By Sam boughedda
Investing.com -- Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI) reported earnings for its latest quarter after the close Wednesday.
The energy infrastructure firm announced earnings per share of 32 cents on revenue of $4.29 billion. Analysts polled by Investing.com anticipated EPS of 28 cents on revenue of $3.64 billion.
“The company is off to a great start this year and once again generated robust earnings and strong coverage of this quarter’s dividend. We continue to live within our cash flow, have reduced our debt by more than $11 billion since 2015, and plan for this year to be the fifth consecutive year of increased dividends,” said KMI Executive Chairman Richard Kinder.
The company said the first quarter 2021 results were favorably impacted by earnings during the February 2021 Winter Storm Uri, which meant current quarter earnings were below the previous period. However, excluding those nonrecurring earnings, the company's current-quarter earnings would be above the prior year.
Looking ahead, the company sees 2022 net income attributable to KMI of $2.5 billion, while it expects to declare dividends of $1.11 per share, a 3% increase from the 2021 declared dividends.
KMI also expects net income, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and discounted cash flow to be favorable to budget "due to stronger than expected commodity prices and favorable operating results from our Natural Gas and CO2 business segments."
"During 2022 we expect to once again fund our expansion capital opportunities internally, meet or exceed our debt metric goal, and return excess cash to our shareholders through a dividend increase and opportunistic share repurchases,” added Kinder.
Kinder Morgan stock slipped 0.35% following the report.