After markets close Wednesday, the new Kinder Morgan Inc. (NYSE: KMI) will report fourth-quarter and full-year results. The company completed its consolidation in late November and has abandoned its master limited partnership (MLP) organization. The earnings results posted Wednesday will be the first under the new structure, and more than anything, analysts and investors will be looking for information about the company plans going forward.

When KMI announced its intention in August to acquire all the outstanding shares and common units of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP), Kinder Morgan Management (KMR) and El Paso Pipeline Partners (EPB), CEO and Chairman Richard Kinder said the company expected to pay a dividend of $1.72 per share in 2014 ($0.43 per share quarterly), rising to $2.00 in 2015. He reiterated those numbers in December.

Kinder also said he expected to raise the dividend by about 10% annually through 2020 with excess coverage expected to be more than $2 billion over that period. For 2015 he put a figure of more than $500 million on excess coverage. He also said the company would invest about $4.4 billion in expansion and small acquisitions and would end 2015 with a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 5.6.

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Why did the company toss its limited partnership structure? Simplicity, and an increase in the company’s ability to finance acquisition with KMI stock. Here’s Kinder:

[W]e believe that KMI will be a valuable acquisition currency and have a significantly lower hurdle for accretive investments in new energy infrastructure. In the opportunity-rich environment of today’s energy infrastructure sector, we believe this transaction gives us the ability to grow KMI for years to come.

In other words, having all the company’s assets under a single roof eliminates all the complexity of borrowing and guaranteeing the loans because all the company’s assets are now available to back new borrowing and stock issuances.

Kinder is also likely to talk about the collapse of crude oil prices and the potential impact on KMI’s pipeline business. Because transportation contracts are typically not affected by the price of the commodity being transported, what will matter is how much volume KMI expects to ship. The same is true of the company’s natural gas pipeline system.

Most estimates of crude oil production volume indicate an increase in 2015, at least for the first half of the year. Kinder is virtually certain to get a question during the conference call regarding his view of volumes going forward and how that could affect KMI’s business.

The company has been expanding its terminal business, especially around the Gulf Coast, no doubt anticipating that the federal government will lift its ban on exports of crude oil. The company also entered the sea transportation business when it acquired five Jones Act tankers in late 2013. These are American-built and American-crewed tankers with a capacity of 330,000 barrels that are the only type of ship that may transport cargoes from one U.S. port to another. The company has ordered another five newbuild tankers and in November purchased two more existing ships.

KMI currently has a backlog of projects valued at $18 billion that Kinder said in early December “have a high certainty of completion.” At the time he also said that the company had revised its West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price down to $70 a barrel. We may get another revision to that price expectation.

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The impact of lower crude prices will be felt most in the company’s CO2 segment, where Kinder has said every $1 change in the price of crude affects pretax income by $7 million. With crude prices currently around $46 a barrel, the company’s CO2 business is losing $168 million more in pretax earnings compared with the $70 per barrel price in effect when Kinder made the statement. KMI’s own production is mostly hedged and that portion that is unhedged is primarily in lower-priced natural gas liquids.

The consensus analyst estimate for EPS is $0.34 for the quarter and $1.19 for the year, on quarterly revenue of $4.3 billion and annual revenue of $16.48 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2013, KMI posted EPS of $0.33 on revenues of $3.87 billion, and in 2013 the company posted EPS of $1.15 on revenues of $14.07 billion.

Among a universe of nine energy and utility stocks, KMI got the nod from Credit Suisse as the best of the bunch. The analysts put a price target of $49 on the shares, implying an upside of nearly 18% based on Tuesday’s closing price. Credit Suisse is especially pleased with KMI’s newfound ability to lower its cost of capital, so the roll-up of all the companies into one seems to have achieved Richard Kinder’s goal.

KMI may have to change its mindset somewhat though. A wildly successful MLP — like KMP once was — needs to grow distributions consistently, year after year. When times are good, MLPs act just like other corporations and borrow to grow if they can — and if they can’t they borrow to pay for buybacks and dividend increases while building up their cash pile to take advantage of any blood in the streets. Richard Kinder has constantly been focused on shareholder returns and that is not likely to change. What could change is the amount of cash that is available to grow what is essentially a fixed-fee business, which could put pressure on future revenues and earnings. This may not be likely in KMI’s case, but it is certainly possible.

Since December 1, KMI’s shares have risen by nearly 12%, about double the increase in the S&P 500 index. The share price posted its 52-week high of $43.18 in late December, up about 20% from January 2014. The shares have given a bit of that back and were up about 16.5% on Wednesday.

After the first hour of trading Wednesday morning, KMI shares were up about 0.7%, at $42.10 in a 52-week range of $30.81 to $43.18. The consensus price target from 14 analysts is $46.86.

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