Venture Global Inc Q2 2026 Earnings Call - Record EBITDA and Strategic Pivot to Short-Term Contracting

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Venture Global Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Ben Nolan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ben, please go ahead.

Ben Nolan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you, Trevor. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Venture Global Inc.’s second quarter 2026 earnings call. I am joined this morning by Mike Sabel, Venture Global’s CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Jonathan Thayer, our CFO, and other members of Venture Global’s senior management team. Before I begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from what is described in these statements. I encourage you to refer to the disclaimers in our earnings presentation, which is available on the investor section of our website. Additionally, we may include references to certain non-GAAP metrics such as consolidated adjusted EBITDA, which we may refer to simply as EBITDA during this call.

A reconciliation of these metrics to the most relevant GAAP metrics or measures can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation posted on our website. Finally, the guidance in this presentation is only effective as of today. In general, we will not update guidance until the following quarter and will not update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. I will now turn the call over to Mike Sabel.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to share our second quarter 2026 results. I will begin the call with an overview of our key accomplishments in the quarter and an update on the business. I will then make some remarks on the LNG industry before turning over the call to Jack, who will provide a more detailed review of our financial results as well as updated guidance for 2026. Following all prepared remarks, we will open the call to Q&A. On page 5, you can see some of the highlights for the quarter, including our largest ever quarterly EBITDA of $2.5 billion and significant growth in volumes, revenue, income from operations, net income and EBITDA year-over-year.

We are increasing our 2026 EBITDA guidance to $8.7 billion-$9.1 billion from $8.2 billion-$8.5 billion, based on current market outlook for the remainder of the year. Given outsized LNG price volatility related to events in the Middle East, we have maintained a broader-than-usual guidance range than in the past. As we contract the remainder of our expected volumes for the year, we expect to tighten this range following the third quarter. Jack will discuss these numbers in greater detail in a moment. Turning to page 6. In the second quarter, we exported 127 cargoes while maintaining our incredible record of safety. Commercial momentum continued in the second quarter, where we executed over 2 MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements with new and existing customers, including TotalEnergies, Vitol, EnBW and Atlantic-SEE.

The market has welcomed Venture Global’s ability to offer customers optionality in uniquely contracting short, medium and long-term volumes. I am also proud to highlight that we exported our 1,000th cargo just four years after Venture Global’s first cargo in the first week of March 2022. The team has worked tirelessly to make us the safest, most efficient and best performing LNG company in the industry, and we now have the track record to prove it. These efforts, along with the investments, innovations and process improvements we have made to our machines, position Venture Global well to export our next 1,000 cargoes in a fraction of the time. In just a few years, we should be exporting more than 1,000 cargoes every year. With our continued operational and commercial execution, we are confident in the resiliency of our cash flows.

On that basis, the board has recently approved an increase in our quarterly common dividends to $0.04 per share, a 122% increase. We are pleased to show this dividend growth and reward our shareholders. This quarter, we were very active in optimizing our capital structure and reducing our capital costs. We refinanced several tranches of term loans, bonds and even preferred equity, which totaled more than $5.3 billion of capital cumulatively and should reduce our annual interest and coupon obligations by more than $100 million. We added a new $1.5 billion term loan against our nine LNG carriers, which had previously been funded by cash. We appreciate our capital partners and the team who has worked tirelessly to bring all these transactions together. Venture Global has now raised or refinanced more than $103 billion of capital. Moving to page 7.

Our contracted position for 2026 has increased markedly to over 91% of the portfolio from the 84% previously reported on our first quarter earnings call in May. The 127 cargoes produced in the second quarter were at the high end of our expected production range, and we are tightening and raising the midpoint of the cargo range for the full year. While normal seasonality does impact production during warmer months, I do think it is worth noting that we have made operational and capital investments to reduce the adverse impact of summer temperatures, which you can see is demonstrated in our relatively stable production profile.

Rather than artificially increasing LNG production by deferring maintenance to capitalize on stronger market demand, our solid production performance during the summer months reflects our ongoing focus on innovation and operational improvement. In fact, instead of postponing maintenance, we completed significant planned work during the quarter, including hot gas path inspections on the gas turbines at Calcasieu Pass, activities that would typically require substantial production downtime at most LNG facilities. Given our modular configuration and built-in redundancies, the impact of maintenance on our LNG production was inconsequential. Importantly, we are still early in our optimization journey and expect to debottleneck and deliver further enhancements to our output and operational performance over the coming years. Turning to page 8, our in-house engineering procurement and construction team is working hard to safely keep CP2 on time and on budget.

Now, just over a year from FID, which was July of last year, July 28th, the project has roofs raised on all four LNG storage tanks, 16 fabricated liquefaction modules on site, and five of the gas and steam turbines that made up the power plant on foundations. For those power plants, we are assembling our heat recovery steam generators, the HRSG, off-site at our Morgan City facility in Louisiana. We have now built and transported five HRSGs to CP2. You can see one of them arriving and on the barge at CP2 in the picture here, which is no small task as they are nine stories tall and each weigh more than 1,500 tons. This is the first time we have built our own HRSGs, which are some of the largest modular HRSGs ever built.

By taking this scope in-house and managed by our internal EPC team, we have removed one of the major bottlenecks in our construction schedule, which should streamline our timeline to first LNG. On page 9, we have our bolt-on expansions at CP2 and Plaquemines. In May, we filed an application with FERC for the expansion of CP2, which would be entirely within the existing CP2 footprint. We were pleased to receive a pre-filing waiver from FERC and have already ordered long lead equipment, such as power modules and liquefaction trains, from our longstanding partners at Baker Hughes. We expect to make a final investment decision on the 10 MTPA expansion in early 2027, with first LNG production at the CP2 expansion in late 2028. For the Plaquemines expansion, you can see the first phase of our bolt-on expansion plans depicted on the slide.

As previously disclosed, we expect the first phase to include eight liquefaction trains producing 6.4 MTPA of LNG. We filed to permit the full 31 MTPA expansion of Plaquemines to be constructed in multiple phases late last year and are targeting FID in the first half of next year, with production from phase one in 2029. To facilitate the expansion of Plaquemines, we expect to build a new pipeline to North Louisiana called Cloud Connector, and once producing from phase one, our runway production across all three projects is expected to be approximately 85 MTPA. As you can see on page 10, we currently have around 53 of this 85 MTPA committed under long and medium-term contracts. Notably, 100% of our nameplate capacity across our first three projects is contracted.

The additional 32 MTPA available for marketing is comprised of excess capacity in the addition of the CP2 and Plaquemines phase one bolt-on expansions. We continue to maintain a portfolio approach and anticipate contracting the majority of this capacity through both a mix of long-term agreements to support new financing and medium-term contracts designed to enhance returns and retain flexibility. To help understand the portfolio approach I just described and the option value it creates for Venture Global, on page 12, we show the frequency distribution of implied liquefaction fees between the emergence of shale gas into the U.S. market from 2010 to today. As you can see, after adjusting for the cost of gas, as well as conservative shipping and logistics costs, the average liquefaction fee would be over $6 per MMBTU.

While that does include several periods of significantly elevated prices, it also includes the COVID-related downturn of 2020, and even adjusting for those, the median fee would still be nearly twice that of a 20-year contract price. Those periods of elevated pricing take place a few times a decade. This substantial spread with asymmetric extrinsic option value highlights the premium available for short- and intermediate-term contracts in the LNG market. We believe our contracting approach and balanced portfolio provide downside production with the ability to monetize our available LNG capacity at long-term rates, establishing a pricing floor. At the same time, our blended portfolio approach provides flexibility to capture materially better returns on medium-term contracts and remain in a position to harvest outsized returns on shorter-dated contracting during periods of cyclical strength.

These consistently higher blended returns influence our capital allocation decisions as we believe retaining and monetizing the additional upside option value from a balanced portfolio dramatically enhances the cash flow and absolute value of our LNG assets. Turning to page 13. While LNG supply has of course been impacted by the events in the Middle East, demand has been resilient. As you can see, most of the substantial Asian markets have experienced a meaningful rebound in imports following the initial impact of elevated prices, with recent months higher on a year-over-year basis. High temperatures in both Asia and Europe have driven greater power demand. Industrial demand from sectors like the fertilizer market has also proven to be inelastic. Importantly, as you can see here, European gas inventories remain well below normal levels, which will likely drive higher winter demand and pricing.

In fact, Europe is increasingly approaching a point at which it is exposed to severe winter weather, dangerously exposed, both physically and economically. I’ll turn the call over to our CFO, Jack Thayer, who will review the quarterly performance, provide an overview of our project performance, and discuss our updated financial guidance.

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: Thank you, Mike, and good morning to those of you on the line. I will be referring to the Venture Global, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. The 10-Q is available on our website, and some of the key results are summarized on page 15 of the presentation. During this call, I will highlight results I believe are salient to this audience, and I encourage you to review the entirety of our financial statements in detail. Beginning with revenue, our top line was $4.6 billion for the second quarter of 2026, a $1.5 billion or 48% increase from the $3.1 billion during the equivalent period in 2025. This increase in revenue was driven by $1.3 billion from higher sales volumes, 466 TBtu in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 329 TBtu in the second quarter of 2025, and $102 million from higher net LNG sales prices.

Our income from operations was $2.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a $1.2 billion or 111% increase from $1.0 billion in the second quarter of 2025. This shift was primarily driven by the higher sales volumes I previously mentioned, augmented by higher LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas. Our operating and maintenance costs were $118 million higher respectively year-over-year through the increased commissioning work at Plaquemines and from more Venture Global-owned ships being in operation. G&A expenses were largely unchanged year-over-year, despite a larger headcount. Our development costs were lower than the same period last year, as we were able to capitalize more costs associated with CP2 and our pipeline and bolt-on expansions.

Our net income attributable to common stockholders, which we refer to as net income, was $1.3 billion for the second quarter of 2026, a $979 million or 266% increase from the $368 million in the second quarter of 2025. Higher interest expense was offset by favorable changes in interest rate swaps, and income taxes were higher due to an increase in net income. Shifting to consolidated adjusted EBITDA, we earned $2.5 billion during the second quarter of 2026, a $1.1 billion or 79% increase from $1.4 billion in the second quarter of 2025. This increase in consolidated adjusted EBITDA was driven chiefly by higher sales volumes, as well as higher LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas. Our EBITDA margin was 54% for the quarter, as higher volumes and better pricing was not accompanied by commensurate increases in costs.

Once again, this quarter, our treasury team was busy refinancing $5.3 billion since our last earnings call. In June, we refinanced $2.25 billion of Venture Global, Inc. senior secured notes, and we raised $1.5 billion in vessel financing. In July, together with our partners at WhiteWater, we repriced the $1.07 billion senior secured term loan B. As Mike mentioned earlier, we are expecting our refinancing efforts thus far in 2026 to have saved more than $100 million in annual interest costs and preferred dividend coupons. As you see on page 16, we are providing a consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $8.7 billion-$9.1 billion for 2026, which is up from $8.2 billion-$8.5 billion when we reported in May and conservatively reflects the current market and volatility. This range contemplates a current market liquefaction fee of $12.50-$13.50 per MMBTU for cargoes remaining to be sold in 2026.

This conservative range represents a modest discount to the current TTF and JKM forward price expectations. On average, if fixed liquefaction fees over the remainder of 2026 increase or decrease by $1 per MMBTU, we expect our consolidated adjusted EBITDA range to adjust accordingly by $180 million-$210 million, reflecting our accelerated pace of contracting and our 91% contracted position. Lastly, before turning it back to Mike, on page 17, we walk through the capital allocation priorities we laid out last quarter: funding expansion, strategic deleveraging, and balance sheet optimization and return of capital. First, as we discussed, we are making excellent progress not only in the construction of CP2, but increasingly on the bolt-on additions at both CP2 and Plaquemines, having already made material equity contributions to both expansions. Second, with respect to the balance sheet, I just walked through some of the refinancing measures we have taken.

Through July of this year, we have repaid $1.4 billion of debt, including about $1.3 billion of the bridge loan at CP2 and reduced our annual interest and coupon obligations by more than $100 million. With COD of Plaquemines in Q4 and with the start of production at CP2 next year, we anticipate positive developments with respect to our credit ratings. Lastly, this morning we announced a 122% increase in our dividend to $0.04 per quarter. Over the longer term, we believe our portfolio of high return bolt-on opportunities will remain an attractive avenue for future investment. However, the relative scale of the incremental capital investment is expected to decline compared to our growing cash flows, creating more opportunities for other capital allocation priorities. Specifically, we plan to continue to retire and refinance higher cost capital as bonds mature or are callable.

We are confident in the resiliency of our cash flows and expect to grow our dividend over time. Additionally, we may also pursue share repurchases as other incremental means of enhancing shareholder value and returns as our capital program matures. I will now turn the call back over to Mike.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you, Jack. At this point, we would like to open up the call for Q&A.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Manav Gupta with UBS. Your line is open.

Manav Gupta, Analyst, UBS: Congrats on a good quarter.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thanks, Manav.

Manav Gupta, Analyst, UBS: I just wanted to talk a little about. Also, congratulations on raising the dividend. Those things matter, and your comments on potential share buybacks. Those are all very positive. I wanted to talk a little about your guidance raise. Can you help us understand some of the drivers of the guidance raise? Because the way we are thinking about it, sir, is you started the year at a guidance, and now this guidance is almost 60% higher than your original guidance. So if you can help us understand drivers of the new guidance raise here.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Sure. Thanks, Manav. The basis, obviously, of all of it is the execution by the team and the production at our facilities. We continue to be confident of the quality of the continued production that we expect for the balance of the year. I made a few comments about how we are able, through significant maintenance activity, continue to produce well. We highlighted those comments because it really is a pure kind of operational demonstration of the uniqueness of the configuration of our facilities, where we have multiple gas turbines, not embedded directly in large liquefaction trains, but in multiple power plants that provide the electricity for electrically driven compressors in our liquefaction trains. So it gives us maximum redundancy and availability even through maintenance. So we’re pleased to see a demonstration of that execution.

We obviously have had a lot of volatility this year in the macro markets for LNG pricing. The combination of just confidence in production and what we are anticipating conservatively, as Jack said, the markets to look like for the remaining of the year, feel good about increasing the absolute level of the cash EBITDA generated for the year. Which on the upper end, moving past $9 billion is something that we’re very proud of.

Manav Gupta, Analyst, UBS: Thank you, sir. My second follow-up here is obviously the global markets are disrupted. You are one of the few people who is ramping the projects absolutely at the right time, so you can supply more next year. I’m just trying to understand, you have quantified on slide 16 the impact of $1 liquefication on 2026 EBITDA $180 to $10. I’m not looking for exact number, but how should we think about this number as things stand? How much would the liquefication fees $1 movement change 2027 EBITDA? If you could give us some puts and takes on that’d be very good. Thank you.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: I think, Manav, on page 23 in the presentation, we actually answer that question for not just 2027, but 2028 and 2029. Do we go to 2030 as well?

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: No, we stop at 2029.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yeah.

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: It is $650-$700.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Is it? Okay.

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: for 2027.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yeah. That’s a great chart because it shows the magnitude of the growth that’s coming just from executing on CP2 and the brownfield expansion at CP2 and the first small expansion at Plaquemines.

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: And importantly, Mike, it contemplates the COD at Plaquemines phases one and two as well.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Correct

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: With a greater contracted position, we’re still maintaining significant optionality and exposure to the prevailing markets in a positive fashion.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Correct. As of now, we remain on schedule for, and expect to be, for Plaquemines CODs phases 1 and phase 2.

Manav Gupta, Analyst, UBS: Thank you so much.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thanks, Manav.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next question comes from the line of John Mackay with Goldman Sachs. John, your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, John Mackay.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hey, good morning, Mike’s team. Appreciate the time.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Sorry.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: This morning.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yep.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: I wanted to pick up on some of the macro comments. Look, I think the disruption in the Middle East has gone on longer than we all would’ve anticipated. I’d be curious to hear from you just how your customer conversations have changed over the past, let’s say, couple months, and how that is playing into your view around forward selling cargoes, either on a prompt basis or maybe out to some of these five-year contracts. Thanks.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: It is a really interesting question. We obviously are thinking about it every day. If you go back to right before the recent conflict started in the Straits of Hormuz, if you recall the net spreads in the market that we were realizing were $5-$6, closer to $6 net spreads prior to shooting. At that point, we were very busy on 20-year contracting activity and discussions. We have continued to be very busy, and are active in actually a significant number of negotiations on a 20-year contract basis. You have seen us do several billion dollars of five-year deals. We continue to have interactive in those discussions as well, and expect to have multiple deals completed between now and the end of the year. Obviously, that is a forward-looking statement. It is busier.

I would say there has been an uptick in interest on the five-year term and less in the last 90 days. As this conflict has become more difficult to predict, I think there has been a, I was going to say slight, but maybe a little more than slight uptick in shorter-term contracting interest.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: I appreciate the thoughts there. Second quick one from me, going back to that kind of forward look on the volume outlook and the margin impact. The volume impact is up relative to how you framed it up last quarter. Can you just walk us through that? Is that FID timing? Is that CP2 in service timing? What are the plus and takes?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: For the increase in the number of cargoes? Is that your question?

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Correct. Yeah.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: I think it is really just as we continue to progress through the later stages of phase one of Plaquemines, our competence as we continue to operate there gets better. And obviously, we continuously generate mass amounts of processed data as well that supports a lot of our analytics about forward production. As we described, I think in July, we passed our 1,000th cargo. So there is a huge increase every month in our operational knowledge that allows us to make those refinements. That includes having views, obviously, on planned maintenance that we perform frequently. As we get through that activity, that also gives us more clarity on what forward production can be. We mentioned a little bit in the comments about increased confidence in warm weather production at Plaquemines, and that is something we are very pleased with, and that is a part of it as well.

John Mackay, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: All right. That is great. Appreciate the time.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yep.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next question comes from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Jeananne.

Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst, Bank of America: Hi, good morning. Thanks for the new slide around historical distribution of the liquefaction fee and the discussion around the balanced portfolio approach. What is kind of your latest thinking around your ideal steady state mix of long-term contracts, medium-term contracts, and uncontracted in your book, and how far away is it from what your mix looks like today?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Our plan and our target is to largely contract, which we’ve already done in the nameplate capacity. We’ll largely contract all of the excess capacity production on a multi-year basis, and we have several years of commissioning cargoes, both from CP2 and from the bolt-ons that are coming. Those, for several years, will give us nice exposure to that upside option value that that slide refers to. Ideally, and we expect to be able to do it, the excess capacity will be largely all contracted on a multi-year basis, where when you look at the total portfolio, we are overweighted in 20-year contracts. While we are going to do more 20-year contracts, our emphasis is going to shift more to much shorter contracts for the balance of that portfolio to drive the much higher price.

The data in that slide, we think is really fascinating in that it really explains a lot of the portion of the market that’s occupied by the trading companies that contract and buy from producers and on-sell to the market. When you look at over the course of that time, many of those traders started out as primarily building and producing their own facilities and volumes. Since then, have grown bigger businesses in contracting from other producers that are taking the balance sheet risk to build that capacity. It’s exactly for the math that’s shown over the last 16 years here, that there’s more than double the value over the last 16 years for having shorter term contracts than the 20-year contracts.

We think 16 years is a great data set, and we think that some version of that going forward is going to continue and be reflected in pricing. So the combination of us contracting all of our nameplate capacity, which supports investment grade credit ratings treatment at our projects, but retaining more of the extra production capacity that we have on a shorter than 20-year capacity, captures that higher option value and is the right combination of portfolio mix that will maximize the return over time, and it’s been the case for the last 16 years. We think it will continue, and I think the behavior and activity of the very large trading market demonstrates that the market thinks that’s the case too.

Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst, Bank of America: That makes sense. Thank you. Did the Plaquemines phase one bolt-on timing FID move up from just 2027 to now first half of 2027? What drove that? Was it customer demand?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: For a while, we’ve had our eyes focused on the first half of 2027. We think the customer demand can comfortably support that.

Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst, Bank of America: Great, thanks.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: The constraint is not going to be the timing of the offtake contracts.

Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Thanks a lot, Mike.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thanks, Jeananne.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next question comes from the line of Elvira Scotto with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hey. Good morning, everyone.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Elvira.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: I just wanted to follow up on a couple of the questions. I guess the first one, on the expansion projects that you are going to do on CP and Plaquemines, what is your targeted contracting strategy there? Are those expansion projects going to be long-term contracts or a mix?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: That’s a great question. It’ll be a mix. When you look at the timing that we just described, you’ll notice that they come online fairly quickly. Because they’re a true brownfield that benefit significantly from the existing installed facilities. The time from FID to production is much shorter, even faster than what we’ve been able to achieve to date. And may in fact set new records on timing. It gives us extra flexibility on the mix of term that we need for the contracts, and doesn’t require as many of those to be 20-year contracts. So we will do some 20-year contracts, but it’ll have more midterm contracts than projects have been able to execute successfully in the past.

Generically, the project finance and the LNG business is designed around needing $10 billion to construct facilities, and you do not get any revenue or profits for six, seven, eight years on average. That securitizing 20-year contracts and amortizing construction loan bank debt over 20 years is a requirement to make the math work. When you are 18 to 20 months between FID and production, it is a much different formula and gives you more flexibility in financing, and also creates an opportunity to drive much, much more significant returns on capital.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Great. Thank you for that. I know you talked about this a little bit, but maybe go into a little bit more detail. You increased your dividend 122% to $0.04 a share. What was the rationale for that increase at this time? You talked about your broader capital allocation strategy, but given this increase, how should we think about the dividend going forward?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: A lot of it was largely just we were significantly below the rest of the group on an absolute and a percentage yield basis. Even after this increase, that is the case, and that is obviously just because we only recently started a dividend, and so it is just part of the catch-up. Our plan is continue to grow the dividend over time. It is a reflection also of our maturity, of our growth in our businesses. As we pass $60 billion in assets, and we feel good about the progress of turning on CP2 and a giant increase in the execution of all the 20-year contracts that are associated with CP2 that we feel very comfortable in absorbing that.

As Jack described in his comments, in the future too, that could be combined with not just dividend increases, but also potential share buybacks that obviously will be part of the discussion as Jack described.

Elvira Scotto, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Great. Thank you very much.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next call comes from the line of Zach Van Everen with TPH Research. Your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Zach.

Zach Van Everen, Analyst, TPH Research: Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe the first one, we saw Williams sanction a project, the Delta Access project, that does appear to be heading the direction of Blackfin. I was curious if that is going to help feed current or future feed gas, or if your own Cloud Connector pipeline is enough on the pipeline side.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Jack, do you want to take that question?

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: Sure. As you surmise, that is headed directly towards our Blackfin facility, and we would expect that pipeline to connect into our Cloud Connector pipe, and we have capacity on that pipe.

Zach Van Everen, Analyst, TPH Research: Got it. Makes sense. Then maybe around that same theme, we have seen a significant increase in power demand and power projects around Texas and Louisiana. How do you guys think about supply contracts with producers, maybe with longer terms, just to make sure you have not only the FT, but also the supply secured for your contracts into the future?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: I’ll make some comments, and Jack, if I miss some things, jump in. We’re always in the market negotiating and contracting a mixed blend of gas supply, and we do it opportunistically. We keep a careful watch on that. Our view is that there’s plenty of gas to support the domestic demand, both for LNG domestic production and also incremental demand that we’ll layer on in years to come from data centers. We’re more focused on the interconnect and transportation and pipeline capacity to access the plentiful gas. You’ve seen us make significant and meaningful investments in this area and we’ll continue to do some of that. That was part of the long-range planning that you saw play out for us with the significant investment in our nitrogen removal unit at CP2. Several of those large units are sitting on foundations.

Last Saturday, I saw the second rolling onto foundations down at CP2. In addition, the longer CPX lateral, which approaches 100 miles down to Silsbee, and our beautiful Blackfin pipeline that we partnered with WhiteWater that heads to Katy and our transportation agreements that take us all the way to the Waha. We’ve been focused on this, I think, a few years ahead of the rest of the market and feel in a very strong position and continue to spend a significant amount of our time on medium and long-term planning on that front. Jack, do you have some add to that?

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: Just two quick points, Mike. That was a comprehensive answer. First of all, power plants relative to LNG facilities are relatively small consumers of natural gas. I would say roughly less than 10%, relative to an LNG facility, is consumed at a power plant. I think the other comment I’d make is the majority of our pipes are intrastate, which allows us to control 100% of the capacity on those pipes, whether it’s our own pipes or whether we’re contracting for significant capacity on laterals that connect into our facilities. So, the amount of dedicated supply and dedicated delivery that’s coming to our facilities, we think, gives us a significant competitive advantage relative to others who are not spending the money to build that dedicated connectivity and are looking to contract on it on a relatively short-term basis.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: We’ll be more exposed to competing for access to gas over time. We think it’s a real strength of our portfolio.

Zach Van Everen, Analyst, TPH Research: Awesome. I appreciate the detailed answer. Thanks, guys.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Craig.

Craig Shere, Analyst, Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Good morning. I want to pick up on John’s contracting question a bit. I want to confirm that the quote, "multiple more deals anticipated by year-end 2026" are indeed 3 to 5 years. And given that kind of increased hedging through decade end, could that position you for more of a multi-year guidance and capital allocation outlook by first half 2027?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: We’re uniquely in the market now, able to talk to customers about almost any term that customers have need for. Because as we are bringing on Plaquemines to COD, we still retain a large volume of capacity that’s not contracted on a 20-year basis. And as CP2 comes online, that’s going to increase dramatically. And as you will note from our comments in the presentation today, we have what we think are very attractive schedules for the CP2 and Plaquemines bolt-ons to come online in 2028 and 2029 as well. And so it gives us tremendous availability that we think is having material positive impacts on the price of LNG globally and gas. And so, yes, we’re expecting multiple deals of varied terms this year and next year and the year after, of course.

We’ve been waiting and watching progress on our projects to get to this point in our growth that would enable us to have that advantage. And the slide that shows the option value, what number is that, Ben? What page number is the, I love that. That’s my favorite slide in the deck.

Jonathan Thayer, Chief Financial Officer (Jack), Venture Global Inc.: It’s slide 12.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Slide 12, that shows the data for the last 16 years on what pricing has looked at on an average and a medium basis over that period. It shows that there is tremendous option value in our configuration and execution that frankly, I do not think is captured in our value at all. Because we, like the rest of the market, have contracted the nameplate capacity of our production. But because of our configuration and our ability to convert the massive amount of data we generate into process engineering that produces significant extra volumes, gives us that upside option value that over time, long periods of time, have proven extremely valuable and well above the long-term contract prices. As you include just construction cost inflation in projected periods, you have additional floor price support that is still coming.

In that, we think that that, as I described earlier in my answer, shows up in the behavior of all the trading companies that continue to grow their contracted portfolios. Rather than deploying their balance sheet capacity and capital in building mostly new production capacity, they continue to allocate more of their business and contracting from other producers, and on selling it much higher prices than the long-term contract prices. There is a lot of data, really all the data shows that at least in the last 16 years, has been the correct strategy. I answered a lot more than you asked there.

Craig Shere, Analyst, Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Understood.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Sorry, Craig. But in your media training, they tell you to do that. But part of it, I covered in there your question.

Craig Shere, Analyst, Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: We agree with the upside not captured in market value, but believe the three to five-year contracting does start to capture that. To the degree the post Iran conflict medium-term contracting increases relative to what had been open cargoes, relative to what was shorter term contracted before. We just felt that opens up the opportunity to start thinking about a more clarified multi-year outlook that could help unleash some of that upside we were just talking about. Maybe you could kind of provide thoughts on that. But to finish-

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Sure

Craig Shere, Analyst, Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: off my second question. Some of these figures I think are starting to bleed together a bit. You mentioned 6 MTPA of medium-term guided contracting, but I think that includes the 1.5 MTPA of Calcasieu Pass contracts that includes 1 MTPA rolling off in April 2028. So, you could be legging into some nice medium-term margin uplift on a variety of levels here.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: No, we agree and we think about it every day as we plan and schedule our investments in growth. I think the first stop in thinking about your comments on the multi-year projection is really what the actual physical production capacity curve looks like. We load roughly, what are we doing? 43 cargos a month or so today. That’s going to more than double as we turn on CP2 and add these bolt-ons in 2.5 years. So that’s a massive increase on already a very large LNG production business in a short amount of time to have a doubling in scale. You can layer on multiple pricing scenarios on top of that. On page 23, we’re trying to show what that looks like. We’re coming upon, as we turn on the facilities, tremendous increase in production capacity.

We think the way that the market, meaning the commercial contracting customer market, is executing their portfolio strategies shows that there’s a more bullish view than a pessimistic view on expected prices that we believe will drive very nice returns, very, very nice returns on our investments and produce a lot of increases in cash generation in the next few years.

Craig Shere, Analyst, Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Thank you.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: Our next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One. Your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Wade.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: Good morning, everyone. Appreciate y’all taking my questions. I’m just kind of curious if you maybe could discuss what might be holding you guys back from maybe narrowing the timeline on CP2 startup or moving it forward, what those toggles might be?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: These are very large, complex construction projects that have tens of thousands of scopes. We are just being disciplined and being conservative. The market, you have seen how we have executed on a timing basis. The first LNG, first Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines was 29 and 30 months respectively. We have done it before. The first LNG train, as you have heard us say and know, at CP2 is going to be the 55th train that we have done. The teams have executed these configurations a lot now, and it is going extremely well from an execution standpoint. We are just being disciplined and conservative at this point on how we are providing guidance. Obviously, we are very careful when we say the second half of next year. In our definition, the second half of next year starts July 1 and goes to December 31 of next year. That is a pretty broad range.

We are being precise in the language. We are also sprinkling in, and you saw it in the commentary here, the data points about the progress at the site. July 28, just a few days ago, a little less than two weeks ago, was the one-year anniversary at CP2. Most projects after 12 months may still be finishing engineering and doing test piles. We have complete modules sitting on foundations being integrated and having cables pulled. CP2, knock on wood, in addition to our focus on safety, is progressing as well as a LNG facility has ever progressed. So we are being disciplined. We obviously know as the market investors contemplate the next couple of years, the significance of the timing of when CP2 turns on. It is certainly tempting for us to provide more detail on it. But for the moment, we are being conservative.

It is going very well.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: Thanks for that, Mike. That all makes sense. So there is some upside to slide 23 is what you are telling me. Just switching gears a little bit, if you do not mind, just to maybe dovetail on some of the prior questions on contracting. I am speaking maybe more industry-wide, not poking at you guys specifically here.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yeah.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: But it seemed to be sort of a lack of, or fewer longer-term, 20-year contracts signed this year, just industry-wide, at least from what I’ve seen.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Yes.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: I’m just wondering if you could maybe give us a little bit more granularity on what your kind of commercial conversations are like, and to the extent you can sort of parse that out by customer type, region, developed world, developing world. That would be helpful. Thank you.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: There definitely is rhythm to the conversations with customers, not just for us, but the whole market. When you do multi-billion dollar, 20-year contracts, they typically happen after years of conversations. So they very often are the timing of concluding those contracts are not being driven by current macro environment, but just the byproduct of multi-year conversations and contract roll-off by utility customers that are doing very long-range planning. So sometimes you can’t, and you shouldn’t read too much into the macro relationship with contract announcements. For us, the contracting activity has remained very steady all the way from last year to today, and we feel really good about the cadence of those conversations and matching up with how we want to continue to contract our portfolio. It’s pretty broadly distributed between Europe and Asia.

Europe was running a little bit ahead, I think, last year of the pace of Asian contracting, and I think today the Asian contracting, this is very general, has caught up with kind of the number of and level of interest from Europe.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: Awesome. Thank you again. Appreciate all the color.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Mm-hmm. On the demand side, it remains very, very positive. You continue to see periodically new announcements on regas terminals and power plants. China continues to make very, very significant progress in construction of regas terminal capacity. That’s a very, very significant percentage of the total global LNG market. You’re starting to see a lot more global announcements of very large-scale data center demand, a large portion of which will be gas-fired electricity.

There’s still a lot of growth coming internationally in our view, on top of the very strong trend being driven by a growing global middle class that has the same typical demands that we’ve seen over decades as the rest of the world that as you start with a lot of coal production capacity and layer in more gas on top of it. We see that strong trend continuing and new demand on top of it that will be significant in certain markets for data center demand.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: Great. All makes sense. Thanks again. Appreciate it.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you.

Wade Suki, Analyst, Capital One: Have a great day.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: You too.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: We have time for one more question. Our final question comes from the line of Sunil Sibal with Seaport Global. Your line is open.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Good morning, Sunil.

Sunil Sibal, Analyst, Seaport Global: Hey, good morning, and thanks for the time this morning. I wanted to understand a little bit about the longer-term capital allocation strategy. Obviously, you have raised dividends, and I think you also talked about share buybacks, and then you have talked about investment grade at the full consolidated level also in the past. I was curious, especially when you look at stock buybacks versus investment grade ratings, how do you prioritize those two? Then maybe in the context of that, you obviously have in the capital structure some junior data also. How do you think about that also in that context?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: As Jack mentioned in his comments, the growth of our LNG production and how that translates in coming years to increased cash generation. As I described a moment ago, in the next couple of years or so, we will double from our current production capacity. Even in a pretty broad range of sale contract pricing, we generate a lot of cumulative cash, tens of billions of dollars of cumulative cash in the next few years. It gives us the cash generation that supports continued growth that we have been describing, but it also supports investment-grade path at the project levels and at the parent level. It supports dividend growth and supports stock buybacks in the future. It is just the incremental scale of the new production that we have described is just getting smaller on a relative basis to the scale of our earning assets.

We are passing $61 billion, $62 billion of assets, and if you look at, I think we have added $8 billion plus this year, and year-on-year basis, around $15 billion. That general path is going to continue for a few years. We just start building a big earning asset base that generates a lot of cash. If you look at our absolute levels, the first cargo we loaded was the first week of March 2022, and here we are in 2026, projecting $9 billion of cash EBITDA this year. That is material. It is a big amount of LNG volume.

Sunil Sibal, Analyst, Seaport Global: Understood. Then on the arbitration on Calcasieu Pass, any update there? Obviously, you can’t comment on ongoing arbitrations, but I was curious, with what we are seeing in the market, does that help or does that change your view in any way in the last few months with regard to settling of some of those ongoing arbitrations?

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: We don’t control the schedule of the arbitration processes. Those are controlled away from us. We expect resolution of the next one, we thought it would be in the first half of the year. We still expect it before the end of the year. Then we have the next one after that, we have a hearing that begins at the end of November, and will extend into next year. Again, if we don’t settle. You’ve seen us obviously settle several of them successfully, and we remain open and constructive on settling what remains outstanding, and we remain optimistic on being successful in working through them.

Sunil Sibal, Analyst, Seaport Global: Okay. Thank you.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thanks, Sunil.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Sabel, CEO, for closing remarks.

Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, Venture Global Inc.: Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time this morning and look forward to answering follow-up questions and look forward to seeing many of you in person in coming months.

Trevor, Conference Call Operator, Venture Global Inc.: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.