Good morning, and welcome to Western Midstream's Second Quarter 2026 Fireside Chat with our Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President, Kristen Shults. Kristen, WES reported another quarter of record-adjusted EBITDA. What are the drivers of this quarter's performance, and how does this position WES for the second half of the year? Thanks, Daniel. Really great second quarter results for us. Adjusted EBITDA of $737 million, which is up 8% quarter-over-quarter. If you look at the same second quarter in 2025, we are up 19% year-over-year. Few things behind that outperformance for the second quarter. First of all, water throughput up 5% quarter-over-quarter, so great performance on the water side. We saw some volumes that had been taken off for recycling come back on the system. Also, just where the producers are drilling and some of the water cuts in those areas got a little bit more water on the system. Delaware Basin gas was up 5% quarter-over-quarter. A bunch of that is really the Brazos acquisition that we just closed on in mid-June, so you have a little more than two weeks' worth of activity that is embedded in that adjusted EBITDA and thus in that Delaware Basin gas throughput there. The DJ Basin has been doing a good job for the first half of the year, too. 2% up quarter-over-quarter. We still expect to see a decline in the DJ Basin in the second half of this year, but it has done a nice job of hanging in there. The overall commodity price environment is still favorable, and so that is, of course, playing into our NGLs and the fixed recovery contracts that we have. The plants are also operating really well. When that happens, we are able to produce more excess natural gas liquids volumes, and at the higher commodity prices, that really benefits our bottom line. Those are really the drivers behind the second quarter versus first quarter results. We restated our 2026 guidance for the full year. Of course, the first half outperformance played into that restatement. Also just looking at the remainder of the year, we see commodity prices being higher just based on strip for the remainder of the year. The average price that we used was $71 for WTI for the second half of the year, and then averages to $77 for the full year of 2026. Once we take into account the incremental adjusted EBITDA from Brazos, the higher commodity price environment, the favorable throughput results we are seeing this year, as well as just how well the assets are recovering and performing, we were able to move that midpoint up by $250 million. Then you see that trickle through the rest of free cash flow and discretionary cash flow. We moved those midpoints up $200 million. We got a little extra interest expense and maintenance CapEx after the Brazos acquisition, but still a good movement. WES is now pointing to the top end of the guidance range for capital expenditures in 2026. What are the drivers of this increase, and how should investors think about incremental spend versus our original budget? There is a lot of puts and takes within our capital budget this year. We have had some projects roll out of the capital budget, but we have had a lot more projects and true expansion growth projects roll into the capital budget this year. Some of that is caused by the producer shifting some of their drilling activity into 2026 that we were not expecting until 2027, predominantly in the Delaware Basin and then in the PRB. We have also obviously acquired Brazos, and so we have got a little bit more capital in there now for Brazos to finish out the year. Then we mentioned on the call that we signed the two new gathering and processing agreements in the PRB, and we are going to start spending money this year for those agreements as well. North Loving 2 and Pathfinder are still on track. They are still on budget, actually below budget. They should be coming online in the first half of next year. As we really ramp up building out those facilities and the pipeline, you will see an increase in Q3 capital, and then we will start to taper it out a little bit in Q4, just as those projects are ending or getting near their endpoint. Speaking of the Powder River Basin, WES announced two agreements in the basin. What is the impact of these new agreements to WES in 2026 and in 2027? Yes. As I just mentioned, we are going to spend a little capital in 2026 on those agreements. We will spend more in 2027. We should see from those two agreements, as well as the expectations we already had for the PRB, some growth in the PRB in 2027 as well. We are really excited about the agreements. There are 270,000 acres that we had dedicated. That is a home run in terms of acreage dedication and shows the producers really moving towards more of a full-scale development within the PRB from both of those producers. So excited to add that in. It comes with substantial minimum volume commitments as well as the acreage dedications and should be a nice addition into the portfolio. During the quarter, WES announced the startup of its second Joint Industry Project for beneficial reuse in the Delaware Basin. What can you tell investors about this project, and how does it benefit WES in the future? Yes, Daniel, we are really excited about JIP 2. This is our second engagement with the other collaborators in the JIP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Devon, and ConocoPhillips, and we are testing out various beneficial reuse technologies in JIP 2 in the Permian. There is just so much water that is coming out of the Permian every single day. 19 million barrels of water that comes out of the Delaware that we need to move in order to move the oil and the gas that our producers and customers are expecting us to move every day. The beneficial reuse aspect, we look at the water services that we provide, very integrated platform. We can not only gather it, but we can dispose of it, we can recycle it, and one day we can do the beneficial reuse aspect and turn it into this reclaimed fresh water that can be used for industrial cooling or surface discharge, non-consumptive agricultural irrigation. JIP 2 is 10 times the size of JIP 1. It takes 2,000 barrels at the beginning of the plant, and then it delivers 1,000 barrels of reclaimed fresh water. Very excited about this. We're going to keep testing and bringing down the cost of the membranes through the R&D we are doing out there. Hopefully, this sets us all up to sanction our first commercial plant. Kristen, thank you for joining us today. For our listeners, if you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Our contact information is located in the investor relations section of our corporate website.
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