Tallgrass Energy, LP (TGE) Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tallgrass Energy, LP (NYSE: TGE)Q1 2019 Earnings CallMay. 07, 2019, 4:30 p.m. ET

Contents:

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  • Prepared Remarks
  • Questions and Answers
  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Tallgrass Energy first-quarter 2019 earnings call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nate Lien.

Please go ahead, sir.

Nate LienInvestor Relations

Thank you, Kim. Good afternoon and thank you for joining the Tallgrass Energy quarterly earnings call as we discuss TGE results for the first quarter of 2019, which we released through our press release this morning and 10-Q this afternoon. Joining me on the call are David Dehaemers, chief executive officer; Bill Moler, president and chief operating officer; and Gary Brauchle, executive vice president and chief financial officer. Before turning the call over to David, let me remind you that this event is being recorded and the replay will be available for a limited time on our website.

Additionally, our comments today will include forward-looking statements and estimates. These forward-looking comments are subject to various risks and uncertainties and reflect management’s views as of May 7, 2019. Please refer to our filings with the SEC, which are available on our website, which provide discussions of factors that may cause actual results to differ from management’s projections, forecasts, estimates, and expectations. Note that except to the extent required by law, Tallgrass undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

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Please also refer to our earnings release in website for reconciliations between the non-GAAP financial measures referenced in this presentation and the most comparable financial measure or measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. With that, let me now turn the call over to David for his opening remarks.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Afternoon, everybody, and thanks for joining our Tallgrass Energy first-quarter 2019 earnings call. As you might imagine, it’s been another busy quarter with the closing of the Blackstone transaction, our continued recontracting efforts on Pony in the west end of REX, as well as our ongoing efforts to commercialize this Seahorse Plaquemines Liquids Terminal and the Pony Express expansion projects. All that has kept us busy. We’re making great progress on all fronts.

Bill will talk about more of those items in his prepared remarks, but the key message is that we made incremental progress on each of these fronts during the quarter. In addition, it was another outstanding quarter of financial performance for Tallgrass Energy, with adjusted EBITDA of $246 million, cash available for dividends of $201 million, producing a healthy dividend coverage ratio of 1.35 times for the first quarter. The performance drove TGE’s 15th consecutive quarterly dividend increase to $0.53 per share or $2.12 annualized, which interestingly enough, is over four in less than four years that we IPO’d and which is also a sequential increase of 1.9% for the fourth quarter of 2018 in an increase of 8.7% over the first quarter of — of our first-quarter 2018 dividend. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Gary for additional comments.

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, David, and afternoon, everybody. Moving to this segment performance for the quarter, the natural gas transportation segment produced adjusted EBITDA of $139 million in the first quarter of ’19, which is an increase of $15 million from fourth quarter of ’18. The primary driver was again higher distributions from our 75% interest in REX, which were primarily the result of lower interest expense at REX and the increased rate on the Encana contract, which began in March. In addition, TIGT performed above our expectations, benefiting from higher margins and lower expenses during the quarter.

For the crude oil transportation segment, adjusted EBITDA was $81 million for the first quarter, which was approximately $8 million lower than the fourth quarter of ’18, primarily as a result of lower average transportation volumes but still well above contracted volumes for the quarter. The quarter averaged approximately 336,000 barrels a day. Approximate throughput for April was just under 370,000 barrels per day. We expect throughput in May to again approximate 370,000 barrels per day.

The gathering, processing and terminalling segment generated adjusted EBITDA of $28 million for the first quarter, which was roughly in line with the performance from the fourth quarter. Now moving on to our capital structure. At the end of the first quarter, our leverage was approximately 3.7 times based on the trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA as calculated according to our credit agreements. When including our 75% share of REX’S $2.041 billion in debt, our consolidated leverage for the quarter would have been approximately 4.8 times.

While these metrics held steady from the fourth quarter, we expect our leverage ratio to decrease throughout the remainder of 2019 as we deliver another year of adjusted EBITDA growth at Tallgrass. As for liquidity, today we have undrawn revolver capacity of over $850 million, representing ample liquidity to continue funding organic growth projects and additional bolt-on acquisitions. One other item of note with respect to REX’s capital structure. Many of you may have seen that REX issued $550 million of 2029 senior notes in a coupon of 4.95% in early April.

So that was in order to repay $525 million term loan with — that we arranged at the beginning of this year. The short-term term loan provided exactly the flexibility that we sought in order to issue new senior notes in a more stable debt market at an attractive rate for REX, one that is commensurate with its investment-grade credit profile. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Bill for the commercial updates for the quarter.

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Gary. It was a positive operational and commercial quarter for Tallgrass, as we advanced recontracting discussions on REX and Pony, agreed in principle on a pre-filing settlement of the TIGT rate case, advanced our discussions with Kinder Morgan on a potential JV to expand Pony Express, and on May 1st, we closed another strategic water services acquisition. In the gas transportation segment, we saw some atypical fluctuation in REX West End volumes as seasonal weather and a West Coast pipeline outage occurred in Quarter 1. The West End volumes have returned to normal levels, and our commercial team did a nice job capitalizing on backhaul opportunities in the quarter.

We continue to make incremental positive steps with new and existing customers in our recontracting efforts and expect to announce a more fulsome update later this year. As we have mentioned a number of times, we believe that the Cheyenne Connector and Cheyenne Hub projects will play a key role in providing incremental volumes into the West End of REX. We continue to expect in-service in the fourth quarter of 2019 for both of these exciting projects. At Tallgrass Interstate Gas Transmission, we have reached an agreement in principle on a pre-filing rate case settlement, which is a positive outcome, both for Tallgrass and our shippers, with negligible expected impact to the pipeline’s cash flows.

In the crude oil transportation segment, we recently announced Pony Express’s Hereford Lateral project, a new 12-inch, 30-mile-long pipeline which will extend Pony Express’s reach deep into the DJ Basin in Weld County, Colorado. The project is backstopped by firm commitments to underwrite the project. And then we are currently in an open season to solicit incremental commitments. In addition, we are taking line fill on the Iron Horse Pipeline in the Powder River Basin in nearing completion of the associated terminal assets, with an expected in-service date for both by the end of May.

We are also nearing completion on the Grasslands Terminal at the head end of our Platteville line, which will allow us to nearly double the capacity of Platteville Extension to — in order for — better serve new and existing customers in that region of the DJ Basin. Finally, we expect Pony Express’s expansion to approximately 420,000 barrels per day to be in service by late summer. Turning to BNN Water Solutions, as we mentioned in a prior earnings release, we recently closed on the acquisition of an approximately 92% interest in Central Environmental Services, water services provider in the Marcellus and Utica. The acquisition continues to geographically expand our position as an industry-leading water services provider as we enter an additional basin.

Water services continues to see strong organic growth opportunities across all the basins in which we operate. Finally, for a quick update on Seahorse and the Plaquemines Liquids Terminal projects, we continue to have strong engagement and productive conversations with potential Seahorse shippers. And as previously mentioned, we have one potential anchor shipper signed. The stand-alone open season for Seahorse and the joint open season with Pony Express have both been extended to May 31st.

With regard to Plaquemine Liquids Terminal, we recently received a consistency determination from Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority that the proposed PLT Terminal and is consistent with the Coastal Master Plan. This determination validates our intent to minimize and to mitigate any impact the PLT Terminal might have on Louisiana coastal restoration efforts and is another positive step in commercialization of our project. We are in ongoing discussions with a number of potential counterparties that could anchor the project. And now David will conclude our remarks ahead of Q&A.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Thanks, Bill. The first quarter was yet another outstanding quarter for Tallgrass, and we expect the remainder of the year to produce outstanding results as well. In addition, as we move forward with Blackstone, we are excited about the important projects we are pushing toward FID and we look forward to writing the next successful chapter in the Tallgrass story. As always, thank you to our employees for what they do every day to keep themselves and for our community’s safe — and our assets operating reliably.

Thank you to our shareholders for their confidence in investing in us and to everyone on this call for your interest in our company. And with that, operator, we will turn it over to you to start the Q&A portion of our call.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] And now we’ll go first to Spiro Dounis with Credit Suisse.

Spiro DounisCredit Suisse — Analyst

I want to start off with the water assets that you just purchased in the Northeast. Small amount overall, but just wondering if you could walk us to the decision to step out of your core basin and also just how you think about the multiple paid for the business.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Yes, Cole, this is Dave. I think going into the new basin, our team has looked in the Utica and the Marcellus for a number of years, really since we’ve acquired BNN some time ago. It is a difficult place geographically, etc., but we’ve always — it’s always been of interest to us. We just had to find the right asset.

They felt like at this time, they felt they found the right asset to get us into that area and build it out from there. Do you want to add to that, Bill?

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

The only thing I’d add is that the Marcellus north of Utica are really new basins to us. We have shippers on REX that move upwards of 2.8 Bcf a day from east to west to markets in the Midwest. We know the producer community; we know this hipper community. We’re leveraging those relationships in this acquisition to further extend our service offerings to those shippers and producers.

I guess, it, really, is a pretty easy bolt-on. And the facilities are one of the largest, if not the largest, in the basin, and we’re excited to own it and continue to grow it.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Hey, Spiro, it’s Dave. If I called you Colton by accident, my apologies. I suspect we’ll hear from Cole here.

Spiro DounisCredit Suisse — Analyst

Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry. I’ve been called much worse. Just maybe following up on that in the Northeast, and is that primarily tucked or is that piped? Then as you think about developing it, are you thinking about putting pipe in the ground or continuing on the current footprint?

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Today it is primarily trucked. It is a disposal facility that is closest to a significant river crossing. We’re about six miles away from the river crossing across the Ohio. In — so we can get into West Virginia in Pennsylvania.

Trucked volumes, and then we are on a major thoroughfare next to a rest stop right off of a major highway. However, our goal, as it has been in all of our water business, is to get the trucks off the road and get the water into pipe, and we are well under way with negotiations with several of the existing disposal shippers to get their volumes on pipe. That’s the intent.

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Hey, yes, Spiro, and it’s Gary. I think you asked about the multiple on that, and without getting too specific, it’s in the range of our previous water acquisition multiples, kind of in that low to mid-single-digit number.

Spiro DounisCredit Suisse — Analyst

Got it. OK, that’s helpful. Second one, just following up on Seahorse. Appreciated the prepared comments around that.

I guess just curious if you can give us a sense of really how far along you are. I think at the end of last year, you talked about being close to signing that anchor shipper. It sounds like that’s done now, but I guess there’s been — so a lot of time in between. I certainly appreciate that it’s a bit of a moving target — the joint tariff discussions, etc.

But is there any sort of timeline, or maybe you could talk about some of the gating issues to get you over the finish line on a potential FID there?

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Appreciate the question. When we announced Seahorse, I think we were the only pipeline project that was being pursued from Cushing to the Gulf Coast, certainly from Cushing to Louisiana. At my last count that there are now seven different projects that are being proposed by others, so that’s complicated the matter to some degree. But I will tell you our path from Cushing to St.

James and subsequently down to the Plaquemines Liquid Terminal has a lot of interesting nuggets along the way, including interconnected pipes, other direct-connected refineries. We’re seeing great interest in potential short-haul volumes, as well as long-haul volume in all the way down to the Louisiana coastline, and we are in negotiations with aggregators, as well as end users and other pipes to potentially fill this project and get it to FID in a hopefully rapid fashion.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Spiro, I know you’re looking for something more definitive, then it would be wonderful as we could tell you, look, by the end of May or June we’d be FID on it. I would say that that’s not without possibility of that happening. It’s just we’re working with, like Bill said, it’s a complicated situation. We’re working with a lot of parties.

There’s a lot of good stuff that we can do, but we’ve just got to bring a few things together at the same time — have a — we need another anchor shipper, who we are talking to, to go as firm as the first one did.

Spiro DounisCredit Suisse — Analyst

Yes, understood. And I can appreciate the complexities of it.

Operator

We’ll go next to Colton Bean with Tudor, Pickering, Holt and Company.

Colton BeanTudor, Pickering, Holt, and Company — Analyst

So I just wanted to touch on, Bill, I think you highlighted in the prepared remarks the discussion around Cheyenne Connector in that being able to backfill for some of the REX contracts. Just any updates there? I think previously you guys had talked about there are a number of shippers that are committed on Cheyenne that haven’t yet decided kind of where they want to go from there. So any thoughts on how that plays through to REX would be helpful.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Yes, Spiro, Bill can answer that. Actually, I was going to make fun of that. Then I did it very naturally. I called you Spiro.

Yes, so you and Spiro are even now, Colton — my apologies.

Colton BeanTudor, Pickering, Holt, and Company — Analyst

There you go.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Everybody here’s laughing and smiling at me, so my bad.

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

I forget who I’m talking to. Where are we on Cheyenne Connector? As you guys know, we are currently fully subscribed at 600 million a day with two committed shippers. We have received our EA from the FERC. We have received all of the concurrent permit filings to the commission.

We expect to get the certificate any time now and go into construction. Still planning on it being in service in Q4, which happens to be coincidental with some of our contract roll-offs on REX, so I think we’re in a timing game here, where we’ve renewed a fair amount of contracts to date on REX. I think the others are waiting to make sure that there is sufficient supply fitting at Cheyenne to get into REX at the time that those contracts expire before they renew. But we have — the contracts that we have executed have been in the range of value that we have to hope for.

And we continue to have conversations, both small and large, with producers, processors, aggregators, and end users in the arena for space availability when those contracts roll off in November in a few in ’20. So I think as soon as we get pipe in the ground and get going, people will then take the risk of the certificate and permitting off the issue and construction risk and be more — to go ahead and sign the dotted line.

Colton BeanTudor, Pickering, Holt, and Company — Analyst

Got it. And so I think in last quarter you all had noted that you had already recontracted 30% of the REX roll-offs. Any update to that?

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

We did note that that’s accurate, and I think probably at this point, all we’ll tell you is we’ve made more progress than that. Again, as you can appreciate, it’s a little bit of a competitive thing, it’s a little bit of people waiting for validation of long-term forward rates. When REX did go down here for four or five days in last month for some service — and so I’m not validating this, because I’ve always told everybody that REX is not a spread pipeline, but spreads did blow out to over $2.00. I think that validates a lot of it.

So the answer is yes, we did say 30%. We’ve made more progress than that, but really probably not appropriate to give you a higher percentage specifically right now.

Colton BeanTudor, Pickering, Holt, and Company — Analyst

That’s helpful. So, just the last one, Bill, I think you’ve talked about with the Kinder JV potentially sourcing barrels from third-party pipelines from coming out of Alberta and then also out of the Bakken, so any update there as to how you’re thinking about some of those commercial accounts at REX and how you would actually get those barrels to Pony?

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

As a reminder today, Colton, we have joint tariffs with both Kinder’s HH pipeline and Belle Fourche, owned by the True families. That’s how we access Bakken barrels today. I’m not saying that there aren’t other ways to access Bakken barrels down to Guernsey that people are looking at, but those are our 2 primary routes today to get Bakken barrels. Other heavy barrels that could come into the line could come over from Casper, either through a line we might lay or someone else might put in the ground.

There are heavies at Casper. There’s heavies on the Platte line that goes right by Guernsey, and all of those are being pursued, including the potential methods to get Canadian volume down to the Guernsey area and into the pipe. So a lot of moving parts and pieces, as you can imagine, but all of them are being chased.

Operator

We’ll go next to Dennis Coleman with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Derek WalkerBank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

This is Derek Walker on for Dennis. Just a couple from me. You mentioned the recent water acquisition in just kind of a broader sort of bolt-on, sort of M&A strategy. I guess maybe should we think of the bolt-on sort of strategy just mostly focused on water, or are there certain other assets that you’re looking at? I mean, are these sort of the similar sort of size sort of opportunities that you’re looking at?

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

The — whatever bolt-ons have just been there for the taking. I wouldn’t say that it’s a strategic forefront for us. We would love to participate in acquisitions of bolt-ons to REX, to Pony, to our midstream assets in the Rockies. It just so happens that our guys in the water business have found ways to create value where others have not and have been very successful in getting those at good multiples in then building off of that, in bringing those multiples even down further.

But I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a forefront strategy.

Derek WalkerBank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Got it. And then maybe just a quick one on leverage. David, you mentioned 3.7 times for this quarter and 4.8 times with the proportion of consolidated REX with an expectation for that to continue to decrease for ’19. Is there a general target on the leverage ratio front, and how should we think about that longer term as you kind of execute through some of these projects? Thanks.

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Derek, it’s Gary, and it was I that made those comments in the prepared remarks. I think we continue to think about leverage metrics that are investment-grade style metrics. And we’ve consistently said at TGE on an unconsolidated basis for REX, in that neighborhood for a long-term period of three to four times. So we’ve got a good history of living within that, and we’ll plan to continue to do that.

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Michael Lapides, Goldman Sachs.

Michael LapidesGoldman Sachs — Analyst

Real quick on Pony, can you talk about the volume, the throughput you saw in the first quarter, kind of closer to the 330,000 gallons per day. And — I mean, then the pick that just happened in May and how quickly, just kind of that seems like a pretty big, pretty quick uptick up to the 370s. And then how quickly you think you’ll fill all the way in the 420s?

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Michael, we — if you go back, really, eight months into probably midway through last year almost — I guess that would be nine months — and we’ve been prorated on the pipe probably five of the nine months, I’m guessing, so — and by proration, that means we’ve had to cut people back. Some of those months we were kind of capped, I think, if I recall correctly, at about 335,000 gallons per day or 340,000 gallons per day, and then late last year we were able to really start moving around 370,000 gallons per day to 371,000 gallons per day. Some of it that has been on price. Bill can color over this a little more than me on the months where we haven’t topped out and/or prorated.

I don’t think any of that is disconcerting. Every month we have moved more volumes than we’re contracted for. Yes, so if we’re contracted at a 315,000 gallons per day level and then we move 375,000 gallons per day, I think that’s a very, very good indicator. We’ve got 60,000 gallons per day of either walk-up or people shipping volumes that maybe they were deficient for in the past.

In terms of the 425,000 gallons per day, I guess — again, before Bill takes the helmet here and tells you what his thoughts are — we have not been able to run the pipe day in and day out and be comfortable with it at 425,000 gallons per day, but there have been days where we’ve done 400,000 gallons per day. And I think it’s just a matter of getting the right contract and party for the right — to the right place where they need to pick up the volumes, etc. Do you want to add to that?

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. I think, too, you’ve seen the Hereford Lateral announcement. That is a fully underwritten project with volumes that’s consuming some of that available capacity as it comes online. We are doing pump work on the north end between Guernsey and Sterling that is adding some capacity to get to that 420,000 gallons per day number.

We’re doing a pipe, a short pipe loop that’s adding to the capacity of that number. We’re doing some work at Cushing for over-pressure protection on some of the tankage at Deep Rock. All of those things are going to lead to us being able to securely and safely and repeatedly provide volumes at 420,000 gallons per day or in excess of 420,000 gallons per day. So we haven’t sold it because we’re not confident that we can do it day in and day out, but with the facilities we’re adding, we’ll be able to.

Then I’ll just remind you that the Hereford Lateral contract, we’ve done contracts with another shipper in the DJ Basin. Some of that capacity is pre-spoken for, meaning we might have sold a stepped-up contract that starts at a volume one year and ramps up the following years. So it’s being used on a short-term basis in the interim. The winter volume, Q1 volume, decreased to the extent there was any.

It could have been related to weather-related issues and Wyoming in North Dakota freeze-offs, etc. Generally we see a volume dip simply because it’s harder to move oil in subzero temperatures than it is in 70 degrees like it is here in May. So I don’t know how much I can ascribe to weather, but in January, even despite the weather, we had a fairly significant basis blowout in the Guernsey market, and we had — yes, we had almost twice our pipe capacity and nominations in allocations thereby acquired. So it’s a very dynamic environment, and it’s weather impacted, basis impacted, producer impacted, etc.

But if you asked me one thing, I would say it’s primarily weather related to winter months.

Michael LapidesGoldman Sachs — Analyst

Got it. And then one quick follow-up. Can you just remind me what’s your expectation for growth and for maintenance capex this year? And how should we think about — and let’s leave Seahorse and the Plaquemine Terminal aside for now — how that would kind of differ in 2020, not including those 2 large items?

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Gary will give you some more specifics than I will right now, but I will kind of remind you that — so we did the CES deal. That was a little over $50 million. We’ve got another water project that we’re probably going to green-light here in the $30 million, so that makes up $80 million. I think we told you last quarter that we had about $700-plus million of growth AFEs on the books.

We were — I think my recollection is we had spent about $275 million of that so far. I think we’re closer now to $375 million or $400 million having been spent. So we’re still executing on another $300 million that is in the AFE system to go on. And can you supplement that?

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, sure. Michael, it’s Gary. In terms of maintenance capex for the year, in the neighborhood of $40 million, excluding REX, give or take $5 million on either side of that. That’s probably a good way to think of it.

And then in terms of expansion capex, I would say between $300 million and $400 million, and that depends a little bit on — that delta on expansion capex depends a little bit on the Cheyenne Connector Project and if our partners opt in on that and make their capital contribution for that. So hopefully, that’s helpful.

Michael LapidesGoldman Sachs — Analyst

Meaning that number would come down or there would be an offset if they come in and take their percentage?

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

If they don’t, it will be closer to $400 million. If they do, it will be less than that.

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we’ll go next to Barrett Blaschke with MUFG Securities.

Barrett BlaschkeMUFG Securities — Analyst

On the new water acquisition, could you give us a little bit of a breakdown as to what percentage of the volumes are coming from produced water versus frac water and any guidance you could give us on what the differential in those rates would be?

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Differential in the rates, disposed the —

Barrett BlaschkeMUFG Securities — Analyst

Produced versus frac?

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Yes, and a little confused by your question, but the flow-back water coming from hydraulic stimulation activities is by nature produced water, so the answer to your question is all of it is produced water. And we don’t — I don’t know that we have a distinguishment between what is coming in as water that was recently used for hydraulic stimulation or whatever it produced. I don’t know that we delineate that. And again, we only have owned it for, what, a week.

So I might be able to answer your question next quarter, so — but that’s not something we’ve dug into yet.

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

What else is going on, Barrett?

Barrett BlaschkeMUFG Securities — Analyst

That was my main question. I think a lot — the rest of mine have been answered. So, thank you.

Operator

Yes, as we have no further questions, I’d like to turn it back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Yes, operator, would you mind giving the audience one more chance to ask a question or two, and then we’ll close up with remarks.

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we have no further questions.

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Yes, good. Well, I’ll go a little off script here and give a couple final remarks before we close out, and really do again thank everybody for participating in the call. A couple of things that we’ve had since the last call we had for the end of the year at the end of January and when we announced the Blackstone thing, a couple of topics have come up. They’re out there in Twitterverse, and sometimes they’re the plot in the Game of Thrones and things like that.

But there is no intention of Blackstone doing anything here untoward. They simply have felt like they could buy an interest in our business. They gave liquidity to Kelso and EMG. They bought it to make money.

They did not buy it to screw anybody, just to be real blunt about it. And for anybody to postulize anything else out there is patently false, ridiculous and fraudulent. The second is the things around us leaving, etc. Everybody on this call that spoke today has a significant amount of their net worth still invested in this money.

Speaking only for myself, I’ve still got $50 million of investment in that, and that is from money that I put in this thing. It’s not restricted stock. In fact, I’ve never gotten a share of restricted stock in the last seven years at this thing. And so I didn’t leave $50 million in this thing to lose money, and that’s just simply isn’t going to happen.

And people that believe in us, that have given us credit over the last seven years, who have seen that we do a good job of trying to explain what we’re doing and then trying to execute on it. We’re not perfect. We don’t always achieve every goal that we have, but I know we try like hell to do it as much as anybody. Nothing has changed in that regard.

So those of you that support us and see that, thank you very much, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. We’re going to continue to produce the best results we can for all of our constituencies. So with that, again, thank you, everybody, for your attendance and really appreciate your interest in Tallgrass and hope everybody has a wonderful evening. Goodbye.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 37 minutes

Call participants:

Nate LienInvestor Relations

David DehaemersChief Executive Officer

Gary BrauchleExecutive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Bill MolerPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Spiro DounisCredit Suisse — Analyst

Colton BeanTudor, Pickering, Holt, and Company — Analyst

Derek WalkerBank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Michael LapidesGoldman Sachs — Analyst

Barrett BlaschkeMUFG Securities — Analyst

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