ONEOK, Inc. Price & Performance (OKE)

In order to fit in as many of you as we can. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pierce Norton, President and Chief Executive Officer. [indiscernible] Thanks, Andrew. Good morning and thank you for joining us. On today's call is Walt Hults, Chief Financial Officer Treasurer Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development and Sheridan Schwartz, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.

Also on the call today is Randy Lentz, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Randy joined us from Medallion Midstream and we welcome him to the ONEOK Oak team.

Yesterday, we announced higher fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings driven by contributions from multiple strategic acquisitions volume growth and continued execution on the synergies identified in our refined products and crude oil businesses acquired in 2023. We also announced 2025 financial guidance and provided a 2026 growth outlook. For 2025, we expect strong earnings growth driven by our completed projects, For our 2026 growth outlook, we expect greater than 15% earnings per share growth and adjusted EBITDA growth approaching 10%. Compared with our 2025 guidance midpoints.

Walton Sheridan will provide additional details on those guidance and the growth outlook shortly. Over the past two years, One Oak has executed on our intentional and disciplined growth strategy. Creating unique opportunities with our more regionally diversified product and service offering, offerings and delivering value across our expanded footprint. We've transformed our company into in multiple ways making it even stronger more resilient and better positioned to play a leading role in contributing to energy addition. I'll touch on a few of these key areas that we believe will drive our continued success and further enhance our strategic competitive advantage. First, we've significantly grown our integrated operations. Both in terms of our product mix demand pull versus supply push drivers and geographic diversity. We've added refined products, and crude oil transportation, and crude oil gathering to our integrated value chain. And we've significantly extended and expanded our presence in the Permian Basin and Louisiana.

Second, we've added significant operational scale through our now approximately 60,000 mile pipeline network, enhancing our connectivity with key producers basins and market centers To scale and integrated connectivity further strengthen our resilience and position One Oak for success across various market cycles.

Third, we continue to prioritize organic growth opportunities by expanding and extending our now even larger asset base. Key projects have included Ingeo pipeline expansions in the Bakken and Permian Basins, Additional NGL fractionation capacity in Mont Belvieu and the Mid Continent refined products pipeline expansions into the Denver market and natural gas storage expansions in Oklahoma and Texas. Most recently, we announced an LPG export project joint venture with MPLX.

With LPG exports added to our service mix, we will provide an integrated NGL wellhead to water solution for our customers enhancing our product offerings. Fourth, continue to prioritize innovation, commercial development and customer service across our operations. Numerous additional project opportunities remain in various stages of development These unannounced projects span across regions and products. And they include synergy projects, and traditional growth opportunities.

Examples include projects to interconnect and optimize recently acquired assets top line and facility expansions in key basins, additional natural gas infrastructure driven by continued demand for the AI driven data centers and LNG demand. And debottlenecking projects across our operations to accommodate growth, or just to name a few. Finally, we remain committed to returning meaningful value to our investors. We've proven our ability to sustain and grow our long standing dividend invest in high return growth projects and maintain financial flexibility.

Including the ability to begin executing on our share repurchase authorization. We've provided eleven consecutive years of adjusted EBITDA growth. And our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance is well over double what it was just three years All of these successes and extraordinary growth and the scale of One Oak's transformation doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't happen without the dedication of our employees.

Their continued focus on safety, service and innovation has enabled this level of change to occur. And will continue to drive additional meaningful growth and value across our operations.

I'll now turn it over to Walt and Sheridan to provide their financial and commercial updates. Walt? Thank you, Pierce.

I'll start with a brief overview of our fourth quarter and full year financial performance and then move on to our 2025 guidance and 2026 outlook. 2024 results were in line with our guidance expectations that we increased in both the first and third quarters of twenty twenty four. Net income attributable to One Oak totaled $923,000,000 or $1.57 per share in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four. And totaled $3,000,000,000 or $5.17 per share for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA totaled nearly $2,200,000,000 in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four and more than $6,700,000,000 for the full year. These results include $375,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA and $73,000,000 of transaction costs related to the EnLink Medallion acquisitions that we began consolidating in October. As of December 31, we had more than $730,000,000 in cash on hand. No commercial paper outstanding and no borrowings outstanding under our credit agreement. Our fourth quarter twenty twenty four annualized run rate net debt to EBITDA ratio was 3.6 times. Continue to demonstrate our ability to utilize various capital allocation levers in 2024 by returning nearly $2,500,000,000 of value to shareholders.

Through dividends, and share repurchases. Repurchased $172,000,000 of stock the fourth quarter and in January 2025, we increased our quarterly dividend by 4%. Now moving on to our guidance. As Pierce mentioned, in addition to yesterday's earnings announcement, we provided detailed 2025 financial and volume guidance and a 2026 growth outlook. 2025, we expect an 8% increase in earnings per share to a midpoint of $5.37 compared with 2024 when excluding one time items in 2024 such as transactional related costs and divestitures. CPS guidance does not include an assumption for share repurchases. But we remain committed to executing on our Board approved $2,000,000,000 share repurchase program over the course of these next few years. From an adjusted EBITDA perspective, we expect a 21% increase in adjusted EBITDA in 2025 to $8,225,000,000 excluding approximately $50,000,000 of transaction costs compared with 2024. Key drivers of our 2025 guidance include higher earnings driven by a full year of earnings from recent acquisitions, volume growth from increases in production and completed growth projects and fee based earnings. Our 2025 financial guidance also includes approximately $250,000,000 of incremental commercial and cost synergies related to our acquisitions of Magellan, Medallion and EnLink. This is additive to what we've already realized through the end of twenty twenty four.

As it relates to capital expenditures, Range reflects the investments necessary to accommodate expected increases in production, and invest in attractive return growth projects such as our recently announced LPG export dock. Our 2026 outlook of greater than 15% earnings per share growth and adjusted EBITDA growth approaching 10% compared with the 2025 guidance midpoints is driven by expected volumes from increased production and recently completed synergy and growth projects. Key contributors include a full year of earnings from the Elk Creek and West Texas NGL pipeline expansions, and synergy projects completed in twenty twenty five along with a partial year benefit from the completion of the Denver area refined products expansion, and the connection of our Mount Bellevue assets to the Houston Ship Channel distribution assets. We also expect to realize additional synergies in 2026. I'll now turn the call over to Sheridan for a commercial update. We saw a strong year over year performance in 2024. The refined products and crude segment contributed its first full year of earnings benefiting from higher average refined product tariff rates blending and marketing opportunities, as well as higher earnings on our long haul crude oil pipelines. Continued strength in Rocky Mountain volumes during the year continued to support earnings with NGL raw feed throughput volumes up 8% and natural gas volumes processed processed up 6% in the region.

The Natural Gas Pipeline segment exceeded the high end of its 2024 financial guidance even excluding divestitures and acquisitions. The segment's outperformance continued to be driven by strong demand for our intra state pipeline and storage services. Turning to 2025, and starting with the Natural Gas Liquids segment, we expect higher year over year adjusted EBITDA and raw feed throughput volumes to be driven primarily by growth out of the Permian and Rocky Mountain regions. We've assumed high levels of ethane recovery continue in the Permian Basin and partial recovery in the Mid Continent. We also expect to see continued opportunities to incentivize ethane recovery in the Rocky Mountain region. In the Permian Basin, we expect recently completed and connected third party processing plants, new contracts and increasing volume from legacy in link plants could to contribute to higher volumes feeding our West Texas NGL pipeline. As legacy in link contracts roll off in future years, significant incremental volume is expected to move to our Permian NGL system. Recently completed NGL growth projects will contribute to higher volumes than earnings in twenty twenty five including NB6, and expansions of our Elk Creek and West Texas NGL pipelines in the Williston and Permian base, We also expect increasing contributions from the acquired Eastern Energy assets as we complete connections to our Houston based system in 2025, helping us to realize additional synergies.

As payers mentioned earlier this month, we announced strategic joint venture projects to construct a 400,000 barrels per day LPG export terminal in Texas City, Texas. And a pipeline connecting One Oak's Mont Belvieu storage facility to the new terminal.

Our collaboration with MPLX on this project enables us to provide a new wellhead to water solution to customers across our entire system. The world scale dock has multiple strategic benefits over other currently operating facilities. Including a premier open water location brownfield economics, timing and cost benefits driven by the proximity to the existing Marathon Refinery and infrastructure and strategic access to our NGL Storage In Mont Belvieu. The project is expected to be completed in early twenty twenty eight. In the refined products and crude segment, we expect continued growth in Refined Products margins and a significant increase in crude oil volumes driven by our added crude oil gathering infrastructure from both the Medallion and EnLink acquisitions.

We expect to fill existing gathering capacity over time which will feed and fill our long haul crude oil pipelines connecting key suppliers with critical refining and marketing center. We also expect continued benefits from the ability to execute certain blending related commercial and cost synergies between the natural gas liquids and refined product businesses. We expect these type of synergies to ramp up as projects come on mind this year. Moving to the natural gas gathering and processing segment. We expect volume growth in all of our We guided to Rocky Mountain Region volume growth at 8.5% at the midpoint.

Compared with 2024 and at average of more than 1.7 Bcf per day in 2025. Williston Basin volumes continue to benefit from increasing efficiencies that have been well documented by our producer customers. Strong gas to oil ratios and overall producer activity. [indiscernible] Part of those efficiencies that we continue to benefit from is the drilling of longer laterals and higher well performance on traditional laterals. Without the need for as many well connects.

In 2025, we expect 35% of our well connects to be with three mile laterals as opposed to traditional shorter laterals. Through recent acquisitions, we've extended our gathering and processing assets into the strategic and growing Permian Basin and added assets in the Mid Continent. [indiscernible] the Mid Continent, we expect volume growth in addition to the [indiscernible] annual volume of nearly 2.5 Bcf per day in 2025. Projects are already underway to connect and optimize asset. As Pierce mentioned, as Pierce mentioned, these synergies are captured in the 2026 outlook Walt provided. In the Permian Basin, we expect natural gas processing volume to average approximately 1.6 Bcf per day at the midpoint. We are in the process of relocating 150,000,000 cubic feet per day legacy in linked natural gas processing plant to the region from North Texas. Which we expect to be completed in the first quarter of twenty twenty six. And we continue looking at expected infrastructure needs going forward. As existing customers and potential opportunities provide line of line of sight for strong growth in the coming years. In the Natural Gas Pipeline segment, [indiscernible] Our assets are well positioned to benefit from industrial demand growth driven by data centers, LNG exports and ammonia facilities.

Our newly acquired assets in Louisiana provide direct connectivity to major LNG exporters and industrial customers. There are also approximately 30 potential power plant expansion projects across our footprint that could provide more than four Bcf per day of incremental demand if they move forward. Natural gas storage expansions continue to be an opportunity for us as well. With key projects ongoing in Oklahoma and in Louisiana. Pierce, that concludes my remarks. Thank you, Sheridan, and thank you, Walt. We are proud of our strong performance over the past year. Through strategic acquisitions and organic initiatives, we've extended our reach and built a platform for future growth that leaves us poised for continued success.

The potential before us is significant.

And we remain committed to delivering the value to our employees shareholders, customers and communities.

Before we close, I want to recognize our employees' related to the recent severe cold across our footprint.

As always, our teams demonstrated incredible commitment and dedication to maintaining safety and delivering reliable service regardless of the challenging conditions. This unwavering focus on safety and customer service is a testament to the character and resilience of our people. I want to thank all of our employees for their hard work, and dedication throughout another year of significant change in growth.

It is their commitment and passion that drive our success and make us stronger as an organization. Thank you to our shareholders for your continued trust and support. We're excited about the journey ahead and look forward to sharing our progress with you in the future. Operator, we're now ready for questions. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. And the first question will come from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Would you be able to provide some additional details behind bridging the 2025 to 2026 guidance. It sounds like much of it is driven by project contribution, but are there other details and color around synergies or assumptions on volume and pricing at this point?

Well, Theresa, what we're really seeing is the benefit of the synergy capital that we've been spending primarily connecting the Easton assets, so that all of our assets down in Bellevue and the Houston channel, those should get completed here in 2025 and we'll get that full benefit into 2026. We'll start to see some of these other projects wrap up in later twenty twenty five or early twenty twenty six. And contributing benefit So this last phase of capital investment is coming at a great time. Hello?

Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen.

Appears we have lost connection to our speaker line. Please stand by while we reconnect. Thank you. And Teresa, you may go ahead. I believe you were asking a question.

Yes.

If we want to move on to the second question, I just wanted to unpack two components of your organic projects backlog a little bit more. On the LPG side, can you speak more to the Strategic Benefits Behind Your Export JV With MPLX And How Exactly Will ONEOK And MPLX Be Competitive Versus The Incumbents On Export Economics? And Then Secondly, Within Your Refined Products, Portfolio. What Other Capacity Additions Are There Like The Denver pipeline expansion and beyond the initial 35,000 barrels per day, how much can you actually spend up that 16 inches line given the pretty significant cost of the project?

Yes, Theresa, this is Sheridan. I'll start with the LP [indiscernible] We are excited to collaborate with a great partner like MPLX on this strategic project for both companies strategic rationale is really you could say location, location, location. First location is, as I mentioned before, we have access to the open water We're within two hours of open waters at this location, significantly better than the other in the area.

Location because we're next to Marathon's refinery it is a brownfield construction site where we have a lot of other their infrastructure there. That greatly reduces the cost of this venture. And then obviously the location to our the NGL system and storage where we easily can be able to get our product into that into our dock as we go there. We have been looking at this for a for a long time. We've been intentional and disciplined about going forward with this type of a project, when we've been evaluating for over eight years in at this time we're really comfortable with where this project sits today and how we can compete into the marketplace as well as it advances our, as I mentioned, our wellhead water strategy across our entire system. And with a project that actually we can grow into as this dock and pipeline are both expandable beyond the 400,000 barrels a day. So that's really as we think about this dock and the strategic significance and how we can compete in the marketplace. As we continue to go forward. The Denver expansion, we put a 16 inches pipeline and we've said that we have commitments up to 35,000 barrels a day.

Obviously, a inches pipeline can move a lot more volumes in that, but as that area grows in demand or a supply of that area is disrupted in any way, from refinery closures, we can capital efficiently increase the capacity of that pipeline by adding more pumps all the way up to as much 250,000 barrels a day, if so needed depending on the demand.

Thank you very much.

And our next question will come from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. I guess just a follow-up on Theresa's question about the LPGX sport dock. It seems like LPGX sports are getting overbuilt and spot rates could fall significantly. Can you just speak about your assumptions for uncontracted rates, whether you share that view and whether in your numbers the uncontracted capacity is a meaningful contributor to the projecting?

Jean Ann, what I would tell you is this is coming on in 2028 as we think about LPG, doc. And as we can continue to look at the growth across our entire system, especially coming out of the Permian, we see a significant amount of LPGs be able to come on the market. And we already control a significant amount of that volume that is going across other docks today that we once the stock is up, we will be pointing to the stock. So we don't share the view that docks are going to be overbuilt when we get out into the 2028. [indiscernible] will be up, it will be able to compete very well with it. We have not assumed on our spot rate. We have assumed a typical market rate on any spot volume that we've included in our economics So nothing that is what we are seeing in line with what we're seeing today.

Okay.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then things are looking bullish for gas price over the next couple of years. Rig count in the Hansel is been flattish, but maybe creeping up in the mid cons. From what you're hearing from growth the next year or two in the Mid Con, which I don't think most are anticipating.

Well, as we've been talking to our customers in the Mid Continent and looking at rail drifts and everything else, we definitely are seeing increased activity in the Mid Continent. And that's really one of the things that driving our increase in our volume outlook as we look forward is is the increased drilling activity we are seeing in conversations with our producers. So I think you are a little bit of an uptick from their sand to gas from the gas price. [indiscernible] This is Pierce. Only thing that I would add to that is the demand tailwinds that we're seeing basically in the industry. I mean, we just recently we, but the industry brought on 60 Bcf a day of export capabilities coming on LNG.

That's expected to expand to somewhere around 30 Bcf Different projections out there, but AI could go from three to six Bcf a day And then you still have coal plant conversions. So all of that is going to kind of point to somewhere around plus 20%, maybe 25% growth in the demand for natural gas in the future. That comes with natural gas liquids. So think that's going to help with prices as well.

Great. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

And our next question will come from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

This is Brock and Reddy on for Jeremy.

For the 25 CapEx guide, could you help us bridge spend on the three larger projects in your backlog versus those smaller capital opportunities such as well connects, plant connections, and synergy related opportunities?

Trying to decide who is going to take that question. This is Walt. We have the three larger projects being the Medford frac which is kind of its heavy heavy build stage at the moment as we move forward. The Denver pipeline also kind of in that phase. The addition of the plant down in North Texas which is a reasonably quick and concentrated spend during that period. And we're wrapping up the Easton acquisition. So that's the kind of focus there in 2026. Clearly, as some of those projects come on, some of that that capital intensity will fall away. We'll have the dock project kind of being ramping up in 2026. And hit a stride as you get out in the next couple of years after that. But towards the back half of this year, we'll be getting into a pretty good spend rate as well. So that's really the gist of it. A lot of the other capital that we're spending around synergies and the like, they are very small extremely high return projects.

That we've been working on to connect the refined products and the NGL system to really enhance the ability to move product around the system, to be more efficient in blending activities and the like. So those are coming to completion and those are going to be added in kind of singles and doubles across the way we build out those synergies 'twenty five and 'twenty six.

Perfect. Thank you for that. And then, the materials [indiscernible] roughly 30 potential power plant expansion projects cause your footprint, including the data centers, Just curious if you could provide an update on commercial development, how that's progressed? And Just a strategic positioning with EnLink fully in the portfolio now?

Yes. This is Sheridan again.

And what I would say, Obviously, all 30 are at different levels stages that we're talking to. Some some or further along than others. We do think we have a very good competitive advantage when we look at a lot of these data centers and that is especially in our Oklahoma and Texas assets that we're sitting so close to supply that is really cuts down on the transportation costs as we go forward and with our integrated network to be able to OWT system out of West Texas being able to draw from all different plants in that area. The It's the same thing in Oklahoma. So we're working on the there are some as always you would expect, some are progressing more than others are progressing, but not all of them will get done.

Where of that 30 that is as 4BCF of of demand that we're looking at. We kind of look across The United States. There's only about three, somewhere between three and six BC of demand that think we'll come into play. So we're going to have a look at a majority of that volume and we're very confident we're going to get our fair share of the demand from Datacenter. Great. Thanks for the time.

And the next question will come Michael Bloom with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Wanted to ask about 2026 CapEx. I realize you're not giving an estimate here, but just directionally, obviously, you have a Big pickup in 2025 Given the larger size and scale of the company now, is this kind of a new run rate for the company?

Michael, this is Walt. I think you definitely are seeing kind of a peak here in 2025 as we wrap up Medford and the Denver project is in full swing. Will we as a larger company have a higher run rate? Definitely. But I think that you will see it as some of those come off and some of the synergy capital that we've been spending completed come down over '26 and into '27 But Medallion acquisitions, we definitely want to make sure that continue to make sure that we have capacity available for our customers in the Permian and some of the new markets that we're entering.

And then just wanted to ask, are you level set on synergies Just wondering if you can just sort of clarify for us where our synergies are tracking for, let's say Magellan and Lincoln Medallion versus Your original targets that you laid out? And then specifically the $250,000,000 that you called out, is that incremental to what you had originally laid out or you're just saying this is the number for 2020? [indiscernible] Yes. So in 2024, we had said that originally that we would have $175,000,000 of synergies Throughout the year, we signaled that we would exceed that amount and we clearly have. You can look at the results in RB and C for $24,000,000 versus what would have been a $23,000,000 range and we've definitely seen a benefit from some of that starting to come home. So we did better than the 175 as we headed into '25. We had said that there would be an additional 125 as it related to Magellan. In twenty twenty five. And so we're layering in another 125 on top of that.

Recognizing that we may have achieved some of those original planned out 2025 Magellan in 2024. So I think it speaks to the increased opportunities that we've continued to see as the teams have gotten together do those singles and doubles and really really optimize the NGL and refined product systems to open up a lot of new And the next question will come from Manav Gupta with UBS.

Good morning. On your 2025 guide, can you help us top end of the guide, especially for the natural gas liquids and refined products and crude segments like could get you to 3.1% and $2,300,000,000 respectively in 2025 for those two segments.

I think that as you look at the business, some of it's the timing of when we bring in some of these synergies. We are going to bring those bring those earnings home quicker. Clearly, There can be opportunities as our producers if they see continued strength in commodity prices or gas prices here They can help us out on that front. But I think that while we're not going to have to rely just on increased producer activity, I do think that we have the innovation of our team as they continue to look for opportunities to optimize Those smaller synergies, they may only be a $10,000,000 $15,000,000 add to EBITDA, but you do a bunch of them and they start to add up pretty Perfect. My quick follow-up here is now that you're operating with Medallion and EnLink, are there any opportunities or operationally that you are seeing when which you did not see earlier with new actually did the deal. So those are like kind of positive surprises. Can you talk a little bit about any positive surprises of these two deals?

This is Shikhar. And I would say as we continue as we saw with Magellan. When we start getting our people together and the people that really run these assets and they start talking to each other and working together the synergy opportunities almost start just kind of boiling out.

When we went and bought and we looked at the money we think we could make before we bought it We knew predominantly where they were going to come from and we knew kind of what we thought was there, but we didn't as with Magellan, we didn't know the scale of what that could be when you really get the people operating those assets to continue to go forward.

We're seeing a bunch of opportunities in the Mid Continent for G and P for for quick connects between our two systems up there where we can get gas to more efficient gas plants that produces more NGLs or NGL system We knew that was there, but how fast we can get there and how big that is has been has been a really good supply. You get down into Permian, you talked about we've been able to very quickly be able to put ourselves into positions to be able to market crude oil in that area, which helps us to put more crude oil right away onto our long haul pipes. The speed that we were able to do that has been able to go forward. And then a couple of things that we didn't even really consider was synergies between our EnLink crude oil system and our medallion crude oil system have really been a positive mover for us that they've found different ways to be able to connect those systems as we continue to go forward. Or even just simple things as we've had opportunities where we have we have crew trucks that we're driving and in link crew truck that was driving by a medallion terminal that we've been able lower our crude trucking cost just by bringing it to lower closer locations to the wellhead.

So we continue to see that. And as Walt mentioned, as we think about how do we get to the higher end of the 2025 guidance is how fast we can put these together and how new ones continue to come on, which is what we saw as I mentioned before, what we saw with the Medall and with Magellan acquisition is to get the teams together and define this.

The next question will come from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research. Hi, good morning. Wanted to follow-up first on the 2026 EBITDA outlook and synergies. So you said $250,000,000 of incremental synergies this year. Is there a number you can provide for 2026? It sounds like a lot of the projects are coming on of incremental synergies. [indiscernible] Yes, we're not going to guide you a specific number At this point in time, it's kind of baked into our outlook at this point.

What I would say is that the further we get down the path [indiscernible] multiple acquisitions Some of the supply chain type of synergies start to blend together. When we're buying for the four companies together as opposed to just legacy ONEOK, There are a little bit less easy to identify where we should point them to, whether they're Magellan synergies or Medallion synergies or EnLink. So some of those kind of get grouped together and we're just seeing a net benefit to the So at this point in 2026, we're going to just leave it at Those synergies that we have identified today are baked into that number. And we'll continue to try to find more and refine that number as we get closer to when we provide actual guidance for 'twenty six. But that is our outlook today. With what we know so far.

Great. And maybe on the export facility, Can you give a sense of expected returns on the project or contracts that are in place today And then separately on exports, just how it affects your strategy and how you're thinking about organic growth or M and A? Particularly in the Permian? Once you have this facility in place.

We'll start with the one at the end is our strategy across our whole system, not just in the Permian, [indiscernible] in that way we feel we can bring the most value to our customer to our producer customers. And this is just one more one more stop or one more leg in this integration that we think it's a critical to be able to continue to be competitive in all the areas that we are across. We continue to see a lot of demand the dock as we continue to go forward. Our returns are going to be in the mid teens to higher teens on this project as we continue to go that's kind of what our economics are looking like right now. But it is an integrated it's of our integrated play that we're trying to do is touch the barrels many times as we can, so we can offer a full suite of offerings to our producer customers This is Pierce. I think you had a question about M and A. In particular in the The way I would answer that is that we continue to be focused on the integration of the companies that we've bought so far.

And we're we're focused on realizing those synergies across that footprint. Having said that, there's a couple of ways that things come on the market. One is strategic, which is usually public to public.

And then the other one is through the private equity chain there probably is going to be some of those things coming on the market in the future. We look at everything, but it's less to be seen whether or not those transact or not. But we're going to be intentional and disciplined in the way that we approach all of our M and A future opportunity.

Thank you.

And the next question will come from Sunil Sibal with Seaport Global Securities. [indiscernible] thanks for the time. I was going in and out, so I'm not sure if this was addressed. But I wanted to start off on the Permian side of things. I believe your processing capacity is around 1.7 Bcf per day there. Could you tell us what kind of utilization that is running at And then the downstream of processing plants, Approximately how much of the NGL volumes you control from the marketing point of view?

What I would say on on the 1.5 to 1.7 Bcf and the utilization of that As we mentioned, we are moving a gas plant out of the North Texas down into the Permian Basin and we wouldn't be doing that unless we were capacity that we have in the Permian Basin today is going to be fully utilized as we continue to go forward. That's how we think about volume going forward in twenty twenty twenty five. As it relates to on the downstream side of that with utilization on NGL pipe, we've talked about that we have plenty capacity with the expansion of the West Texas NGL system that will be here in this year up to seven forty thousand barrels a day with a lot of capacity that wasn't spoken for because we didn't need that much to sanction that project As we continue to go forward on that. And as what we're seeing in is all the new volume, but majority of the new volume that we are getting on the system and the majority of the volume that is that system.

Have the marketing rights to it. We control it. There are some legacy contracts with Magellan that has a significant amount of volume. That they have that we have the marketing rights to it, but we already had in place NGL contracts to other service providers. And when that volume rolls off contract, that will automatically come over to our system at that time.

Okay.

Okay, got it. Thanks for that. And then on the On the stock buybacks, I think your previous guidance sorry, can you hear me? All right. Yes. So think your previous guidance on leverage was exiting. Twenty twenty five at three point nine and obviously with the new guidance you're talking about 3.5x leverage in 2026. So it seems like you're making good progress there. I was kind of curious how should we think about the cadence of Stock buyback program that you have?

Well, I mean clearly, we are mindful to make sure that we get our debt metrics in line with our goals. And we're looking at the business as we go forward. That said, we have the full intention of completing the 2,000,000,000 buybacks over the course of the program that the Board set forward. We saw a situation there at year end where we had the proceeds from the sale of assets to DTM where we are sitting on a very large amount of cash As I mentioned before, even with those, we closed out the year with $773,000,000 of cash on the balance sheet. So we were opportunistic there to get started. On that program, And we'll look at things during 2025. But clearly, I think that [indiscernible] bulk of the $2,000,000,000 will be back weighted as we get in the final two years as our metrics our goals from a [indiscernible] Got it. Thanks for that.

And the next question will come from Neil Dingmann with Truist Securities.

Good morning. Thanks for the time. I guess just you've hit a lot of these. I guess my question just on per a lot of the overall producers just give their new plans for 2025 and to me, they all sound quite good or at least the same. I'm just wondering, based on what you've heard now from plans and what you guys have had with conversations do you still have sort of the same expectations for production in some of your areas as you did last year.

Yes.

We've had a lot of conversations with our producers and what they're seeing going forward. And I would probably say we are at or above what we thought we would be last year a lot with the let's take the Bakken, the consolidation that's up in the Bakken, We're bringing producers with different types of efficiency on the wellhead consolidating acreage so they can drill longer laterals that's going to bring more volume into our system We're seeing that also in the Mid Continent where a little bit we mentioned earlier today, gas prices are up a little bit more. We're seeing people start to come in a little bit harder in the Mid Continent, which and all this is reflected into our guidance. But I would we're at or above where we would thought we would be.

Three, four months ago for sure. No, that's great to hear. And then just maybe just a quick follow-up on EnLink. I'm just wondering now, fully under your control. I'm just wondering, are you all seeing additional opportunities to accelerate and maybe just how customer demand is looking there also?

Yes. I mean, we are, I think, especially in the Permian, we have a team out there that's highly focused on growing that Permian asset and they're getting after it. We see a lot of opportunity [indiscernible] we are looking at and we are excited about what we see out there. Bringing this new plant on, look what else we can do with our integrated footprint out there. So within LNG and We have a much wider expanse across that area, especially you look out to the Western Side where we see a lot of activity with the combination of the 1 Oak Inland I think the team is pretty jazzed up to be able to continue to put these two things together and continue to grow this with all the activity we're seeing.

Great to hear it. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Pierce Norton, CEO for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Before I wrap up today, I want to who have contributed significantly to One Oak's success over the years. Chuck Kelly, is retiring after twenty five years of service. Most recently, he was our Senior Vice President of Natural Gas Pipelines but has also served in key leadership roles in energy services, corporate development, and natural gas gathering and processing over the years. [indiscernible] the Vice President of Investor Relations, who after twenty years of dedicated service, he's an his retirement Andrew has been an important part of the organization through significant change in progress.

Many of you have known and worked with Andrew for years and his presence will be certainly be missed. Both of these gentlemen have made contributions that will have a lasting impact on our company. Please join me in congratulating them on an outstanding careers and in wishing them the very best in their next exciting chapter. I'm also pleased to announce that Megan Patterson, who many of you know, and who you worked alongside Andrew for a number years will be stepping into Andrew's role. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Megan for closing remarks. Thank you, Pierce.

Our quiet period for the full year starts when we close our books in early April and extends until the release Heinz in late April.

We'll provide details for that conference call at a later date. The IR team will be available throughout the day today for any follow ups Thank you for joining us and have a great day.

The conference has now concluded Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.