Alan Armstrong
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead, your line is open
Great, thank you very much John, and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us here for our Q4 and full year 2014 earnings call today. To begin with, I'd like to welcome a couple of new members of our leadership team and they are joining us today as John just mentioned by phone. First is Bob Purgason, who became Senior Vice President of our Access operating area in January, and just to remind you, Bob has been COO at Access since 2010 and before that he was here at Williams for about 19 years until 2006. So, the organization here at Williams is very excited to have Bob back and really looking forward to a lot of the leadership he is brining. Additionally, Walter Bennett is here with us, and Walter previously led the Western operations for Access, and in January he began leading Williams' Western operations post Allison Bridges' retirement. And of course that includes our Northwest pipeline area and all of our big gathering and processing out in the Rockies as well as we've added to that now the Niobrara area in Wyoming that ACMP had this built, and our team, the Williams team had collaborated to help bring that business up as well. So, we're really excited to have Walter's very strong operating background and strong technical expertise brought to our team out there in the west. Additionally, I would just tell you, there are a lot of great leaders that have come in from ACMP, and they really are contributing a lot to our organization and help us lead through this tremendous growth period that we've got going on here at Williams. So, really nice to see the teams come in together so nicely and so quickly. Moving on here to slide 2, and you'll see a lot of the major topics listed here on this slide that will hit on this short presentation, but this is the place I'd like to spend a little more time discussing the drivers of our new guidance and really the significant derisking that has occurred as we have dramatically lowered our planned commodity margins. We've lowered our fee-based volume assumptions, and we've got more conservative on our Geismar ramp-up schedule. So, here first on the commodity price deck, our new price deck is centered on a $55 WTI and $3 Henry Hub gas price, and we've tried to be conservative with the price decks that are largely below the forward curves for products like propane and natural gasoline, where we're along the commodity and below the forward curve where we are short like our natural gas and ethane. We believe this is certainly one of the most conservative decks being used amongst our peers in the industry, and overall this resulted in a 44% reduction in our planned commodity margins and commodity positions at WPZ, and this now represent only about -- this commodity price only about 12% of our gross margin is now exposed directly to the commodities. On the gathering volume side, we've assumed reduced activity on the assets with unprotected volume exposure. So, in those areas, we're directly exposed to volumes and in many case we're ahead of what the producers have publicly communicated to investors. In other words, we're trying to get ahead of the lowering of rig counts and making sure that we've got a good handle on what we expect, and in many cases where that hasn’t been publicly tried to get ahead of that with our own estimations. And fortunately though, I would tell you these impacts are only limited to a handful of our assets, and in the context of the new larger enterprise, the impacts we think are certainly manageable. So for example, our Northeast volumes are currently tracking ahead of our revised plan for 2015. On the Geismar ramp schedule, we have incorporated a much lower utilization of the facility over the first three months of the year, and this is going to allow for safe controlled ramp-up to full production. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time doing it safely and ensuring a very high quality asset, and we certainly don't want to try to make any shortcuts here at the last minute on that. So, very proud of the team there continuing to be very focused on safe and making sure when we do get up to full capacity that we've got a safe and durable asset there. A couple of offsets to the impacts of these more conservative assumptions do exist in our plan. First of all, the early in service for Transco projects on the mainline portion of the Leidy Southeast expansion and the Virginia Southside expansion, and I'll hit on more of this in just a little bit, so I won't spend any time there. And then finally, on the next, on the cost cuts, we do have some offset to some of the negative variances as we’ve stepped up our focus on really rightsizing our cost structure to match the reduced levels of activities in few of the regions. And so, while we've not specifically called out that number, I would emphasize that this can and will be a moving target depending on the ultimate levels of activity, and the production around our assets. But we certainly see an opportunity to offset some slower growth, and take advantage of the lower energy prices and materials in our own business because we certainly are exposed to energy and materials in our own business and a lot of those prices have come down. So in general, we're taking advantage of this low commodity market to position ourselves for a very strong consistent performance. And with many of the potential upsides that have been taken out of our guidance now, we still see a lot of those upsides out there, but we pulled a lot of that out of our guidance, and so as those occur, they will result in upsides to our guidance. But despite the significant derisking, WPZ still has one of the highest distribution growths amongst our peers, and this is driven now by approximately $4.5 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2015 which is further driven by fee-based revenues which make up about 88% of our gross margin. And then, we expect our EBITDA to continue to grow to about $6 billion on the backs of over $9 billion of fee based projects as we look forward to 2017. Moving on to slide 3, we can see here the key drivers of the fourth quarter and the comparisons to the fourth quarter of '13 along some of the mixed results that generated headwinds for us in the fourth quarter. So, this was certainly another very busy quarter for us as we undertook the commissioning of three very large assets. These assets are now ramping up to our expectations here in the first quarter and will be big contributors to our growth for the balance of 2015 and beyond. So, first now to hit on the WMB highlight, WMB received $515 million of distributions up from WPZ and ACMP and this was a 16% increase up $70 million. The higher distribution was supported by 30% increase in the fourth quarter adjusted segment profit in DD&A which was up $216 million to now $944 million there in the fourth quarter. So this large increase was certainly driven by the additional ACMP interest that we acquired in the third quarter of '14 and as well the associated consolidation of those interests. WPZ had mixed results for the quarter. We had some real positives and some real challenges as well. Ongoing mature businesses continued to perform as expected; however, we did have some delays and higher expenses in bringing on Geismar and along with lower commodity prices caused the quarter to come in lower than we had planned. So, now looking into each segment, the Atlantic-Gulf, strong underlying performance in Transco in the Western Gulf, but this was offset by some producer startups on the Keathley Canyon and Gulfstar facilities. These projects are now online and ramping up nicely here in the first quarter and really pleased to be serving our customers out there both the Anadarko's Lucius facility and the Hess' operated Tubular Bells facility up there. On the NGL & Petchem side, Geismar being offline versus an expected mid fourth quarter startup plus some LCM inventory adjustments that marks most of the products that we have for linepack and operating inventories back to a much lower market and so this is nothing new in terms of how we account for our inventories, but the sever downward move in NGLs caused a much larger than normal swing in this inventory valuation. We also saw some high expenses for the quarter associated with commissioning and repairs through our Geismar facility. In the Northeast we continue to ride the wave of strong growth in the Marcellus volumes with a 26% increase on a quarter-to-quarter basis and 28% increase in a full-year '13 to '14 comparison. However we did not hit our expected numbers in OVM due to a delay in bringing on some of the major well pads that producers were bringing on right at the end of the year, but we do continue and enjoy tremendous growth in this area and our current production levels in the Northeast segment as I mentioned earlier are ahead of a more conservative plan now for 2015. Southwest, the West really performed largely in line with what we've expected with the exception of the commodity prices which certainly clipped our NGL margins in the area. And this area has really held up fairly well despite of lack of drilling and as always our Northwest pipeline asset remained quite steady and in 2015 our plan has less than 15% of the company's gross margin in the west coming from commodity exposed contract. So, in the past as you know the west has always been an area of big commodity exposure to us and to some of our big processing facilities out there and because of the continued growth in our fee based business as well as the large decline in NGL margins now only have about a percent of that gross margin, actually a little less than that out West. So, lot less volatility as we go into 2015 at West. So overall, a noisy quarter for WTZ given several one-time and discrete events, but our underlying fundamentals are very strong they give us complements in our 2015 plan and certainly now on the ACMP side, ACMP produced another very impressive quarter. Fee based revenues were up 48% to $593 million and this was driven by a lot of new capital investments that delivered record gross gathering volumes of 6.5 Bcf a day, so tremendous accomplishment by the ACMP team there in the fourth quarter as well. Moving on to slide 4, talk about some of the milestones and the recent accomplishments here, that certainly give us a lot of confidence in our plan going forward. First of all as I mentioned Gulfstar won the typical startup issues I would tell you for the producers bringing on a lot of new big wells on to that platform, but it is looking like some ultimate upside to our original expected flow rates from the facility and so we're really pleased to see the way that's going and very excited about that investment. On the Transco side, another winner and another big increase in peak volumes on the nation's largest and fastest growing pipeline. With this year's peak a day here in January beating last year's record by 8% despite a very, very cold winter in January 2014. So, really just a lot of continued growth is driving that on the Transco system and that team continues to do a great job keeping up with all that growth. ACMP as I mentioned also hit another record volumes and this really a major contributor to this was the gathering volumes in the Utica and those fed into the 49% UEO processing JV there in Eastern Ohio and the latest train to come on line was the new Leesville plant. So, continued great exposure there to the growth in the Utica and really excited to see the way those volumes continue to perform. More recently, the big addition to our discovery partnership, the Keathley Canyon connector received first production from Anadarko at their Lucius platform and now as we move into March we expect to begin receiving much larger gas volumes from Hadrian field and so again, another huge accomplishment brining on that major facility out in over 7000 feet of water. Our Geismar restart has certainly been long awaited and we're excited to be where we are on that finally and it is, we are in the process of getting that lined out and we expect to continue to ramp up here in the end of February and our plan does really expect consistent full rate production until the very end of march and so we've derisked that as well and we currently are working to improve the ultimate efficiency of several of the heat exchanger systems before we can reach back for full production. But all the systems in the base plant have been activated and we've been able to fund that up to about 70% of load there on the base plant. So, we're very confident and where we are today on that it's really just a matter of getting those exchangers being able to operate up to their peak efficiencies. Our combined access and Williams operating teams came together on the new Bucking Horse plant in Wyoming right during the dead of winter and so, while we don’t expect this plant to generate a significant amount of cash flow, here in the near future, it was very important for our teams to get this plant online for the benefit of our new largest customer Chesapeake and it also demonstrated the clear benefits of integration between both Access and Williams personnel into one new organization out there. So hats off to that team that worked through the pretty touch winter up there to get that plant started up. Many of our recent expansions have involved along with other facilities modifications to the Transco mainline and so, this allows us to facilitate moving gas from the Marcellus and the Utica from the North to the South. And so, with two kind of projects in common here on this was first Virginia Southside which started up in December '14, the mainline portion did, not yet the lateral but the mainline portion started up much earlier than expected and that full facility of the lateral will come on in the third quarter of 2015. And then the same story on Leidy Southeast which in March of this year will bring on the mainline portion of the Leidy Southeast project and that also beats our expectations for that project as well. And together these projects will yield $50 million to $75 million of incremental operating profit in 2015. These are all fully contract and that's been approved by the FERC. So we are ready to put these into service and of course bringing on all this incremental operating profit wasn’t expected originally in those investments really gives a very nice boost to our original expected returns for those projects. And then finally, our Rockaway Beach lateral is expected to start up in either late March or early April and the team has been working hard to hold the schedule despite as a lot of you all know a very wet and cold weather there in the New York area. But really excited to finally bring that project to closure and being able to serve our big customer of their national grid. Moving on to slide 5, this slide really just provides a real quick snapshot of the different types of cash flow that make up our $6 billion of gross margin. And just to make a few points here, first it shows that now only 3% of WPZ's risk remains tied to the NGL margin commodities and the spread on NGLs and only 9% is tied to our olefins margin in both our Geismar and Canadian facilities. So, meaning 88% of our cash flows are now from fee based revenues here in 2015 and including nearly two-thirds of those that are under contract that have demand payments, cost of service with minimum volume commitment. So as we can see on the next slide our future growth is even less dependent on commodities as we move to slide 6 here, and this really shows that 99% of our $9.3 billion of growth capital that's in guidance are tied to fee based projects. So this slide really gets to the heart of our lower risk and growth strategy for the next few years. And as you can see the vast majority of this is tied to, even the fee based projects the vast majority is tied to the kind of business that are either on our gas pipeline system or in the ACMP area where we have a lot of protection from volume risk. And so lot of confidence and certainty from our perspective about how we go forward. So, while certainly commodity prices are and remain important to our business specifically here for the near term cash flows and coverage they really are not the driver of our growth. Our business strategy is built around natural gas volume growth and the demand for associated large scale infrastructure that are going to be required to build out as the natural gas and natural gas products markets continue to build on the back of a very low priced commodity. And as a result we're confident in our ability to deliver one of the highest rates of distribution growth amongst our large cap peers, despite the lower expected commodity prices that are not built into our plan. Moving on to slide on to slide 7, this slide just drills down into the known projects over this longer period. And so, I'm not going to go through each of these facilities, but one of things that I think we have not spoken very much about but is pretty impressive is the amount of exposure that we have to the LNG export facilities and in fact the Transco has connections that allow it to receive or deliver gas. But nearly every LNG import/export facility in the Gulf Coast and the eastern seaboard other than the Everett facility in Boston. Those LNG facilities include Cheniere's Sabine Pass, Exxon's Golden Pass, trunk lines like trialed [ph] Sempra's Cameron LNG, the Elba Island LNG and the Toe Point LNG [ph]. And as you know, we've talked in the past about our access to our Gulf Trace Project being a 1.2 Bcf a day commitment to Cheniere's Sabine Pass facility that's fully contracted and will start up in early 2017. But we also recently concluded an open season in December of '14 for the Gulf market expansion and this is designed to provide an additional 1.4 Bcf a day of firm transportation from station 65 going back to the West to points on the mainline in Louisiana and Texas and great progress there and we're in the process of negotiating the firm commitments from our shippers and that came out of the open season and it is anticipated that this could possible 1.4 Bcf a day of capacity could be in service as early as late 2018, so just continued tremendous growth on the Transco system, both on the market side and supply side. Moving to slide 8 here for the conclusion, certainly we're very pleased to have the PZ/ACMP merger closed and remain more excited than ever really, we continue to see tremendous benefits from the combined strength of this new MLP and we think it is the MLP to be exposed to amongst the large caps if you like the prospects of overall market growth of both natural gas and natural gas derivatives because clearly our strategy is very tightly focused on this opportunity. As we look to the PZ distribution growth, all of the issues I've gone through the day really drive to this and the revised outlook for PZ and WMB result in a new guidance of 7% to 11% annual distribution growth at WPZ through the '17 period with the midpoint of 9% and this really reflects the strength and the quality of our underlying assets with a growing coverage ratio of greater than 1.05 once we get through this first quarter and '15 ramp up period. So, not only do we think we have good growth there, but we are continuing to build coverage through period and so we're really excited that despite these much lower and a very relevant to our peers at very conservative price that we continue to be even at the lower growth rate at the low end commodity prices we're still at the high end of our large cap MLP peers. And so, even though this is slightly below the plan that we articulated at the time of the ACMP and WPZ merger, these level of growth in cash and coverage are indicative of the best-in-class large cap MLP. As we look at the WMB dividend growth we have also slightly slowed down our targeted levels of growth for WMB and this of course is driven by the lower price environment that we've forecast with a range now of 10% to 15% growth largely to match the underlying growth of cash flows coming up from the MLP. So just to highlight the stability of this business plan even under the low price commodity case we can grow WPZ at the 7% we talked about and continue to move over 1.0 coverage there at the low price and at WMB at 10% with additional layers of coverage index of 1.0 at WMB as well. So, we really like our position now with the distribution and coverage and we certainly like the underlying fundamentals that underpin that. So, overall we're very confident in this business plan. We think it's realistic. We think it allows us to continue to provide tremendous total shareholder return whichever commodity price environment develops as we go forward and in fact across all scenarios we have the best-in-class growth at WPZ and a top-tier growth at WMB with growieng levels of coverage across both entities. So, this continually building list of investment opportunities are very tightly aligned with our strategy. They give us great confidence in our future and continue to give us a very high quality long lived cash flows that we think are some of the highest quality in the industry and this is coming from our continually, very competitively advantaged assets. And so with that, I thank you for joining us and we'll turn it over for questions that you might have. Operator?