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Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are mining, oil and gas exploration and services, pipelines, refining, and utilities.

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The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

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This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-379-Williams

The oil and gas company was founded in 1908 and grew quickly to manage nationwide pipelines, which it still maintains today.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-387-Williams

The Tulsa-based energy company focuses on natural gas and petroleum exploration and production, with assets concentrated along the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

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Williams is a leading energy infrastructure company. Founded in 1908, Williams specializes in the gathering, processing, storage, and transportation of natural gas, operating over 30,000 miles of pipelines across the United States, including the flagship Transco pipeline network, the nation's largest-volume natural gas pipeline, stretching from Texas to New York. Handling approximately 30% of the natural gas consumed daily in the U.S., Williams plays a crucial role in delivering reliable and low-cost energy to homes and businesses.

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Williams (WMB): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Williams

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Day, everyone, and welcome to the Williams Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Danilo Giovanni, Vice President of Investor Relations, ESG and Investment Analysis. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and for your interest in The Williams Company. Yesterday afternoon, we released our earnings press release and the presentation that our president and CEO, Chad Zamarin, and our chief financial officer, John Porter, to speak to this morning. Also joining us on the call today are Larry Larson, our Chief Operating Officer Lane Wilson, our General Counsel and Rob Wingo, our Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategic Development. In our presentation materials, you'll find a disclaimer related to forward looking statements.

This disclaimer is important and integral to our remarks, and you should review it. Also included in our presentation materials are non GAAP measures that we reconcile to generally accepted accounting principles, And these reconciliation schedules appear at the back of today's presentation materials. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff.

Thanks, Anila, and thank you all for joining us today. Before we dive in, I want to welcome Rob Wingo to the call. Rob joined Williams on July 14, backfilling my previous role. And Rob has hit the ground running and we are thrilled to welcome him to Williams and to welcome his family to Tulsa. With Rob now on board, we have successfully transitioned and settled the leadership team and we are laser focused on not missing a beat.

Alan and I have had a very smooth transition and last week we held our first series of Williams Board meetings with Alan as Executive Chair. It was a great set of meetings with our Board and we continue to benefit from what I believe is the very best Board in the energy industry. It really is an incredible time to be at Williams. Our teams are firing on all cylinders and the fundamentals supporting our business are stronger than ever. We continue to see robust demand across our footprint and you will see rising tides in our offshore business in the West, along the Gulf Coast, across the Northeast and of course along our Transco Corridor.

As an example of these fundamental tailwinds, after posting record demand on Transco this past winter, in July we set an all time record for summer demand on Transco, delivering a record breaking 16.1 Bcf of natural gas on July 29. In addition, nine of the 10 all time highest peak summer days have occurred this summer. And you might think this is being driven by an abnormally hot summer, but in fact, on a cooling degree day basis, this summer has actually been 4.2% cooler than last year. And now to the quarter. Our teams continue to deliver strong consistent performance across the business and the second quarter is another example of how we are positioned to lead and grow in an evolving energy landscape.

So let's begin on slide two. From deepwater developments to major pipeline expansions, our team has consistently delivered complex projects on time and on budget. In fact, oftentimes ahead of schedule and under budget, and this past quarter was no different. In total, we placed six major projects into service, including Transco's Southeast Energy Connector in Alabama and Transco's Texas to Louisiana Energy Pathway project along the Gulf Coast. In the deepwater, we successfully completed the expansion of our Gulf E system to serve Chevron's Ballymoor production, which started up in April, and we commissioned Shenandoah, which will drive significant cash flows across our Discovery offshore asset that is now wholly owned following last year's acquisition of our partner P66's interest in Discovery.

In the Haynesville, we brought the Louisiana Energy Gateway and Haynesville West projects online, enhancing our ability to deliver reliable energy across key markets we continue to strengthen our footprint in the Haynesville completing the acquisition of Sabre Midstream at an attractive multiple and further enhancing our position as the largest gas gatherer in one of the most prolific natural gas basins in the country. As our new projects ramp up and serve our customers' needs, they will really show their power from an earnings perspective through the 2025 and beyond. As for projects and execution, we've accelerated the timeline for Transco's Southeast Supply Enhancement or CECI project, which is the largest project ever from an earnings contribution perspective in the history of the company. Accelerating CECI shows our ability to move quickly and efficiently in response to customer needs and growing natural gas demand across the Mid Atlantic and Southeast markets. We also began construction on the Socrates Power Innovation project and we remain on track for bringing that project in service in 2026 as Williams supports our nation in winning the race for artificial intelligence and the next generation of technology.

And in late breaking news, just yesterday our team finalized the commercial agreements for Transco's Northeast Supply Enhancement or NESE project. This is a significant step forward in bringing increased energy reliability, affordability and lower emissions to New York City and we look forward to finalizing federal and state regulatory approvals. The country is waking up to the fact that when we lag in building natural gas infrastructure, we see increases in energy costs, a reduction in energy reliability, and a stifling of economic opportunity and growth. We're hopeful that we will continue to see constrained markets reopen and embrace natural gas as the very best solution for lowering emissions, reducing consumer costs, and delivering energy reliability and security with U. S.

Produced energy. Turning to our financials, we are increasing our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint by $50,000,000 and we're now guiding to 7,750,000,000 at the midpoint, which represents a cumulative $350,000,000 raise since our original guidance was set in 2024. At our revised midpoint, our performance from 2020 through 2025 will deliver an impressive five year EBITDA annual growth rate of 9% and John will go through this in more detail in his remarks. And finally, we published our 2024 sustainability report last week, which outlines our progress in environmental stewardship, social responsibility and governance and we continue to lead the industry in this space. As I said at the top of the call, it is an exciting time at Williams and I'm very proud of the team and equally excited about the opportunities ahead.

And I'll now turn it over to John for a deeper dive into the financials.

Thanks Jed. Starting here on slide three with a closer look at our adjusted EBITDA performance, which was up 8% over the 2024. Walking now from last year's $1,667,000,000 to this year's 1,808,000,000.000 we start with our transmission and Gulf business, which improved $91,000,000 or 11%, setting an all time record due to higher revenues from expansion projects. At Transco, we had increases from Regional Energy Access, Southside Reliability Enhancement, Texas to Louisiana Energy Pathway and the Southeast Energy Connector projects. We also continue to see growth from our storage businesses on higher renewal rates at Gulf Coast Storage and Nortex, as well as incremental contributions from market based rates at our Washington storage facility.

In The Gulf, we saw contributions from our Discovery acquisition, as well as contributions from our new service to Shell's Whale project. Second quarter Gulf gathering volumes were up over 17% versus prior year and NGL production was up about 77%. Lastly for this segment, although our new Transco rates went into effect on March 1, we continue to maintain a conservative reserve pending the final settlement. Next, our Northeast G And P business improved $22,000,000 or 5% primarily on higher revenues, including higher gathering and processing rates. This segment was unfavorably impacted by that we made last August.

Overall volumes picked up about 5% over 2Q 'twenty four, and we've continued to see July volumes that are basically in line with the 2Q 'twenty five averages. In the West, we were also $22,000,000 or 7% higher driven by higher Haynesville volumes and growth in the DJ Basin, including the Rimrock acquisition that closed at the January. The West was negatively impacted by a step down in our minimum volume commitments at Eagle Ford. On the volume front, overall volumes grew about 13% driven by growth in the Haynesville, including volumes from the Sabre acquisition acquired on 06/02/2025. Our Sequit Marketing business was flat versus the prior year, where contributions from the Cogentrix acquisition offset weaker realizations in the gas marketing business.

And then finally, our other segment, which includes our upstream business, was up about $7,000,000 including higher upstream volumes, partially offset by unfavorable price impacts from significantly lower oil prices versus the prior year. So that gets you to the $1,808,000,000 of EBITDA for 2Q twenty five or 8% growth. Let's move to the next slide and discuss what we're seeing for the remainder of 2025. As Chad mentioned, we are once again revising our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance upward from a previous midpoint of $7,700,000,000 to now $7,750,000,000 and we're moving the top of the range to 7,900,000,000.0 At $7,750,000,000 we will see 9% growth in adjusted EBITDA over 'twenty four and a 9% CAGR from 2020. Additionally, if you bridge back to when we first issued our 'twenty five adjusted EBITDA guidance in February '4, we are now up $350,000,000 cumulative from the original guidance of $7,400,000,000 Our current guidance update reflects a continued solid start to 2025, the addition of the Sabre acquisition with an expected modest contribution for 2025 of less than $20,000,000 and our overall confidence in the growth of our underlying business plus line of sight to an extraordinary number of projects coming online in the near future.

Speaking specifically to the segments, in our Transmission and Golf segment, we look forward to settling our Transco rate case and seeing the contributions from the two transmission projects we recently placed in service, as well as completing four additional transmission projects by end of year, and we remain optimistic about continued upside from the re contracting of our storage business. The revised guidance we're issuing today does include what we feel is a pretty good read on where we think the rate case will settle. Additionally, the Deepwater, we've now completed the Shenandoah, Whale and Ballymore projects and still have the Salamanca project to go for 2025. In the deepwater, we are only in the early stages of a volume ramp that will accelerate through the remainder of the year. In our Gathering and Processing businesses, we continue to see overall strengthening in our volumes reflecting our exposure to crucial natural gas focused basins and our Haynesville expansions, including our large scale Louisiana Energy Gateway project.

Lastly, we are still well positioned to deliver on plan for our Upstream business and the majority of our Marketing businesses plan was realized in the first quarter. Just a couple of notes on full year 2025 growth CapEx and available funds from operations. First for growth CapEx, accounting for the favorable acceleration of the Southeast Supply Enhancement project and our planned spending on the Northeast Supply Enhancement project, we now see growth CapEx coming in towards the high end of our current guidance of just under $2,900,000,000 You'll also see an increase in our per share metrics, including our twenty twenty five AFFO per share guidance that includes our higher expected adjusted EBITDA, as well as lowering our 2025 current income taxes by about $100,000,000 We were very pleased with the restoration of 100% bonus depreciation in the One Big Beautiful Bill. As we've discussed, this creates significant cash tax deferrals that are tied to the in service dates of non regulated capital investments like our power innovation projects, but also covering our other gathering and processing investments. So again, 2025 is off to a solid start toward meeting or beating our guidance even after raising it a cumulative $350,000,000 Our '25 guidance delivers 9% growth at midpoint and would sustain a 9% CAGR for 2020 to 2025.

Our backlog of fully contracted projects points to continued industry leading growth in the coming years and our recently completed annual ten year forecast just keeps improving. All of this gives us confidence in the long term sustainability of the strong financial performance. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Chad.

Thanks, John. Before we turn it over to questions, I want to wrap with a clear message. This is the golden age of natural gas and Williams is built for this moment. With an ever expanding backlog of fully contracted projects now extending beyond 2030 and our proven ability to meet customer needs and capture new business in emerging markets, Williams is better positioned than any other company to benefit from the growing wave of natural gas demand. The world is quickly recognizing that natural gas is the backbone of reliable, affordable and cleaner energy and our infrastructure is essential to meeting growing demand here in The U.

S. And around the world. On top of the world's need for clean, reliable and affordable energy, we've also seen the rapid emergence of the need for speed with respect to energy. The race is on for the next generation of technology and the race can only be won if we get back to building the products, technologies and energy of the future. This needs to be an urgent wake up call.

We've seeded ground in our ability to compete globally and it's time to reclaim it. And it all starts with energy infrastructure. And we believe with natural gas infrastructure as the critical backbone of our nation's energy system. At Williams, we're investing in the infrastructure that will power America's future. Our teams are as active as ever and are working an exciting backlog of projects and growing pipeline of opportunities and I look forward to us delivering for our customers and for our country.

Our strategy is intentionally aligned with the world's growing demand for clean, affordable and reliable energy as well as for the need for speed. The need is real and the Williams team is rising to the challenge. And with that, we'll turn it over to your questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please limit to one question and one follow-up. Our first question comes from the line of Praneeth Satish of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning. So you've increased EBITDA to 9% CAGR over the last five years. I guess when I look at the opportunity set for the next five years, it looks dramatically better with CapEx opportunities rising, power demand rising and ROIC improving. So I get that you're going up against the law of large numbers, but do you think there's some upward bias here to the 5% to 7% EBITDA CAGR guidance that's out there?

I mean, from our math, you significantly surpass that? Or are there some headwinds that we should be thinking about as we look out through 02/1930?

Yes. No, I don't think there are headwinds, Praneeth. I think you actually said it well. We've shown, I think, pretty remarkable growth over the last five years. And the company is even healthier now.

The balance sheet is stronger, and I'd say the tailwinds are even better. And so we're going to remain disciplined and stay tuned. We'll be, I think, laying out a bit more color on the longer range opportunity set in our Analyst Day in early twenty twenty six. But I think you captured it well. We want to continue to invest in a disciplined manner, high return projects, and do that in a way that generates predictable growth.

But I think we've demonstrated that the business is built to exceed our historical set growth rates. But I'd say more to come as we roll out the next five plus years of projects.

Got it. Thanks. And then on the last call, you had mentioned ordering some long lead time equipment for two additional behind the meter projects beyond Socrates. Maybe can you provide any updates there on where those projects stand in development when you expect to FID them? And maybe I'll try to push my luck here, but given that the majority of the behind the meter deals industry wide so far have taken place in Texas and Ohio, can we assume that at least one of those projects is located in those regions?

And then any further thoughts you could provide in terms of sizing and economics of those projects relative to Socrates?

Yes. First one I'd say is that, I think we've said we expect to deliver commercial agreements for the next couple of projects in the second half of the year. And so the teams continue to do a tremendous job, I'd say, at meeting the customers' needs and tailoring kind of our solutions to what the market is looking for. So we have placed orders, as you mentioned. And I would expect that we're going to be fully commercializing the next couple of projects in the next few months.

And we remain on track. We have talked about that looking like another, call it, up to a gigawatt of capacity that we think we could bring online by the 2027. And so I still think that's a good target. And we would expect the economics to look as attractive as the Socrates economics that we rolled out. Plus, I would say that we continue to look for opportunities that even better leverage our footprint and the full suite of capabilities that we have when we connect opportunities all the way from our gathering and processing business through to the end customer need.

And so we continue to feel good about those projects moving forward. And I'd also say we are continuing to see the potential to upsize even the Socrates project. And so I'd say stay tuned, but I think the second half of the year we should we're feeling confident about our ability to deliver the next round of projects.

Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet of JPMorgan Securities. Your line is now open.

Great. Just wanted to kind of pick up with the opportunity set as you outlined previously. Just if we think about the back half of 2025, do you see FIDs on the pipeline side more likely stemming from another Transco type of expansion? Or do you see the possibility for an FID on something stemming from the Northwest system. It seems like there's a lot of irons in the fire as you laid out in the slides there.

Yes, I can start and Larry can also weigh in here. Obviously, we've crystallized, I think, the scoping of Power Express on Transco. The announcement on Nessie yesterday is significant milestone. And I think it's reflective of markets that have been constrained reopening and recognizing the need for natural gas as we've seen utility bills go up. We've seen reliability go down.

And so we are seeing still across the entire footprint, including, as you mentioned, in the Pacific Northwest area that's been a bit quiet over the last few years from a gas pipeline expansion perspective. And so whether or not we see FIDs here in second half of the year, kind of wait to see the pace at which the next round of projects roll out. But as I mentioned in my remarks, we continue to be as active as ever. And we really do see project opportunities in the Gulf Coast, the Southeast, Mid Atlantic, the Northeast, and in the West And Pacific Northwest. But Larry can also maybe give an update on the West opportunities.

Yeah. Thanks, Chad. This is Larry Larson. As a lot of people know, we do have an open season that's out there right now on our Rockies Columbia Connector project that's targeted to serve the Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. That open season is not biting.

It closes tomorrow. And I think so far we've seen some great interest, having really good discussions with customers. I think we're optimistic we'll see something materialize just because we are seeing an increase in demand for natural gas. The system utilization on Northwest Pipeline continues to remain high. And so the team is working well with their customer group and working towards negotiation.

So I think we'll just have to see the pace of how that comes together over the second half of this year.

Got it. Thank you for that. And a question for Rob, if I might. Rob, I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about your experience at EQT and what you're bringing to Williams here as far as any different thoughts on how to approach things strategically or any thoughts in general on what you're seeing so far?

Jeremy, good to meet you. Yeah, so I've spent quite a bit of my career both in the midstream and on the upstream side. And so I'm bringing both of those perspectives to bear here.

I would say that what I've seen here has a very robust thoughtful strategy, comprehensive and it's been proving to be very successful. My goal is to execute on the plan that's already in place and tweak where necessary and to basically capture the robust opportunity set that's in front of us here. I've gotten a very warm welcome from the team and I'm very grateful for that. I see an organization full of very strong performers bolstered by frankly one of the best cultures I've seen. And the team is excited.

You know, they're excited about Chad's leadership and the the leadership from the rest of the executive team, and I think we're ready to go.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis of Citi. Your line is now open.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, team. Wanted to go back maybe to that project backlog. And as we think about that 2028 to 2030 timeframe, you've got Power Express now coming to 02/1930, you've got a few more, let's call it, longer cycle projects in the hopper. I guess I'm just curious as we think about the mix of long cycle over short cycle in that time frame, are you leaning in any one particular direction right now as we anticipate some of these FIDs coming?

And as you think about the CapEx that's going to sort of fill that out, should it look similar to 25,000,000 or do you see that changing?

Thanks, Spiro. Good question. Yes, I think generally, we really tried to demonstrate our ability to layer in projects to create fairly predictable earnings growth. And we do see that opportunity over the next five years. And frankly, it's crystallizing, I think, pretty nicely.

So you will see the Southeast Supply Enhancement project coming online in 2027. We've booked ended the decade with Power Express that will come online in 02/1930. And then layering in, call it, singles and doubles on the transmission side of the business. But then also importantly, our Power Express projects that are pretty powerful because they turn from FID to in service pretty quickly. And so I think you'll continue to see a pretty good layering in of demand pull projects, which is really great from a strategy perspective, because we're connecting these projects to robust demand from LNG exports, power demand, industrial demand and direct power for data center demand.

And what that will do is ultimately pull supply to meet that demand. And so we do see the next five years an ability to continue to layer in transmission projects and Power Innovation projects. And then we will expect to see the supply response to meet that kind of demand that we're connecting to the system. And so I'd say you're seeing some of the larger projects. And as we announce the next round of Power Innovation projects, I think those will really fill significant growth through the end of the decade.

But we'll layer in then the smaller projects along the way. And from a CapEx perspective, I think as John has mentioned, we've been able to keep the balance sheet in incredibly strong position. In fact, we've added quite a bit of growth without increasing the targeted credit metric for 2025. And if you look at the capacity that we have to invest over the next couple of years, I think we will see a bit more investment than we may have seen the last few years, although 2025 is shaping up to be a pretty healthy organic capital year. But I think we feel really good about our ability to maybe tick up capital a bit, but well within the capacity of the balance sheet to maintain our strong credit metrics.

Yeah, and I think Spiro, yeah, just maybe one more thought to that. I mean, what we're seeing with our long range forecast and opportunities that the commercial teams are bringing forward is a continued cadence of high returning CapEx projects too. So we've got the capacity. Commercial teams are busier than ever. But what we're seeing in the backlog continues to be high returning projects.

And as Chad said, many of those cycling to operations at pretty short time frames.

Got it. Thanks, John. Thanks, Chad. Second one, just on M and A, maybe a two part question here. First, with respect to Sabre, curious kind of downstream opportunities there are now with Legg, whether this sort of fills this up beyond current levels and maybe even necessitates an expansion at some point?

And then just looking at M and A more broadly, the recent deals have been a little bit smaller in scale. And I guess I'm curious, is that a function of just the available assets out there right now tend to be smaller? Is that an effort on your part to keep that small and focus more on organic? Just curious how to think about your M and A strategy right now.

Yes. So first on Sabre, the Sabre footprint, it's a great set of assets underpinned by very high quality counterparty credit and very strong minimum volume commitments. And it sits just north of our Haynesville footprint in Louisiana, which is nice. It extends our footprint north into an area where we currently don't operate. And we do see the ability over time to attract volumes through that system down into our southern infrastructure and towards markets along the Gulf Coast, which is what our leg system provides.

So we do think it's a very attractive acquisition from a value perspective, but also over time, we think has some potential upside potential to better integrate into our footprint than had it been just continuing to stand on its own. So we like it from that perspective. And I think your point about the size of M and A, I mean, we continue to be very disciplined. I think we like our ability to layer in bolt on acquisitions in a way that's very manageable from a pacing and an overall capital perspective. On the one hand, we do respond to some degree to what's available in the marketplace.

But more importantly, I think we're constantly looking for the right strategic opportunities that are unique to our footprint and our ability to capture outsized value. And so we tend to think long term even from an M and A perspective and plan those moves so that they layer into our overall program and not feel like we're in a position where we have to react to what's available in the marketplace. And so there are fewer smaller companies today than there were five years ago, but we continue to have, we think, such strong positions across our footprint that if there are opportunities that make sense, in many cases, we can somewhat be patient and we can layer those in when and where it makes sense.

Great. I'll leave it there for today. Thank you, team.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Zach Van Everend of TPH and Company. Your line is now open.

Hi, all. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just starting on leg. Great to see that online and flowing. It looks like it's flowing a decent amount of gas.

I'm just curious if that gas was waiting behind pipe or if that's been kind of shifted around from other inter state pipes within the basin?

Hey Zach, this is Larry Larsen. I'll take that one. Good question. Yeah, we're one really excited to get LEG online. Obviously, we know that one has been a challenging project for us to get to on some fronts, and excited to have first flow start last week.

And I think you're going to see a mix of, yes, we are seeing some ramp up in productivity that's going to be driving growth on volumes to this system. But you'll also see some producers probably shifting from some other markets to be able to get access to the Gilles market and some of the growing LNG demand. And so we anticipate that to ramp up pretty quickly and hopefully see that being running pretty full here by the end of the year.

Got it. That makes sense. Maybe sticking on the same theme, maybe just an update on your guys' overall macro view in the Haynesville and the Northeast. We've seen prices come down a bit, but we've also seen some private producers around your system add quite a bit of rigs. So maybe just a general view on the volumes across the systems through the rest of the year?

Yes, I'll start and then let Larry talk about producer activity. I think we tend to say this often, lower prices continue to, I think, confirm the demand for natural gas. Today, gas is about a quarter of the cost of oil on an MMBtu basis and a quarter of the cost of electricity at the delivered retail level. And so having an attractive price for natural gas, frankly, in time when we're seeing utility bills increase across our footprint, I think is reaffirming the demand for natural gas. So that's a good thing from our perspective.

And we do see very clear line of sight to growing demand. And so I'll let Larry talk about current producer activity. But we were, I think, already talking about the supply and demand balance through the end of the decade needing to call significantly on the Haynesville, call significantly on the Permian, and then as much as we can unlock from the Northeast. And that was before we started to see more in basin demand start to materialize because of power generation growth really across the entire United States. And so you've seen projects like NESE.

NESE was not in the supply and demand balance for the Northeast. And so we're seeing projects that are being announced that are going to add demand to the footprint of our country. And we're going to need to continue to see a big call on gas. And so I think we like the fact that low natural gas prices are showing the power of natural gas to be that low cost solution for our country. And we definitely think we will see that demand grow even beyond what was being modeled through the end of the decade.

But Larry, maybe you can speak to current activity levels.

Yeah, we have seen an uptick in activity in the Haynesville and it's been mixed between producers. We have seen some of the privates bringing some activity into the Haynesville and we expect the volumes to continue to ramp. We're obviously seeing demand pick up now with leg coming in to service and having access to the growing LNG demand and other markets down at Gillis. We anticipate through the back half of this year continued growth compared to what we've seen in the first half. If you think about the Northeast, it's been somewhat mixed between producer as well.

It's great to see Cotero, their announcement coming out, that there continued activity in the Northeast PA. So we're anticipating volume growth in the Northeast and as well as in some of our development in Ohio Basin. And so it's a little somewhat more moderate probably in the Northeast just because you've got a mix between producers, but we are seeing some second half of the year volume growth anticipated.

Got it. I appreciate the time, everyone. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Gabelman of TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I first want to ask about the tariff impact on kind of CapEx and build multiples. And as we think about new projects that you're going to build like NESE, how do those steel tariffs impact the CapEx to EBITDA multiples? How do you manage that risk moving forward?

Yes. Great question. This is Larry. I'll take that one. Yes, obviously, we're very engaged.

Our supply chain is actively monitoring impacts. As we look at it, I mean, steel costs, I mean, they can, depending on the project, be somewhere between 5% to 15% of total project costs. And so as we see some of these tariffs, as we look at some of our projects right now, it could have anywhere from a 1% to maybe 3% impact on total project costs. And so nothing too significant at this point. I mean, lot of that is managed within the contingencies.

As you think about just ongoing management of projects, we're always navigating variability in steel prices, and so nothing's different here. But really just goes to a lot of the strategic sourcing that our teams do on the supply chain front and really trying to get ahead of any constraints that we see in the marketplace right now. But as we think about NESE and other projects near term, we don't see anything that's a significant impact to it.

Yes. And I would just add, I think we've talked about this and to put some numbers to it. NESE is a great example. I mean, the FERC has reinstated the environmental study that was done for NESE last go around. That's an example of helping to lower cost.

Can cost several $100,000,000 to get through the permitting phase of a project. So addressing permitting reform has a way bigger opportunity to impact costs. We were able to receive a favorable permit allowance from the Army Corps of Engineers for spoil for the NESE project. That was over $150,000,000 cost that would have been borne by that project because of permitting restrictions in that area. So we're going to continue to beat the drum on the fact that we've got to, as a country, address permitting reform.

And that has a much bigger opportunity for lowering costs for consumers in The US. And the tariffs, I think, Larry mentioned, are something that we feel confident we can manage. But the real opportunity is going to continue to be getting back to making it more efficient to build infrastructure in The US.

Yeah, great. Thanks for that color. My second one is on the LNG infrastructure build out. And I noticed that in your slides, you increased the forecast for LNG export projects under construction and then pre FID projects within your footprint. And I guess with that moving higher, the question is how does that kind of impact your outlook for additional projects that you could build in The U.

S. Gulf Coast? And then also how do you think about the storage opportunity with the LNG build out continuing to move up into the right?

Yes. So thanks. Good question. And maybe I'll start. First, we've certainly seen, I think both with the negotiations that are happening around trade, but also just the fundamentals around natural gas, we've seen, I think a lot of upside to the LNG demand case, which is great.

We're seeing pretty clear line of sight to that demand growth. I think you're seeing that already kind of play through in some of our early project announcements, but this is going to be a story that continues to drive additional projects. But Larry mentioned where we are on leg. We've announced an expansion of our Haynesville gathering system that will move more volumes into Legg over time. That project will come online in 2027.

That's adding 400,000,000 cubic feet a day of expansion capacity just from our South Mansfield gathering system. And so we do think that there will continue to be a pretty significant call. Most models had the Haynesville growing by an incremental 10 Bcf a day over the next, call it five to seven years. And that was before we added in these additional kind of demand pulls from LNG. And so as the largest gatherer in the Haynesville, you can imagine that we're going to continue to see expansion, fill up projects like LEG and have expansions beyond this current round.

Larry, I don't if you have anything you want to add to that.

No, I think you hit it pretty well. I mean, on the storage front, we announced the Pine Prairie expansion earlier this year, and we've got a great footprint in The Gulf. And so as you continue to see LNG demand grow and some of the potential volatility that'll create, we expect that will create more opportunity for, more storage opportunities in the future. I think that'll be something we'll continue to monitor. Right now, we're just focused on getting primary expansion executed, and, we'll continue to talk to some of both the producer market as well as the LNG market on what the needs for additional storage will look like.

Yeah, think on that note, it's probably worth saying, Pine Prairie, as we announced that project, we've been able to pull together sufficient support for the project, but even have seen demand beyond that project capacity. And so teams are already working on the next round of storage expansion opportunities. So we do think that's going to be an added vector of growth over the next five, ten years.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John McKay of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Hey, everyone. Thank you for the time. I wanted to ask on two Transco projects. Just on the first one, you talked on this briefly of being able to pull forward CECI a little bit. I think you've mentioned the FERC filings, the ability to pull that even potentially more forward.

Can you just kind of walk us through what you're thinking there and kind of what you're looking for to get a better sense of maybe earlier timing? Thanks.

Yeah, so this is Larry. I can take that one. So yeah, it's great news as far as being able to have an environmental assessment versus going through a full environmental impact statement related to CECI. And so that helps speed up the permitting timeline. And so hopefully, we'll be able to get a notice proceed on that project next year and be able to move that up a quarter in full in service. We are anticipating some opportunities to have partial in service come in at the beginning of twenty twenty one.

We're still kind of finalizing the actual scope of that and how we'll end up contracting that from a revenue standpoint. But I think pretty excited news to be able to bring that in and accelerate some value in 2027. So that's kind of the main feedback on it.

That's helpful. Thank you. Then second one is, it does look like Power Express, the size was kind of refined down a little bit. Maybe just walk us through the thinking there and capacity over time. Thanks.

I'll start and see if anyone wants to add. But I do think any time we were pulling a project together, we went through the same process. I think if you recall on Southeast Supply Enhancement, we're really the teams work to find the optimum, most efficient size of the project from a build and capital efficiency perspective and also from a market perspective. And we did see more demand than what we ultimately decided to contract for in this first round of the project. But we kind of found that point of efficiency.

Williams (WMB) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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