Kinder Morgan Raises Dividend - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) announced that its board approved a cash dividend of $0.20 per share for the first quarter ($0.80 annualized) payable on May 15, 2018, to common stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 30, 2018. This is a 60 percent increase from last quarter's dividend, and is consistent with the plan KMI announced during the summer of 2017. KMI said it continues to expect to use cash in excess of dividend payments to fully fund growth investments, further strengthening its balance sheet.

For 2018, KMI's budget is set to declare dividends of $0.80 per common share and achieve DCF of approximately $4.57 billion ($2.05 per common share) and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $7.5 billion, and it expects to meet or exceed those DCF and adjusted EBITDA targets. KMI now forecasts to invest $2.3 billion in growth projects during 2018, up $100 million from the budget.

KMI reported first quarter net income available to common stockholders of $485 million, compared to $401 million for the first quarter of 2017, and DCF of $1.25 billion, up 3 percent from the comparable period in 2017. The company said the increase in DCF was driven by greater contributions from the Natural Gas and CO2 Business Units, partially offset by higher cash taxes, greater sustaining capital, and the impact of the KML IPO. Net income available to common stockholders was further impacted by a $34 million unfavorable change in total certain items compared to the first quarter of 2017.

CEO Steve Kean said, "For the quarter, we achieved distributable cash flow (DCF) of $0.56 per common share, representing 4 percent growth over the first quarter of 2017, resulting in $804 million of excess DCF above our dividend. Kinder Morgan's top priority is generating significant shareholder value and completing attractive return growth projects is a key part of that commitment. We continue to have good success in this area as we completed approximately $700 million of projects while adding approximately $900 million of new projects to our backlog during the first quarter. These new projects have attractive returns as demonstrated by our average capital-to-EBITDA multiple (excluding the CO2 segment) improving during the quarter to approximately 6.0 times."