Antero Midstream (NYSE:AM) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Greetings, and welcome to the Antero Midstream Corporation Second Quarter twenty twenty six Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You will be placed in the question queue at any time by pressing star, one on your telephone keypad.

0:19 As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Dan Katzenberg, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you for joining us for Antero Midstream's second quarter investor conference call. We will spend a few minutes going through financial and operating highlights and then we will open it up for Q and A. I would also like to direct you to the homepage of our website at anteromidstream.com where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call. Today's call may contain certain non GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings press release for important disclosures regarding such measures. Joining me on the call today are Michael Kennedy, CEO and President of Antero Midstream Justin Agnew, CFO of Antero Midstream and Lenny Krueger, CFO of Antero Resources.

1:12 With that, I will turn the call over to Mike. Thanks, Dan. Good morning, everyone. I'll start my comments on slide number three.

1:20 Last year has been an exciting year for growth in Appalachia and more importantly Antero Midstream. During the second quarter, we gathered over 4.1 Bcf per day of gas, which was almost a 20% increase year over year. This growth was driven by the successful integration of the HG Midstream assets. This increased scale, premier footprint and strong balance sheet positions Antero Midstream to capture the abundant opportunities are beginning to materialize in the region. To this point, we've seen an acceleration of new gas fired power generation project announcements and supply deals including a two gigawatt combined cycle power plant in Doddridge County, West Virginia accessed by AM's joint venture pipeline. We expect this trend to continue as final investment decisions and construction start ups accelerate providing increased visibility into the Appalachian demand growth story.

2:13 Looking ahead, we are positioning our infrastructure to support significant demand growth over the next several years. This starts with beginning construction on our first intrastate regional pipeline called Eastside Express. This large diameter East West pipeline will enhance the regional connectivity of our dry gas gathering system with several downstream market outlets. We plan to phase in this project over the next several years as new market opportunities arise with the objective of increasing optionality and supporting low cost dry gas growth. As the industrial builder in the state of West Virginia that gathers half of the gas produced in the state, we view this project as step one in positioning Antero Midstream to capture the incremental production needed to fill the visible demand growth.

3:06 In our view, this production growth will have to come from high quality investment grade producers with multi decade inventories like Antero Resources. In addition to this project, the opportunity set up ahead of Antero Midstream is larger than ever. In aggregate, we are evaluating several billion dollars of infrastructure opportunities within the region and will be selective with projects that are near term, actionable and accretive to our free cash flow and generate attractive rates of return. Before turning the call over to Justin, I wanted to briefly touch on the early results we are seeing on our first return to the dry gas Marcellus in over a decade. As you can see on slide number four, EURs on our revisit were over 60% higher than offset wells completed the last time we were actively developing the area.

3:59 This highlights the productivity improvements from enhanced completion designs and validates the decades of underlying resource that underpins the growth outlook at Antero Midstream.

4:10 With that, I'll turn the call over to Justin. Thanks Mike. I'll start with our second quarter highlights on slide number five. The second quarter represents the first full quarter of contribution from the recently acquired HG assets, which have been successfully integrated. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was a company record $289,000,000 which was a 2% increase year over year driven by an increase in gathering volumes. Looking ahead to the third quarter, we expect high single digit sequential EBITDA growth in Q3 driven by increased volumes, which keeps us on track to achieve our full year EBITDA guidance. Capital invested during the quarter was $47,000,000 which helped generate $80,000,000 of free cash flow after dividends.

4:56 This quarter marks the twelfth consecutive quarter of generating free cash flow after dividends, highlighting the consistency and durability of cash flows over the last three years. I'll conclude my prepared remarks on Slide six, which highlights our pro form a balance sheet and maturity schedule. In July, we received over $370,000,000 of damages and interest from Veolia. Pro form a for these proceeds, our leverage was 2.8 times as of June 30, below our three times target and well ahead of schedule. Excess cash on hand and availability available capacity under our undrawn credit facility positioned us to call our nearest term 2028 maturity at par. As a result, we have no near term maturities and we've converted that debt into lower cost, pre payable debt on our credit facility while maintaining significant liquidity.

5:50 This financial flexibility is critical in today's environment as we position Antero Midstream to execute on the large opportunity set Mike referenced in his remarks. This flexibility and project opportunity set, in addition to our organic growth strategy, position us well to continue delivering shareholder value over the long term and enhance our return of capital to shareholders. With that, operator, we are ready to open up for Q and A.

6:17 Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question today is coming from John McKay from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live. Hey, guys. Thank you for the time. Let's start on Eastside Express. Just wondering if there's a little more you can share with us in terms of CapEx expectations

6:49 and the contracting side? Is this AR underwriting? Are you looking to get customers on the demand side to underwrite? Maybe just walk us through the spending and the return profile. Yes, it's really AR underwriting, but it's 200 to $300,000,000 over the next two to three years. So I think about kind of $100,000,000 each year. I think it has seven interconnects with long haul pipelines, big pipe 1.5 Bcf to two Bcf a day. So there will be opportunities, but solely underwritten by Antero Resources and its development plans, but with optionality to get third party business and connect with all those different pipes.

7:32 That's helpful. Thank you. And then, maybe just looking broadly, you mentioned the several billion dollars of opportunities. Maybe just walk us through some of the general buckets that could include. Is there anything in there that could kind of dovetail with some of the cost saving initiatives that AR has been talking about? Or should we kind of think about this as pretty separate?

7:54 Yes. No, I think you've heard about all the different power plant construction, data center construction in West Virginia that's capturing that from a midstream perspective, these type of regional pipelines or laterals off of existing pipelines to those type of projects. I referenced it on the AR call, but a decade ago, a good go by is the Stonewall Pipeline. We had to farm that out. We didn't have the ability to fill that internally whether from capital or expertise. Now that's not the case. We are the builder in this area of the world. We have a million acres dedicated to us from AR. We have all these demand projects and power plants within that acreage or close to it.

8:41 So we will be building those pipelines and laterals for those type of projects within the state of West Virginia.

8:49 Appreciate that. Maybe just a clarification. Is there a kind of timeframe on that that you can throw out there? No. We just said this is our first one, the Eastside Express. So that's over the next two to three years. That's a 2829 timeframe. We're hopeful to announce more in the near term. Clear. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is coming from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan. Your line is now live. Hi, good morning. Good morning. Just want to peel back that several billion of CapEx opportunities as you sit there. And it sounds like some of this could be servicing third parties beyond AR here. And just wondering that part of the business, how much opportunity you see to grow as far as servicing other producers or just in general moving beyond what AR provides?

9:45 Yes. I'm looking at a project backlog right now. There's 15 projects that generally make that up all within state of West Virginia. So that's what we're looking at. Antero Midstream could be involved solely or more probably probability wise with AR's gas. So we're way more comfortable with AR as a supplier of that. AR, of course, we know exactly when they drill wells and where the gas goes and very confident in that throughput. So probably most likely associated with AR, but there are 15 projects on this list I'm looking at right now and AR is probably half of them.

10:26 Okay. Got it. Thank you for that. And then just pivoting towards water here, just wondering what opportunities on the water beneficial reuse side you might see there. Given disposal costs much higher in the Northeast versus Texas, does that create more incentive, economic benefit to recycle here? Just wondering what that any updates there? Yes. For AR, it's terrific. They have a closed loop water system that it's in a kind of cost plus 13 versus the kind of the disposal costs that you referenced. That's great for AR. Also great for AM because that closed loop system is the freshwater distribution, where it gets nice returns both from a freshwater distribution and also from a produced water disposal reuse case. So, really a benefit to both parties. Also allows AR to complete in that fourteen, fifteen, 16 stages range and not have water be a logistics issue.

11:32 So very beneficial to both. We'll connect the HG system. We're connecting it as we speak. That will be what's responsible and it could be more than this, but what we've talked about on the high single digit EBITDA growth for '27 that's just connecting the water systems to get the water down to the HG area.

11:53 So that will benefit us going forward in the '27 with the EBITDA growth on top of what we had this year. Got it. That's very helpful there. And apologies if I missed the details on the AR call. But with regards to power generation investment, the governor has a 50 by 50 goal. So clearly, a lot of appetite in state to develop new generation there. And just wondering I guess Antero's appetite to

12:23 more fully I guess embrace that build out going further downstream what have you. Just any thoughts on that side? Yes. We fully embrace that. We're the only investment grade producer in West Virginia, that's focused solely on West Virginia. We are the midstream builder. We've built everything up here over the last decade. So you combine those two and we produce about half of the state's gas. So, we would be a logical person to benefit or entities to benefit from that initiative Governor has. Got it. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is coming from Sunil Sibal from Seaport Global. Your line is now live. Yes. Hi. Thanks for the time this morning.

13:10 Most of my questions have been hit, but I just had one clarification with regard to the opportunity to contract for the gas to ultimate consumer. So I was curious, you're talking for those contracts, are you contracting with the power producers

13:29 in the region? Or you're more focused on contracting with the data center entities per se? It's all of the above, both. We're building the Eastside Express just knowing Antero's development and where that's going and where the interconnects are and just the opportunity set in front of us. We want to get in front of that and be positioned well. So when these opportunities present themselves, are positioned to deliver gas to them.

14:01 Thank you. Thank you. Next question today is coming from Ned Baramov from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live. Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to go back to the timeline for additional infrastructure or intrastate projects you're currently working on. I think you noted you plan to announce potentially other projects soon. I was just wondering if construction of these projects would potentially overlap with that

14:34 of the Eastside Express project? Yes, not in 2026, but 2027 and beyond. That's probably a good assumption. Understood. And then I guess you mentioned the AR contracts on or AR will underwrite the project. I was just wondering if the contracts would be in a take or pay type of format or will there be volumetric exposure from AM's perspective? It's just acreage dedications from AR, but because we know where AR drills and the plants are drilling, there's no need for those MVCs because we know the volumes will be there. Understood. And then maybe one more if I could. It seems that curtailments will be used a little bit more to better align the timing of production at AR with gas prices. Can you talk about the impact to AM's results? And does this imply that volumes going forward will have a little

15:35 bit more pronounced seasonality? Yes. No, I mean, we're talking $50,000,000 a day. I think AM gathered 4.1 Bcf, so it's about 1% for maybe one quarter of the year. So maybe you're looking at 0.25%.

15:53 That doesn't move the needle for AM. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. We reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments. Thank you everyone for joining the second quarter conference call today. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out. Have a good day. Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.