KMI — Q2 2026 Earnings Preview

KMI is a trajectory-over-absolutes story: a natural-gas midstream leader that moves ~40% of US LNG feed gas and derives roughly two-thirds of EBDA from natural-gas transport and storage. The value is in a growing, self-funded, take-or-pay backlog converting to cash flow — not in any single quarter's EPS.

Growth trajectory is re-accelerating. The last print (2026Q1, reported 2026-04-22) was a broad-based beat: Revenue $4.83B (+13.8% YoY, accelerating from +8.7% prior), Adjusted EBITDA $2.54B (+18% YoY — the strongest in the visible 9-quarter series), and Adjusted EPS $0.48 (+41% YoY). Natural Gas Pipelines is the engine, with segment EBDA up +33% YoY into the latest quarter on record LNG feed-gas pull. Yet the stock moved only −0.25% the next session — the beat was largely anticipated.

Key watch items into 2026Q2:

• Guidance: KMI gives no quarterly guide — the operative bar is the FY2026 single-point budget ($8.6B Adj EBITDA, $1.36 Adj EPS, $1.19 dividend). Watch for an explicit raise of the budget now that Monument is closing; management has already telegraphed >3% upside ex-Monument.
• FERC certificate (~July 31): the single hardest catalyst, landing in the same window as the print. A grant is largely priced; the asymmetry is a slip (downside) vs. an earlier in-service read-through (upside — management already pulled MSX from Q4'28 to Q2'28).
• Power / data-center backlog: ~60% of the $10.1B backlog is power-linked. This is the under-appreciated, management-stressed bull point (153 GW of new gas-fired generation this decade) — the "management is the contrarian" setup to watch.
• Tariffs / macro: a non-issue — management sized tariff exposure at ~1% of project cost and it faded to a non-event by Q4'25. The only recurring drags are RNG/D3 RIN weakness and softer CO2 oil volumes, both small and pre-disclosed.

Classification: CONSERVATIVE guider, consistent beater — FY2025 delivered +6% EBITDA / +13% EPS against a +4% / +10% budget. The FY2026 budget is a floor, not a stretch, and the risk into Q2 is skewed to a modest beat.

How to read KMI "guidance": KMI does not issue quarterly EBITDA/EPS guidance and does not give ranges. Consistent with midstream practice, it sets a single-point annual budget each December and reaffirms/updates it verbally on quarterly calls. There is therefore no 2026Q2 guide to parse — the 2026Q2 print is measured against (a) the FY2026 budget and (b) sell-side consensus for the quarter.

Current quarter (2026Q2) — segment drivers and the YoY setup

KMI guides none of these at the quarter level, so every "Guide" cell is Not Guided. The "Latest actual" column is 2026Q1 as the run-rate the print will be judged against; % YoY laps the 2025Q2 prior-year comp the print will report against.

FQ+1 (2026Q2) — consensus bar

FY+1 (FY2026) budget — the standing annual guide

Management commentary & tone — monotonically positive across three calls

Net tone read: unambiguously good-to-better. Over three quarters the team moved from "we'll beat" to "we're raising," added a second demand leg (power/data centers) to the LNG story, lowered its leverage guide, and collected a third agency upgrade. There is no defensive pivot, no guidance withdrawal, no unusual caveat — the opposite of the pre-earnings red-flag checklist.

Risk caveats management itself flags (candid, contained): RNG volumes / D3 RIN prices (the one recurring negative, weak through 2025); CO2 oil-volume softness (~7% of EBITDA); Bakken/Continental drilling pullback sized at ~3% of EBITDA and called "very manageable"; compression/pipe availability as the gating item on pulling project timelines forward. All named, quantified, and small.

Contrarian tell (per investing principles): Rich Kinder has, for multiple quarters, hammered a gas-demand thesis — LNG feed gas to 19.8 Bcf/d in 2026 (+19%) and >34 Bcf/d by 2030, plus 153 GW of new gas-fired generation — that he explicitly says the Street under-models. To the extent the market still frames KMI primarily as an LNG-feed-gas story, the under-appreciated, repeatedly-stressed bull point is the power-generation backlog conversion, from a team with a strong delivery record. That is the classic "management is the contrarian" setup.

Post-guidance updates since the Q1 call (2026-04-22 → present)

No new formal guidance (next update is the print). The material development is the FERC final EIS clearing ~500 miles of Southeast expansions (MSX + SSE4), with certificate orders guided for July 2026 — validating the compressed-permitting assumption underpinning the backlog. Monument (~$500M, Texas) is incremental upside management excluded from the >3% framing.

Newsflow since the last print has been overwhelmingly about project sanctioning and regulatory de-risking on the natural-gas side — the same growth story management has been pushing. No red flags: no guidance withdrawal, no C-suite departures beyond the previously-disclosed Tom Martin retirement, no adverse regulatory surprise.

Verdict: MIXED over 8 quarters but decisively improving — Adjusted EPS walked from three straight misses (2024) → three in-line quarters (guided exactly to consensus) → two accelerating beats (2025Q4 +5.4%, 2026Q1 +26.3%, the largest in visible history). Last-4-quarter Adj EPS: zero misses, 100% beat-or-in-line; revenue 4/4 beats. Per investing principles, the direction of the beat magnitude is the signal — and it is inflecting sharply positive.

Beat/miss detail (Adjusted EPS):

Caution on durability: part of the record 2026Q1 +26% was weather/LNG-seasonal, so 2026Q2 will not repeat that magnitude — the relevant question is whether the baseline has stepped up, not whether another +26% lands. Management pushed back on "weather-only," citing every segment growing, and raised the full-year framing. The pattern of hit-your-guide → beat → raise is the "talented management" signature.