Hess Midstream Q1 2026 Earnings Call - CapEx Slash Fuels Record Free Cash Flow and 2% Distribution Hike

Kevin, Conference Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 1st quarter 2026 Hess Midstream conference call. My name is Kevin. I’ll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you’ll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You’ll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised today’s conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Gordon, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Jennifer Gordon, Vice President of Investor Relations, Hess Midstream: Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in our first quarter earnings conference call. Our earnings release was issued this morning and appears on our website, www.hessmidstream.com. Today’s conference call contains projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities laws. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in such statements. These risks include those set forth in the Risk Factors section of Hess Midstream’s filings with the SEC. Also, on today’s conference call, we may discuss certain GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of the differences between these non-GAAP financial measures and the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the earnings release. With me today are Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer.

I’ll now turn the call over to Jonathan Stein.

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Thanks, Jennifer. Welcome everyone to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, I will discuss our first quarter performance and outlook for the remainder of the year. Then I’ll hand the call over to Mike to review our financials. In the first quarter, we continued to execute our operational priorities and deliver our financial strategy. We delivered solid operational performance and achieved our guidance, which included the impact of severe winter weather in January and February. In March, we completed an accretive $60 million share and unit repurchase on the public and our sponsor. Last week, we increased our distribution 2%, approximately 8% on an annualized basis for Class A shares.

This increase included our targeted 5% annual increase for Class A shares and a distribution level increase following our repurchase that maintains our total distributed cash on a lower share and unit count. Turning to our results. During the quarter, throughput volumes averaged 430 million cubic feet per day for gas processing, 119,000 barrels of oil per day for crude terminaling, and 115,000 barrels of water per day for water gathering. In line with our guidance, throughput volumes were down compared to the fourth quarter, primarily due to severe winter weather in January and February, partially offset by recovery in March, as well as capture of additional third-party gas volumes.

Consistent with our annual guidance, we continue to expect volumes to grow through the rest of the year, excluding the impact of planned maintenance at TGP in the second quarter that is expected to reduce volumes by 5 million-10 million cubic feet per day for the quarter. Turning to Hess Midstream’s capital program. In the first quarter, we safely brought online the second of two new compressor stations after completing it in the fourth quarter of 2025. In the first quarter, capital expenditures were $10 million, seasonally lower than the fourth quarter of 2025 as severe winter weather restricted activity levels. We expect our capital spend to be seasonally higher in the second and third quarters as we continue to execute our program, including completion of greenfield high-pressure gathering pipeline infrastructure that we started in 2025.

However, with the second compressor station online and reflecting Chevron’s move to longer laterals, which reduces well connect CapEx for Hess Midstream, we have now reduced our 2026 estimated capital expenditure by a third to approximately $100 million. As a result of this reduction and together with the deferral of cash taxes, we are increasing our 2026 adjusted free cash flow guidance to $910 million-$960 million, reflecting a 20% increase year-over-year at the midpoint. Hess Midstream remains a leader in shareholder cash returns with one of the highest free cash flow yields across our peer set.

In summary, we remain focused on executing safe and reliable operations while leveraging our historical investment in existing infrastructure to continue generating significant adjusted free cash flow, allowing us to easily provide returns to our shareholders through going distributions and incremental share repurchases while simultaneously continuing to reduce our debt leverage. With that, I’ll hand the call over to Mike to review our financial performance for the first quarter and guidance.

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: Thanks, Jonathan, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will discuss our financial results for the 1st quarter of 2026 and provide an update on our 2nd quarter financial guidance and outlook for 2026. Turning to our results. For the 1st quarter of 2026, net income was $158 million, compared to approximately $168 million in the 4th quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the 1st quarter of 2026 was $300 million, compared with $309 million in the 4th quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower revenues, primarily caused by severe winter weather in January and February. Total revenues, including pass-through revenues, decreased by approximately $15 million, resulting in segment revenue changes as follows. Gathering revenues decreased by approximately $14 million. Processing revenues decreased by approximately $6 million, while terminalling revenues increased by approximately $5 million.

Total costs and expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, pass-through costs, and net of our proportional share of LM4 earnings decreased by approximately $6 million, primarily from lower seasonal maintenance and lower third party offloads, resulting in adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026 of $300 million. Our gross adjusted EBITDA margin for the first quarter of 2026 was maintained at approximately 83%, above our 75% target, highlighting our continued strong operating leverage. First quarter of 2026 capital expenditures were approximately $10 million, significantly lower than in the fourth quarter of 2025 as severe winter weather limited activity. Net interest, excluding amortization of deferred finance costs, was approximately $53 million, resulting in adjusted free cash flow of approximately $237 million, an increase of 14% from the fourth quarter of 2025.

We had a drawn balance of $343 million on our revolving credit facility at the end of the first quarter of 2026. For the second quarter of 2026, we expect net income to be approximately $150 million-$160 million and adjusted EBITDA to be approximately flat with the first quarter at $295 million-$305 million, which includes the impact of planned second quarter maintenance at the Tioga Gas Plant. We expect adjusted free cash flow in the second quarter of 2026 to decrease relative to the first quarter of 2026 as capital expenditures in the second quarter are projected to be seasonally higher than the first quarter.

As we said in our 4th quarter call, we expect 2nd half volumes to be higher than the 1st half, helping to drive higher EBITDA in the 2nd half of the year. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect net income of between $650 million and $700 million, and adjusted EBITDA of between $1 billion 225 million and $1 billion 275 million in 2026, approximately flat at the midpoint compared with 2025. As Jonathan mentioned, our cash position is strong and notable among our peer set.

We now expect full year 2026 capital expenditures of approximately $105 million and expect to generate adjusted free cash flow of between $910 million and $960 million, and excess adjusted free cash flow of approximately $280 million after fully funding our targeted 5% annual distribution growth, which we expect to use for incremental shareholder returns and debt repayment. As mentioned, we no longer expect to pay $50 million of cash taxes in 2026 and do not expect to pay material cash taxes until after 2028, following the recent interim guidance from the IRS on the application of the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax. In March, we executed an accretive 60 million share repurchase transaction from both the sponsor and the public.

As the year progresses, we will continue to evaluate additional opportunities for incremental returns of capital. This concludes my remarks. We will be happy to answer any questions. I will now turn the call over to the operator.

Kevin, Conference Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 1 1 again. We will pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Jeremy Tonet with J.P. Morgan Securities. Your line is open.

Francine, Analyst, J.P. Morgan Securities: Good morning, everyone. This is Francine on for Jeremy. Thank you so much for taking questions. Wanted to zoom up in a bit more on the change to CapEx here and what this means for well connect/turn in line activity for the year, and whether there are any read-throughs or changes to growth expectations for year-end or into 2027 that we can derive from this. Thank you.

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Hi. Thanks for the question. No, look, if you look at what’s been happening with CapEx for us, really since the end of last year, we’ve really been reducing CapEx as we are approaching the end of our infrastructure build-out, which has been really years in the making as we continue to build out our strategic footprint in the Bakken. You know, CapEx was low in the first quarter. That was really, as I mentioned, due to really restricted activity, due to the weather as well as seasonal dynamics. That’s normal for the first quarter.

We do expect that to be the low point of the year and then pick up as we continue to build out over the next few quarters, including, as I mentioned, completing our greenfield high-pressure gathering pipeline infrastructure we started last year, expect to complete this year. So really, you know, really nothing in terms of changing strategically. The kinda downsizing, if you will, of our guidance this year from 150 to approximately $100 million is really right-sizing our CapEx to account for things like upstream efficiencies, like longer laterals, which as I’ve discussed, can have the effect of reducing WellConnect CapEx for us. That’s very positive.

Really, if we reflect on this, it’s really just an extraordinary business model that with the lower CapEx that we are spending, we’re really generating significant free cash flow that supports, of course, our 5% targeted distribution growth as well as incremental returns of capital to our shareholders, like the share repurchase we did this quarter, as well as simultaneously being able to do debt repayment.

Francine, Analyst, J.P. Morgan Securities: Thank you. That’s helpful. Would just like to touch a bit on kind of the third party outlook here and whether you’ve had any changes to that since the Middle East conflict has been ensuing. Thank you.

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Sure. In terms of third parties, I mean, nothing I would say, in terms of, you know, major, macro changes. We did have some additional third-party volume in the first quarter, as I mentioned. That was really some additional throughput from other midstream providers. That really highlights, as we said in the past, optionality that we have in our system that allows flexibility for others to be able to utilize it during operational challenges that they have. We’re still targeting 10% third-party volumes, and that’s incorporated into our guidance, and any additional third-party volumes would be upside. I’m not seeing anything dramatic, just the normal, like I said, third parties coming to utilize the optionality in our system, but nothing, no major changes due to macro environment at this point.

Francine, Analyst, J.P. Morgan Securities: That’s super helpful. Thank you again.

Kevin, Conference Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hey, team. Thank you for the time. Last call, you guys spent some time talking about a little bit of the evolution on the balance sheet side, thinking about lower leverage over time. I’m just wondering, we’re a quarter later now, if you’ve had some time to kind of refine that and if you have a kind of longer-term leverage target you wanna put out there relative to the kind of distribution growth and maybe some buyback cadence you’ve talked about?

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: Yeah. No, I can talk to that. Thanks, John, for the question. There’s no change really to our return of capital approach that we outlined in our December guidance note or as we talked about in our Q4 call in February. We do plan to use a portion of our free cash flow, as we said then, after distributions to pay down debt. It’s a conservative financial strategy that’s consistent with the volume profile and Chevron’s target for about 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day plateau production in the Bakken. We’ll still have a balanced strategy, though, that includes incremental return of capital beyond our 5% annual distribution growth, and we plan to have a stronger balance sheet as a result.

All of that is underpinned obviously by the MVCs that we have out to 2028, and they continue to provide some significant downside protection. We’re still aiming for about $1 billion of free cash flow after distributions through 2028. As I said, we’ll use that, you know, obviously every distribution or every share buyback is approved by our board and that’ll be set by our board. We plan to use that for incremental return of capital and paying down our debt. No change there, really.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: All right. I appreciate that. Second one, apologize, it’s a little bit in the weeds, but, terminals revenue was really strong in the quarter. Just wondering if there’s any kind of one-off in there or this new kind of implied, rate is the go forward we should think of.

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: Yeah. I think you’re reading that right. There is an element of implied rates in there in the terminals. That’s, as you recall, it’s a, it’s cost of service rate that gets adjusted every year for our expectation of OpEx, CapEx and any volumes that drives, you know, a targeted return on that. That’s part of the reason why you’re seeing better, stronger performance. There is just a tariff adjustment.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Do you mind just reminding us kind of the structure of that contract going forward? Thank you.

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: That goes through to 2033, and it’s rebalanced every year as part of a calculation that aims to return a specific like mid-teen return, and it’ll be based on what we anticipate as the actual volumes, CapEx, OpEx, in order to serve that and to generate that return. The tariffs will flex up and down accordingly. If we have lower volumes anticipated, then the tariff will go up. If we have lower CapEx, for example, then the tariff will go down. That’s through to 2033.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: All right. Thank you very much.

Kevin, Conference Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Doug Irwin with Citi. Your line is open.

Doug Irwin, Analyst, Citi: Hey, thanks for the question. I just wanted to pick up on the second quarter guidance you gave here. I think my math, just looking at the full year midpoint implies something around 8% growth in the second half of the year. Can you maybe just talk about some of the drivers you see contributing to that growth in the second half and where there might be some risk to the upside or downside from here?

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Sure. Let me start. I mean, on the volume side, really, as we said, you know, Q1 is, I’d say, really the low point in terms of volume. We do have planned maintenance in TGP in the second quarter, so that takes out 5 to 10 million cubic feet per day. Absent that, we would have seen some additional growth into Q2. As the year really progresses, obviously better weather, you know, Chevron continues to do longer laterals, so you’ll start to see that pick up as those completions get completed later in the year and, you know, more wells come online. That will also drive some additional volumes as well as we continue to grow through the year. No change to our, to our overall guidance.

Yeah, that’s about right, about 8% on the EBITDA basis increase in the second half. Really, that’s going to be driven by just really the flow of cadence, if you will, of volumes as we kind of come off this low point really due to weather, get through this maintenance in second quarter, then continued volume growth from there.

Doug Irwin, Analyst, Citi: Understood. Then my second, just maybe on the broader growth outlook beyond 2026. We have Chevron’s messaging to plateauing volumes in the Bakken around that 200,000 barrel of equivalent level. You seem to kinda keep squeezing out more free cash flow from the business. I’m just curious if there’s any appetite to pursue inorganic opportunities or maybe any other ways to kind of put some of that free cash flow to work from here. Should we really just kind of expect the buybacks and debt repayment to be the primary focus from here?

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Sure. Let me start a little bit, then I’m gonna turn over to Mike. He can talk a little bit about, you know, capital allocation. Yeah, I think it’s a good opportunity to really reflect that, you know, if you kind of look around, you know, there’s been a lot of changes around us for the past year or two, and here we are 9 to 10 months after the acquisition of Hess by Chevron. Really, I think so much at Hess Midstream remains the same. In terms of where we are now, as you mentioned, Chevron targeting approximately 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day while continuing to optimize the development plan. That development plan underpins our volume guidance and EBITDA growth. Remember with that EBITDA growth really driven by inflation escalates and reduction in CapEx.

You know, Chevron continues to bring lessons from other basins to the Bakken, like longer laterals, workover optimization, and increased chemicals to improve productivity. Longer laterals, for example, obviously make the wells more economic by decreasing the break even, but also, as I talked about, impact has been seen in a positive way by reducing our well connect capital requirements as less wells are needed. That’s really the driver of that free cash flow. Our financial strategy continues to be the same. 5% distribution growth can be achieved even at MVC levels and significant, obviously, free cash flow. You know, with all the things that have changed around us, we continue to have all the elements of visibility, consistency, shareholder returns, and balance sheet strength.

They’ve always been our hallmark, and so with so much changing around us, we’re continuing to execute our strategy, focused on operating our assets safely and reliably and, executing our financial strategy. You know, all that says is, you know, a lot remains the same in terms of, you know, looking at bolt-on opportunities. We’ve always said that we’ll look at those, but the bar remains high relative to our existing business model, which continues to be really differentiated, relative to others in the sector. Maybe I’ll turn it over to Mike. He can talk a little bit about, you know, with this higher free cash flow, really a lot of the same in terms of our capital allocation strategy as well.

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: No, thanks, Jonathan. I think you summarized it pretty well. I think what I’d add to that is, obviously, as we think about our debt, you know, EBITDA leverage target, we don’t have a specific target in mind, but we will naturally see our 3 times current debt leverage drop as we continue to grow EBITDA without increasing the absolute level of debt. You know, that will naturally de-lever us, but with some portion of our free cash flow after distributions that we’ll use for debt payment, we’ll see that de-lever even further.

What I would say is that with our current guidance out to 2028, and with the ambition to continue to do some shareholder return of capital, the math would not support us getting really down far below 2.5 times leverage by 2028. That gives you a bit of a range as to where we’re expecting our leverage to sit in the longer term through 2028. As Jonathan said, you know, it’s steady as she goes. We are, you know, pretty good from a cash position. We look forward to rolling out the next few years with some good coverage with our MVCs and with transparency to our volume throughput driven by Chevron’s targeted 200,000 barrels of oil per day planned production.

Doug Irwin, Analyst, Citi: Got it. Thanks for the time.

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Thanks.

Kevin, Conference Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Praneeth Satish, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Good morning. Thank you. You know, beyond the drilling and completion efficiencies that Chevron has highlighted in the Bakken, are there any other longer-term costs or structural opportunities or changes that you and Chevron are working towards that could show up in your business? Maybe put differently, you know, as your capital intensity comes down, are there scenarios where some of those savings kind of flow back to Chevron through alternative commercial structures or anything like that?

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Well, what I would say is, look, in terms of efficiencies and optimization, those are all really win-wins. I gave the example of, you know, of longer laterals which reduce the break even, obviously increase the number of wells, available economic to drill, and that also, as I said, reduces our capital and makes it just all efficient all around. In terms of, you know, the contract structure, if that’s what you’re kind of alluding to there, you know, look, just a reminder, you know, 85% of revenues are fixed fee. That continues, together with the cost of services Mike mentioned on the terminaling and water gathering, that continues through the end of 2033. Really including this year, another 8 years.

You know, that contract structure provides Hess Midstream with visibility and consistency, as I mentioned, two of our hallmarks of what we’ve always been part of. Before the end of 2033, there’s no contractual mechanism to change the tariff to renegotiate the contract. There’s also governance guardrails, including the need for special approval, including at least one of the independent directors to prevent any unilateral action by Chevron. In addition, of course, just normal conflict committee process for any proposed contract changes. Right now we’re focused on working with Chevron in terms of optimizing operationally, to really continue to help develop the Bakken in just the most optimized way possible.

Praneeth Satish, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Got you. No, that makes sense. Seems like a win-win here. Maybe just a clarifying question on terminals. You mentioned it’s a cost of service contract. It stepped up this quarter. It was quite a large step up, I guess, when we kinda translate that to EBITDA. Just to be clear, is this kind of the Q1 run rate? Is that something that we can assume for the balance of the year kinda going forward?

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: Yeah. It is based on both the tariffs and also what throughputs we had. Now Q1, I’d say, was a little bit of an impacted quarter because of the weather. You know, we’ll see how that plays out when we get into more stable territory in Q2, Q3, and the rest of the year. Yes, I think a part of that is obviously the step up in the tariffs because of the cost of service formula. I wouldn’t say that I would extrapolate completely on the Q1, but definitely that’s gonna be a factor.

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: Yeah. Look, the only thing I would just say on terminaling also is, as Mike explained the rates, no need to repeat that, but you know, you do see more third parties terminaling one-off, can have some variation quarter to quarter.

Mike Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer, Hess Midstream: Yeah

Jonathan Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Hess Midstream: because that’s a place where people can just come up and do, you know, short-term terminaling, kinda walk up, so to speak, or short-term arrangements.

Praneeth Satish, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Gotcha. Thank you.

Kevin, Conference Operator: Thank you. At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.