Maurice Toy
RBC Capital Markets Analyst

Thanks for that wholesome answer. If I could just finish off with another big picture, but perhaps a longer-term thought here. Just here's how you think over the long term how NGO molecules will move differently from how it does today. Obviously, today, a lot of liquids, rich growth, are being piped and fracked to and at support tasks, including CAPS and KFS. But as you see more export heading out west, do you see the potential for more midstream assets in northeast BC and northwest Alberta? And what does that all mean to you and your facilities?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, that's a great question.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

I mean, certainly we see the runway for a lot of growth in natural gas and without a lot of NGLs in Western Canada. And obviously, that's what's driven the contracting that we've seen so far. There's absolutely – and, you know, I certainly don't see – I've been asked before whether there will be an LPG pipeline built to the West Coast. there's no world I see that you can justify the capital cost of building a pipeline like that to the west coast because there's just not enough volumes to support it. So I think that would be cost prohibitive. So a lot of barrels were still moved by rail. Some of that, as you suggested, I certainly believe that there's going to be more field frac projects, whether that's in northwest Alberta or into BC. I think we'll see more of that, and there will be some product that gets railed directly to the west coast. But anybody that moves any product by rail would also appreciate that rail is not rateable like a pipeline. So whether the weather frees up, so you get strikes, you get whatever other, other issues that call, you know, your cars get bunched up, whatever happens, um, you know, there's, there's disruptions. And, and, and so, you know, if you, if you don't have enough storage and onsite storage, above ground storage is very expensive. So if you are, uh, you know, you can't ship all your product for a couple of weeks, um, you know, that adds to a lot of, a lot of dollars and a lot of value. And if you have to truck all that, that's super expensive. And, And so the reliability of having a pipe to underground cavern storage to the hub where all of those NGLs, a lot of them are consumed already. Still, the point I'm trying to make is there's still going to be a lot of demand for those parts to still go to Fort Saskatchewan. So I see a little bit of all above where there's still going to be field track, but there's still going to be a lot of demand to get to the hub in Fort Saskatchewan. And just maybe the other point I'd like to make is that the West Coast, obviously, we think that there's growing demand in Asia and that's a good place to be, the FEI index. But I'd also point out that there's also high demand centers locally. And we want to make sure that we can provide optionality for our customers because a lot of times they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket or one market. Again, with the planes acquisition, we're also going to be able to help them access those eastern markets. And I can tell you, when it's cold, they need the products, and they're going to price the products. The products are going to be priced to stay in Canada so that they get the ability to heat their homes and things like that. So, you know, bottom line, I think there's going to be great demand still at KFS for Saskatchewan.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Sao with BMO. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ben Sao
BMO Capital Markets Analyst

Hi. Thanks, Amore. Maybe to expand on that last question, but more specifically on the propane market in Western Canada, can you comment also similarly on the flow dynamic that you think can anticipate LPG exports has been viewed as taking market share from other regions. Can you comment on that and whether there's any potential impact on the Sarnia market or the U.S.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

export side of things? Well, thanks for the question, Ben.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

You know, first of all, like I say, the NGL market is just getting over and over supplied. We are a supply-based basin. We have a very small population, so our consumption relative to how much we produce, that is becoming more imbalanced. So you're just going to have a growing oversupply of product that has to clear the market somewhere. And so, yes, the West Coast Asian markets, yes, they're going to be a very valuable market to access and clear some of that excess surplus product. But What we've seen is that in the mid-continent U.S., in the northeast U.S., and places like, you know, you get into Wisconsin and also into Michigan and, you know, Sarnia, you get into the prairies in Canada. I mean, it gets cold here, you know, and when that happens, it's almost, it's pricey and elastic. Like, they need to heat their homes, and There's a lot of homes that will never be connected to natural gas. And so they rely a lot on propane. And so when you get, you know, demand spikes because of weather, they need the product and it's going to price higher than the West Coast because it has to to make sure that product goes there. So I just think it's always great to have options and optionality of accessing high value markets because You know, the highest place to send a molecule of propane changes from time to time and even during the same season. And I'm really happy that we can hit any one of those markets and take advantage of strong pricing.

speaker
Ben Sao
BMO Capital Markets Analyst

Okay. I understand. It sounds like maybe there's some potential market share changes, but the absolute movement is on the trap versus down.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

I'd say yes. Absolutely. Thanks for that.

speaker
Ben Sao
BMO Capital Markets Analyst

And maybe my next question, you mentioned a reference to some acquisition activity. How do you think about framing that inorganic strategy now with a large deal you're getting approval for and then integrating afterwards? Do you fall back on the BD side of things, telling those folks to reallocate their time? Are you still looking actively on transactions considering just where your balance sheet is heading towards?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, I'd say overall that we're still looking for opportunities to enhance our integrated service offering and at the top end of that service is our GMP business. You know, we're not looking to do big acquisitions right now or anything like that, but can we look at some smaller tuck-in opportunities that integrate well with our existing business? Absolutely. So, you know, we're in the business to provide a service for our customers, and, you know, we can't start it and stop it. It's business that continues every day, and, you know, the great thing is that you know, with the financial plan that we executed on, and, you know, Irene can speak to that in more detail, we've left ourselves some flexibility to maintain those activities. So, Irene, is there anything you want to add?

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

No, no, just to add that, yeah, as Dean mentioned, it is the strength of our balance sheet, and it was really getting our base business, the execution of it, the growth in our fee-for-service that allowed us to do such a transformational acquisition. And so the funding plan that we did put in place was intended to maintain our targeted leverage of that two-and-a-half to three times so that it didn't stop opportunities because we do see so many and we want to continue to grow.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Maybe one more thing I'd just like to add is that the bulk of our people in our company are still driving our business and working hard to make – you know, make it more competitive and more profitable. We have a segregated team that is going to be dedicated to the integration and I think in the, you know, the planes business, you know, we combine it with ours when closing happens. So we have different work streams in our company, but our base business is still a big focus of most of our people.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

I got it.

speaker
Ben Sao
BMO Capital Markets Analyst

And just one quick follow-up on on that topic with foot gas processing transactions. I mean, it's a focus more looking at that North Monty area where medialization is already quite strong, but you're bolstering an entire footprint. Or is it more maybe the Bissau region where you can buy for value and enhance and integrate?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

I mean, again, we're here to – supply services where there's greatest demand. And right now, the greatest demand is up along the Monteney-Dubeny fairway up in our northern region. We still have capacity available in our south region. So, again, most of our focus down there is to fill what we have.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. The next question comes from AJ O'Donnell with ETH. Please go ahead.

speaker
AJ O'Donnell
ETH Analyst

Morning, everyone. I was wondering if we could, you know, go back to just overall NGO competition in the basin. In light of some of the contracts, incremental contracts that you guys have been able to sign with cap zone one to four, just thinking over the longer term and maybe some of the comments from larger producers in the basin about overall transport rates are looking to save on overall transport rates by the end of the decade. How would you characterize the contracts that you've been signing? Have they been pretty competitive from a price advantage or, you know, are we getting into a situation where we start to build out all this NGO infrastructure in the basin and we could potentially see some margin compression later on in the decade as things start to roll off and recontract?

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Good morning, AJ, and again, thank you for the question.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Certainly, the basin is very competitive, and that's why we have such a competitive marginal cost supply overall for the basin, which is great. And what I'd say is that, you know, I said this earlier, is that our objective is to build the most competitive integrated industry platform. And, you know, our goal is to keep on improving every day, and this is a relentless pursuit that will never stop and um you know so we're very pleased that uh we could be competitive to to sign and attract a hundred thousand uh barrels of supply onto our system and uh and that led to obviously including downstream contracts through our frac and and logistics and marketing business so we can be very uh competitive i do want to reiterate that all of our projects are well within our capital return expectations. So they fill that and they're well within the range on an independent basis. And again, when you look at it on an integrated basis, we feel very confident that we're going to deliver superior return on capital returns for our shareholders. So we believe this is very sustainable. We think that there's going to be more consolidation in the basin and You know, if that happens, again, we're very well positioned to compete for business in that world and still deliver strong returns for our shareholders.

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Yeah, I think the only thing I'd add, Dean, and, you know, I agree 100% with everything you said, is that, you know, as we think about our practice functions coming online, as Dean has said, is that You know, the way we look at it, we contracted Fracts 1 and 2, and then we contracted Fract 3. So when you think about fully contracted, it's not just Fract 3, and a bunch of contracts are rolling off on 1 and 2. We looked at it from a stacked perspective, and it's all of our Fract complex that has a high degree of contracting. The contracts that are rolling off, and there's some, not a huge amount – You know, we think about it with respect to being able to offer that integrated offering, as Dean said. You know, the fact that, you know, we've got another fractionation expansion coming online next year might create some very short-term oversupply in the market, but the fundamentals and the drilling activity that we're seeing is our view is that track capacity within our basin is going to be highly utilized in the long term. And, you know, can't speak for our competitor, but we're already looking at the next frac expansion. We're not looking to, you know, wait another seven, eight years like we did the last time between frac two and frac three. We believe that the basin is going to require more frac capacity much sooner than that.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Great. I appreciate that detail.

speaker
AJ O'Donnell
ETH Analyst

Maybe just the last one from me. I know it's only been a couple months in, you know, the plane's assets are not quite in your hands yet, but you guys have kind of talked about, you know, your prudent risk management activities. And just wondering, as you look out over the, you know, the frack forward curves into next year, maybe what your ability is like. Have you been able to lock in any additional margin or hedges on that business? Yeah, just any comments on that. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Hi, AJ. Thanks for the question. And yeah, I think I can speak generally about our hedging. As we mentioned earlier, in terms of the pro forma business mix, there's not going to be that significant of a change as to the amount of marketing. It's about 30%, which is kind of what we've seen over the past few years from our standalone business. And again, we are looking for the true competitive advantage because we have the storage, the logistics, and the risk management disciplines. So, as it relates to hedging specifically, really our philosophy isn't going to be very different. What we do is we look to protect inventory, which is really key, and we look to lock in future margins. So, when it comes to the frack spread exposure, you know, the key elements to this is acogas, propane in particular, and butane as well as FX. These components already fit very well within our existing risk management program. So, So I think we feel very confident that we will be able to manage this as we close and get into next year.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Yeah, I'd also add, AJ, that we can't speak to this in a lot of detail, but I'd say that there are hedges in place that give us confidence with our mid-teens DCF accretion in the first full 12 months of closing.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Great. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. The next question comes from Patrick Kenney with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

speaker
Patrick Kenney
National Bank Financial Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just on the GNP margin front, I know LNG Canada is still working through some growing pains, but in light of where ACO prices are at, just wondering if you could comment on how you're seeing fees and overall margins holding up across your GNP portfolio going forward. especially in the south where, you know, whether or not you might need to share the pain, at least over the near term, just to support current production levels at, you know, whether it's Rimby, Brazzo, or Strachan.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Hey, Patrick. Good morning.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

You know, thanks for the question. I'll turn this over to Jamie, but I just want to make a couple of quick points. One is that about 70% of our margins from our GMP business is generated from the north. And that's more linked to condensate pricing. So it's less elastic to natural gas prices. So, you know, the 30% is in the south. What I'd say is that, you know, we've seen low prices for a long time. So this is nothing new. So, you know, our volumes have been pretty steady because of that. But I'll turn it over to Jamie.

speaker
Jamie Urquhart
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Yeah, I was going to make the same point, is that sharing in the pain, we've been sharing in the pain for a period of time now, Patrick. You know, obviously, everybody's aware of where gas prices have been over the last few years. The point I'd like to make is that, you know, the growth that we see around some of our facilities is, you know, have some liquids associated with them. So we're optimistic with respect to some of the growth opportunities we do see in the south. And that spans all of our facilities, not just around the Rimby gas plant. But also, you know, the facilities that we do have have great interconnectivity, have deeper cuts traditionally, and they have great interconnectivity to market. So, you know, if you look at the the plays that we service in the south, there's still a pretty significant liquids component and value proposition associated with them. That still makes it attractive for customers to drill wells. Now, would they prefer gas prices to be north of $2, $3? Of course, but they can still make it work for them. And, you know, and I think you would have seen there's just more plays that are developing to be a little bit repetitive around the Duvernay, the Belly River, that, you know, we're obviously in conversations with customers to help serve their needs on those emerging plates that are more liquids-based.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Maybe one more thing to add, Patrick. I'd also say that Jared's team has done a lot of work to find optimization efficiencies across our entire portfolio, including our Cell GMP team. And with that, it helps enable us to provide a service to our customers at a price point where it makes sense for them, but where we can also generate a margin as well.

speaker
Patrick Kenney
National Bank Financial Analyst

Got it. Okay, thanks for that. That's great, Keller. And then just on the shift in some growth capex into 26th, I know it's not a huge number, but just wondering if you had a bit more color on which project or projects might be experiencing a bit of a delay, whether it's specific to the project or more macro-related, but also maybe what initiatives your team might be undertaking just in order to maintain the target and service base.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Hi, Patrick. I can start, and maybe Jared has something to comment on. Honestly, the reduction in growth cap, it's really just a shift in timing. It's largely just reforecasting, and so there's really been no impact to timing, schedule, overall cost of any of the key projects that we have sanctioned. So I would say overall, you know, our guidance that we provided in December of last year, I think we said over 26 and 27, we would average $350 to $450 million in in each of those years. You know, I think you can expect that one year may have higher spend versus the other, but on average, that still remains.

speaker
Jared Bastoni
Senior Vice President, Operations and Engineering

Yeah, what I'd add, Patrick, is, you know, as some of that timing was shifting is that, you know, the commercial arrangements were coming together on some of those projects. Our engineering team was in lockstep with our commercial group and understood that. So we were able to make a bunch of adjustments in terms of kind of sequencing and timing around those projects when we ordered some of the long lead equipments and made some of those commitments. to still preserve the ISDs that we originally had planned for.

speaker
Dean Sadeguchi
President and CEO

Okay, that's perfect. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Patrick.

speaker
Eileen Merikar
Senior Vice President and CFO

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

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