Houston, Texas-based Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) is North America's midstream energy infrastructure provider. With a market cap of $46.9 billion, the company operates through Natural Gas Pipelines, Products Pipelines, Terminals, and CO2 segments.
The energy sector giant has slightly lagged behind the broader market over the past year. Over the past 52 weeks, KMI stock has gained 20.3% versus the S&P 500 Index’s ($SPX) 21.4% returns. However, in 2024, shares of KMI are up 19.7%, outperforming SPX’s 16.5% gains over the same time frame.
Narrowing the focus, KMI has underperformed the USCF Midstream Energy Income Fund ETF’s (UMI) 22.3% gains over the past 52 weeks but has outpaced UMI’s 18.5% returns on a YTD basis.
Kinder Morgan has underperformed over the past year due to weaker-than-expected commodity prices and a mild winter that impacted its natural gas operations. Despite recent improvements and increased LNG export volumes, the company has faced challenges with lower-than-planned revenues and operational weakness. However, the stock rose after its Q2 earnings release on Jul. 17 due to the company's optimistic outlook on natural gas demand driven by AI and data centers. The company's plans for a major expansion project to meet this growing demand fueled the positive reaction.
For the current fiscal year, ending in December, analysts expect KMI to report EPS growth of 12.2% year over year to $1.20. The company’s earnings surprise history is mixed. It beat or matched the consensus estimate in two of the past four quarters while missing the forecasts on two other occasions.
Among the 19 analysts covering KMI stock, the consensus rating is a “Moderate Buy.” That’s based on six “Strong Buy” ratings, one “Moderate Buy,” 11 “Holds,” and one “Moderate Sell.”
This configuration is slightly more bullish than two months ago when KMI had five “Strong Buys.”
Argus analyst Bill Selesky recently upgraded Kinder Morgan to “Buy” with a price target of $24.
Although the mean price target of $21.69 represents a low single-digit premium of 2.7% to KMI’s current price. The street-high target of $24 indicates a potential upside of 13.6% from current price levels.
On the date of publication, Aditya Sarawgi did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
