A customer class that did not exist at scale

American pipelines and electric utilities have spent the past year signing up a customer that barely existed five years ago: the hyperscale computing campus, which draws power like a mid-sized city and wants it contracted for a decade or more. Kinder Morgan, the Houston owner of about 83,000 miles of pipe that earns fees moving other companies' gas, refined products and crude, now carries a sanctioned project backlog of $9.6bn. Some 92% of it is natural gas, and more than 60% is aimed at power generation and data-center load. The backlog shrank from $10.1bn in the quarter only because $650m of finished projects entered service; management described a shadow list behind it worth over $10bn, with at least another $1bn expected to be sanctioned in the second half.

The operating numbers are moving the same way. Second-quarter adjusted EBITDA was a record $2.199bn, up 12%, and the company raised full-year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to at least 5% above its $8.6bn budget, with adjusted earnings per share guided at least 12% above budget. Transport volumes rose 7% year on year; gathering volumes rose 26%, led by a 54% jump on its KinderHawk system in the Haynesville shale. Net debt fell to 3.6 times EBITDA from 3.8x at the start of the year, leaving roughly $3.4bn of borrowing capacity before the 4.0x middle of its target range. On 31 July federal regulators certificated two Southeast expansions — about 500 miles of new pipe, some $5.2bn of capital and 3.8m dekatherms a day of firm capacity.

The reason that matters is deliverability, not gas resource. Only one large interstate line, Mountain Valley, has been completed in a decade, and a new system takes five to eight years to permit and build. Working gas storage capacity grew 7% between 2010 and 2025 while demand grew far faster, cutting days of cover from 71.9 to 36.9. Incumbency on existing high-deliverability corridors is what makes Kinder Morgan the default counterparty for a new power or liquefied-natural-gas interconnect — and the same five-to-eight-year cycle is its main constraint on capturing the 2028-2030 squeeze with new-build capacity. Management also flagged tightening compression equipment, because turbine manufacturing capacity is being pulled toward power generation.

Against that, the shares fetch 7.00x trailing gross profit, down from 8.29x in mid-May, and 12.54x trailing EV/EBITDA against Williams at 15.72x. Kinder Morgan's trailing free-cash-flow yield is 5.61%; Williams' is minus 0.25%. The caveat sits in consensus, not the company: analysts model 2027 revenue growth of 2.0% and earnings of $1.53 against $1.52 this year, so the forward price/earnings ratio of 20.37x sits slightly above the trailing 19.86x. The backlog is not in the estimates.

The opposite balance sheet

NextEra Energy pairs Florida Power & Light, a regulated utility serving about 5.7m accounts over roughly 77,000 circuit miles, with Energy Resources, the country's largest developer of contracted wind, solar and storage. Second-quarter revenue rose 12.4% to $7.534bn and gross profit rose 43.4%. The signed development backlog reached 35.1 gigawatts after 3.6 GW of additions, and the company lifted its Florida large-load expectation to 8 GW by 2032 from 6 GW, each gigawatt worth roughly $2bn of rate-base investment. Florida regulators approved a four-year rate settlement in November 2025 with an authorized return on equity of 10.95% and base-revenue increases of $945m this year and $705m more in 2027. Earnings guidance of $3.92-$4.02 was left unchanged.

What differs is funding. NextEra's trailing free-cash-flow yield is minus 5.83% — a developer outspending its operating cash flow — and on 15 May it agreed to buy Dominion Energy at 0.8138 NextEra shares plus cash per Dominion share, a roughly $67bn transaction. That requires issuing about 716m new shares against 2,089m diluted, and raising authorized shares to 5.0bn from 3.2bn, at a special meeting on 3 September. The stock fell 4.63% on announcement and the two companies' combined market value dropped $5.0bn. The balance sheet is the asserted moat — the thing that lets NextEra underwrite multi-gigawatt contracts with hyperscalers — and this deal is what tests it. Dominion already has about 12 GW under executed electric service agreements; NextEra's Florida book remains 21 GW of interest with no announced transaction.

NextEra now trades at 8.37x trailing gross profit against 11.73x in mid-May, and near 21x its own adjusted 2026 guidance against the 24.44x price/earnings ratio it carried in May.

One session, five companies, no news

The rest of the delivery complex rolled over in the same week. Williams, the Tulsa operator of the Transco and Northwest systems and Kinder Morgan's closest rival for the same interstate revenue, raised its EBITDA growth target to 11%-plus a year and is moving into generation itself, putting a 200-megawatt plant in service in 18 months and closing a $5.34bn venture with Blackstone; its shares still fell 7.7% over three months. American Electric Power lifted contracted large-load additions to 69 GW from 63 and traded like a bond. On 21 August, Kinder Morgan fell 2.94%, Williams 3.87%, NextEra 1.88% and AEP 1.54% — while the S&P 500 gained 0.4% and the Treasury doubled buybacks of long-dated debt, pushing yields down from the 30-year's 19-year high of 5.33% three sessions earlier. Henry Hub gas rose 1.1% that day. No issuer news was discoverable for any of them.

So the usual explanations fail in sequence: not the discount rate, not the commodity, not guidance. Kinder Morgan was still in a clean uptrend on 10 August, its 50-day average above its 200-day, and had fully reversed by 21 August — a nine-session turn, not a slow de-rating, and it remains up 18.1% over twelve months. NextEra's deterioration began in June, and its 21 August close of $83.65 was its lowest since at least February. What is left is positioning: the same group of stocks sold by the same holders, at once.

The setup

Where it stands — Both businesses accelerated through the summer; both multiples compressed since May, Kinder Morgan's by 16% and NextEra's by 29%. Would confirm — Kinder Morgan sanctioning the flagged $1bn-plus of new projects, lifting backlog above $10bn, with power and data-center share holding above 60%. Would invalidate — A cut to Kinder Morgan's raised 2026 EBITDA guidance, or NextEra trimming its $3.92-$4.02 earnings range. Watch next — NextEra's special shareholder vote on the Dominion share issuance, 3 September 2026. Valuation — Kinder Morgan: 7.00x trailing gross profit, 6.86x forward, versus 8.29x in May. NextEra: 8.37x and 7.78x, versus 11.73x.