VG

On August 11, Venture Global (NYSE:VG) reported its Q2 2026 earnings. While the text implies an established corporate history, Venture Global completed its IPO in January 2025, making this only its second Q2 report as a publicly traded company. The company posted its largest quarterly EBITDA ever, raised its full-year guidance for the second time this year, and lifted its dividend by triple digits. But the stock still carries one of the most lopsided sentiment profiles on the market, and that gap between the fundamentals and the trading floor is the real story here. The headline number was $2.5 billion in consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026, a 79% jump from the $1.4 billion posted in the same quarter of 2025. Revenue followed the same trajectory, climbing 48% year over year to $4.6 billion, with $1.3 billion of that increase coming from higher sales volumes and the rest from better pricing. Venture Global shipped 466 TBtu of LNG in the quarter, up from 329 TBtu a year earlier, and net income attributable to common stockholders came in at $1.3 billion, up 266% from $368 million. That kind of operating leverage let management raise 2026 EBITDA guidance to a range of $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion, up from the $8.2 billion to $8.5 billion range given back in May. The company also exported its 1,000th cargo, just four years after its first shipment in March 2022, while keeping 91% of its 2026 volumes contracted, up from 84% at the start of the year. On the balance sheet side, Venture Global refinanced $5.3 billion of debt and preferred equity during the quarter, part of more than $103 billion raised or refinanced since the company's founding, a move management says will cut annual interest and coupon costs by more than $100 million. The board followed that up by raising the quarterly dividend 122% to $0.04 per share. Not everything in the release points in one direction. Management kept its EBITDA guidance range wider than usual, citing LNG price volatility tied to events in the Middle East, and said it would only narrow that range after the third quarter. The current guidance assumes a liquefaction fee of $12.50 to $13.50 per MMBtu for uncontracted 2026 cargoes, and every $1 swing in that fee moves EBITDA by $180 million to $210 million, a reminder of how exposed results still are to global gas prices. Much of the company's future growth also sits years out. A final investment decision on the 10 MTPA CP2 expansion isn't expected until early 2027, with first production not until late 2028, while the Plaquemines expansion is targeting an FID in the first half of 2027 and Phase 1 output only starting in 2029. Of the roughly 85 MTPA of run-rate production expected once all three projects and their bolt-ons are online, only about 53 MTPA is currently committed under long- and medium-term contracts, leaving 32 MTPA still to be marketed. And despite the dividend increase, the payout remains modest at $0.04 per share, even as the company keeps tapping debt and equity markets to fund expansion. Hedge fund ownership of Venture Global climbed from 22 funds to 50 quarter over quarter, which points to institutions building positions rather than trimming them. That accumulation is happening even as short interest sits at 80.57% of the float, a level that signals heavy organized skepticism and a stock crowded with bearish bets. Meanwhile, shares trade at a forward P/E of just 9.41, as of August 19, a multiple that assumes little of the growth management just described. Venture Global just delivered a quarter that most companies would call a best-case scenario, with record EBITDA, a raised outlook and a much larger dividend. Yet the stock's setup, a cheap multiple, growing institutional interest and an enormous short position, suggests the market hasn't fully settled on what to make of it. For the bulls, the next test is whether contracted volumes and cargo output keep climbing while CP2 and Plaquemines expansions stay on schedule. While we acknowledge the potential of VG as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 Best Future Stocks to Buy Under $10 and 12 Best Performing Semiconductor Stocks to Invest In. Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. ET Senior Vice President of Investor Relations - Benjamin Nolan Chief Executive Officer, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder - Michael Sabel Chief Financial Officer - Jonathan Thayer Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Venture Global, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Ben Nolan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ben, please go ahead. Benjamin Nolan: Thank you, Trevor. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Venture Global, Inc.'s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm joined this morning by Mike Sabel, Venture Global's CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder; Jack 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 Investors 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, 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'll now turn the call over to Mike Sabel. Michael Sabel: 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'll 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 to $9.1 billion, from $8.2 billion to $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 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'm also proud to highlight that we exported our 1,000th cargo just 4 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. And 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 9 LNG carriers, which have 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 28, the project has roofs raised on all 4 LNG storage tanks, 16 fabricated liquefaction modules on site and 5 with 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 HRSGs, off-site at our Morgan City facility in Louisiana. We have now built and transported 5 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 9 stories tall and each weighing 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 time line 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 prefiling waiver from FERC and have already ordered long-lead equipment such as power modules and liquefaction trains from our long-standing partners at Baker Hughes. We expect to make a final investment decision on the 10 MTPA expansions 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 8 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 1 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 1, our run rate production across all 3 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 3 projects is contracted. The additional 32 MTPA available for marketing is comprised of excess capacity and the addition of the CP2 and Plaquemines Phase 1 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. And inevitably, 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 protection 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 and 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. Now 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: Thank you, Mike, and good morning to those of you on the line. I'll be referring to the Venture Global, Incorporated 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 (sic) [ $114 million ] higher, respectively, year-over-year due to 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 to 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 Incorporated 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 to $9.1 billion for 2026, which is up from $8.2 billion to $8.5 billion when we reported in May, and conservatively reflects the current market volatility. This range contemplates a current market liquefaction fee of $12.50 to $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 to $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're 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. And 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 of 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 investments. 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'll now turn the call back over to Mike. Michael Sabel: Thank you, Jack. At this point, we would like to open up the call for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Manav Gupta with UBS. Manav Gupta: Congrats on a good quarter. I just wanted to talk a little bit -- 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 bit 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. Michael Sabel: Sure. Thanks, Manav. The basis, obviously, of all of it is our -- the execution by the team and the production at our facilities. And so 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. And we highlighted those comments because it really is 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 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. And 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: My second follow-up here is, obviously, the global markets are disrupted. You are one of the few people who's 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 liquefaction on 2026 EBITDA, $180 million, $210 million. I'm not looking for exact number, but how should we think about this number as things stand? How much would the liquefaction fees $1 movement change 2027 EBITDA? If you could give us some puts and takes on that, that will be very good. Michael Sabel: I think, Manav, on Page 23 in the presentation, we actually answer that question for not just '27 but '28 and '29. And do we go to 2030 as well? Jonathan Thayer: No. It's till 2029. Michael Sabel: Yes. And so it... Jonathan Thayer: It's $650 million to $700 million for '27. Michael Sabel: Yes. 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: And importantly, Mike, it contemplates the COD at Plaquemines Phases 1 and 2 as well. So with a greater contracted position, we're still maintaining significant optionality and exposure to the prevailing markets in a positive fashion. Michael Sabel: Correct. As of now, we remain on schedule for and expect to be for Plaquemines CODs, Phase 1 and Phase 2. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John Mackay with Goldman Sachs. John Mackay: I wanted to pick up on some of the macro comments. Look, I think the disruption in Middle East has gone on longer than we all would have anticipated. I'd be curious to hear from you just how your customer conversations have changed over the past, let's say, couple of months and how that is playing into your view around forward selling cargoes, either on a kind of prompt basis or maybe out to some of these 5-year contracts? Michael Sabel: So it's 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 Strait of Hormuz, and if you recall, the net spreads in the market that we are realizing were $5 to $6, closer to $6 net spreads prior to shooting. At that point, we are very busy on 20-year contracting activity and discussions. And we have continued to be very busy and are active, and actually a significant number of negotiations on 20-year contract basis. You've seen us do several billion dollars of 5-year deals and we continue to have and are active in those discussions as well, and expect to have multiple deals completed between now and the end of the year. Obviously, that's a forward-looking statement. So it's busier. I would say there has been an uptick in interest on the 5-year term and less in the last 90 days. So as this conflict has become more difficult to predict, I think there's been a -- I was going to say slight, but maybe a little more than slight uptick in shorter-term contracting interest. John Mackay: I appreciate the thoughts there. Second quick one for 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 puts and takes? Michael Sabel: For the increase in the number of cargoes, is that your question? John Mackay: Correct. Yes. Michael Sabel: I think it's really just as we continue to progress through the later stages of Phase 1 of Plaquemines, our confidence as we continue to operate there gets better. And obviously, we continuously generate massive amounts of process data as well, that supports a lot of our analytics about production, forward production. And as we described in, I think, in July, we passed our 1,000th cargo. So it's just there's a huge increase every month in our operational knowledge that allows us to make those refinements. And that includes having these, obviously, on planned maintenance that we perform frequently. And 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's something we're very pleased with. And that's a part of it as well. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America. Jean Ann Salisbury: 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? Michael Sabel: So our plan and our target is to largely contract -- and which we've already done on the nameplate capacity, largely contract all of the excess capacity production on a multiyear basis. And we have several years of commissioning cargoes, both from CP2 and from the bolt-ons that are coming. And those for several years will give us nice exposure to that upside option value that, that slide refers to. And so ideally, and we expect to be able to do it, the excess capacity will be largely all contracted on a multiyear basis. Where when you look at the total portfolio, we are overweighted in 20-year contracts. So 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. And as the data in that slide, we think, is really fascinating and that it shows -- 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. And 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, and since then have grown bigger businesses and contracting from other producers that are taking the balance sheet risk to build that capacity. And it's exactly for the map 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. And we think 16 years is a great data set. And we think that, 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 and 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: That makes sense. And did the Plaquemines Phase 1 bolt-on timing FID move up from just like 2027 to now 1 half -- first half of 2027? And what drove that? Was it customer demand? Michael Sabel: We've been -- for a while, we've been looking at -- we've been -- we've had our eyes focused on the first half of 2027. We think the customer demand can comfortably support that. And the constraint is not going to be the timing of the offtake contracts. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Elvira Scotto with RBC Capital Markets. Elvira Scotto: 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 CP2 and Plaquemines, what is your targeted contracting strategy there? Is that -- are those expansion projects going to be long-term contracts or mix? Michael Sabel: There'll be -- that's a great question. It will 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 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 in the LNG business is designed around needing $10 billion to construct facilities and you don't get any revenue or profits for 6, 7, 8 years on average. And 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's 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: Great. And then 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? And then you talked about your broader capital allocation strategy. But given this increase, how should we think about the dividend going forward? Michael Sabel: A lot of it was largely just we were significantly below the rest of the group on an absolute and a percentage yield basis. And even after this increase, that's the case. And that's obviously just because we only recently started a dividend. And so it's just part of the catch-up. And our plan is to continue to grow the dividend over time. It's a reflection also of our maturity of our growth in our businesses as we passed $60 billion in assets and we feel good about the progress of turning on CP2 and the -- and a giant increase in the execution of all the 20-year contracts that are associated with CP2 that we can -- 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. Operator: Our next call comes from the line of Zack Van Everen with TPH Research. Zackery Van Everen: Maybe the first one, we saw Williams sanction a project, the Delta Access project. It does appear to be heading the direction of Plaquemines. 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? Michael Sabel: Jack, do you want to take that question? Jonathan Thayer: Sure. So as you surmised, that's headed directly towards our Plaquemines facility, and we would expect that pipeline to connect into our Cloud Connector pipe, and we have capacity on that pipe. Zackery Van Everen: Got it. Makes sense. And then maybe around that same theme, we've 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 that -- not only the FT, but also the supply secured for your contracts into the future? Michael Sabel: I'll make some comments and Jack, if you want to -- if I miss some things, jump in. The -- we're always in the market negotiating and contracting a mixed blend of gas supply, and we do it opportunistically. And so, yes, 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 will layer on in years to come from data centers. And we're more focused on the interconnect and transportation and pipeline capacity to access the plentiful gas. And so you've seen us make significant and meaningful investments in this area, and we'll continue to do some of that. And 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 on the foundations down at CP2. And 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. And so it's -- 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 kind of medium and long-term planning on that front. Jack, do you have something to add? Jonathan Thayer: Just 2 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 for -- 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, and we'll be more exposed to competing for access to gas over time. We think it's a real strength of our portfolio. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Craig Shere: I want to pick up on John's contracting question a bit. I want to confirm that the "multiple more deals anticipated by year-end '26" are indeed 3 to 5 years. And given that kind of increased hedging through decade-end, could that position you for more of a multiyear guidance and capital allocation outlook by first half '27? Michael Sabel: So 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 '28 and '29 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. So it's -- 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 numbers have been, what page number is the -- I love that. So that's my favorite slide in the deck. Jonathan Thayer: It's Slide 12. Michael Sabel: Slide 12 that shows the data for the last 16 years on what pricing has looked at on an average and a median basis over that period. It shows that there's tremendous option value in our configuration and execution, which, frankly, I don't 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. And as you include just construction cost inflation in projected periods, you have additional floor price support that's still coming. So -- and 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 at higher -- much higher prices than the long-term contract prices. And there's a lot of data and really all the data shows that, that, at least in the last 16 years, has been the correct strategy. I answered a lot, more than you asked there. Sorry, Craig. But in your media training, they tell you to do that. So I heard [indiscernible] in there your question. Craig Shere: We agree with the upside not captured in market value, but believe the 3- to 5-year contracting does start to capture that. And to the degree the post Iran conflict medium-term contracting increases relative to what had been open cargoes relative to what was a shorter-term contracted before, we just felt that, that opens up the opportunity to start thinking about a more clarified multiyear outlook that could help unleash some of that side we're just talking about. Maybe you could kind of provide thoughts on that. But to finish off my second question, some of these figures, I think, are starting to bleed together a bit. You mentioned 6 MTPA medium-term guided contracting. But I think that includes the 1.5 MTPA foundation Calcasieu Pass contracts that includes 1 MTPA rolling off in April '28. So you could be legging into some nice medium-term margin uplift on a variety of levels here. Michael Sabel: 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 the -- your comments on the multiyear projection is really what the actual physical production capacity curve looks like. We load roughly, what are we doing 43 cargoes a month or so today. That's going to more than double as we turn on CP2 and add these bolt-ons in 2, 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. And you can layer on multiple pricing scenarios on top of that. And on Page 23, we're trying to show what that looks like. And we're coming upon, as we turn on the facilities, tremendous increase in production capacity. And 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. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One. Wade Suki: Just kind of curious if you maybe could discuss what might be kind of holding you guys back from maybe narrowing the time line on CP2 startup or moving it forward, what those toggles might be? Michael Sabel: We're -- I mean, these are very large complex construction projects and have tens of thousands of scopes. And so we're just being disciplined and being conservative. The market, you've seen how we've executed on a timing basis, the first LNG for Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines, was 29 and 30 months, respectively. And so we've done it before. The first LNG train, as you've heard us say and know at CP2 is going to be the 55th train that we've done. So the teams have executed these configurations a lot now, and it's going extremely well from an execution standpoint. We're just being disciplined and conservative at this point on how we're providing guidance. Obviously, we're 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's a pretty broad range. And -- but we're being precise in kind of the language. But we're 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 2 weeks ago, was the 1-year anniversary at CP2. And most projects after 12 months may still be doing -- finishing engineering and doing test piles. And we have complete modules sitting on foundations being integrated and having cables pulled. And so CP2, knock on wood, in addition to our focus on safety, is progressing as well as an LNG facility has ever progressed. So we're 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. And so it's certainly tempting for us to provide more detail on it. But for the moment, we're being conservative. But it is going very well. Wade Suki: Mike, that makes sense. So there's some upside to Slide 23, is what you're telling me. Switching gears a little bit, if you don't mind, just to maybe dovetail on some of the prior questions on contracting. And I'm speaking maybe more industry-wide, not talking you guys specifically, but it seems to be sort of a lack of fewer longer-term 20-year contracts signed this year, just industry-wide, at least from what I've seen. Michael Sabel: Yes. Wade Suki: 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. Michael Sabel: There definitely is a rhythm to the conversations with customers, not just for us, but the whole market. When you do multibillion-dollar 20-year contracts, they typically happen after years of conversations. And so they very often are -- the timing of concluding those contracts are not being driven by current macro environment, but just the byproduct of multiyear conversations and contract roll-off by utility customers that are doing very long-range planning. And so you can't -- 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. The -- 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 is -- this is very general, has caught up with kind of the number of -- and level of interest from Europe. The demand -- 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 global -- the total global LNG market. And you're starting to see a lot more global announcements of very large-scale data center demand that a large portion of which will be gas-fired electricity. And so there's still a lot of growth coming internationally in our view on top of the very strong trend being driven by 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 more gas on top of it, and we see that strong trend continuing. And new demand on top of it that will be significant in certain markets for data center demand. Operator: We have time for one more question. Our final question comes from the line of Sunil Sibal with Seaport Global. Sunil Sibal: So I wanted to understand a little bit about the longer-term capital allocation strategy. Obviously, you've raised dividends and I think you also talked about share buybacks. And then you've talked about investment grade at the full consolidated level also in the past. So I was curious, and especially when you look at stock buybacks versus investment-grade ratings, how do you prioritize those 2? And then maybe in the context of that, you obviously have in the capital structure, some junior debt also. So how do you think about that also in that context? Michael Sabel: So as Jack mentioned in his comments, the growth of our LNG production and how that translates in coming years to increase cash generation, as I described a moment ago, in the next couple of years or so, we'll 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. And so it gives us the cash generation that supports continued growth that we've been describing. But it also continue -- it supports investment-grade path at the project levels and at the parent level. It supports dividend growth and support stock buybacks in the future. It's just the incremental scale of the production, the new production that we've described, is just getting smaller on a relative basis to the scale of our earning assets. We're passing $61 billion, $62 billion of assets. And if you look at -- I think we've added $8 billion plus this year and, year-on-year basis, around $15 billion, and that general path is going to continue for a few years. So we just start building a big earning asset base that generates a lot of cash. If you look at our absolute levels, we're -- our first -- the cargo target we loaded was the first week of March 2022. And here we are in 2026 projecting $9 billion of cash EBITDA this year. That's material. And so it's just a -- it's a big, big amount of LNG volume. Sunil Sibal: Understood. And 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? Michael Sabel: So we don't control the schedule of the arbitration processes. Those are controlled away from us. And so 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. And 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. Operator: We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Sabel, CEO, for closing remarks. Michael Sabel: 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. Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Venture Global, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Venture Global wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $409,970!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,381,040!* That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by nearly 5x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2026. This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Venture Global (VG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Venture Global, Inc. VG reported second-quarter 2026 earnings of 51 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 49 cents by 4.08%. The bottom line skyrocketed 264.3% from 14 cents in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenues rose 47.6% year over year to $4.58 billion and topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.50 billion by 1.64%. Higher LNG sales volumes, led by Plaquemines commissioning, and stronger LNG sales prices net of feed gas costs drove the results. Venture Global exported 127 cargoes during the quarter. A Venture Global, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Venture Global, Inc. Quote LNG volumes sold increased 41.7% year over year to 466.4 trillion British thermal units, or TBtu, from 329.2 TBtu. Exported LNG volumes rose 44.6% to 478.3 TBtu from 330.8 TBtu. Plaquemines accounted for 90 cargoes, while Calcasieu Pass contributed 37. The company also exported its 1,000th cargo across its projects, reaching the milestone about four years after its first export. Income from operations climbed 110.8% year over year to $2.19 billion from $1.04 billion. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 78.8% to $2.49 billion from $1.39 billion, with the EBITDA margin reaching 54%. Net income attributable to common stockholders was $1.35 billion compared with $368 million a year earlier. Higher sales volumes and better LNG sales prices net of feed gas costs were the primary contributors to the EBITDA increase. Cost of sales increased to $1.66 billion from $1.42 billion as LNG volumes rose. Operating and maintenance expenses advanced to $335 million from $217 million, reflecting increased commissioning work at Plaquemines and a larger fleet of Venture Global-owned ships in operation. General and administrative expenses were $112 million compared with $103 million a year ago. Development expenses fell to $23 million from $57 million, while depreciation and amortization declined to $260 million from $267 million. Total operating expenses were $2.39 billion versus $2.06 billion. Plaquemines remains in the final stages of construction, commissioning and assurance testing ahead of Phase 1 commercial operations. Venture Global continues to target Phase 1 commercial operations in the fourth quarter of 2026 and Phase 2 in mid-2027. CP2 remains on schedule for first LNG in the second half of 2027. The project had 16 liquefaction modules on site, roofs raised on all four LNG storage tanks, and five gas and steam turbines on foundations. Engineering was 100% complete and procurement stood at 79%. Venture Globalraised its 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance to $8.70-$9.10 billion from $8.20-$8.50 billion. The updated range assumes a fixed liquefaction fee of $12.50-$13.50 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) for remaining unsold cargoes. A $1 per MMBtu change in the fee is expected to move full-year adjusted EBITDA by $180-$210 million. The company expects 500-518 cargoes in 2026, including 149-154 from Calcasieu Pass and 351-364 from Plaquemines. As of Aug. 11, 91% of expected 2026 cargoes were contracted at a weighted-average liquefaction fee of $5.05 per MMBtu, while 75% of expected 2027 cargoes were contracted. Cash and restricted cash totaled $4.60 billion as of June 30, 2026, while total assets reached $61.52 billion. The company also had a $2-billion corporate revolving credit facility that remained undrawn and fully available. Venture Global refinanced $5.30 billion of capital since the start of the second quarter, generating more than $100 million of expected annual interest and coupon savings. The board raised the quarterly dividend 122% to 4 cents per share, payable Sept. 30, to shareholders of record as of Sept. 15. Venture Global currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks from the energy sector are PBF Energy Inc. PBF, HF Sinclair Corporation DINO and Cactus, Inc. WHD. PBF and DINO sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present, and WHD carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks Rank #1 stocks here. PBF reported second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $6.22 per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.05. As of June 30, 2026, PBF had total debt of $1.75 billion, and cash and cash equivalents of $894.1 million. HF Sinclair reported second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $5.31 per share, topping the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.39. As of June 30, 2026, DINO had total debt of $2.77 billion, and cash and cash equivalents of $2.26 billion. Cactus reported second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of 93 cents per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 71 cents. As of June 30, 2026, WHD had cash and cash equivalents of $365 million. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Venture Global, Inc. (VG) : Free Stock Analysis Report PBF Energy Inc. (PBF) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cactus, Inc. (WHD) : Free Stock Analysis Report HF Sinclair Corporation (DINO) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Record quarterly EBITDA of $2.5 billion was driven by significant volume growth and higher net LNG sales prices despite seasonal temperature headwinds. The company's modular configuration and built-in redundancies allowed for major maintenance, including hot gas path inspections, without consequential impacts on production downtime. Management attributes stable production profiles during summer months to specific operational and capital investments designed to mitigate the adverse effects of high temperatures. A 'portfolio approach' to contracting is being utilized to balance long-term agreements for financing stability with short- and medium-term contracts to capture higher market premiums. Internalizing the EPC scope for heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) at CP2 is a strategic move to remove construction bottlenecks and streamline the timeline to first LNG. The company achieved a milestone of 1,000 cargoes within four years, asserting that process improvements will allow the next 1,000 to be exported in a fraction of that time. Full-year 2026 EBITDA guidance was raised to $8.7 billion - $9.1 billion, reflecting a 91% contracted position and conservative market liquefaction fee assumptions of $12.50 to $13.50 per MMBtu. The guidance range remains broader than usual due to outsized LNG price volatility linked to geopolitical events in the Middle East, with plans to tighten the range after Q3. FID for the 10 MTPA CP2 expansion is targeted for early 2027, with first production expected in late 2028, leveraging existing footprint and long-lead equipment already ordered. Plaquemines Phase 1 expansion (6.4 MTPA) is targeting FID in the first half of 2027, supported by the planned Cloud Connector pipeline to North Louisiana. Management anticipates that the relative scale of incremental capital investment will decline compared to growing cash flows, enabling increased dividends and potential share repurchases. Refinanced $5.3 billion in capital during the quarter, which is expected to reduce annual interest and coupon obligations by more than $100 million. The Board approved a 122% increase in the quarterly common dividend to $0.04 per share, signaling confidence in the resiliency of future cash flows. Management highlighted that European gas inventories remain below normal levels, creating a risk of dangerous physical and economic exposure to severe winter weather. Ongoing arbitration regarding Calcasieu Pass remains a factor, with management expecting the next resolution before year-end 2026 while remaining open to settlements. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Management cited the unique configuration of facilities providing maximum redundancy during maintenance as a primary driver for higher-than-expected production. Increased confidence in production levels combined with conservative anticipation of market volatility allowed for the upward revision past the $9 billion EBITDA mark. There has been a 'more than slight' uptick in interest for shorter-term (5-year) contracts over the last 90 days as the conflict makes long-term market dynamics harder to predict. Despite the shift toward shorter terms, 20-year contract negotiations remain active and are often insulated from immediate macro volatility due to long-range utility planning. Historical data from 2010-2026 shows median liquefaction fees for short-term contracts are nearly twice that of 20-year contract prices, representing significant 'extrinsic option value'. Venture Global intends to use nameplate capacity for investment-grade 20-year deals while marketing excess capacity on shorter terms to capture these higher blended returns. Management believes the massive scale of upcoming production (doubling in the next few years) will generate enough cumulative cash to support all priorities simultaneously. The company expects to generate tens of billions in cumulative cash, which will fund growth, support deleveraging to investment-grade levels, and allow for shareholder returns.

Venture Global (VG) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.51 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.49 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.14 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +4.08%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this exporter of liquid natural gas would post earnings of $0.13 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.19, delivering a surprise of +46.15%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. Venture Global, which belongs to the Zacks Oil and Gas - Exploration and Production - United States industry, posted revenues of $4.58 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.65%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $3.1 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Venture Global shares have added about 109.1% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 13.3%. While Venture Global has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Venture Global was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.51 on $4.66 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $1.51 on $18.08 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Oil and Gas - Exploration and Production - United States is currently in the bottom 14% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. One other stock from the same industry, Kolibri Global Energy Inc. (KGEI), is yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 13. This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.21 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +162.5%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. Kolibri Global Energy Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $20.86 million, up 87.8% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Venture Global, Inc. (VG) : Free Stock Analysis Report Kolibri Global Energy Inc. (KGEI) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

ARLINGTON, Va., August 11, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Venture Global, Inc. ("Venture Global," "we," or "our") (NYSE: VG) has reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. As a reminder, Venture Global will host a conference call for investors and analysts beginning at 9:00 am Eastern Time (ET), August 11, 2026, to discuss second quarter results. Summary Financial Highlights Key financial highlights include: Generated strong second quarter 2026 financial results: Exported 127 cargos and sold 466.4 TBtu of liquefied natural gas ("LNG"), an increase of 38 cargos and 137.2 TBtu sold, or 42%, from Q2 2025. Expanded total assets as of June 30, 2026 to $61.5 billion, an increase of $15.0 billion from $46.5 billion as of June 30, 2025. Exported our 1,000th cargo across our exporting projects, just four years after Venture Global's first exported cargo in 2022. Increased Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA guidance to $8.7 - $9.1 billion3, up from $8.2 - $8.5 billion, which assumes a weighted average liquefaction fee of $12.50/MMBtu - $13.50/MMBtu for our remaining unsold cargos, in line with current forward curves. Increased contracted 2026 cargos to 91% of available cargos at a weighted average liquefaction fee of $5.05/MMBtu. Tightened and raised the midpoint of the expected cargo range to 500 - 518 from 494 - 523 for 2026. Executed over 2 MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements, including: Other recent key financial milestones achieved during the second quarter through today include: Calcasieu Pass: We completed major scheduled maintenance on the gas turbines at our Calcasieu Pass facility. Despite major maintenance typically requiring LNG facilities to curtail large portions of production, Calcasieu Pass produced 37 cargos in Q2, surpassing our SPA obligations. Calcasieu Pass' performance this quarter highlights a strategic advantage of our modular approach which enables redundancy of critical components, and generates a more stable and elevated production profile. Plaquemines: We are in the final stages of construction, commissioning, and assurance testing required in advance of COD of our Plaquemines Project Phase 1, and the team is working tirelessly to safely complete the remaining Phase 1 scopes. As recently communicated with our Phase 1 customers, we are pleased to reaffirm that we are targeting Plaquemines Project Phase 1 COD in Q4 2026 and Plaquemines Project Phase 2 COD in mid-2027. We continue to progress early development of the Plaquemines Expansion Phase 1, following our permit applications filed with FERC and the DOE late last year. Subject to regulatory approvals, we are targeting FID in the first half of 2027 and first LNG in 2029. CP2: Construction at our CP2 Project continues to advance well, and we remain on schedule to produce first LNG in the second half of 2027. While only a year from FID, we have made extraordinary progress, with 16 liquefaction modules already on site, roofs raised on all four LNG tanks, and five of the gas and steam turbines on foundations, highlighting our speed to execution and operational excellence. During the quarter, we filed for CP2 brownfield expansion permits with FERC and non-FTA export authorization at DOE. Subject to regulatory approval, we are targeting FID on the CP2 Expansion in early 2027 with first production in late 2028. "Venture Global has proven our ability to successfully build and operate complex machines that generate exceptional results. The second quarter of 2026 is a perfect demonstration of that execution in operations, construction, and financing, with significant year-over-year financial gains, production this quarter at the high end of our forecasted range, construction at CP2 on schedule driven by our in-house EPC efforts, and refinancings that translate into more than $100 million of annual cost savings," said Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel. "Moving into the second half of the year, with safety remaining our top priority, we are focused on moving Plaquemines Phase I into commercial operations, continuing construction momentum at CP2, and progressing commercial and financial activities in support of FID at the brownfield expansions at both CP2 and Plaquemines." Summary and Review of Financial Results Net income1 and Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA2 increased approximately $1.0 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively, for the three months ended June 30, 2026 as compared to the same period in 2025. These increases were primarily driven by higher LNG sales volumes, predominantly from Plaquemines as a result of commissioning progress, and higher LNG sales prices net of feed gas costs due to higher implied liquefaction fees for LNG sold under commissioning sales agreements. Net income1 and Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA2 each increased approximately $1.1 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2026 as compared to the same period in 2025. These increases were primarily driven by higher LNG sales volumes, predominantly from Plaquemines as a result of commissioning progress, partially offset by lower LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas primarily due to lower implied liquefaction fees as Calcasieu Pass transitioned from selling LNG under commissioning sales agreements to under post-COD SPAs in April 2025. 2026 Outlook Our updated guidance for 2026 is as follows: Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA1 guidance for the full year 2026 is $8.7 billion - $9.1 billion. We expect to export 149 - 154 cargos from Calcasieu Pass and 351 - 364 cargos from Plaquemines in 2026. We continue to anticipate Plaquemines Project Phase 1 COD in Q4 2026 following the conclusion of commissioning and assurance testing and any required remediation or rectification work. Declaration of Dividend Venture Global, Inc. has announced that its board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.04 per share on its Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The dividend is payable on September 30, 2026, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on September 15, 2026. Webcast and Conference Call Information Venture Global will host a conference call to discuss second quarter 2026 results and provide guidance for the fiscal year 2026 at 9:00 am Eastern Time (ET) on August 11, 2026. The live webcast of Venture Global’s earnings conference call can be accessed at our website at www.ventureglobal.com along with the earnings press release, financial tables, and slide presentation. After the conclusion of the webcast, a replay will be made available on the Venture Global website. About Venture Global Venture Global is an American producer and exporter of low-cost U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) with over 100 MTPA of capacity in production, construction, or development. Venture Global began producing LNG from its first facility in 2022 and is now one of the largest LNG exporters in the United States. The company’s vertically integrated business includes assets across the LNG supply chain including LNG production, natural gas transport, shipping and regasification. The company’s first three projects, Calcasieu Pass, Plaquemines, and CP2, are located in Louisiana along the Gulf of America. Venture Global is developing carbon capture and sequestration projects at each of its LNG facilities. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements. We intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included herein are "forward-looking statements." In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "might," "will," "could," "should," "expect," "plan," "project," "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "pursue," "target," "continue," the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us, may include projections of our future financial performance, expectations regarding the development, construction, commissioning and completion of our projects, expectations regarding sales of LNG cargos, estimates of the cost of our projects and schedule to construct and commission our projects, our anticipated growth strategies and anticipated trends impacting our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results, level of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including: our potential inability to maintain profitability, maintain positive operating cash flow and ensure adequate liquidity in the future, including as a result of the significant uncertainty in our ability to generate proceeds and the amount of proceeds that will regularly be received from sales of uncontracted commissioning cargos and excess cargos due to volatility and variability in the LNG markets; our need for significant additional capital to construct and complete projects, including some of our existing projects, future projects, potential bolt-on expansions and related assets, and our potential inability to secure such financing on acceptable terms, or at all; our potential inability to construct or operate all of our proposed LNG facilities or pipelines or any additional LNG facilities or pipelines beyond those currently planned, including any of the bolt-on expansion opportunities which we have identified, and to produce LNG in excess of our nameplate capacity, which could limit our growth prospects, including as a result of delays in obtaining regulatory approvals or inability to obtain requisite regulatory approvals to complete construction during our estimated development periods; significant operational risks related to our natural gas liquefaction and export projects, including the our existing projects and any potential bolt-on expansions, any future projects we develop, our pipelines, our LNG tankers, and our regasification terminal usage rights; our potential inability to accurately estimate costs for our projects, and the risk that the construction and operations of natural gas pipelines and pipeline connections for our projects suffer cost overruns and delays related to obtaining regulatory approvals, development risks, labor costs, unavailability of skilled workers, operational hazards and other risks; the uncertainty regarding the future of international trade agreements and the United States’ position on international trade, including the effects of tariffs as well as the effects of ongoing legal challenges to tariffs and reimbursements of tariffs; our current and potential involvement in disputes and legal proceedings, including the arbitrations and other proceedings currently pending against us and the possibility and magnitude of negative outcomes in any such dispute or proceeding and the potential impact thereof on our results of operations, liquidity and our existing contracts; our potential inability to enter into the necessary contracts to construct our projects, or any potential bolt-on expansion, on a timely basis or on terms that are acceptable to us; our potential inability to enter into Contracted SPAs with customers for, or to otherwise sell, an adequate portion of the total expected nameplate capacity at our projects, or any potential bolt-on expansion, or any future projects we develop; our dependence on our EPC contractors and suppliers for the successful completion of our projects and delivery of our LNG tankers, including the potential inability of our contractors to perform their obligations under their contracts; various economic and political factors, including opposition by environmental or other public interest groups, or the lack of local government and community support required for our projects, which could negatively affect the permitting status, timing or overall development, construction and operation of our projects; the effects of FERC regulation on our interstate natural gas pipelines and their FERC gas tariffs; the risk that the natural gas liquefaction system and mid-scale design we utilize at our projects will not achieve the level of performance or other benefits that we anticipate; potential additional risks arising from the duration of and the phased commissioning start-up of our projects; the potential risk that our customers or we may terminate our SPAs if certain conditions are not met or for other reasons; potential decreases in the price of natural gas and its related impact on our ability to pay the cost of gas transportation, the payment of a premium by us for feed gas relative to the contractual price we charge our customers, or other impacts to the price of natural gas resulting from inflationary pressures, including from the disruption in international oil and natural gas supply chains caused by the ongoing conflict in Iran and decline in commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz; the potential negative impacts of seasonal fluctuations on our business; the risks related to the development and/or contracting for additional gas transportation capacity to support the operation and expansion capacity of our LNG projects; the risks related to the management and operation of our LNG tanker fleet and our future regasification terminal usage rights; the potential effects of existing and future environmental and similar laws and governmental regulations on compliance costs, operating and/or construction costs and restrictions; our potential inability to obtain, maintain or comply with necessary permits or approvals from governmental and regulatory agencies on which the construction of our projects depends, including as a result of opposition by environmental and other public interest groups; our indebtedness levels, and the fact that we may be able to incur substantially more indebtedness, which may increase the risks created by our substantial indebtedness. For more information on these and other factors that could cause our results to differ materially from expected results, please refer to the risks and uncertainties discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is August 11, 2026, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Measures This earnings release contains references to Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, which is not required by, or presented in accordance with, generally accepted accounting principles in the United States ("GAAP"). We believe Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA provides investors and other users of our consolidated financial statements with useful supplemental information to evaluate the financial performance of our business on an unleveraged basis, to enable comparison of our operating performance across periods. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA also allows investors and other users of our financial statements to evaluate our operating performance in a manner that is consistent with management’s evaluation of financial and operating performance. We define Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA as net income attributable to common stockholders of Venture Global Inc., as determined in accordance with GAAP, adjusted to exclude net income attributable to non-controlling interests, income taxes, gain/loss on interest rate swaps, gain/loss on financing transactions, interest expense, net of capitalized interest, interest income, depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation expense, gain/loss from changes in the fair value of forward natural gas supply contracts, and gain/loss from changes in exchange rates on foreign currency transactions. We believe the exclusion of these items enables investors and other users of our consolidated financial statements to assess our sequential and year-over-year performance and operating trends on a more comparable basis. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA has material limitations as an analytical tool and should be viewed as a supplement to and not a substitute for measures of performance, financial results and cash flow from operations calculated in accordance with GAAP. For example, Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA excludes certain recurring, non-cash charges such as stock-based compensation expense and gain/loss from changes in the fair value of forward natural gas supply contracts, and does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs. In addition, although depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, the assets being depreciated and amortized may have to be replaced in the future, and Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect cash requirements for such replacements. Other companies, including companies in our industry, may also calculate Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA differently, which may limit its usefulness as a comparative measure. The following table reconciles our Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025 (in millions) to net income attributable to common stockholders, the most directly comparable financial measure prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP: View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260811465911/en/ Contacts Investors:Ben [email protected] Media:Shaylyn [email protected]

Interested in Venture Global, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Venture Global delivered record quarterly performance, with second-quarter revenue rising 48% to $4.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA increasing 79% to $2.5 billion. The company raised its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $8.7 billion-$9.1 billion, citing higher volumes and LNG prices but noting continued market volatility. The company strengthened its financial position by refinancing more than $5.3 billion and repaying $1.4 billion of debt through July. It also raised its quarterly dividend 122% to $0.04 per share and said annual interest and preferred dividend savings should exceed $100 million. CP2 remains on schedule and on budget for first LNG in the second half of 2027, while Venture Global is planning expansions at CP2 and Plaquemines. The projects could lift total production capacity to about 85 MTPA, with expansion investment decisions targeted for 2027. 3 Energy Stocks to Watch Now as LNG Demand Surges Venture Global (NYSE:VG) reported second-quarter 2026 results marked by higher LNG sales volumes, stronger earnings and an increase to its full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook, while outlining continued progress on its CP2 project and planned expansions at CP2 and Plaquemines. Chief Executive Officer Mike Sabel said the company generated its largest quarterly EBITDA to date, reporting consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $2.5 billion. Venture Global raised its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion, from a prior range of $8.2 billion to $8.5 billion. Management said the wider-than-usual range reflects LNG price volatility related to events in the Middle East, though it expects to narrow the range after the third quarter as it contracts remaining expected volumes. → SoundHound AI Sends a Loud Signal After Its Q2 Earnings Beat 3 LNG Stocks to Watch as Iran War Continues Revenue totaled $4.6 billion in the second quarter, up 48% from $3.1 billion in the year-earlier period, according to CFO Jack Thayer. Higher sales volumes contributed $1.3 billion to the increase, while higher net LNG sales prices added $102 million. Sales volumes increased to 466 TBtu from 329 TBtu a year earlier. Income from operations rose 111% to $2.2 billion from $1.0 billion. Net income attributable to common stockholders climbed 266% to $1.3 billion, compared with $368 million in the second quarter of 2025. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 79% to $2.5 billion from $1.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 54% during the quarter. Thayer said the increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by higher sales volumes and higher LNG prices net of feed-gas costs. Operating and maintenance costs rose year over year as commissioning work at Plaquemines increased and more company-owned vessels entered operation. General and administrative expenses were largely unchanged despite a larger workforce, he said. → 3 Dividend Champion Utilities for a Market That Can't Sit Still What a Gold Miner and an Oil Trust Reveal About Today’s Market Venture Global exported 127 cargoes during the quarter and said it shipped its 1,000th cargo in early March, four years after its first cargo in 2022. The company said its 2026 portfolio is more than 91% contracted, up from 84% reported during its first-quarter call. The company increased its quarterly common dividend to $0.04 per share, a 122% increase. Sabel said the increase reflects the company’s growing business and confidence in its cash-flow outlook. He added that the company expects to grow the dividend over time, while Thayer said share repurchases could also be considered as its capital program matures. → Is Wingstop's Growth Story Losing Steam? Venture Global refinanced more than $5.3 billion of capital across term loans, bonds and preferred equity since its prior earnings call. The actions included refinancing $2.25 billion of senior secured notes in June, raising $1.5 billion in vessel financing and repricing a $1.07 billion senior secured term loan in July alongside WhiteWater. Management expects the refinancing activity to reduce annual interest costs and preferred dividend coupon obligations by more than $100 million. Through July, the company had repaid $1.4 billion of debt, including about $1.3 billion of the CP2 bridge loan, Thayer said. Sabel said CP2 remains on schedule and on budget just over a year after its final investment decision. The project has roofs installed on all four LNG storage tanks, 16 fabricated liquefaction modules on site and five gas and steam turbines installed on foundations, according to the company. Venture Global is assembling heat recovery steam generators at its Morgan City, Louisiana, facility. Five of those units have been built and transported to CP2. Sabel said bringing the work in-house removes what the company views as a significant construction bottleneck and should help streamline the timeline to first LNG. The company continues to guide to CP2 first LNG in the second half of 2027. During the question-and-answer session, Sabel said management is remaining conservative in its public timing guidance, while describing project progress as strong. Venture Global filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May for a 10 million metric tons per annum expansion at CP2, entirely within the existing project footprint. The company expects to make a final investment decision on that expansion in early 2027 and targets first LNG in late 2028. At Plaquemines, the company plans an initial expansion phase consisting of eight liquefaction trains producing 6.4 MTPA. Venture Global is targeting a final investment decision in the first half of 2027, with Phase One production expected in 2029. Once the Phase One Plaquemines expansion is producing, management expects total production capacity across its three projects to reach about 85 MTPA. Management said approximately 53 MTPA of the expected 85 MTPA production runway is committed under long- and medium-term contracts, while 100% of nameplate capacity across the company’s first three projects is contracted. Sabel said Venture Global intends to use a portfolio approach that combines long-term agreements supporting financing with medium-term contracts designed to improve returns and preserve flexibility. He said the company expects to contract most excess production capacity on multi-year agreements while retaining commissioning volumes and other capacity that can benefit from shorter-term market opportunities. Thayer said that for cargoes remaining to be sold in 2026, the new EBITDA outlook assumes a liquefaction fee of $12.50 to $13.50 per MMBTU. A $1-per-MMBTU change in fixed liquefaction fees over the remainder of the year would affect adjusted EBITDA by an estimated $180 million to $210 million. Management said the comparable 2027 EBITDA sensitivity is expected to be $650 million to $700 million. Sabel said customer discussions remain active across both 20-year and shorter-duration contracts. He said interest in five-year and shorter-term arrangements has increased amid uncertainty surrounding the Middle East conflict, while demand discussions remain broadly distributed between Europe and Asia. The company also said it remains open to settling outstanding Calcasieu Pass arbitration matters. Sabel said Venture Global expects a resolution in the next arbitration before year-end and has another hearing scheduled to begin at the end of November if a settlement is not reached. Venture Global (NYSE: VG) is a Houston-based energy company that develops, constructs and operates large-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities in the United States. The company focuses on converting domestically produced natural gas into LNG for shipment to international markets, positioning itself as a supplier of pipeline-quality gas in vessel-ready form for global customers. Venture Global's core activities include site development, engineering and construction of liquefaction and export terminals, commissioning and ongoing operations of those facilities, and commercial marketing of LNG under both long-term and short-term contracts. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Venture Global Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Revenue: $4.6 billion in Q2 2026, a 48% increase from $3.1 billion in Q2 2025. Income from Operations: $2.2 billion in Q2 2026, up 111% from $1.0 billion in Q2 2025. Net Income: $1.3 billion in Q2 2026, a 266% increase from $368 million in Q2 2025. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA: $2.5 billion in Q2 2026, up 79% from $1.4 billion in Q2 2025. EBITDA Margin: 54% for the quarter. Sales Volumes: 466 TBtu in Q2 2026, compared with 329 TBtu in Q2 2025. LNG Cargoes Exported: 127 cargoes in Q2 2026. 2026 EBITDA Guidance: Increased to $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion, from $8.2 billion to $8.5 billion. Dividend: Increased quarterly common dividend to $0.04 per share, a 122% increase. Contracted Position for 2026: Over 91% of the portfolio, up from 84% previously reported. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with VG. Is VG fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: August 11, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Record quarterly EBITDA of $2.5 billion, up 79% year-over-year, driven by higher sales volumes and prices. Raised 2026 EBITDA guidance to $8.7-$9.1 billion, reflecting strong operational performance and market outlook. Increased contracted position for 2026 to over 91%, up from 84% in Q1, enhancing revenue visibility. Executed over 2 MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements with customers like TotalEnergies, Vitol, EnBW, and Atlantic-See. Refinanced $5.3 billion of capital, reducing annual interest and coupon obligations by more than $100 million. Increased quarterly dividend by 122% to $0.04 per share, signaling confidence in cash flow resilience. CP2 project on track with significant construction progress, including 16 liquefaction modules on site and HRSGs built in-house. Filed for CP2 and Plaquemines expansions, targeting FID in early 2027 and first production in late 2028/2029, adding 16.4 MTPA capacity. Maintained strong safety record and exported 1,000th cargo just four years after first cargo, demonstrating operational excellence. Portfolio approach with a mix of long-term and medium-term contracts captures higher option value, as evidenced by historical liquefaction fees averaging over $6/MMBtu. LNG price volatility due to Middle East events has led to a broader-than-usual guidance range, creating uncertainty. Operating and maintenance costs increased by $118 million year-over-year due to commissioning work at Plaquemines and more owned ships in operation. Higher interest expense partially offset gains from interest rate swaps, impacting net income. Ongoing arbitration with Calcasieu Pass customers remains unresolved, with the next decision expected before year-end and another hearing in late November. European gas inventories remain dangerously low, which could lead to higher winter demand and pricing, but also poses physical and economic risks. The company's aggressive expansion plans (CP2, Plaquemines, bolt-ons) require significant capital, with FID timing and execution risks. Despite dividend increase, the yield remains below peers, and future capital allocation may shift to share buybacks, which could be dilutive to growth. The company's reliance on short- and medium-term contracts exposes it to market price fluctuations, as seen in the sensitivity of EBITDA to liquefaction fee changes. Construction of CP2 and expansions is complex and subject to potential delays, though management expresses confidence in timing. The company's high leverage and refinancing activities, while reducing costs, still require careful management of debt maturities and interest rate exposure. Q: Can you help us understand some of the drivers of the guidance raise, which is almost 60% higher than your original guidance? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: The basis is the execution by the team and production at our facilities. We continue to be confident in the quality of continued production for the balance of the year. We highlighted our ability to perform significant maintenance activity while continuing to produce well, which demonstrates the uniqueness of our configuration with multiple gas turbines providing maximum redundancy and availability. Combined with confidence in production and a conservative view of the LNG market for the remainder of the year, we feel good about increasing the absolute level of cash EBITDA generated for the year, moving past $9 billion on the upper end. Q: How should we think about the impact of a $1 per MMBtu movement in liquefaction fees on 2027 EBITDA, given the quantified impact on 2026? A: Mike Sabel, CEO and Jonathan Thayer, CFO: On page 23 of the presentation, we answer that question for 2027, 2028, and 2029. The sensitivity for 2027 is $650 million to $700 million per $1 per MMBtu change. This chart shows the magnitude of growth coming from executing on CP2, the brownfield expansion at CP2, and the first small expansion at Plaquemines. It also contemplates the COD at Plaquemines phases 1 and 2, and with a greater contracted position, we're still maintaining significant optionality and exposure to prevailing markets. Q: How have your customer conversations changed over the past couple of months given the Middle East disruption, and how is that playing into your view on forward selling cargoes? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: Before the recent conflict started in the Strait of Hormuz, net spreads were $5 to $6, and we were very busy on 20-year contracting activity. We have continued to be very busy and are active in a significant number of negotiations on a 20-year contract basis. We've also done several billion dollars of 5-year deals and expect to have multiple deals completed between now and the end of the year. There has been an uptick in interest on the five-year term and less in the last 90 days, as the conflict has become more difficult to predict, leading to a more than slight uptick in shorter-term contracting interest. Q: What is your latest thinking around your ideal steady-state mix of long-term contracts, medium-term contracts, and uncontracted volumes in your book? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: Our plan is to largely contract all excess capacity production on a multiyear basis. We are overweighted in 20-year contracts, so while we will do more, our emphasis will shift to much shorter contracts for the balance of the portfolio to drive higher prices. The data over the last 16 years shows more than double the value for having shorter-term contracts than 20-year contracts. The combination of contracting all nameplate capacity, which supports investment-grade credit ratings, while retaining more extra production capacity on a shorter-term basis, captures that higher option value and maximizes returns over time. Q: What is your targeted contracting strategy for the CP2 and Plaquemines expansion projects? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: It will be a mix. These expansions come online fairly quickly as true brownfield projects, with a much shorter time from FID to production, potentially setting new records. This gives us extra flexibility on the mix of term needed and doesn't require as many 20-year contracts. We will do some 20-year contracts, but it will have more midterm contracts than projects have been able to execute in the past. When you are 18 to 20 months between FID and production, it's a much different formula that gives more flexibility in financing and creates an opportunity to drive much more significant returns on capital. Q: What was the rationale for the 122% increase in the dividend to $0.04 per share, and how should we think about the dividend going forward? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: We were significantly below the rest of the group on an absolute and percentage yield basis, and even after this increase, that's the case. It's part of the catch-up, and our plan is to continue to grow the dividend over time. It reflects the maturity of our business growth, as we've passed $60 billion in assets and feel good about the progress of turning on CP2 and executing the 20-year contracts associated with it. In the future, this could be combined with potential share buybacks, as Jack described. Q: We saw Williams sanction the Delta Access project heading towards Plaquemines. Will that help feed current or future feed gas, or is your own Cloud Connector pipeline enough? A: Jonathan Thayer, CFO: As you surmised, that pipeline is headed directly towards our Plaquemines facility, and we would expect it to connect into our Cloud Connector pipe, where we have capacity. Mike Sabel, CEO: We're always in the market negotiating a mixed blend of gas supply and keep a careful watch on that. We're more focused on interconnect and transportation capacity to access plentiful gas. We've made significant investments in this area, including the nitrogen removal unit at CP2, the longer CPX lateral, and the Blackfin Pipeline with WhiteWater. The majority of our pipes are intrastate, allowing us to control 100% of the capacity, giving us a significant competitive advantage. Q: Can you confirm that the multiple more deals anticipated by year-end 2026 are indeed three to five years, and could that position you for more of a multiyear guidance and capital allocation outlook by first half 2027? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: We're uniquely in the market now, able to talk to customers about almost any term they need. As we bring Plaquemines to COD and CP2 comes online, our available capacity will increase dramatically. We expect multiple deals of varied terms this year, next year, and the year after. The slide showing option value data for the last 16 years demonstrates there's tremendous option value in our configuration and execution, which we don't think is captured in our value at all. Our ability to convert massive amounts of data into process engineering produces significant extra volumes, giving us upside option value that has proven extremely valuable over long periods. Q: What might be holding you back from narrowing the timeline on CP2 startup or moving it forward? A: Mike Sabel, CEO: These are very large, complex construction projects with tens For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.