Q2 2025 Western Midstream Partners LP Post-Earnings Fireside Chat

Speaker #1: Welcome to Western Midstream's second quarter 2025 post-earnings call and fireside chat. Joining us are our Chief Financial Officer, Kristen Shults, and our Senior Vice President of Commercial, John Vandenbrandt.

Speaker #1: Kristen, I'll start with you. Can you give us an overview of WES's record second-quarter financial and operational results?

Speaker #2: Sure, Daniel. The second quarter was the highest adjusted EBITDA we've had in our partnership's history. It was really a successful quarter for the team. Operationally, we performed really well; we saw increased throughput across all the product lines and across all of our large operated basins.

Speaker #2: The Delaware Basin really was the winner this quarter, having record oil, gas, and water production. This significantly contributed to the increase that we saw in adjusted EBITDA, specifically in adjusted gross margin.

Speaker #2: OpEx was relatively flat compared to Q1. We've been doing a lot of work internally around cost optimization and just really taking a deep look into how we're operating.

Speaker #2: On the operations side, in particular, we are trying to reduce costs. I think you're starting to see some of that come out as we're moving through this year, and we'll see even more of that coming out in the third and fourth quarters.

Speaker #2: It's really helping us from a total OpEx perspective, as we see increased costs related to increased water volumes or just increased costs in general as we're pushing through more throughput.

Speaker #2: Expectations for the rest of the year, we are still looking at similar throughput growth rates as we mentioned at the beginning of the year, so gas, mid-single-digits growth, crude oil, low-single-digits growth, and water mid-single-digits growth as well.

Speaker #1: John, we sanctioned a second train at the North Loving plant that is expected to come online in the second quarter of 2027. Can you talk to WES's slight change in strategy and decision to sanction another plant right now?

Speaker #3: Thanks, Daniel. Absolutely. I think there are two main things to keep in mind as we've approached the sanctioning of North Loving 2. The first is that it's backed by the strong support of our existing agreements, where we've got a tremendous amount of insight into our producers' activity. Through the discussions as we've gotten into budgeting for next year and as we've received long-term forecasts, we're really inspired and confident in the long-term delivery of what our existing contract structure looks like with a vast variety of producers all across the basin.

Speaker #3: The second thing that's also been really encouraging is that over the last 12 to 18 months, we've seen a tremendous amount of success in the organic development of our system, with new contracts for gas gathering and processing with customers around the basin.

Speaker #3: Those, together, gave us the confidence to pull the trigger and sanction North Loving 2 today. As always, we've had a tremendous amount of connectivity with other processors in the basin via offloads, and we continue to use those today to make sure that we provide ultimate flow assurance and reliability throughout the system.

Speaker #3: We expect that when we do bring in North Loving 2 in the second quarter of '27, it will be very full on day one, as we've continued to manage the flow into the startup of that via the offloads.

Speaker #1: Can you also give us an update on the Pathfinder pipeline project?

Speaker #3: Absolutely. First of all, we remain focused on executing the development of that infrastructure and bringing it online in the first quarter of 2027. To date, everything is on track, and we're very excited about the startup of the infrastructure and what it'll do for existing business.

Speaker #3: As we continue to build on the organic success that we've seen over the last 12 to 18 months on both the gas and the water side of our business, we're very encouraged by the discussions we're having with customers on long-term solutions that will utilize Pathfinder as well as the rest of our assets and infrastructure to provide long-term flow assurance solutions.

Speaker #1: Okay, Kristen, turning back to you. In our second quarter results, WES announced that we expect the capital budget in 2026 to be at least $1.1 billion.

Speaker #1: Can you tell us a bit about what is included in that number? How will this drive growth in the coming years?

Speaker #2: Sure. On the earnings call, we wanted to give a little bit of color around what we might see in 2026 from a capital perspective, what it would look like.

Speaker #2: We've announced a lot of new projects this year—really exciting growth projects. We've got Pathfinder and North Loving 2; the vast majority of that spend will be in 2026.

Speaker #2: We previously talked about Pathfinder, the midpoint of the CapEx associated with that being about $425 million; we spent some of that this year. In 2025, we'll spend a little bit more in the second half of this year.

Speaker #2: But, vast majority I'd say anywhere from 350 to 400 is going to be spent in 2026. Same thing for North Loving 2, as you know that's going to be a 300-a-day plant, so that'll be quite a big chunky project for us.

Speaker #2: We'll spend a little bit this year as it relates to long-lead equipment, but the vast majority would be spent in 2026 too. Then, if you think about what gets layered on top of that, we have just the normal run rate of the business itself, and we are seeing continued growth in the portfolio. So, in the past, we've talked about that being around, let's call it, $500 million, maybe $600 million, when you see increased throughput and growth coming from the portfolio. We still have expansion capital and new compression needs, new SWD needs, that we kind of run around that range.

Speaker #2: So, if you just take those numbers and start laying them on top of each other, that's where we're coming up with in excess of $1.1 billion.

Speaker #2: We will obviously get updated forecasts from our producers for the second half of this year, and then into even January and February. We will still look at those and adjust our capital plans for 2026.

Speaker #2: And because we are a GMP midstream provider, where they decide to ultimately drill on that acreage we’re serving can make a pretty material influence on how we put our capital budget together.

Speaker #1: Kristen, John, thank you both for joining us today. For our listeners, if you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us.