Earnings Labs

The Williams Companies, Inc. (WMB)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to The Williams/Williams Partners 2015 Year-End Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. And at this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. John Porter, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. John D. Porter - Director-Investor Relations, Enterprise & Planning: Thank you, Angel. Good morning and thank you for your interest in Williams and Williams Partners. Yesterday afternoon, we released our financial results and posted several important items on our website. These items include yesterday's press releases and related investor materials, including the slide deck that our President and CEO, Alan Armstrong, will speak to momentarily. Our CFO, Don Chappel, is available to respond to questions. And also we have the five leaders of Williams' operating areas with us: Walter Bennett leads the West; John Dearborn leads NGL & Petchem Services; Rory Miller leads Atlantic-Gulf; Bob Purgason leads Access Midstream; and Jim Scheel leads Northeast G&P. In our presentation materials, you will find an important disclaimer related to forward-looking statements. This disclaimer is important and integral to all of our remarks and you should review it. Also included in our presentation materials are various non-GAAP measures that we reconcile to generally accepted accounting principles. These reconciliation schedules appear at the back of the presentation materials. Over the past many months, we've taken many questions related to the merger between Williams and Energy Transfer. The focus of our call today is our fourth quarter results and business outlook. So we're not going to take questions on the pending merger or other related matters. However, before we discuss our fourth quarter and year-end 2015 results, I can provide a brief update on the transaction. Williams' Board of Directors is unanimously committed to completing the transaction…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question will come from the line of Christine Cho of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Christine Cho - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead

Good morning, everyone. I was wondering if we could start with any insights that you guys have from your talks with the rating agencies and your commitment to the investment grades rating at WPZ, given all the agencies had taken action before your press release detailing reduced CapEx. Any color on how they feel about your CapEx cut, deferrals, your Chesapeake exposure, your asset sales, et cetera? Also, if you could talk about where they would like to see your debt/EBITDA ratio to get to? I mean, are they still okay with that 5 times? Donald R. Chappel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Christine, this is Don. Good morning. Great question. We've been in regular dialogue with S&P and the other agencies. And I really can't speak for the agencies, but I think we've had a very constructive conversation and I think they appreciate the strength of our business, as well as some of the challenges ahead, and we're continuing to work with them and look forward to their decision. And again, we're very much focused on maintaining that investment grade rating, but obviously it's their call.

Christine Cho - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead

Okay. I guess in that context, you stated at least $1 billion of asset sales in the first half of 2016 in the original press release. What kind of asset sales are you assuming? And I'm curious to know if you started the process for this and what type of parties you're talking to. Is it utility, midstream guys, financial guys? And should we expect to see any announcements before the deal closes or do we need to see the deal closed first? Donald R. Chappel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: I would say that we're preparing for the asset sales. We've not launched anything as of this date, yet we're confident that we can sell the assets and generate the liquidity that we previously outlined kind of in the second quarter. But at the same time, we're not identifying the assets at this point. We don't think it's in our interest to do so. We have quite a few assets that we could in fact monetize, so we're going to keep our options open, but we remain confident in our ability to do so. The merger does not need to close. So we'll execute on that either before or after the merger, depending on the exact merger timing.

Christine Cho - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead

Okay. And then, I just wanted to touch upon the bankruptcy comments that you guys had. Alan, you talked about with respect to a rejection, it's all or nothing. And so, I'm curious to know, let's say, the bankruptcy court says that these contracts cannot be rejected, does that mean legally, you guys aren't required to mark to market the rate at all or let go of the MVCs or is that debatable? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. No, that is right. It is everything. Those contracts are all-in-one and it's all the terms of the contract, so there isn't ability to cherry pick the terms the contract.

Christine Cho - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And your next question will come from the line of Brandon Blossman of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company. Please go ahead. Brandon Blossman - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Good morning, gentlemen. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Donald R. Chappel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Good morning. Brandon Blossman - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Alan, I'll start off on a bright note. Transco expansion projects, some puts and takes in the backlog, but it looks like, by and large, that looks like on track for a multi-year period. Would you care to contrast Transco's projects with others that are on the project list across the board and the peers in terms of likelihood of going ahead and maybe benefit on an incremental basis to Transco as some of those more heavily producer-backed projects that don't show up in 2016 and 2017? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I think we really don't have those risks in our projects right now. They're fully contracted and they're very secured credit standing behind those contracts. So we really don't have that kind of risk in the projects that we are utilizing with Transco. And so there are a lot of producer-pushed projects out there with very different kind of credit rating standing behind them, but in our case, we feel very strong about the credit and the term standing behind our projects. And there's certainly great push to move ahead with those and a lot of volumes packed up behind those systems ready to flow if and when we get those projects completed. Brandon Blossman - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: And this is looking into a crystal ball, but do…

Operator

Operator

And your next question will come from the line of Ted Durbin of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Theodore Durbin - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks. Appreciate all the color on the Chesapeake contract. I guess I'm just wondering about – it seems like I'm sensing a tone change from you around your willingness to renegotiate the contract. I think you'd already done the one in the Haynesville. Does that now change your view there? And there's an argument out there that such as commodity prices that's pressuring Chesapeake it's also the above-market gathering contracts. I just love your thoughts there. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. No, our – I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. We continue to work with Chesapeake in areas to help in negotiating and I would say nothing has changed on that. Our relationship with them is very strong. And the concept of the rate – we keep hearing this above-market rate and I think what people need to remember there is that the rates get set based on the capital that we spent and the returns that are very normal returns in the market. And so, we hear this term above-market rates a lot of the time, but in fact, really the returns that we're generating are very normal. What's occurred that caused the rates to go higher in some areas is where the volumes haven't shown up, but we're still the asked return on our invested capital is very normal for the space. But certainly no indication – or no, I didn't mean to indicate that our tone with Chesapeake has changed. We're simply – and I want to make really clear on this, all we're trying to address is all the concerns that have been…

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Becca Followill of the U.S. Capital Advisors. Please go ahead.

Becca Followill - USCA Securities LLC

Analyst · the U.S. Capital Advisors. Please go ahead

Good morning. Few questions for you. One, can you quantify the lower OpEx that you're looking for the reduction in terms of dollars for 2016? And then the second one is on the contract that you recently renegotiated with a customer for lower rates in exchange for higher volumes. Are you looking at doing other of the – more of those with customers that are not Chesapeake? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Becca, I will take the second half of that and I'll let John take the first part of that. As to the contracts in any negotiation, that was a situation where the rate from a legacy cost of service contract was so high that there was no way the reserves in the area would ever be produced and so it was a matter of rate being even in excess of the price of gas. And so, this was a matter of actually getting the gas flowing and assuring ourselves that the gas would continue to flow in exchange for some additional volumes and additional dedication in the area. So, whenever we have opportunities like that that we can bring increment to our gas – or, sorry, our cash flows as we look on a long-term basis, we certainly will try to take advantage. And there are plenty of win-win opportunities out there to increase our cash flows to get gas flowing that's not flowing today. Obviously, we have to be cognizant of the fact because I mentioned earlier that there is only so much gas that's going to get out of the region. And so we want to maximize those revenues on our system because we realized that when Mcf starts flowing in one place, it likely means that it didn't come off a competitor system; it would come off of our own system. So we certainly are cognizant of that issue and the strength getting out of the basin. John R. Dearborn - Senior VP-Natural Gas Liquids & Petchem Services, Williams Partners GP LLC: On the cost question, Becca, we've not put an exact number out there, I guess, for significant cost production that we're committed to. We're already implementing some of those cost reductions. We'll continue to implement additional cost reductions prior to the merger date. And then, we would expect even more significant cost reductions to follow the merger. So the merger date is a variable in that, as well as our joint planning with the ETE team in terms of such cost reduction. So we're not prepared to put a number out there at this point, but we will as we get further along in the year.

Becca Followill - USCA Securities LLC

Analyst · the U.S. Capital Advisors. Please go ahead

Understand. Thank you. And then just to go back to the question on the rate reduction, are there producers – because we get these questions constantly, are the producers actively requesting rate reductions from you guys in order to help them out through this period? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Certainly that's the case, Becca, and I think what our decision is, is what benefit do we get out of that. Again, we have to look at it knowing that there's only a certain amount of gas that's going to get out of the region. And so, we have to determine what the benefit that they're willing to offer in exchange for us lowering the rate up against current prices in a way that provides the cash margin. So, we understand people's cash margins very well. Truly no secret in terms of what that looks like to producers because we get it from so many different people. And it really just boils down to who's got the best offer in terms of exchange for us in terms of us being incented to see their gas flows over somebody else's.

Becca Followill - USCA Securities LLC

Analyst · the U.S. Capital Advisors. Please go ahead

Got you. Thank you. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And your next question will come from the line of Selman Akyol of Stifel. Please go ahead. Selman Akyol - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thank you. Good morning. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Selman Akyol - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: First question I guess for Don. Going back to sort of the credit rating agencies discussion, you said you look forward to a decision. Can you say when you expect to get a decision from them? Donald R. Chappel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: I can't give you their timing. I think, again, you'll have to speak to the agencies on that. But again, we've been working collaboratively with them to provide the information that they need to make their rating decisions. Selman Akyol - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: All right. And then just in terms of the related shut-ins, just wondering if you could just put a quantity to that in terms of how much has been shut in on your system? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I'm going to ask Jim Scheel to chime in and give some specifics on that if he could, please. James E. Scheel - Senior VP-Northeast Gathering & Processing: Sure, Selman. As we began the fourth quarter, we had just under 1 Bcf a day shut-in primarily, as we've already talked about, due to lower pricing coming out of the summer and some lack of takeaway capacity. As we begin the year, we probably have right at about 1.1 Bcf a day or perhaps a little bit more shut-in behind the system as we've seen producers continue to complete wells but throttle the production due to price. So it's kind of hard to know until we see a full flow, but we're estimating right at the 1.1 Bcf. And really just to put that in perspective, if that was all flowing, the Northeast would go from about 6 Bcf a day to 7 Bcf a day and our incremental EBITDA would probably increase by about $180 million to $900 million, overall. Selman Akyol - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: All right. Thank you. That does it for me. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Sharon Lui of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Sharon Lui - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Hi, good morning. You indicated, I guess, there are several projects slated for in-service during the first half of 2016. Can you just remind us what's the potential cash program for projects like the tie-ins? Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I don't think we've provided – I'm looking at John here. John R. Dearborn - Senior VP-Natural Gas Liquids & Petchem Services, Williams Partners GP LLC: Yeah. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think, Sharon, we provided specifics on those, but I do think we've said that those are significant. And so you can look to the kind of revenues that we get off of facilities like Devil's Tower and Gulfstar One. And you can think about that from a volumetric standpoint as both the Kodiak tie-in that comes into Devil's Tower and the Gunflint tieback comes on to Gulfstar, but they're certainly very significant. Of course, just like any deepwater wells, they come on gangbusters and decline over time, but they will be fairly significant in terms of cash flow additions when they start up.

Sharon Lui - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you. And then, I guess just following up on Christine's question about discussions with the rating agencies and the distribution policy, just your latest thoughts on whether a distribution reduction would be an option you would take to defend the investment grade rating? Donald R. Chappel - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Sharon, this is Don. We have a number of options. Obviously, we pointed at cost reductions, asset sales, potential partners on some of our projects to reduce capital needs and a variety of other tools. We certainly are mindful of the fact we've got significant cash flow that goes out in the form of distributions, but again we don't have any further guidance on that but that's always an option.

Sharon Lui - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Okay. And maybe this question is for John. In terms of looking at Geismar, I mean ethylene prices still remain pretty depressed. Just wondering what's your outlook for the balance of the year in terms of ethylene and propylene prices. John R. Dearborn - Senior VP-Natural Gas Liquids & Petchem Services, Williams Partners GP LLC: Yeah. Thanks, Sharon, for the question. As we take a look forward, I think it's rather well-known in the industry that there's a rather large turnaround season ahead of us here in the second quarter. And so, on the ethylene side, we think that's going to be up favorable to margins during the second quarter. But then as we look at the ethylene industry overall, in North America this past year, we set an all-time new record for ethylene production. And of course, our ability to export ethylene and ethylene derivatives is somewhat yet limited by bagging and terminalling particularly in the polyethylene case. And so we would expect that the second half of the year on ethylene reverts back to margins more akin to what we're experiencing today. On the propylene side, likewise propylene refinery turnarounds are happening right around now. They get those done in expectation of gasoline production for the summer season basically. And so, we have a rather stable outlook on propylene at the moment through the rest of the year.

Sharon Lui - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And your next question will come from the line of John Edwards of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. John Edwards - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yeah. Hi. Just wanted to clarify – going back to Chesapeake and how things work in a bankruptcy scenario. We're just curious with the MVCs then, would those stay or would those go? Or are they separate from some of the contracts? I mean, any color you can provide on that would be helpful. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, sure. Just to be clear, those MVCs are part and parcel to the agreement. There's no separate agreement; it's all one agreement. And in a proceeding – any proceeding, the final decision there would be for the creditors to decide if they wanted to accept or reject the contract. And so that's how that would go. And it's all or none in terms of they don't get to again decide anything. So I know there's been a lot of talk about the MVCs being at risk, but that's somewhat – I'm not sure what's driven that assumption by the investor base, but that's not the way it works. And as well, the market-based rate issue, while that might occur during a short-term period, during the proceedings, there might be an ability to take something to market rates if all the other protections that we talked about were to fail. Then it would just be during the interim period prior to the settlement of the proceedings. John Edwards - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay. So, I mean as a practical matter, would there be the possibility to renegotiate those and then submit it to the court for approval? Or is it just literally simply it's all or…

Operator

Operator

And gentlemen, there are no further questions. At this time, I'd like to hand it back over to Alan Armstrong for closing remarks. Alan S. Armstrong - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Very good. Again, thank you all very much for joining us. Really pleased with the way the business continues to operate in this difficult commodity environment, and very excited about the amount of growth projects that are out in front of us that are consistent with our strategy of taking advantage of seeing these low price natural gas really develop a lot demand. And so, we're very excited about where we sit and we appreciate your interest in the company. Thank you for joining us.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line and have a wonderful day.