MPLX Lp (MPLX) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Welcome to the MPLX Third Quarter 26 Earnings Call. My name is Julie, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Worthington. Brian, you may begin.

Brian Worthington: Welcome to MPLX's Third Quarter 26 Earnings Conference Call. The slides that accompany this call can be found on our website at mplx.com under the Investors tab. Joining me on the call today are Maryann T. Mannen, President and CEO Chris Hagedorn, CFO other members of the executive team. We invite you to read the safe harbor statements on Slide 2. We will be making forward looking statements today. Actual results may differ. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included here. As well as in our filings with the SEC. With that, I will turn the call over to Maryann T. Mannen.

Maryann T. Mannen: Thanks, Brian. Good morning and thank you for joining our call. Effective November 1, 2 new independent directors joined the MPLX board. Michael Dunn, and Bruce Niemeyer have strong records of accomplishment in the energy industry. Making them outstanding additions, and we are happy to have them join our board. Delivering on our commitments to return capital, MPLX increased its quarterly distribution by 12.5% for the third consecutive year. The increase is supported by our multiyear track record of delivering mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and growth projects coming online over the next several years. Additionally, this increase reflects conviction in the durability of our cash flows and execution of our strategy. MPLX's distribution now equates to an annualized rate of $4.84 per unit. And as also announced this morning, in conjunction with Marathon Petroleum sale of the Saint Paul Park and Mandan refineries, MPLX announced the divestiture of midstream assets supporting these refineries for $750 million. Representing an EBITDA multiple of approximately 9x. Ensuring the competitive positioning of our portfolio is a strategic commitment and we expect to redeploy proceeds from the sale to advance MPLX growth plans anchored in the Permian and Marcellus basins. In the third quarter, MPLX delivered adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion reflecting 5% growth versus the same period in 2025. Excluding the impact of the Rockies divestiture in late 2025, MPLX adjusted EBITDA would have grown 7.3% year over year for the third quarter. Strong execution across our business and continued progress on the growth strategies across our integrated natural gas and NGL value chains enabled the return of approximately $1.1 billion to our unitholders During the quarter, the Harman Creek III Complex began operations with 300 million cubic feet per day of gas processing and 40 thousand barrels per day of deethonization capacity increasing our Northeast processing capacity to 8.1 billion cubic feet per day, fractionation capacity to 800 thousand barrels per day. As we continue placing high return projects into service and increasing utilization across our system. MPLX remains positioned to deliver durable mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth. Natural gas and NGL fundamentals are robust. Creating compelling opportunities to support increasing domestic and global demand for US energy. Growing producer activity, increasing demand for natural gas fired power generation and expanding access to global markets support continued investment across our integrated value chains. Our disciplined capital allocation framework remains unchanged. Investments must provide strategic fit durable demand and attractive risk adjusted returns. In the third quarter, MPLX and its joint venture partners announced the FID of the Solitude Pipeline System which when completed, will provide an additional 4.5 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas egress from the Permian Basin. Solitude was 1 of the fastest projects to reach FID in the company's history, with strong long term contracts from shippers bringing the project from commercial to FID in under 90 days, supporting our view of long term production growth. In the Permian Basin. Solitude increases MPLX's interest in Permian natural gas long haul pipeline capacity from 11 billion cubic feet per day to approximately 16 billion cubic feet per day and is expected in service in late 2029. MPLX is investing over 90% of its $2.9 billion organic growth capital program for 2026 toward natural gas and NGL infrastructure opportunities. Our growth towards the end of the year is supported by this capital investment and efforts to optimize operations. Secretariat 1 and Harmon Creek III have been increasing throughputs since being placed into service. We see opportunities to further increase processing utilization in the Marcellus Basin and in the Utica where utilization rose from 73% in the second quarter to 89% in the third quarter. We also anticipate ramping additional sour gas throughput on our Titan I plant, which is running at over 150 million cubic feet per day. In addition to these efforts, we are advancing several projects that support our integrated value chain into 2027. The Bay Runner pipeline is expected to be placed into service in the fourth quarter. Providing additional access to LNG export infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. We expect volumes to ramp through 2027 to support the end users commissioning and scaling demand. Additionally, the BANGL pipeline expansion is expected to come online in the fourth quarter, increasing capacity from 250 thousand barrels per day to 300 thousand barrels per day and providing additional NGL takeaway capacity from the Permian Basin. The Blackcomb natural gas pipeline began commissioning activities in July, The JV partners continue to progress the pipeline as planned and Blackcomb is expected to achieve full commercial service in the fourth quarter. In the Delaware Basin, construction is progressing to expand sour gas treating capacity at the Titan Complex to over 400 million cubic feet per day expected by year end. New pipeline connectivity was placed into service between our Titan Sour Gas Complex and our Delaware Basin processing footprint further enhancing our ability to optimize volumes across our integrated Permian system. We expect these growth platforms to position MPLX for strong adjusted EBITDA growth in 2027. Our Gulf Coast fractionation and export facilities continue to progress on schedule and on budget. We expect the first 150 thousand barrel per day fractionator associated purity pipeline and our 400 thousand barrel per day joint venture LPG export facility to enter service in the first half of 2028. Furthermore, the second 150 thousand barrel per day fractionator remains scheduled to begin operations in 2029. Through these investments, MPLX continues to strengthen its integrated wellhead to water strategy while positioning the partnership to generate durable cash flow growth. Let me turn the call over to Chris to discuss our operational and financial results for the quarter.

Carl Kristopher Hagedorn: Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen. Slide 8 outlines third quarter operational and financial performance highlights for our crude oil and products logistics segment. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased $67 million compared to the third quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by higher rates across the business units and increased butane blending, partially offset by higher operating expenses. Including incentive compensation. Terminal throughput increased 6% year over year, primarily driven by higher export volumes. Moving on to slide 9, segment adjusted EBITDA in our Natural Gas and NGL Services segment increased $26 million compared to the third quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by higher volumes, including growth from acquisitions, partially offset by the divestiture of noncore gathering and processing assets in 2025. and-- Higher operating expenses, including incentive compensation. Excluding the impacts of the Rockies divestiture, our Natural Gas and NGL Services segment adjusted EBITDA has grown 10% year over year for the third quarter. Gathering volumes increased 14% year over year driven by strong producer activity across the Utica, Marcellus and Permian Basins. Processing volumes were up 5% year over year due to increased production in the Utica and additional processing capacity entering service in the Marcellus and Permian basins. Utica gathering and processing volumes rose 19%, 20% year-over-year. And remain an area where we anticipate strong producer activity. Our Northeast processing system operated at a 93% utilization in the third quarter, demonstrating the strength of producer activity in the Marcellus and Utica. In the Permian, increased utilization at Secretariat 1 and growing demand moving through BANGL, further demonstrates value of our integrated value chain strategy. Sour gas treating volumes averaged over 150 million cubic feet per day during the quarter as we continue progressing toward over 400 million cubic feet per day to capacity at Titan by year end. As additional projects enter service, we remain well positioned to support growing producer activity. The quarter included $77 million of expense associated with incentive compensation, $37 million higher than the third quarter of 2025. Year to date, this expense has totaled $167 million, which is $48 million higher than the same time frame last year, impacting our adjusted EBITDA growth by approximately 1% for the year. The increase was driven by charges to the partnership for annual bonus and long term incentive compensation programs. The programs are a combination of final. Financial and other metrics that include performance relative to peers and linked to its strategic partner. Marathon Petroleum. Looking ahead, MPLX remains positioned to deliver second half weighted adjusted EBITDA growth in 2026, underpinned by investment investments that are ramping through the balance of the year. While we expect these investments to generate modest cash flow in 2026, we are well positioned to accelerate cash flow growth. Throughout 2027. Lastly, we do not expect the sale of the midstream assets associated with the Saint Paul Park and Mandan refineries to impact our ability to deliver mid-single-digit growth. Now let me hand it back to Maryann T. Mannen for some concluding thoughts.

Maryann T. Mannen: Thanks, Chris. MPLX is executing its strategy with consistency and discipline. Our priorities remain unchanged. Operate safely and reliably, grow through high return investments, optimize integrated value chains, return capital to unitholders. The durability of our cash flows enabled us to increase our quarterly distribution by 12.5% for the third consecutive year. This increase marks the fifth consecutive year of double digit increases resulting in annualized base distribution growth of greater than 70%. Over the past 5 years. The divestiture announced today currently presents a headwind to 2027 that was not initially contemplated when other operational metrics were established. We still believe we can deliver mid-single-digit EBITDA growth and our comfortable with annual distribution coverage of 1.3x. Acknowledge that another year of 12.5% distribution growth may be impacted by the loss of this EBITDA. And we still expect a significant distribution increase in 2027 greater than distributable cash flow growth. In addition to the strong set of organic projects we are developing, we continue with evaluating inorganic opportunities. Our announced divestiture provides an additional $750 million for growth and we remain committed to deploying capital to opportunities that are strategic and deliver strong returns. Underpinned by the optimization of our value chains and increasing utilization across recently completed investments, MPLX remains on track to deliver durable mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and we expect even greater EBITDA growth in 2027. Our strategic investments, financial flexibility and strong with MPC, continue to differentiate MPLX and support long term value creation. Now let me turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Worthington: Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen. As we open the call, for your questions. As a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you limit yourself to 1 question and a follow-up. If time permits, we will re-prompt for additional questions. We will now open the call to questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, Our first question comes from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

John Mackay: Hey, team. Thank you for the time. Maryann, maybe I will pick up on kind of the end of your closing remarks there. You guys have been talking a lot about confidence in the second half over first half. EBITDA ramp. Maybe just a little more color you can share there and kind of specifically whether you would expect the Titan expansion to contribute in fourth quarter? And then any not to ask for too much, but kind of any incremental color you want to give on 27 over 2026. I know you sound constructive on it, but maybe any incremental detail, we would appreciate.

Maryann T. Mannen: Good morning, John, and thanks for the So let me take the first part, which is the ramp first half to the second half. We have been indicating for the last several quarters that the back half of our year, second half of 26, we expected that growth to be stronger than the first half of the year given the timing of project completions etcetera. And we remain confident frankly in the fact that the fourth quarter will see incremental growth over the third. Let me talk a little bit about why we see that, and then I will talk about 2027 for a bit. As I mentioned, even in my prepared remarks, we have got Secretariat I continuing to ramp Harmon Creek III that came online in the middle of the year. Just in the third quarter. It continues to ramp into the fourth quarter as well. We are also seeing opportunity to increase Utica processing utilization think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, it rose from 73% in the second quarter. To 89% in the third, and we still see opportunity there. Ramping on additional sour gas through our Titan I plant, I think the question you asked is whether or not Titan II would see any incremental volumes. And the answer is no. We expect Titan II to be complete at the end of this year and it will begin its ramp to 400 in 2027. But certainly Titan 1 operating well. As a matter of fact, Gregory, Chris and I had the opportunity to visit the Titan facility just a few weeks ago. And experience really the progress on that asset as well. Quite pleased with where we stand and confident in the team's ability to get that Titan II completed by the end of the year. Then we have got Blackcomb Pipeline that began its commissioning in July and that is expected to achieve full commercial service in the fourth quarter as well. And then BANGL, the NGL pipeline, 100 thousand to 400 thousand in the fourth quarter. So again, we feel pretty confident about that. And then for 2027, even with the loss of the EBIT from the assets associated with MPC sale, we still expect 2027 EBITDA growth to be stronger than 2026 as many of the projects that we were talking about begin to come into service again. The 1 thing I want to pass to Chris we talked a little bit about the compensation expense and that could be a headwind or a tailwind. Chris talked about it in his remarks I just wanted to give him a second to talk about that as well, and then I will come back in the event you have any other follow-up.

Carl Kristopher Hagedorn: Yes. Hi, John. Just to elaborate a little bit on what I had in my prepared remarks. Emphasizing 2 numbers. When you look third quarter and you look Q over Q versus 2025, our expense was $37 million higher this year than it was in prior year, associated with these long term incentive compensation programs. When you look at third Q year to date versus prior year Q to date, it is about $48 million higher than the 2025 year to date numbers. So thinking about going to our proxy like information filed in our 10 k, we know that MPLX does not really have employees. In. Instead, MPC employees are used to serve MPLX is arrangements, and then there is a reimbursement associated with that. That compensation program that all employees participate in, is tied to certain financial metrics, but also metrics that are tied to MPC share price. So when you look at MPC share price this year, that significant kind of outperformance as compared to prior year is impacting the expense that we are recording this year. So as Maryann had stated, we cannot really predict what that price is going to do in the fourth quarter. So it could be a headwind, it could be a tailwind. But we will continue to monitor that movement.

Maryann T. Mannen: So John, operationally, we remain confident in the fourth quarter being as suggested and obviously the back half of this year being much stronger than the first half of this year heading into 27. Let me pause and make sure we answered your first part of your question, John.

John Mackay: No, that is great color. Thank you both. Maybe just a second 1 for me. We obviously saw the joint sale today Just curious if, Maryann T. Mannen, you can touch on kind of how you see the MPC MPLX relationship kind of progressing from here Can you do the joint sale? Could you do a joint acquisition at some point? And then, you know, we have some recontracting coming up in early 28. So maybe just kind of pull that in to sharing your general thoughts on the state of things. Thank you.

Maryann T. Mannen: Yes, sure. Thank you for the follow-up, John. The relationship with MPC and MPLX remains very strong, strategically important. A lot of value there. The decision for MPC to sell the Mandan and Saint Paul Park, obviously, resulted in the loss of some EBITDA for MPLX But we remain committed to the basins that we talk about Permian, Marcellus, our nat gas, NGL strength and then obviously Utica increasing our utilization there. These remain strongholds in our growth portfolio. We are confident in the portfolio that we have today. In terms of the re-contracting, see no reason why MPC and MPLX would not recontract. As you know, we typically look at this 12 to 18 months out, but it would be MPLX and MPC 's intent to obviously re up those contracts. So no change in that strategic relationship at all, John.

John Mackay: Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it.

Maryann T. Mannen: You are welcome. Thank you for the questions.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Manav Gupta with UBS. Your line is open.

Manav Gupta: Good morning. I am going to cheat a little here. I am going to ask a question which I should be asking on the other call, but I am reasonably sure somebody else might beat me to it. So I want to ask you a question. Why Minnesota and North Dakota refineries? Why were those 2 not core to MPC? Why was the decision to move ahead with that along with those midstream assets?

Maryann T. Mannen: Sure. Good morning, Manav. So first of all, I want to thank all of the employees of MPC and MPLX critically important. These employees have continued to run all of our assets safely and reliably. And we will continue to do so throughout the rest of the year before that sale occurs. You may remember maybe as far back as August 2024, 1 of the messages that I wanted to be sure that I and the rest of the leadership team continued to convey was our commitment to ensure that we had the appropriate portfolio both at MPC and MPLX for today. And the appropriate portfolio for the future looking at demands, strengths, opportunities, etcetera. We felt at this juncture given the opportunities that we saw and what we believe to be a good valuation and the fact that we were selling to a company that we believed would take good care of the employees and the assets that the proceeds from that could be redeployed to continue to ensure that the portfolio for the future was optimized in an even better fashion than we were currently optimizing today. So that would be the reason why we made that decision. Hope that helps.

Manav Gupta: Perfect. My second question is we have seen some of your peers buy out assets out there. M and A market has been hot. I am trying to understand is it more function of the asset package that came in did not fit the MPLX profile? Or was it, do you think the prices that were out there were a little too high for MPC to make those acquisitions and make the math fully work? If you could talk a little bit about that. Yes, certainly.

Maryann T. Mannen: I would say across both MVC and MPLX, we continue to look at M&A opportunities that fit our strategic intent. Right? They must be able to deliver the value proposition that we have shared with our unitholders and our shareholders. So when you look at the opportunities that we would be evaluating for MPLX, we want to be sure that wellhead to water, growth of our Permian footprint and the importance of NGL is a strong area of consideration for us. Of course, looking at the utilization in the Utica, and obviously our Marcellus Basin as well. We also need to be sure, particularly as we are looking at this, that they fit our returns profiles. In the case of MPLX, if we have said mid-teens returns are critical, and these opportunities must also be able to deliver our mid-single-digit returns. We will be very disciplined in ensuring that when we put capital to work, both organically and inorganically, that we meet those objectives And that would be, Manav, why I would say whether we have or have not transacted here in the recent past. Thank you so much.

Manav Gupta: You are most welcome.

Maryann T. Mannen: Thank you for your question.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Doug Irwin with Citi.

Doug Irwin: Your line is open. Hey, team. Thanks for the question. Maybe a little bit of a follow-up to Manav's line of question there. Just on the asset sale, curious how quickly you expect to be able to redeploy those proceeds? And then should we be thinking about the target there as being more organic growth or M&A or maybe a mix of both as far as how you recycle those proceeds?

Maryann T. Mannen: Yes, certainly. Thanks for the question. So just on the proceeds from the sale of these assets, we think 1, it strengthens our balance sheet position and continues to give us flexibility While we have not talked about our 2027 capital yet, we will obviously do that on the next earnings call. As you can imagine, there are projects that we are completing. Our 2 fractionators and our export dock As a matter of fact, Sean and I were just out there, a few weeks ago seeing the progress there. And as I mentioned in my remarks, that will be ready for operations, at least frac 1 and the dock no later than 2028 The completion of Titan II is happening this year. We have got TRAVERSE for 2027. The second fractionator at our Texas City will also be done. We have got our Marcellus gathering expansion that will be complete in the first half of 28. Eiger pipeline, Solitude that we just announced, and Secretariat. So these are all projects that are currently ongoing. And again, we do not expect 2027 capital to be stronger at this point than what we saw in 2026. As you know, we actually accelerated some but we will look to deploy those proceeds as quickly as we can on organic or inorganic opportunities as we see fit that meets that criteria. I hope that helps, Doug.

Doug Irwin: Great. Yeah, that is helpful. And maybe a follow-up on the asset sale again. You have now announced 2 fairly sizable asset sales in each of the last 2 years. I guess, do you view these as more opportunistic? Or are they maybe kind of part of a broader plan to keep coring up your footprint here around the Northeast and the Permian?

Maryann T. Mannen: Yeah. I would say it this way. When you look at the Rockies, as we shared when we decided to do that divestiture, we felt that those assets were better placed in the hands of those who had a different capital allocation strategy to those assets and we wanted to deploy funding there, funding from that into nat gas and NGL as you have seen us do In the case of this particular sale, this was really the result of MPC's decision to monetize and to sell those 2 assets So really perhaps different rationale We continue to say that Permian, Marcellus, are critical basins for us 80. Almost 90%, frankly, of our capital. As being put to work in nat gas and NGL. I mentioned actually in remarks the speed at which the Solitude pipeline got FID would. So these are places where we see particularly when you look at the demand pool, coming from LNG, etcetera, places where we see opportunities. Having said that, we are quite pleased with the MPLX asset portfolio. It is operating well. All of our assets are cash flow positive as are the basins where we operate. And so we remain pleased with the portfolio as it exists today.

Doug Irwin: Great. Thanks for the time.

Maryann T. Mannen: You are welcome. Thank you for the question.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Gabe Daoud. Your line is open.

Gabe Daoud: Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Maryann T. Mannen and team. Hey, Maryann T. Mannen. I was hoping we could maybe just get your perspective on the large, Appalachian M and A on the E&P side last week. Just curious how that transaction could maybe impact the business moving forward since it did include 1 of your 1 of your key customers?

Maryann T. Mannen: Yeah. Good morning, Gabe, and thanks for the question. First and foremost, I would say, when we look at EQT and Range both of these are long term existing customers of MPLX with whom we believe we maintain very strong relationships frankly, we are absolutely looking forward to continuing to work collectively on that combined set of assets. We do not typically discuss any of the specific terms of our customer contracts, but we can share that we have got durable long term commitments and strong acreage dedications that extend largely over a decade from 1 of those customers. And we do not expect really to be negatively impacted by the combination We MPLX strive to be the midstream company of choice to support our producer goals customers But anyway, let me pass it to Gregory. Gregory's got deep customer relationships as well and he can share a little bit more with respect to the insights in that combination.

Gregory Scott Floerke: Thanks for the question, Gabe. Yes. Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen. Gabe, we were in the very beginning with Range in the Marcellus. I am proud to say, and we have grown over. That goes back almost 20 years. EQT, same 15-year relationship or a little over that. So you know, as we build out Marcellus and create the position, the integrated position we have with c 3 plus ethane purity pipelines, interconnected to third parties. We build out a system that is integrated, and then both of these customers are part of that. So as we continue to build out our Liberty gathering system in Washington County that we are going to be expanding along with Majorsville. That sort of ties into the Harmon Creek 3 expansion. Our Houston plants, our fractionator and the entire integrated system. So you know, we are running at 93%-94% even after the Harmon Creek 3 plant came online, which is our largest yet built. So we continue to have opportunities to grow here and these are 2 key customers for us that we hope to continue to do that with.

Maryann T. Mannen: Thanks, Gregory. Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen. that is helpful.

Gabe Daoud: And then just as follow-up, given your position on the Permian egress, the egress side of things. Could you maybe give us your updated thoughts around supply against the capacity that should show up by 2030 or so? I think there is pretty close to 20 Bcf a day that could come on an incremental egress standpoint by 2030 versus the supply expectation of just, you know, maybe 7 to 8 Bcf a day of growth by then. So can you maybe just talk to the mismatch and are the volume expectations just simply too low? Will the basin be long pipe for maybe a short period of time? Would love to get your thoughts on that.

Maryann T. Mannen: Yeah. Sure, Gabe. I am gonna ask David to give you some thoughts on that. I will come back there with any other follow-up that you might have.

David R. Heppner: Hey Gabe, great question. So let me step back a little bit and we have been participating in this basin on egress pipelines for almost 10 years now. And as Maryann's comments stated, we are participating in 6 long haul pipes now with the most recent being recently announced, so moving almost 16 Bcf/d out of the pipe. So your comments are spot on. But as Maryann Anne touched on with Solitude, that pipe was the FID of any of the 6 pipes out of the basin, whether it be to Augaldolce or to Katy. So we are seeing continued strong shipper demand customer demand. And then the other interesting part about Solitude is our partners All these pipelines are multi partnered, as you know. And the partner mix from not only midstreamers, but producers in the SALTU pipeline kind of gives you a little bit of a view of how people are thinking about necessity for capacity going forward. So as we think about it and looking forward, whether it be driven by data centers, power demand generation, but more specifically, in the U.S. Gulf Coast by LNG, we continue to see the demand and the need and we see strong customer support and commitment to these long haul pipes coming out of the basin. So as we look forward, we will continue through the lens of strict capital discipline participate in the basin, whether it be in Basin G&P with Gregory and his team, or participate in long-haul pipelines to get the gas out of the basin into the customers that are actually pulling and wanting the demand there.

Maryann T. Mannen: So we see a strong outlook there. Hopefully that helps.

Gabe Daoud: that is very helpful. Thank you all.

Maryann T. Mannen: You are welcome. Thanks for the question.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Keith Stanley: Hi, good morning. I appreciate the flexibility on the distribution growth next year. I think it is a prudent move given the asset sale. You still noted you intend to raise the distribution faster than DCF growth next year. I am curious if as part of that, you would consider a larger increase in buybacks as a lever that you could use to reduce the unit count and improve your coverage and allow for faster distribution growth if organic growth opportunities do not materialize?

Maryann T. Mannen: Hey, Keith. Good morning. it is Maryann T. Mannen. Thanks for the question and appreciate your color there. I am going to pass it to Chris to talk a little bit about buyback and your question and then I can take any follow-up that you might have.

Carl Kristopher Hagedorn: Hey, Keith. And I know you have done the math, but what I would tell you is, first and foremost, our capital allocation strategy is really unchanged. So when you think about us maintaining, you know, safe reliable operations, then distribution growth, then growth capital and then your unit buybacks being the last consideration for return of capital to our unitholders. that is unchanged. And when you think about buybacks as a tool to help with coverage ratio, that you it is a really-- it is really hard. It takes a lot of money to move that dial as I kind of opened with. So that is not something-- it is something that we look at. But it is not something that we. We have, considered at this point.

Keith Stanley: Understood. That, makes sense. Thanks for that. Second 1, and I apologize in advance for revisiting it, but on the whole affiliate relationship, you know, it is pretty striking just the performance difference between MPC and MPLX. This year. And obviously, market conditions are driving that MPC has $12 billion of cash at the MPC level. You are selling another $3 billion in assets. Know, you have you have a lot of free cash flow. The rest of the next few quarters. With the MPLX public quotes only, you know, $22 billion is there any consideration at all to using this unique period of time to simplify the structure and consider maybe buying in MPLX. Just seem like if you were ever going to do it, this could be the time. To do it? Or is it just something you want to keep permanently out there?

Maryann T. Mannen: Yeah. No worries, Keith. I am happy to address the question. So, you know, as I have mentioned before, we continue to believe that MPC and MPLX, the strategic focus, the relationship is critically important Having said that, we recognize that our objective with respect to the unitholders of MPLX and the shareholders of MPC is to ensure that we are providing and creating via structure and all other capital allocation that we do that we are creating the optimum value creation for both of those organizations. So of course, we will always look at structure and to the extent that any change is necessary we certainly make any adjustments that would be necessary. I would tell you, however, and you know this, that our exchange ratio would not be the only criteria of course. that is not the sole criteria that we would use to consider that.

Keith Stanley: Appreciate the color. Thank you.

Maryann T. Mannen: You are welcome. Thanks for the question.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays. Your line is open.

Theresa Chen: Good morning. I want to go back to the Northeast customer consolidation, understanding that there should be opportunities for MPLX to grow alongside the combined EQT range entity. But given the greater scale of the customer post close, how should we think about the potential impact on rates? And contract economics over time?

Maryann T. Mannen: Hey, Tracey, good morning. Thanks for the question. I am going to let Gregory talk a little bit about that. But again, we believe based on long term contracting particularly when you look at sort of the decade of that contracting that we are quite optimistic if you will of our ability to execute through that. But let me let Gregory give you incremental color there.

Gregory Scott Floerke: Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen. Theresa, I mentioned I mentioned previously, we have a long standing relationship with both Range and EQT. We process gas for both and fractionate for both Gather for 1. The infrastructure we build out has been built out over 15 to 20 years. And we have continued to have the ability to incrementally add capacity whether it be in the processing side fractionation or debottlenecking as we continue to do so. Based on the durability of our contracts, the acreage dedications and the extension of that in the rich area We feel really confident not only about the contractual situation that we are in, but the ability to grow incrementally with these customers. And as is the case with any customer and particularly with the combination and with scale, we will always we will always be open to discuss and be willing to discuss other win-win arrangements that could help both the producer customers and our growth. So we are interested in continuing to have those discussions.

Theresa Chen: Thank you.

Maryann T. Mannen: You are welcome, Theresa. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our final question today comes from Bharatan Reddy with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Bharatan Reddy: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. it is been hit on a couple of times during the call, but just curious how you with the additional capital redeployment flexibility, how you evaluate, you know, the Marcellus Utica growth opportunities versus the Permian? And should we think about that as primarily processing additions given what you have mentioned so far? Are there other parts of the value chain that you are looking at this moment?

Gregory Scott Floerke: This is Gregory again. I would say that we continue to see as indicated by the ramp of our Harmon Creek III plant that came online earlier, We are continuing to actually loop pipeline in the Marcellus area, add compression and debottleneck some of the plants. We are obviously at high utilization near mid-90s. But we do have opportunity to continue to incrementally extract more capacity out of our fleet of plants out there. NGL prices are really good. Light oil and crude on the Utica side is really good. The pricing there and so we have got a lot of you have seen we have almost doubled our volume and utilization in the last 3 years in the Utica, and we were fortunate we had some capacity that was built out that we are able to grow into. We will continue to do that in both Utica and Marcellus, and all those systems are integrated together into fractionation and both liquids and gas takeaway. So I think we will continue to see opportunities there for incremental growth.

Carl Kristopher Hagedorn: Yes. And I just wanted to quickly add as well. This is kind of thinking again about our capital allocation strategy and where do we see the growth When we think about the Northeast, you have thought about that. We have always been a just in time processing fractionation builder. When Gregory and team get to that kind of mid nineties, we are thinking about what is that next expansion project. You know, it is the low to mid nineties They better start engineering it. So if you think about the Majorsville expansion that is gonna be coming online, that is that is where that comes on just in time. When you think about the Permian and the Southwest, that is an area where it is as you have seen, there is exponential growth. We just talked about some of the egress that we are expected to see through 2030, but it is also the area that we do just in time. Right? So we are not deploying stranded capital. Rather, we are getting the acreage dedications and the line of sight to the volumes. To fill both processing and fractionation as it is scheduled to come online.

Bharatan Reddy: Great. Thanks for that. And as a follow-up, how would you guys frame the long term CapEx run rate at this point? Obviously, fundamentally supportive backdrop in 2027 has a lot of growth projects coming online, but as you think about longer term, how would you frame that run rate CapEx?

Carl Kristopher Hagedorn: Yeah. I will take that 1 quickly. What I would tell you is when we think about our CapEx, $1.26 billion is an elevated amount. And what we did, we pulled forward a lot of capital spend that was associated with some of the-- some of these Some of these big organic projects that we are doing. You think about Secretariat II, you think about our wellhead to water on the NGL side of the house. These are pull-forwards, not overspend. So it is an important thing to delineate there. This is just where. So thinking about that, right? 2027 likely looks less than 2026. When you go longer term, you start thinking 28, you start thinking 29. What I will remind is that base business continues to get bigger and bigger. So to get to that mid single digit EBITDA growth, you are going to happen, and you require those mid teens return on either organic or inorganic projects. The amount you have to spend gets bigger and bigger each year. And what I would also tell you is, you know, just like you saw with this year, it will not always be linear. Right? It can come in chunks. So, that is how I would probably answer that. Hopefully, that helped.

Bharatan Reddy: Yeah. that is helpful. Thank you.

Maryann T. Mannen: Thank you. Thanks for the question.

Operator: And that was our final question.

Brian Worthington: Thank you for your interest in MPLX. Should you have more questions or would like clarification on topics discussed this morning, please contact us, and our team will be available to take your calls.

Operator: Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your participation. Participants, you may disconnect at this time.