HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE: KMI) today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a plan pursuant to which it expects to pay quarterly dividends of $.125 per share to its common stockholders ($.50 annually), down from its current quarterly level of $.51, beginning with the fourth quarter 2015 dividend payable in February 2016. This dividend enables the company to use a significant portion of its large cash flow to fund the equity portion of its expansion capital requirements, eliminate any need to access the equity market for the foreseeable future and maintain a solid investment grade credit rating. KMI anticipates enough retained internally generated cash flow to fund all of the required equity contribution projected for 2016 and a significant portion of its debt requirements. The company has reviewed its expected investments in 2017 and 2018 and believes that its stable and growing internally generated cash flow will allow it to continue to fund the equity portion of its capital budget without the need to access the equity market. It anticipates meeting all of the rating agencies’ requirements to remain investment grade, and expects a net debt/EBITDA ratio of 5.5 for 2016 and anticipates reducing that ratio in subsequent years.
“We evaluated numerous options, including significant asset sales, but ultimately concluded that these other options were uneconomic to our investors in the long run. This decision was not made lightly, but we believe it is in the best interests of the company, its shareholders and employees,” said Rich Kinder, executive chairman of the KMI board. “It will allow us to continue to maintain and grow our outstanding set of midstream energy assets without being required to issue equity at valuations prevalent in today’s market while maintaining a solid investment grade rating on our debt obligations. We are directly addressing concerns about our investment grade rating and concerns about the need to issue additional equity. We believe today’s action is beneficial to our shareholders.”
“Our strategy always has been, and will continue to be, to focus on fee-based midstream energy assets that are core to North American energy markets,” said Steve Kean, president and CEO. “Our execution of that strategy has enabled us to grow distributable cash flow (DCF) per share and we believe we will continue to do so.”
The company has completed its budget process for 2016 and expects DCF available to its equity holders of slightly over $5 billion, an increase of approximately 8 percent over 2015. “We grew our DCF per share in 2015 and we expect to grow again in 2016, despite a very difficult environment in the energy sector. We believe we have the best set of assets in the midstream energy business and the cash generated by those assets is fee based and growing. Today’s action is not a reflection of our underlying business – our business is strong and growing. Today’s decision is about finding the most economic way to fund our set of attractive return expansion projects,” said Kean.
Please join Kinder Morgan at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at http://ir.kindermorgan.com/presentations-webcasts for a LIVE webcast conference call on this announcement.
Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE: KMI) is the largest energy infrastructure company in North America. It owns an interest in or operates approximately 84,000 miles of pipelines and approximately 165 terminals. The company’s pipelines transport natural gas, gasoline, crude oil, CO2 and other products, and its terminals store petroleum products and chemicals, and handle bulk materials like coal and petroleum coke. For more information please visit www.kindermorgan.com.
The non-generally accepted accounting principles, or non-GAAP, financial measures of distributable cash flow before certain items, both in the aggregate and per share, and segment earnings before depreciation, depletion, amortization and amortization of excess cost of equity investments, or DD&A, and certain items, are presented in this news release.
Distributable cash flow before certain items is a significant metric used by us and by external users of our financial statements, such as investors, research analysts, commercial banks and others, to compare basic cash flows generated by us to the cash dividends we expect to pay our shareholders on an ongoing basis. Management uses this metric to evaluate our overall performance. Distributable cash flow before certain items is also an important non-GAAP financial measure for our shareholders because it serves as an indicator of our success in providing a cash return on investment. This financial measure indicates to investors whether or not we are generating cash flow at a level that can sustain or support an increase in the quarterly dividends we are paying. Distributable cash flow before certain items is also a quantitative measure used in the investment community. The economic substance behind our use of distributable cash flow before certain items is to measure and estimate the ability of our assets to generate cash flows sufficient to pay dividends to our investors.
We believe the GAAP measure most directly comparable to distributable cash flow before certain items is net income. Distributable cash flow before certain items per share is distributable cash flow before certain items divided by average outstanding shares, including restricted stock awards that participate in dividends. “Certain items” are items that are required by GAAP to be reflected in net income, but typically either (1) do not have a cash impact, for example, asset impairments, or (2) by their nature are separately identifiable from our normal business operations and in our view are likely to occur only sporadically, for example certain legal settlements, hurricane impacts and casualty losses. Management uses this measure and believes it is important to users of our financial statements because it believes the measure more effectively reflects our business’ ongoing cash generation capacity than a similar measure with the certain items included.
For similar reasons, management uses segment earnings before DD&A and certain items in its analysis of segment performance and management of our business. General and administrative expenses are generally not controllable by our segment operating managers, and therefore, are not included when we measure business segment operating performance. We believe segment earnings before DD&A and certain items is a significant performance metric because it enables us and external users of our financial statements to better understand the ability of our segments to generate cash on an ongoing basis. We believe it is useful to investors because it is a measure that management believes is important and that our chief operating decision makers use for purposes of making decisions about allocating resources to our segments and assessing the segments’ respective performance.
We believe the GAAP measure most directly comparable to segment earnings before DD&A and certain items is segment earnings before DD&A.
Our non-GAAP measures described above should not be considered alternatives to GAAP net income or other GAAP measures and have important limitations as analytical tools. Our computations of distributable cash flow before certain items, and segment earnings before DD&A and certain items may differ from similarly titled measures used by others. You should not consider these non-GAAP measures in isolation or as substitutes for an analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. Management compensates for the limitations of these non-GAAP measures by reviewing our comparable GAAP measures, understanding the differences between the measures and taking this information into account in its analysis and its decision making processes.
Important Information Relating to Forward-Looking Statements
This news release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. Generally the words “expects,” “believes,” anticipates,” “plans,” “will,” “shall,” “estimates,” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, which are generally not historical in nature. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are based on the beliefs and assumptions of management, based on information currently available to them. Although Kinder Morgan believes that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that any such forward-looking statements will materialize. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied from these forward-looking statements include the risks and uncertainties described in Kinder Morgan’s reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year-ended December 31, 2014 (under the headings “Risk Factors” and “Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and elsewhere) and its subsequent reports, which are available through the SEC’s EDGAR system at www.sec.gov and on our website at ir.kindermorgan.com. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they were made, and except to the extent required by law, Kinder Morgan undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement because of new information, future events or other factors. Because of these risks and uncertainties, readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
