GLNG: Kinder Morgan sells half its stake in Elba Island LNG

Kinder Morgan announced on September 27 that it had closed the sale of a 25.5% interest in the Elba Liquefaction Co. (ELC) joint venture, which operates a liquefaction plant on Elba Island in Georgia. The stake, which represents half of Kinder Morgan’s interest in ELC, has been sold to an undisclosed buyer for around $565mn.
The price of the stake implies an enterprise value of roughly $2.3bn for ELC, Kinder Morgan said, which it estimates is roughly 13 times 2022 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). Blackstone Credit holds the remaining 49% interest in the joint venture.
The Elba Island LNG facility is small in scale compared to the liquefaction megaprojects on the US Gulf Coast, with a capacity of 2.5mn tonnes per year (tpy) of the super-chilled fuel. The ELC joint venture was formed in 2017 to build the facility, which is comprised of 10 modular liquefaction units.
Kinder Morgan, which will continue to operate the plant, said proceeds from the sale would reduce its short-term debt and create additional capacity for investments including “opportunistic” share repurchases.