Oil and gas midstream giant Kinder Morgan Inc. (NYSE: KMI) announced after markets closed on Monday its preliminary financial projections for the coming year. The company said it expects to generate distributable cash flow of $4.46 billion in 2017 and will maintain its current annual dividend of $0.50 per share.
Kinder Morgan slashed its $2.04 annual dividend in December of 2015, saying that it planned to use “a significant portion of its large cash flow to fund the equity portion of its expansion capital requirements.” In Monday’s announcement, the company said it expects to provide guidance on a revised dividend policy later next year, “with a view toward delivering additional value to its shareholders in 2018.
The estimate for 2017 distributable cash flow works out to $1.99 per share and maintains a four-times dividend coverage ratio, essentially unchanged from this year.
Kinder Morgan plans to invest $3.2 billion expansion projects next year, funded with “excess, internally generated cash flow, with no need to access equity markets during 2017.” The company has not gone to the capital markets in 2016, part of the promise that chairman Richard Kinder made last December when the dividend was chopped.
The company also addressed the recent Canadian government decision to allow the company to expand its TransMountain pipeline system from Alberta to British Columbia:
KMI’s 2017 budget assumes a joint venture partner on the company’s TransMountain expansion project and contributions from that partner to fund its share of expansion capital, but does not include any potential proceeds in excess of the partner’s share of expansion capital to recognize the value created in developing the project to this stage. KMI expects to receive such proceeds, but did not attempt to quantify them for budget purposes.
The TransMountain project, which would triple the capacity of the existing TransMountain system from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000 barrels a day, accounts for about $5.4 billion of planned capital spending. A joint venture could halve that and give the company even more financial breathing room. Kinder Morgan expects to begin construction in September 2017 with an operational target of the end of 2019.
There remains serious opposition to the expansion project from Canadian First Nations groups and British Columbia’s provincial government. Karen Mahon, national director of Canada’s Stand.earth, said:
Although this government will issue a permit, the communities of the Lower Mainland not only refuse to grant consent, they are increasingly and vehemently opposed. There will be mass protests. There will be lawsuits. This will become a hotly contested issue in the coming B.C. election. And this pipeline will never be built.
Kinder Morgan plans to discuss its 2017 budget in detail at its January 25, 2017, analyst meeting.
Shares closed up about 0.5% on Monday to $21.46 and were up 0.2% in premarket action Tuesday. The stock’s 52-week range is $11.20 to $23.36, and the 12-month consensus price target is $24.95.
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