John D. Porter
Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at Williams Companies
Thanks, Alan. Starting here on Slide one with a summary of our year-over-year financial performance. Overall, '22 is off to a strong start. We've seen 7% growth in EBITDA or 13% if you adjust last year to remove the favorable effects of last year's severe winter weather, including Winter Storm Uri. And as we'll see on the next slide, our core natural gas-focused transmission and gathering and processing businesses have fueled this EBITDA growth, although we have also enjoyed continued strength in our upstream and marketing businesses.
Our adjusted EPS increased 17%, continuing the strong trend of double-digit growth we've seen now for many years. Available funds from operations, AFFO, grew a bit more than EBITDA, continuing the trend of strong growth in this measure, up 16% year-over-year. As a reminder, AFFO is cash from operations, including JV cash flows, but excluding working capital fluctuations. If you compare AFFO to our capital investments of $316 million and our dividends of $518 million, you see that we generated over $350 million in excess cash for the quarter.
Also, you see our dividend coverage on this page based on AFFO continues to be very strong at 2.3 times. Our debt to adjusted EBITDA metric continues to improve based on our strong growth in EBITDA and cash generation and our capital investment discipline. You see a nearly 0.4 or 9% improvement in this measure in only a year. So now let's move to the next slide and dig a little deeper into our EBITDA results for the quarter. Again, another strong start this year with 7% growth, reflecting the combined effect of the performance of our core business and upside in our upstream operations.
Walking now from last year's $1.415 billion to this year's $1.511 billion, we start by isolating those favorable effects from last year's severe winter weather, which were $77 million and are shown here in gray. Maybe just a quick opening comment regarding expense trends since inflation has been such a big topic lately. We've actually continued to see very solid cost control in our business. You may have noticed the $34 million increase in operating and maintenance expense on the face of our income statement, but this is really driven by a combination of higher reimbursable expenses that are offset in other fee revenue, new lease payments that were just a planned part of Transco's Leidy South expansion project; and finally, operating expenses associated with our new upstream operations.
And related to the $31 million increase in SG&A on the face of the income statement, you should know that this is pretty much entirely related to the addition of the Sequent business. That also includes their bonus accrual and also an $8 million credit reserve related to a small customer bankruptcy. Moving next to our upstream operations on the waterfall chart here included in our Other segment. Upstream operations were up $56 million, excluding the $22 million of winter weather benefits from last year. Importantly, our first new Haynesville production only began in April, so really no contribution in this $54 million yet from Haynesville.
So the full amount of the growth is attributable to our Wamsutter properties. And it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison at that. As a reminder, last year, we owned 100% of the acreage we acquired from BP only for February and March, but in the first quarter of this year, we own 75% of the Wamsutter upstream JV, which now includes the combined BP, Southland and Crowheart acreage. Shifting now to our core business performance.
Our transmission and Gulf of Mexico business improved $37 million or 6%, primarily at Transco and largely from the Leidy South expansion project, which came online in phases last year. Overall, our average daily transmission volumes for Transco increased over 6% versus the prior year as we once again saw record winter natural gas demand. Now Transco's revenues are driven by reserve capacity, not actual throughput, but continued growth in actual throughput does highlight the criticality of Transco service. We also saw higher margins in our Gulf of Mexico business.
Our Northeast G&P business increased $16 million or 4%, driven by top line gathering and processing revenue growth on slightly lower volumes. G&P rate growth was supported by a combination of factors, including higher commodity-based rate, annual fee escalations and other expansion-related fee increases that more than offset lower cost of service rates at our Bradford franchise. The slightly lower year-over-year Northeast volumes in the first quarter were anticipated in our initial guidance, and we expect a continued quarterly increase for the remainder of the year compared to the first quarter of '22 levels.
We continue to expect a gradual increase in overall Northeast volumes throughout the remainder of the year but ultimately, our plan for the Northeast in '22 continues to see higher EBITDA versus '21 on pretty flat volumes. However, we are well positioned to resume stronger volume and EBITDA growth in the Northeast in '23 driven by several expansion and optimization projects underway that Alan will discuss in more detail. Shifting now to the West, which saw an impressive $35 million or 17% improvement over '21.
In the West, we continue to see upside from our commodity price exposed rates in the Barnett, Piceance and Haynesville, as well as substantially higher volumes in the Haynesville that drove an 11% overall increase in volumes for the West. In the West, we see a strong quarter-over-quarter growth trajectory throughout the rest of the year and especially in the second half of the year, driven primarily by strong drilling activity in the Haynesville. Next, you see a $30 million increase in our gas and NGL marketing services business, which includes both our legacy gas and NGL marketing business as well as Sequent.
This improvement was primarily caused by the addition of Sequent in July of last year. Overall, this segment produced $65 million of EBITDA. As a reminder, the first quarter of each year is typically when Sequent creates the majority of its EBITDA, and this was a strong performance for the team. While we expect to see $50 million to $70 million of annual adjusted EBITDA contribution for this combined segment Sequent plus our legacy marketing business, this year, we've gotten off to a stronger start than expected. And with the strong commodity price expectation for '22, we expect to exceed this $50 million to $70 million range.
So again, another strong start to the year with 7% growth in EBITDA of over $1.5 billion, driven by core business performance and upside in our upstream and marketing operations. Let's move to Slide three to look at our latest financial guidance thoughts for full year '22. We are pleased to share a substantial improvement in our '22 financial guidance versus what we provided in February of this year. I won't go through each of these metrics, but we'll offer some commentary on the most pivotal numbers.
Let's start with adjusted EBITDA, where our midpoint is increasing $250 million, moving from $5.8 billion to $6.05 billion with a tightened range of plus or minus $150 million versus the original plus or minus $200 million. This substantial raise in EBITDA guidance is grounded in our confidence in the continued growth in our core business before considering the Trace acquisition. Specifically, we expect steady quarterly EBITDA in our transmission and Gulf of Mexico business through the remainder of the year, but continued quarterly EBITDA and volume growth from our West and Northeast segments with some level of acceleration through the second half of the year. Additionally, for the remainder of '22, we expect a growing contribution from the Trace acquisition, which closed last week as it moves towards the targeted approximately six times acquisition multiple based on its '23 EBITDA.
And finally, with respect to our Upstream operations, we are encouraged by the results we've seen thus far in '22 and remain confident in the fourth quarter exit rates we quoted at our Analyst Day. Shifting down the page now to growth capex, you'll note a $1 billion increase in guidance from a combination of the $950 million Trace acquisition value and other Trace-related capex. Note that we've closed the Trace acquisition using a combination of cash on hand and other sources of liquidity, including our revolver and commercial paper.
You see that our debt to adjusted EBITDA remained steady at 3.8 times reflecting the balancing of our increased EBITDA with our increased growth capex for Trace. The remainder of the guidance items either changed in relation to the change in EBITDA that I've just discussed or remain unchanged as in the case of maintenance capex. So again, a substantial increase in EBITDA guidance of $250 million at the midpoint, driven by continued growth in our core business as well as contributions from Trace acquisition and sustained expectations for our upstream JV operations.
So with that, I'll pass it back to Alan to review our key investor focus areas. Alan?
