Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE:EPD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Randy Fowler: And Harry, I think one other thing the agencies look at on that A minus threshold is also looking at your cash distribution payout with regard to net income. And I think that’s just because we returned so much capital to our investors through distributions, I think that maybe a little bit harder threshold for us to overcome. So as Chris said, we’re pretty pleased with the BBB plus rating and ample flexibility.

Harry Mateer: And I guess the follow-up to that is just any sort of guardrails you can give us? I mean I know you mentioned you’d be comfortable taking leverage up higher for opportunities. But any sense you could like frame that out for us in terms of how high on a temporary basis over what sort of time period you’d look to bring leverage down?

Randy Fowler: Harry, I’ll be honest. I can’t envision a scenario where we would come in and take leverage up to a level that would threaten a BBB plus rating.

Chris D’Anna: And I think if you — Harry, again, this is Chris. If you look back a year ago to the Navitas acquisition, I think within that first quarter, that $3 billion acquisition bump leverage up a quarter turn and then it quickly came back down.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury with Bernstein.

Jean Ann Salisbury: My first one is probably for Tony. Curious about your internal view of NGL pricing versus crude. How long do you anticipate it will take if we ever get there to return to the historical range of NGLs versus trade?

Jim Teague: What’s the historical range?

Jean Ann Salisbury: I guess for propane, I think historically, maybe 55% to 60%, something like that.

Tony Chovanec: Propane is going to price itself to go. So at the end of the day, the international markets are going to decide that. I’ll let Brent weigh in, but we think you’ll see more activity out of China. And so there’s there is support for that number as we head into ’23 as I see.

Brent Secrest: I think there’s going to be some lag, Jean Ann. I think China has got five PDH plants coming on this year. The plants they have existing currently are not running at full capacity. So as the China reopening occurs, it’s just going to take some time to work off some of the inventories over there. And once that economy gets back up and running and there’s enough dock capacity in the US then you can potentially see a rebound in LPGs. But it takes time, it’s going to take some time.

Jean Ann SalisburyAnalyst: But you think that we’re off the trough here, I suppose.

Brent Secrest: I mean, assuming reopening is going to be consistent, there’s no stops and starts, and I would like to think that the trajectory is up on a percentage of crude basis.

Jean Ann Salisbury: And then as a follow-up, Permian crude production estimates have come down over the last six months, I would say, pretty much across the board. The Midland to Houston price spread has kind of also come in. Is spot a more difficult pitch to customers in this environment?