Earnings call transcript: Kinetik Holdings Q3 2025 sees EPS miss, stock dips

Kinetik Holdings Inc. reported its Q3 2025 earnings, revealing an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.03, which fell short of the forecasted $0.32 by a significant margin. Despite a revenue beat, with actual revenue at $464 million versus the expected $449 million, the stock saw a decline of 6.4% to $35.6 in premarket trading, reflecting investor concerns over the earnings miss.

Key Takeaways

• Kinetik Holdings missed EPS expectations by 90.63%, raising profitability concerns.
• Revenue exceeded forecasts by 3.35%, reaching $464 million.
• The stock price dropped 6.4% following the earnings report.
• Strategic projects and agreements, like the King’s Landing plant and INEOS deal, highlight future growth potential.
• Operational challenges, including a decline in rig count and gas price volatility, persist.

Company Performance

Kinetik Holdings faced a challenging third quarter with a notable EPS miss, which overshadowed its revenue beat. The company’s performance is under scrutiny as it navigates operational hurdles, such as declining rig counts in the Delaware Basin and natural gas price volatility. Despite these challenges, Kinetik continues to focus on strategic projects and agreements that may bolster future growth.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $464 million, up 3.35% from forecasts.
• Earnings per share: $0.03, down significantly from the forecasted $0.32.
• Midstream logistics segment adjusted EBITDA: $151 million, down 13% year-over-year.
• Pipeline transportation segment adjusted EBITDA: $95 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Kinetik Holdings reported an EPS of $0.03, missing the forecast of $0.32 by 90.63%. The revenue, however, was $464 million, exceeding the expected $449 million by 3.35%. The earnings miss is substantial, and investors may be concerned about the company’s profitability and operational efficiency.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Kinetik Holdings’ stock fell 6.4% in premarket trading to $35.6. This decline reflects investor apprehension regarding the company’s earnings miss and ongoing operational challenges. The stock is now closer to its 52-week low, signaling cautious investor sentiment.

Outlook & Guidance

Kinetik Holdings revised its full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $965-$1.005 billion. The company is targeting an EBITDA run rate of 1.2 billion by 2026, with plans for increased gas takeaway capacity in 2026-2027. Strategic initiatives, such as the ECCC pipeline project and in-basin power generation, remain focal points for growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jamie Welch emphasized the company’s commitment to improvement, stating, "We will absolutely do better, and I will not rest until we do." He also highlighted the importance of accurate forecasting, asserting, "We are forensically analyzing and improving our forecasting assumptions."

Risks and Challenges

• Declining rig counts in the Delaware Basin could impact future production.
• Volatility in Waha natural gas prices presents financial risks.
• Volume curtailments and operational inefficiencies need addressing.
• Market competition and macroeconomic pressures could affect growth.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on producer development delays, commodity price hedging strategies, and Waha pricing challenges. The company addressed these concerns by outlining mitigation strategies and emphasizing its strategic initiatives for future growth.

Full transcript - Kinetik Holdings Inc (KNTK) Q3 2025:

Alyssa, Moderator: Good morning, and thank you for attending the Kinetic Third Quarter 2025 results call. My name is Alyssa, and I will be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the call to your host, Alex Durkee, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Alex Durkee, Investor Relations, Kinetic: Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Kinetik’s third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Our speakers today are Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Trevor Howard, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Other members of our senior management team are also in attendance for this morning’s call. The press release we issued yesterday, the slide presentation, and access to the webcast for today’s call are available at www.kinetik.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including the question-and-answer section, will provide forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ from what is described in these statements. These statements are not guaranteed for future performance and involve a number of risks and assumptions. We may also provide certain performance measures that do not conform to U.S. GAAP. We’ve provided schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures as part of our earnings press release.

After our prepared remarks, we’ll open the call to Q&A. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Jamie.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Kinetic’s third-quarter results reflect a combination of strong execution across key strategic initiatives and the realities of a challenging commodity price environment, particularly in September. While we exited the quarter in line with our operational expectations, the path to get there was not without its complexities. Through it all, our team remained focused and disciplined, executing on what we can control and continuing to advance our long-term strategy. I’ll begin with an update on our strategic initiatives, and then I’ll turn it over to Trevor to walk through our financial results and guidance updates in more detail. Starting with our strategic projects, I am incredibly proud of our team’s work to bring King’s Landing to full commercial in-service in September, adding organic processing capacity in New Mexico.

The startup of King’s Landing presented results as we navigated taking over the project post-design, engineering, and procurement, but pre-construction, and our team worked tirelessly to keep the project on track. We now have a well-constructed plant at a site that will allow for processing capacity expansions with much fewer challenges to contend with. King’s Landing represents a significant step for our Delaware North customers. Even with Waha natural gas price-related shut-ins and a slower return of previously curtailed volumes, we are consistently flowing over 100 million cubic feet per day, which is in line with our original expectations. Over the remainder of the year, we will continue to perform gathering system modifications to segregate sweet gas and direct it to King’s Landing while keeping the sour gas flowing to Dagger Drawer and Maldramar. We look forward to the return of shut-in PDP and bringing on the remaining curtailed volumes.

We also look forward to enabling our customers to resume development of new wells after more than two years of curtailments and minimal activity. We also made quite a bit of construction progress on the ECCC pipeline that connects our Delaware North to our Delaware South system. We expect ECCC in-service during the second quarter of 2026. Beyond the projects currently underway, we have reached FID on the acid gas injection project at King’s Landing. We expect to receive the project’s permit from New Mexico regulators before year-end 2025. And the project has an expected in-service of late 2026. This will enable Kinetic to take high levels of H2S and CO2 gas at all of our Delaware North processing complexes and meaningfully increase our total acid gas capacity.

From conversations with many of our producer customers in New Mexico, we knew that we needed to build confidence in our service offering and capabilities. Bringing King’s Landing online was a huge first step. The conversations have now shifted to centering on additional processing capacity and sour gas treating capabilities to support future development plans that optimize capital deployment and drilling efficiency for producers, allowing them to drill multiple benches at once, which also eliminates potential parent-child well challenges. We’re meaningfully advancing those discussions, and we believe that the AGI project will strengthen our competitive position and enable us to soon announce a processing capacity expansion at King’s Landing. Kinetic is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing power generation opportunity in the Permian Basin and is actively pursuing innovative, scalable solutions to participate meaningfully in this evolving energy landscape.

We’re excited to announce a new opportunity that further demonstrates our ability to unlock value through strategic partnerships. Kinetic finalized an agreement with Competitive Power Ventures, or CPV, to connect our owned and operated residue gas pipeline network to the 1,350-megawatt CPV Basin Ranch Energy Center. In Ward County, Texas, that will be used as one of the primary sources of supply for the plant. This connection will be made at no capital cost to Kinetic, creating another highly efficient and accretive pipeline outlet for our residue gas. This arrangement also supports new large-scale in-basin power generation to meet growing electricity demand in the region. Importantly, this project serves as a blueprint for future collaborations. It showcases how we can leverage our infrastructure and relationships to create scalable, capital-light solutions that support our long-term value proposition.

As part of our broader strategy to enhance market access and deliver value to our customers, we’ve made significant progress in continuing to support Permian residue gas takeaway. We executed a five-year European LNG pricing agreement with INEOS at Port Arthur LNG, beginning in early 2027. Under this agreement, we will deliver residue gas at a designated interconnect on the Permian Highway pipeline, representing the MMBTU equivalent of approximately half a million tons per annum. The gas will be priced monthly based on the European TTF index, providing our customers with diversified exposure to international pricing. This agreement underscores our differentiated service offering and commitment to delivering innovative and value-added solutions in the Permian Basin. Additionally, we’ve expanded our takeaway capabilities by securing additional firm transport capacity to the U.S. Gulf Coast, commencing in 2028.

This incremental capacity will significantly enhance our customers’ access to premium markets and reflects our continued efforts to address critical takeaway constraints at the Waha hub. Together, these commercial arrangements strengthen our ability to support producer growth, improve premium pricing optionality, and reinforce our position as a reliable and best-in-class midstream partner. Before I turn over the call to Trevor, I’d like to touch on our financial performance versus expectations for the past four quarters. For almost three years, this management team has done a very good job of being able to execute our strategy, fill our residual cryo-processing space with new dedications and commitments, and beat and outperform our financial expectations and guidance. Over the past four quarters, we have stumbled, and we recognize that we need to do better.

We’ve had some challenges as we’ve integrated the Delaware North system into our business, such as the delays for King’s Landing to reach in-service. Meanwhile, we’ve endured challenging and turbulent macro commodity and inflationary headwinds this year. These are not excuses; these are just facts. The buck stops with us. And as the largest individual owner of this company, who has never sold one share, we will absolutely do better, and I will not rest until we do. We are forensically analyzing and improving our forecasting assumptions, including evaluating the use of AI tools and machine learning to do so. We will challenge ourselves on direct and indirect risks and how to mitigate them. And we will aggressively reduce our controllable costs in all segments. Our reputations and credibility are in question, and we will respond with relentless grit, purpose, and resolve to address and rectify this situation.

Looking ahead, we’re executing on a robust multi-year organic investment strategy that positions Kinetic for long-term success. From advancing strategic infrastructure projects like King’s Landing and the ECCC pipeline to developing scalable solutions in sour gas treating and gas supply for large-scale new market-based power generation in Texas, our focus remains on delivering differentiated services and unlocking value across our footprint. These efforts, combined with our commitment to disciplined execution and enhanced forecasting, reinforce our long-term value proposition and our role as a trusted partner in the Permian Basin. Now I’ll turn the call over to Trevor to discuss third-quarter results in more detail and our outlook for the remainder of the year.

Trevor Howard, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Kinetic: Thanks, Jamie. In the third quarter, we reported a just-equity bid of $243 million. We generated distributable cash flow of $158 million, and free cash flow was $51 million. Looking at our segment results, our midstream logistics segment generated an adjusted EBITDA of $151 million in the quarter, down 13% year-over-year. The decrease was largely driven by lower commodity prices, lower Kinetic marketing contributions, higher cost of goods sold, and higher operating expenses, partially offset by increased volumes across both our Delaware North and South assets. Shifting to our pipeline transportation segment, we generated an adjusted EBITDA of $95 million. Total capital expenditures for the quarter were $154 million.

As we disclosed in our earnings release yesterday, volume-related headwinds combined with producer-directed actions from commodity price volatility, the timing of the King’s Landing startup, and the epic crude sale closing have led us to update our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance range to $965 million to $1.005 billion. I will walk through several key factors behind our revised expectations. First, as Jamie discussed earlier, the timing to reach full commercial in-service at King’s Landing was slower than anticipated in September. While we exited the quarter at our expected operational run rate, the timing and the pace of those volume contributions and the associated margin fell short of our initial expectations. The delay in bringing King’s Landing fully online versus our original assumption of July 1st reduced full-year earnings by approximately $20 million. Second, we’ve continued to navigate sustained commodity price volatility and macroeconomic uncertainty throughout much of 2025.

Our updated outlook now reflects market forward pricing as of October 31st, which represents over a 2% decline from the commodity strip used to revise guidance in August and a 12% decline versus our original assumptions in February. Notably, Waha natural gas pricing, which is not included in the figures I just stated, has declined by over 50% since our February assumptions. Together, this has negatively impacted full-year adjusted EBITDA expectations by nearly $30 million versus our original guidance, excluding Gulf Coast marketing impacts. These lower average commodity prices have had both direct and indirect impacts on our business. Directly, they affect the pricing of our commodity lead contracts and change our plant’s product mix, thereby potentially further impacting margin contributions.

Indirectly, we have seen volatility impact producer decision-making with near-term development delays and broader existing production shut-ins due to lower prompt month crude pricing and significantly negative Waha natural gas prices. It is a confluence of multiple factors that has led to this unexpected situation. In October, there were days where approximately 20% of volumes were curtailed, of which roughly half were from our oil-focused producers, a dynamic that we haven’t seen since May of 2020 when WTI crude oil futures contract final settlement price was negative $38 per barrel. We estimate that full-year earnings are negatively impacted from curtailments by approximately $20 million. While Waha prices are expected to remain an issue, takeaway constraints should begin to alleviate by this time next year.

Specifically, the industry is set to bring online over 5 billion cubic feet per day of new takeaway capacity in 2026 and in early 2027 through the following projects: the GCX compression expansion, the Blackcomb pipeline, and the Hugh Brinson pipeline. Kinetic’s marketing entity reserved transportation capacity to the Gulf Coast in 2025 and 2026 to insulate itself from curtailment-related lost gross margin. However, the curtailments were more severe as we saw oil-focused producers shut in production. Turning back to commodity prices, indirect influence on our business, we estimate that lower crude and natural gas liquids pricing, as well as negative in-basin natural gas pricing, has deferred or changed our customers’ development plans across our system, negatively impacting full-year 2025 EBITDA by approximately $30 million. While the Permian Basin continues to demonstrate resilience amid broader commodity price and macroeconomic pressures, it is not immune to the current headwinds.

Since the beginning of the year, Delaware Basin rig count has declined by nearly 20%, reflecting a more cautious stance from our producers. This shift in behavior is also being reflected in industry forecasts. For example, the EIA now projects Permian Basin natural gas volumes to be flat from 2025 to 2026 on an exit-to-exit basis, compared to approximately 3% growth in 2025 exit-to-exit and approximately 9% growth in 2025 on a year-over-year basis. Lastly, our guidance assumed a full year of adjusted EBITDA contribution from epic crude. However, with the divestiture closing in October, Kinetic won’t receive the benefit for our pro-rata EBITDA for the full fourth quarter, and of course, this will have some impact on our full-year results.

We received over $500 million in cash proceeds from that sale and have used those proceeds to pay down debt, reducing our leverage ratio by approximately a quarter of a term. Over time, we will use some of those proceeds to redeploy into new opportunities such as the assay gas injection well that we FID today. Taken together, these impacts led us to revise 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $985 million at the midpoint versus our previous guidance in August. Despite the numerous factors impacting 2025 results and near-term estimates expectations, we remain confident in our long-term strategy and the value creation potential of our organic growth initiatives. Turning to capital guidance, we are tightening our full-year range to $485 million to $515 million, given our heightened visibility with two months of the year remaining and the FID of our King’s Landing assay gas injection project.

Before we open the line for Q&A, let me briefly touch on our capital allocation priorities. Our strategy remains firmly anchored in creating long-term shareholder value while maintaining flexibility for disciplined capital deployment. Since Kinetic’s inception in February 2022, we’ve delivered double-digit adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth. Meaningfully delivered the balance sheet and returned nearly $1.8 billion to shareholders since the merger. Today, we’re building on that momentum with one of the largest processing footprints in the Delaware Basin and advancing strategic projects like the ECCC pipeline, sour gas treating, and capital light reinvestment opportunities, all at attractive mid-single-digit setup multiples. These initiatives, combined with our current total shareholder yield of nearly 11%. Underscore our commitment to delivering both near-term results and long-term value.

Looking ahead, we see a clear path to long-term value creation through our short-cycle strategic project backlog, supported by a conservatively leveraged balance sheet and continued shareholder returns via dividend growth and share repurchases. This disciplined approach positions Kinetic for sustainable growth and a compelling long-term value proposition. And with that, we can now open up the line for Q&A.

Alyssa, Moderator: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one to queue for questions. If for any reason you would like to remove your question from the queue, you may press star two. For those using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, after which point you may rejoin the queue. We will now take our first question from the line of Brandon Bingham, Wisconsin Bank. Please go ahead.

Brandon Bingham, Analyst, Wisconsin Bank: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions here. I wanted to just start on the producer delays, if we could. In the release, it sounds like they are shorter-term in nature. Just trying to gauge maybe the impact in next year. Are these kind of early ’26 pops that you expect? Do you think they’re incremental to ’26 development schedules, or maybe they’re replacing some pops that got pushed into ’27 as knock-on impacts? Just trying to get a sense as to where ’26 might be headed from a producer development standpoint.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Brandon, it’s Jamie. Thanks for the question. So let’s deal with what we outlined in both prepared remarks and in our. Press release. So we’re talking about delays as it relates to expected turn-in line activity during the fourth quarter of this year. So we’ve seen things move from September. Now into late November, which is now past sort of the expected maintenance season, and into December. So we’ve probably seen. Maybe one move into early 2026, but not really that significant relative to, I think, things we’ve told you previously. So it’s more about moving things within the quarter, which obviously have a knock-on impact. You move something 30 days, you’ve moved one-third of your quarter. You move at 60 days, you’ve moved at two-thirds of your quarter. If you’re going to hold, if everyone’s going to look at.

An annualized $1.2 billion and say, "Okay, that’s $300 million for a quarter," but now we’ve moved our turn-in line activity, that obviously has an impact. Right? That’s the easiest way to think about it.

Brandon Bingham, Analyst, Wisconsin Bank: Okay, great. So just to clarify, it sounds like it’s not necessarily moving things into ’26. It’s just delayed within the quarter, so most of the benefit happens in ’26.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Yes.

Brandon Bingham, Analyst, Wisconsin Bank: Okay, great. Sorry. And then just one more question. I heard or read some articles recently that one of your. Larger customers up in the Durango system area was having a lot of success in the Yazo formation. And I was just kind of curious. What you’re hearing or seeing up there and just kind of the development expectations. Outside of the commodity price volatility, it just sounds like some of those formations are. Stronger than maybe most would anticipate.

Hey, Brandon, this is Chris. No, thanks for the question. Look, the northwest shelf is an exciting area for our producers up there. The geology is good. Given the price environment, there’s still activity. In that area. And so what I would say is we see activity. We have the capabilities to provide sour gas takeaway, which is critical in that area. And we’re excited to continue to grow with our producers on the northwest shelf.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: The other thing that I would add, just following on Chris’s comments, is we’ve seen pretty robust EMP M&A activity up there, which generally portends development once the EMP gets their hands around the specific asset. So that’s one dynamic that we’re seeing on the northwest shelf. Another dynamic that we’re seeing is that some of the management teams or private equity companies that had flipped in ’23 and ’24. Have. Returned, and they’re beginning pushing the frontier of the Delaware Basin up on the shelf right into our asset footprint. So. Nothing to report just yet. It’s early days, but. Some nice green shoots for incremental development that we were not expecting. 15 months ago when we acquired the asset. Hey, Brandon, it’s Jamie. Not that this was exactly the question.

Or the response to your question, but this is one of the reasons why the AGI for us was so important. Sequencing is everything for the northern Delaware. And we looked at this and we said, "Okay, now we have this wonderful new King’s Landing plant. It can deal with sweet gas. It’s got a 600 GPM unit, a GPM amine unit, but it’s limited as to what it can take." What we really need and what we really see is the need for the sour gas and our ability to basically. Treat it and process it. And that obviously brought that was sort of the advent of bringing forward the AGI, even ahead of a King’s Landing too.

Brandon Bingham, Analyst, Wisconsin Bank: Awesome. Very helpful. Thank you.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gabe Maureen with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. If I can ask Jamie, maybe just staying on 2026, bigger picture, clearly you laid out some long-term targets. For growth over the next couple of years. I’m just wondering how you’re viewing 2026 kind of fitting within those contexts, given kind of the push and pull here, the commodity backdrop, and producer plans. So maybe if you can just maybe talk about that a little bit.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Yeah, sure. Gabe, and thanks for the question. Look, I think like everybody in the context of both our peer group and our producers, we’re all going through the planning and budgeting phase right now as to 2026. No one quite has a crystal ball on exactly how this is all going to look forward as it relates to commodity prices and sort of geopolitical impacts. Obviously, I think if I look at my dear friend, Case Van Hoff’s most recent stockholders letter, he gauges it as a yellow right now on a traffic light system. And I think that’s sort of right. So ’26 is, for us, we’re trying to discern exactly the level of activity, and obviously, we’ll report back with our guidance in February. Most importantly, the framework that we obviously had historically articulated, King’s Landing’s now online.

So if you just tick through the important elements, and then I’m going to give you the qualifier. King’s Landing online for a full year. ECCC will be online for eight months, nine months, something in that sort of zip code. You have NGL contract expirations, of which there are two. You will have obviously cost reductions. The negatives will be that you will no longer have epic, and you have this question mark on the level of activity in the context of overall development and drill plans for producers. That’s the way to think about it. There’s both good, and there’s elements which are. Epic is sort of a known, and then there is the question marker with respect to producer activity.

Thanks, Jamie. Appreciate those comments. And maybe if I can just ask a little bit of a multi-part follow-up on the natural gas moves you’ve made. First on getting capacity on the Permian egress pipe in ’28. Is that a question of alleviating Waha exposure? Consider getting an increase from your producers? And did you think about taking an equity stake in the pipe like you’ve traditionally done with some other investments? And on the LNG strategy, I’m just curious whether that is something you’ve been reverse inquiry about from the part of customers, or is that something that you really just see as allowing you to compete better for additional packages of gas as they come up here?

Great series of questions. So let me just deal with the first. We’re simply a contract counterparty. On this particular pipeline. And it’s expected in service in ’28. We have now, today, when we look at our Delaware South system. For most or many of our customers, we have been able to. Offer them egress with Gulf Coast pricing. As we have moved north into. Durango or Delaware North, as we obviously now call it, and obviously with King’s Landing coming online, we are now offering that opportunity for those customers. There is a lot of interest in taking incremental capacity. So you look at how much capacity you have, and you realize. We actually need some more. Because the overall demand is so high. So. Kendrick and the commercial team went and secured some more additional capacity, which we know is needed.

On the LNG side, it has been a topic of conversation around. Our leadership team for some time. If you go from a Waha to a Houston ship channel price point. Clearly, we can see the overall premium step up. And we have seen it in the early days where it was not as attractive, and obviously, the last couple of years it has been highly attractive. A further step out has been obviously on the LNG side. And we have always talked about, okay, the issues on the LNG side, Gabe, I think are twofold. How do you do something that is manageable as far as size? And two, that you don’t have to take a 20-year contract, right? Something that is manageable in duration that you can say, and it’s close at hand. So again, I give. Chris and the commercial guys a lot of credit.

They scoured the earth. They found a counterparty that had available capacity. We’re talking about. 16, 18 months from now. I mean, that’s like. A game changer in the LNG. And something when we went to our customers, they were like, "Wow, this is really good." Short term, near term, I start getting this price point. I get my arms around it, and it’s a really interesting, I think, step out for us, which I think we’re going to continue. We’ll learn a lot over the course of this, and. We expect that we may have other customers that will be very intrigued about. Using this as one of their pricing diversification.

Thanks, Jamie.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jackie Kollitis with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. Thank you so much for the time. First, just wanted to start, commodity exposure has been a major headwind this year. Sounds like some of the projects or agreements you announced could help hedge that exposure. What is your hedging strategy. Just throughout the remainder of the year, and how do you expect. To mitigate that commodity exposure prior to that firm takeaway agreement in ’28?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Thanks for the question, Jackie. This is Trevor. I would say that for 2025, we’re relatively well hedged. Across most products. Between C1 through C5 and WTI. As we look forward into 2026, we’ve talked about this in the past, but being between 40 to 80 percent of our equity volumes being hedged on a rolling 12 months, I would say that we are within those targets, just where we sit with Waha today. And then with WTI, that has skewed us towards the lower end of that range. But what I would say is that we’re still well within. The range that we have been executing on. For several years now.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Got to appreciate that color. And then with the FID of the AGI, while expected for the end of ’26, how do you expect volumes to ramp from here on. King’s Landing 1 and when that uptick should. When we should kind of see that uptick? And how does that impact the timing for a King’s Landing. 2 announcement?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Yes. So as Jamie had mentioned, as we think about 2026 and providing explicit directional guidance right now, it’s just a little bit too early. What I would say is that. We included this in our prepared remarks. The plant’s running more than half full right now. We have several packages of gas that are coming online next week and then in. December as well and into 2026. As we think about planning for King’s Landing 2. That is a 24-month, potentially a 24-month endeavor. And so it’s not necessarily how does 2026 shake out, but it’s more as we look forward in a multi-year plan with our producer customers and also what Chris and the commercial team are doing with signing new packages of gas. That really makes us. Lean over kind of the edge of when we FID that King’s Landing 2 plant.

But given the long lead items there, it’s not really a question of what do the next six months look like, but how do we think about ’27 as well? Jackie, I would say, look, this comes back to my early comment about the AGI. Yeah. There are two elements in the context of the way we think about the north business. Today. The gas that’s going into King’s Landing is. Pretty much sweet. There’s a we have a 600 GPM amine unit, but that’s it. So we’re not dealing with sour anything like what we do with Malgemar and Dagger Drawl. We have ECCC, which is in fact a large diameter sweet gas conduit that can move gas south.

So when we think about this and the overall likely development activity, which is predominantly sour, we intend to evacuate gas that would right now, you would think about it, King’s Landing, it will go down ECCC. You get the AGI in place, you will now convert King’s Landing 1 into a sour gas plant. And that’s the way to think about the balancing mechanism from a barbell as you look at how you optimize, right? I think Trevor has always said ECCC, particularly as it relates to sweet gas, gives us the ability to, in fact, be very strategic on the timing for King’s Landing 2. And one thing that I would add is Jamie’s comment just about development activity being primarily sour. I think that comment more pertains to in and around King’s Landing.

With respect to sweet development, we’re seeing substantial sweet development along ECCC, and to Jamie’s comment, that once ECCC is online in the second quarter of ’26, we will reroute that gas south in order to free up capacity up north. Exactly.

Alyssa, Moderator: Wonderful. Appreciate the color, and thank you for the time.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: You’re welcome. Thanks, Jen.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Good morning, Jeremy. Just wanted to follow up on some of the questions that had been asked so far. I think there was a run rate of 1.2 billion EBITDA for exit ’25 was expected at some point in the past. And granted, there are a lot of moving pieces for ’26, as you said, but do you still expect to hit that 1.2 at some point run rate during ’26? Sorry, during 2026?

Yes. That 1.2 billion EBITDA run rate, if not hitting it year-end ’25, do you expect to hit it during ’26?

Well, I think what we said, Jeremy, is let’s just park for one second 2026. If we’re happy to, I’m happy to sort of articulate some of the challenges in the context of 2025 and sort of. How you get from 300 to the midpoint where you have the revised. Guide today. But I think primarily, if you’re going to think about it in just easy terms, between the shut-ins and the delayed and turn-in line activity and epic, you’re well over 60% of your difference.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. And then I guess. Just any other thoughts you might be able to share? I guess there’s give and take as you wind up there for ’26, but just how do you think about the earnings power of the business, the growth profile over time. When all these kind of variables normalize settle out or just from a baseline post that? How do you think about the. EBITDA growth potential for the base business?

Look, I think the overall EBITDA growth potential for the business remains very strong, conditioned on. We have continuing activity, right, in the context on the development side. And that’s, I think, really the question right now we’re all grappling with, and as we look forward. Obviously, I don’t anticipate, and I think you heard it in remarks from Trevor earlier, we haven’t seen. Oil. Directed. PDP shut-in since COVID. This was something that none of us would say on the risk equation we were otherwise anticipating. We have lived with Apache in the context of knowing that obviously when Waha goes negative, they shut in. Got it. We knew that. Rinse repeat, we play forward. But this one was a complete new world for us to basically have to try to reconcile. And as Trevor indicated in his remarks. On some days during October, almost 20%.

Of our overall existing production was actually shut in across the board, of which it was split between. The oil gas and. The oil-directed production and obviously Apache on Alpine High. So it was a really strange situation for October. And obviously, we’ve continued to see it bleed into November. Today, we’ve got. Sorry, yesterday’s a buck 10 on Waha. Today is obviously still negative. I mean, this isn’t building a lot of confidence. And that being said. October of next year, if IBCFA Dave Egreth comes online, just go look at the forwards. Trevor and I were looking at this this morning. The forwards are step it’s like a step change relative to what we see as far as current natural gas pricing. So I think there’s a lot of things that the market is probably telling us, one of which is we do expect software activity. We do.

And I think that has been that’s allowed us, and that is what has prompted us to think about a fundamental reset, right? One of your colleagues said, "Rip the Band-Aid off." Well, we looked at this and said, "Okay, this was our chance to basically go and really take a really tough look at the overall elements of our forecast and how we forecast it so that we can come out and not continue to. Perpetuate the last four quarters," which have been pretty rough. And obviously, something that we wear. We’re not pleased or happy with.

Got it. Understood. Just the last one, if I could, with regards to. Thoughts on. Using the buyback in the future, what type of cadence or framework at this point, given. Volatility in the stock? Just wondering any more thoughts you could share there.

Look, I think on the buyback, the buyback fits within capital allocation bucket. Capital allocation bucket has three masters that, in fact, it could satisfy. Buyback, dividend growth, capital allocation for organic projects, right? All of the above. And we have to look and see where, in fact, we think from a long-term. From a fundamental value standpoint, where we think and what we truly believe to be in the best interests of all stakeholders. And so we look at that and we sort of make the decision. And obviously, Trevor, we’ll do that as we go forward, and we’ll look at the buyback. We’ll be looking at the dividend every quarter. We’ll be looking at, obviously. Ongoing investment in our organic. Project program.

Got it. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Keith Stanley with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. Wanted to dig in a little, the implied Q4 EBITDA in the new guidance, it’s 250 million at the midpoint. Can you say what does that assume about King’s Landing volumes? I assume there’s no Alpine High in there. And then beyond the shut-ins, were there any adverse impacts from the extreme Waha pricing in October as it relates to gas price exposure in that Q4 number?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Thanks, Keith. This is Trevor. As Jamie had mentioned, when you include just customer volumes, that assumes. Gas shutting, our gas-focused shutting volume, as well as our oil-focused producers’ shutting volume, as well as timing delays with respect to given the fact that Waha on certain days in October was minus $9. That caused several producers to push development, as Jamie had commented earlier, into later in the quarter. When you couple that with the epic sale, that represented over 60% of the revision lower. What I would say is that. There’s that element, and then yes, there is an element of pricing. As you know, a portion of our equity volumes on C1 is priced in basin locally, and that did have a negative impact as we looked at the forward forecast or as we looked at the fourth quarter forecast versus where we were three months ago.

So that certainly had an element to it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that that was nearly the impact that we saw than just the lost gross margin from. Curtailments across the system. And I think, Keith, as far as Jamie. As far as the overall. Run rate into King’s Landing, King’s Landing is now at that point where we’re turning around. Compressor stations and basically bringing on gas that has, to this point, been curtailed. So there is more to happen. I think there are another couple, if I’m not mistaken, or at least one over the course of the next four to six weeks that’s likely to happen. So that will bring more volume on. And then it’s going to be a question of, okay, as the oil-focused producers, both in the north and in the south. We’ve had a shut-in production from both categories.

And therefore, the question is, okay, are they going to return? And if so, what’s that timing look like?

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That’s helpful. And to confirm that when you say over 60% is explained by those factors, that’s the difference between the new guidance and the 300 million quarterly rate?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Yeah, exactly.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That’s right.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Exactly.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Okay. Second question. How are you thinking about. Recontracting on. T&F in light of recent industry developments? You have Speedway being built, Energy Transfer saying last night they might convert an NGL pipe to gas service. Does it make sense to try and recontract some of your expirations now and do shorter-term deals, or would you wait until they actually expire?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Keith, it’s Jamie. I think the following. 2026 is the first time that we sort of get to the point where we’ve got. Expirations. And we are obviously very much aware of the current market dynamic. I think. Yes, even with whether you do a conversion, you’re obviously adding Speedway. You’re obviously, I think there’s an expectation that there will be less production. So I think still the overall bias for. T&F rates will be in favor of the seller, right? And there’s a lot of infrastructure that is being built that will need to be filled up. So I think from our vantage point, we don’t see any changes to, look, we will deal with this over the passage of 2026. As we get to it. And. As I said, I think our viewpoint is that the market dynamic will not change.

Between now and then, and we still see this being a very. Attractive opportunity for us.

Jackie Kollitis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Thank you.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Michael Blum with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to—sorry to do this—but I wanted to go back to the Waha issue for a second, just more of a clarification, I think, for me. So you’ve secured some additional capacity to the Gulf Coast in 2028. So what exactly are you doing to manage your exposure between now and then?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: So we have our existing capacity today. We have more capacity next year. And then we have. This new tranche of capacity, which will come on, which comes on for 2028. So we are already at—yeah, we have always been actively managing it, and we are looking forward in the context of how we look at the overall needs of our customers and what that overall. Expectant growth rate is as far as. The amount of volume that wants to be settled at a Gulf Coast price. So we already—I mean, we’ve got capacity, as you know, and we’ve said that repeatedly. And so we manage it, and this will just be another tranche that we will basically add to our overall portfolio.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay. Got it. And then maybe on a related item, and you kind of. Hinted to this in your prepared remarks, I think, but. You had talked in the past about an in-basin power project with some of your producer customers as a way to manage some of this Waha exposure. Can you give us an update on where that stands today?

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Sure. So we. Have continued to obviously talk to our upstream customers. I think it wouldn’t surprise anyone to think that in the current environment where capital is. I think, being heavily scrutinized, that this is a nice-to-have for them versus a need-to-have. I think we look at it and say this is very important for us to, in fact, help us address controllable costs. Obviously, electricity for us has been a rising cost over the course and passage of 2025. And so we continue to evaluate it. I think, look, more to come. I think we show it in our presentation materials that it’s active development. We’ve actually. We’re getting all of the equipment organized. I think there will be more to communicate to everybody. Over the passage of the next. Short time period.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thank you.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: You’re welcome.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Samyad Jain with UBS. Please go ahead.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you provide more color on the data center-related infrastructure investments you might be seeing across the New Mexico border and how Kinetic might be positioned to capture that market? I know we recently saw Oracle and OpenAI announce a data center campus planned in southern New Mexico, and that’ll probably use chromium gas. So how might Kinetic’s current footprint facilitate that sort of project, and how could sour gas come into play?

Samyad, thanks for the question. I think. I would look at. The data center opportunity for us as being one where we have the ability to connect. Our residue gas. Pipeline network into a power generation source. Dedicated to a potential data center or large. Demand-side customer. Obviously, we’ve seen there’s a lot of projects, as many of you know, in the TEF, the Texas Energy Fund, that obviously are looking to get to FID. One project was obviously the CPV project. We provide one of the main gateways for gas to go to a 1,350-megawatt plant that is now broken ground, FID, and expected to be in service in 2029. We believe that there will be other opportunities for us. Like that, that will then not only provide us connectivity because we’ll be building out our pipeline network, but also provide us the opportunity to deliver and supply gas.

Whether it’s in the form of us as Kinetic or our customers that may sit behind our plant. Or our processing facilities. So I do think there is a lot of interesting stay tuned. It will sort of—there’ll be a lot more. Discussion on these particular topics. But this one was sort of the most. Immediate. We just got it completed. We’ve been working on this for. Two years or something. So it’s been a long time coming, but I think there are some pretty interesting opportunities. And we get approached by many. There are many people that are approaching us on the power gen side that want to do large-scale gas-fired CCGTs.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: And Samyad, this is Chris. A lot of our residue gas infrastructure that’s owned and operated is in the southern Delaware. We’ve been talking to many parties. One of them that was publicly announced recently, the Land Bridge NRG deal is adjacent to Delaware Link. So we’re having conversations there. So again, we’ll see which ones completely make FID, but we are having conversations with a number of folks like Jamie alluded to.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Great. Thank you. And then I understand that many of the customers you gain from the Durango acquisition are private. So how have you seen drilling activity in the Permian vary between private and public producers? And as you develop your footprint in Delaware North, what sort of customers are you seeing more traction with down the line?

Thanks for the question, Samyad. This is Trevor. What I would say is that. The private producers that we’ve seen have been, I’d say, a little bit more price-sensitive, particularly in this current environment, than some of the public’s. They’re not putting out multi-year production targets. And so they tend to be, again, a little bit more volatile with respect to the ups and the downs. However, what we have seen just with experience—we saw this during COVID—is that. As. Crude lifted off the bottom, they were the first to pick the rigs back up. And be very aggressive, particularly one of our customers, large customers up there. So I would say just that is just a general macro comment that we’re seeing. With respect to what we’re seeing. From customers up north, I’d say it’s a nice mix of both.

The private equity back or private companies that are aggressively moving up there to expand the play and also seek inventory, given that. It’s pretty competitive. It’s extremely competitive down towards the state line for someone to go pick up inventory. The other thing that we’re seeing is that we’re seeing some of the publics that have historically been more focused at the state line. Or. In Texas push further north. Just given what they’re seeing from well results across all formations. So it’s a pretty attractive—and it’s part of our thesis that we have with Durango—it’s a pretty attractive development that we’re seeing right now. And it’s a multi-year strategy that we have here in order to kind of continue to build this beachhead position and capture a lot of market share as the play continues to move further north, east, and west.

Michael Blum, Analyst, Wells Fargo: And Samyad, this is Chris. We’re still seeing the dynamic too. You asked about northern Delaware. You go to the southern Delaware, where if there’s acreage that some of the publics don’t want to drill, we’re seeing some of the privates farm that out and pick that up and drill that. So there’s still that dynamic going on. So there’s a good mix of development. We’re seeing activity from private. So. That’s continuing to happen on our system.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Alyssa, Moderator: Thank you. This will conclude the question-and-answer portion of today’s call. I would now like to turn the call back to Jamie Welch for any additional comments.

Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kinetic: Thank you, everyone, for your time this morning. And we look forward to continuing our dialogue and engagement with you over the coming days, weeks, and months. Thanks.

Alyssa, Moderator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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