Cheniere Energy, Inc. ($LNG)

Good day, and welcome to the First Quarter 2026 Cheniere Energy Earnings Call and Webcast. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Randy Bhatia, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cheniere's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. The slide presentation and access to the webcast for today's call are available at cheniere.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. Slide 2 of our presentation contains a discussion of those forward-looking statements and associated risks. In addition, a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the presentation appendix. The call agenda is shown on Slide 3. After prepared remarks from Jack, Anatol and Zach, we will open the call for Q&A. I'll now turn the call over to Jack Fusco, Cheniere's President and CEO.

Thank you, Randy, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review our results from the first quarter of 2026 and our improved outlook for the full year. Certainly, a lot has changed since our last earnings call, which took place just before the start of the war in Iran. What has unfolded in the wake of that operation is another major shock in the global energy system, the second such shock in just over four years. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the weaponization of energy, including the damage to a portion of QatarEnergy's LNG facility at Ras Laffan are tragic consequences. The effects of which are being felt all over the world. The sudden cessation of reliable supply of Middle Eastern oil, natural gas and the many other products that normally transit the strait every day on their way to dependent markets around the globe shines a bright light on the criticality of supply security and a diversified portfolio. What we sell at Cheniere is access to a secure, reliable and affordable product that provides the energy to power homes, businesses and economies. Prior to the war, the LNG market already demanded more production than the market could supply as evidenced by the elevated spot market margin we had in the first two months of the year. The disruption of Middle Eastern volumes only exacerbates that supply shortage, increasing prices and restricting availability of supply to the wealthiest buyers at the expense of fast-growing energy-hungry emerging markets. At Cheniere, we look forward to the resolution of this conflict that will enable the renormalization of commerce to one of the world's most important freight gateways so that prosperity through energy affordability and availability can benefit all. Please turn to Slide 5, where I'll highlight our key results and accomplishments for the first quarter of 2026 and introduce our upwardly revised guidance for the year. Our performance in the first quarter has gotten off to an excellent start to 2026. We generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of over $2.3 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.7 billion. On the production side, we picked up where we left off at the end of 2025 and produced and exported a record amount of LNG in the first quarter. The 187 cargoes we exported through March topped the previous record set in the fourth quarter of last year. I'm extremely proud of our operations team whose tireless efforts to engineer and deploy solutions to address the feed gas composition-related challenges we experienced last year continue to bear fruit and drove enhanced operational reliability during the quarter. Today, we are increasing our full year 2026 financial guidance to $7.25 billion to $7.75 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and $4.75 billion to $5.25 billion of DCF. This significantly improved outlook, the previous high end of the EBITDA guidance is the new low end is driven primarily by an improvement in our production forecast of approximately 1 million tons, higher marketing margins as well as higher contributions from optimization activities achieved year-to-date, both upstream and downstream of our facilities. Zach will cover guidance in more detail in a few minutes, but we look forward to delivering financial results within these upwardly revised ranges for the year. During the first quarter, we continued to execute on our comprehensive capital allocation plan. We repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares for approximately $535 million, funded approximately $1 billion worth of growth CapEx with equity and debt. We paid down over $0.25 billion in debt, and we declared a dividend of $0.555. Moving to our growth projects. We continue to make excellent and safe progress on our growth and expansion during the first quarter. Our CCL Stage 3 project now stands at approximately 97% complete. Substantial completion was achieved on Train 5 in March and Train 6 and 7 remain on track for substantial completion in the summer and fall, respectively, with each now tracking a few weeks ahead of schedule that had informed our initial 2026 production forecast in October of last year. First LNG at Train 6 is expected within a few days. On our mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 and debottlenecking project, we have safely progressed to approximately 37% complete. And while it's still early, are tracking ahead of schedule on a number of execution fronts. Piling is nearly complete with approximately 8,000 piles having been driven. The first structural steel has been erected and the next major construction milestone is the first above-ground piping, which is scheduled to be installed this month. With regard to our future growth, our line of sight on the Phase 1 expansions at both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi continues to improve. As we disclosed on our last earnings call, we are budgeting for limited notices to proceed this year on the first phase of the Sabine Pass expansion, Train 7. We are working closely with Bechtel to finalize the EPC contract and would expect to begin issuing LNTPs shortly thereafter, which should be seen by the market as a clear signal that we are on track to reach FID. At Corpus Christi, we are making excellent progress on our development of the CCL expansion project. We were pleased to receive our scheduling notice from FERC last week, supporting our expectation of FERC approval on that project in the first half of next year. We are extremely excited about these Phase 1 projects, which we believe represent the most compelling risk-adjusted infrastructure investment opportunities on the Gulf Coast or maybe all of North America and are expected to accretively grow the Cheniere production platform by approximately 10% each. Turn now to Slide 6, where I'll discuss my key strategic priorities for 2026. My priorities for 2026 are simple: execution, growth and capital allocation, and I'll drill down briefly into each. First, on execution. My priority is to maintain our track record of delivering top-tier safety metrics while furthering our operational excellence program and being a trusted and reliable supplier to our customers. In dealing with some operational challenges last year, the team has responded with determination and resolve and its efforts are paying significant dividends. The team has increased the utilization across both sites by identifying root causes and innovating solutions to address the issues impacting reliability, not just the symptoms. In addition, the team has increased production through identifying and executing on debottlenecking opportunities while seamlessly executing on our planned maintenance activities. And we are focused on managing our platform in a market with elevated volatility. Despite the volatility, our coordinated teams across the globe have done an excellent job managing our positions and assets, ensuring we deliver on our obligations to our customers while optimizing the portfolio through volatile domestic gas markets like we saw during the winter storm Fern as well as very volatile international gas and shipping markets that have prevailed since early March. Next on growth. With Trains 1 through 5 to Stage 3 substantially complete, our immediate priority is a safe completion of Train 6 and 7. As I just mentioned, these trains have accelerated since last year, benefiting from lessons learned on the first trains as our partnership with Bechtel has not only resulted in early operations of the trains, but also shorter time lines on both commissioning and ramp-up to full production. I expect those learnings to continue in order to benefit mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 as those trains move deeper into construction later this year. On our SPL expansion and CCL expansion, we are aggressively executing project development work streams across regulatory, financing, commercial and EPC contracting as FIDs on those projects come into focus. Last week, we received our scheduling notice from FERC on the CCL expansion project, a critical step in the FERC process, and it is aligned with our expected time line of FERC approval in the first half of 2027. And finally, on capital allocation. We had a major update on the last call with the achievement of the original 2020 Vision plan, the new $9 billion authorization the Board approved during the quarter for share buyback and our new share count and run rate DCF targets. We are in an enviable capital allocation position, enabled by our incredible long-term contract portfolio that provides decades of cash flow visibility, our brownfield growth opportunities, investment-grade balance sheet and opportunistic repurchase plan. In February, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first cargo, and next week will mark my 10th anniversary at Cheniere. I'm extremely proud of the many incredible milestones we have accomplished together in that time. While these anniversaries offer the opportunity to look back, I prefer to look forward. And what we have in front of us are incredible opportunities, an opportunity to accretively grow Cheniere in the near term and secure the next phase of growth beyond that, an opportunity to grow our platform by another 20%, benefiting Cheniere's stakeholders while providing the world with more of the secure and reliable energy it needs to improve lives, grow businesses and help emerging markets emerge. I'm incredibly excited about these opportunities, and we are laser-focused on turning them into achievements in the coming years. With that, I'll now hand it over to Anatol to discuss the LNG market. Thank you again for your continued support of Cheniere.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 8. The past quarter has been defined by geopolitical disruption, most notably the escalation in the Middle East and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has put significant strain on global energy markets, including, of course, LNG. While the situation remains fluid, our commercial focus is twofold. First, supporting our customers through near-term volatility; and second, understanding what these disruptions mean for longer-term LNG market structure and contracting. We continue to hope for a safe and timely resolution, including the return of Qatari and Emirati LNG volumes to global markets. Coming into the year, the industry was expecting a roughly 40 million ton LNG supply growth. This expected supply growth continues to be offset by the halt of Middle East LNG flows through the strait, which removes approximately 7 million tons of supply each month. Additionally, U.S. exports were temporarily reduced during winter storm Fern to help balance the domestic gas market. And in late March, Australia's approximately 9 million ton per annum Wheatstone facility and other gas processing plants experienced a multi-week outage following Cyclone Narelle. In aggregate, these disruptions displaced nearly 8 million tons of supply in the first quarter alone. With tanker and LNG vessel traffic through the strait remaining constrained with limited visibility on timing of normalization, approximately 7 million tons of LNG supply per month or approximately 100 cargoes continues to be disrupted. The immediate effect of the crisis was a sharp repricing across regional gas markets. And given most Qatari volume is sold into Asia, we saw the JKM, TTF spread flip in a way not seen since the third quarter of 2023, creating a strong pull for LNG into Asia. Destination flexible U.S. cargoes responded as expected with flows reoptimizing toward Asia to capture higher netbacks. This is exactly the flexibility the market relies on in periods of imbalances or distress, underscoring a key advantage of U.S. LNG in the global gas market. While today, our customers are squarely focused on replacing near-term lost volumes, the flexibility and security of the U.S. LNG through long-term contracts is being highlighted in our commercial conversations and negotiations today. On the demand side, impacts have been more gradual. Middle East cargoes that were already on the water continued to arrive through March, which delayed the full physical effect of the supply disruption. Asia's LNG imports were 5% higher year-on-year for January and February, but started decreasing in March, dropping by 1.5 million tons or 7% year-on-year, with import declines in price-sensitive markets expected to continue in April. Now several months into the disruption, we're seeing clear differentiation across markets in Asia to cope with the supply shock. China has again demonstrated system flexibility, halting spot purchases and redirecting cargoes to markets of higher need. Price-sensitive Qatari-dependent markets such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have taken measures to reduce demand and seek alternative fuel sources. While higher affordability markets, including Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand have stepped in to procure replacement cargoes, and we have been actively supporting our customers navigating this volatility. In Europe, the situation is increasingly tight as storage levels exiting the winter are near 5-year lows with a deficit of 13.2 bcm, about 10 million tons or approximately 150 cargoes of LNG equivalent versus the 5-year average. While the region is relatively less exposed to disrupted Middle East LNG flows compared to Asia, the absence of Russian pipeline flows and the impending ban on Russian gas and LNG have further pressure. To reach adequate storage levels ahead of next winter, Europe will require almost 10 million tons more LNG than last year to reach minimum storage levels of 80% and approximately 15 million tons more year-on-year to reach historical levels of 90%. This highlights Europe's dependence on LNG and intensifies the competition for marginal LNG supplies with other basins, especially as we look ahead to winter. Europe's imports grew 12% to approximately 40 million tons in the first quarter despite a month-on-month drop in March, which remained flat year-on-year as more cargoes started heading east. Across global markets, pricing dynamics evolved in two distinct phases in the first quarter. At the start of the year, benchmark gas prices were moderating, reflecting expectations of that forecast 40 million tons of incremental supply to enter the market. First quarter JKM averaged $10.40 MMBtu and TTF $11.60, down by roughly 30% and 20% year-on-year, respectively. Following the disruption in the Middle East, we've seen a clear repricing with prompt pricing and forward curves moving higher by $3 to $4 an MMBtu. However, despite the disruption of comparable magnitude, these prices still reflect much lower levels than in '22 following the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, which we believe stems from the market's expectation that the disruption will prove temporary and potentially quick to resolve. The Henry Hub curve by contrast has remained relatively flat, reinforcing its position as a stable pricing anchor. Let's turn to the next page to expand on what this means longer term. Uncertainty around the disruption in the Middle East remains high, and we continue to hope for a swift resolution with limited lasting structural impact. However, even under that assumption, the supply outlook over the next few years has shifted. The industry has effectively lost two liquefaction trains in Qatar, representing approximately 12.8 million tons per annum of capacity, which could be offline for up to 5 years. We're also likely to see delays to major expansion projects in the region in both Northfield in Qatar and Ruwais in the Emirates. As shown in the chart on the left, even if flows normalize into the summer, most, if not all, of the previously expected growth in 2026 will be absorbed. Directionally, '26 is much tighter than previously forecast and now '27 has become more structurally constrained, especially considering the record low storage position and supply dynamics across Europe heading into the 2026 winter I just discussed, likely creating a similar scenario ahead of winter 2027. Before eventually net supply growth resumes as new projects in the U.S. and smaller ones elsewhere commence operations and ramp up production the rest of this decade. We expect the market to return to a more well-supplied position as new supplies start fully offsetting volume losses in Qatari projects get back on track after that. So timing matters. But in most scenarios, the near-term buffer has been greatly reduced while the broader trajectory after the next year or two remains relatively unchanged. The LNG market is still expected to grow to approximately 600 million tons by around 2030. As new supply comes online, we would expect that growth to help moderate prices. This would be particularly welcomed by price-sensitive markets that have been constrained in recent years by sustained higher prices. Importantly, demand growth continues to be driven by a diverse set of markets from established importers in Asia to emerging consumers in South and Southeast Asia who need to supplement rapidly depleting domestic fields to continued demand support in Europe, where the complete ban on Russian molecules has and continues to create a structural demand anchor for the LNG market. At Cheniere, our focus remains consistent, providing reliable, flexible long-term LNG supply to a broad and growing set of global markets and doing so through a mix of direct relationships that expand access while maintaining the credit profile in our customer portfolio required to support long-term investment. It is these strategic relationships that underpin not only our current business and infrastructure investments, but also our expansions. With over 35 long-term creditworthy counterparties, we remain resolute in our commitment to them and our differentiated track record of performance, which is recognized and appreciated by our customers, particularly in volatile market conditions like these. That differentiation on reliability is a significant commercial asset, and we're leveraging this as we engage with customers today with a focus on commercializing the balance of CCL Train 4 now that SPL Train 7 is sufficiently commercialized. So while the disruption we're seeing today is significant and it's difficult to fully assess in real time, over the long term, events like these tend to become relatively small inflections in a much broader longer-term growth trajectory. And from that perspective, the underlying need for reliable long-term LNG supply and the agreements that enable it is only being reinforced. With that, I'll turn the call over to Zach to review our financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Anatol, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our financial results and improved outlook for the full year. Turn to Slide 11. For the first quarter 2026, we generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of over $2.3 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.7 billion. Compared to the first quarter of 2025, our first quarter 2026 results reflect higher volumes of LNG delivered, thanks to the substantial completion of Trains 1 through 4 last year of Stage 3. Higher contributions from optimization upstream and downstream of our facilities and a onetime alternative fuel tax credit during the quarter. We recognized in income 646 TBtu of LNG produced from our facilities in the first quarter. While meaningfully higher than 1Q of 2025, first quarter of 2026 volumes were impacted by in-transit timing dynamics that favored 4Q 2025 and 2Q 2026. Looking to the balance of 2026, it's likely 1Q will be our lowest quarter of volume recognized this year as asset production for the remainder of the year is expected to benefit from the rest of Stage 3 coming online, including mid-scale Train 5 at the end of 1Q and Train 6 expected to produce first LNG imminently. In addition, there are no major turnarounds planned this summer and lower ambient temperatures should benefit 4Q, making the last quarter of the year likely our highest quarter of LNG produced and recognized in income. Additionally, for the first quarter, we generated a net loss of approximately $3.5 billion, which is primarily the result of the unrealized noncash derivative impact predominantly related to our long-term IPM agreements and the mismatch of accounting methodology for the purchase of natural gas and the corresponding sale of LNG. The derivative accounting treatment, coupled with the long-term duration and international price basis of our IPM agreements, result in fluctuations in fair market value from period to period as LNG curves move, which you may remember similarly impacting our GAAP net income results in 2021 and 2022. The surge in international gas prices and increased volatility during the quarter drove the unrealized noncash losses in our overall net loss for the quarter. Adjusting for these noncash unrealized derivative losses and the associated impacts to income tax and noncontrolling interest, we generated positive adjusted net income of approximately $1 billion for the quarter. This adjusted net income figure is aligned with our EBITDA and DCF and more representative of our financial performance in the quarter. To be clear, as we deliver on our IPM agreements that are accounted for as derivatives or economic hedges that mitigate future cash flow volatility, we expect these noncash unrealized mark-to-market losses to unwind over time and generate mark-to-market gains as we realize the intended and corresponding fixed liquefaction fees from these contracts that pass through the LNG market price exposure to our IPM counterparties. While IPM agreements may contribute to variability in our reported GAAP net income, those agreements most importantly, provide a stable long-term cash flows similar to our SPAs that help support our contracted infrastructure platform and cash flow visibility for decades to come. As Jack and Anatol noted, our business model is built to thrive regardless of market environment, and the same goes for our capital allocation plan. During the quarter, we deployed approximately $1.2 billion towards our capital allocation pillars of accretive growth funded with equity cash flow, shareholder returns in the form of buybacks and dividends and balance sheet management. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares for over $500 million, highlighting the opportunistic nature of the program considering the movement of our share price over the quarter. Given the volatility in the shares year-to-date, our disciplined value-based repurchase plan is working as designed, and we continue to opportunistically deploy the remaining over $9 billion under our current authorization according to the framework, which guides repurchase activity, working towards our current target of 175 million shares outstanding around the end of the decade. For the first quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.555 per common share, representing a payout of over $116 million for common shareholders. We remain committed to growing our dividend by approximately 10% annually through the end of this decade. Shareholder returns achieved through the combination of our dividend and opportunistic share repurchase plan are a key value proposition for our investors, providing them with a stable and growing dividend and increased ownership in Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi over time, while maintaining the financial flexibility essential to our long-term capital allocation plan. Moving to the balance sheet. We repaid over $250 million of our indebtedness with cash on hand during the quarter, fully redeeming the remaining SPL 2026 notes and amortizing a portion of the SPL 2037 notes. Additionally, in March, we issued $1 billion of 2036 notes and $750 million of 2056 notes at CEI, making our inaugural 30-year issuance and extending our maturity stack into the second half of this century alongside a growing list of our long-term LNG contracts. With a portion of the proceeds, we prepaid the $550 million drawn on our Corpus Christi term loan while also canceling an additional $600 million of unused commitments. We continue to maintain substantial liquidity with approximately [ $1.8 ] billion in consolidated cash and billions of dollars of undrawn revolver and term loan capacity throughout the Cheniere complex. Also in the quarter, we continued to receive recognition from the credit rating agencies as Moody's upgraded its ratings of our unsecured notes at CEI and CCH to Baa2 and Baa1, respectively, each with a stable outlook. We are now high BBB at both projects and mid-BBB or better at the unsecured corporate levels by all 3 credit rating agencies. During the quarter, we funded approximately $1 billion of growth capital across our business as we continue to progress the construction of Stage 3 and Midscale 8 and 9, development of the SPL and CCL expansion projects as well as our Gregory power plant to support incremental power needs at Corpus over time as the mid-scale trains are completed. Of the $1 billion of growth CapEx in the quarter, approximately $300 million was equity funded and approximately $700 million was efficiently debt funded as planned via our delayed draw Corpus Christi term loan as well as from a portion of the proceeds from the recent CEI bond raise. We do expect to increase our spending on Train 7 at Sabine Pass later this year as we have budgeted for potential limited notices to proceed to Bechtel ahead of our expected FID early next year, which is why we are retaining cash at CQP by flexing the variable component of the CQP distribution this quarter. Looking ahead, we remain well positioned to fund our disciplined growth objectives comfortably within our cash flow forecast while retaining our strong investment-grade credit metrics and our significant financial flexibility for shareholder returns through cycles. Turn now to Slide 12, where I will discuss our upwardly revised 2026 financial guidance and outlook for the year. Today, we are increasing the midpoint of our guidance ranges for full year 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow by $500 million and $400 million, respectively, bringing expected consolidated adjusted EBITDA to $7.25 billion to $7.75 billion and distributable cash flow to $4.75 billion to $5.25 billion. We are maintaining our CQP distribution guidance for the year of $3.10 to $3.40 per common unit. These increases are attributed to a few key drivers, including an increased production forecast for the year, an improved margin outlook and contributions from optimization activities already locked in year-to-date, both upstream and downstream of our facilities. As Jack mentioned, thanks to increased utilization of our existing trains as a result of continued debottlenecking and resiliency efforts related to feed gas composition variability as well as accelerated time lines on the remaining trains at Stage 3, we are increasing our 2026 production forecast by approximately 1 million tons to approximately 52 million to 54 million tons for the year, unlocking incremental volumes available for CMI this year. With this increase in continued forward selling by our team over the quarter, we still forecast less than 1 million tons or less than 50 TBtu of unsold open volumes remaining in 2026. Therefore, we currently forecast that a $1 change in market margins would impact EBITDA by again less than $50 million for the full year. Despite having very little open exposure for the balance of the year, we are maintaining the $500 million guidance range as results could still be impacted by a number of factors, particularly given the sustained volatility in the global energy markets, but also variability in our production forecast, the ramp-up and specific timing of substantial completion of Train 6 and 7 at Stage 3, the timing of certain cargoes around the year-end, contributions from further optimization activities during the balance of the year and the impact Henry Hub volatility can have on lifting margin. As we progress through the year and lock in some of these variables, we will look to tighten these ranges as we have done in years past. Our first quarter results, coupled with our revised guidance ranges, once again underscore Cheniere's ability to leverage our platform, respond to market signals and unlock optimization opportunities throughout our business, while still maintaining our highly contracted business model built upon a foundation of long-duration fixed fee cash flows from creditworthy counterparties. Our conviction in which has only been reinforced as we look forward to funding additional accretive brownfield growth at both Sabine and Corpus while concurrently growing shareholder returns in the form of buybacks and dividends that can be relied on year after year. These dependable cash flows are essential to the over $50 billion natural gas infrastructure platform we have developed over the last decade plus as well as our disciplined all-of-the-above capital allocation framework and the durable through-cycle value of this approach has only been enhanced in the wake of the current market environment. Looking ahead, we remain focused on maintaining safe and reliable operations to ensure we can continue reliably delivering flexible, secure LNG as well as meaningful long-term value to our stakeholders around the world for decades to come. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and your interest in Cheniere. Operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to expand a bit on some of the remarks. And Anatol, I was just wondering in the customer conversations at this point, given the disruptions in the Middle East, just how you describe the tone or appetite for U.S. LNG given the reliability in Cheniere's track record there. And then at the same time, kind of contrasting that to somewhat higher prices and how that impacts demand for LNG overall. So just wondering how those 2 factors have kind of flowed through conversations.

Yes. Thanks, Jeremy. We're in a very enviable position as the plants run better. And as you see, we have some additional volume, and we only have these three dozen kind of critical long-term counterparties, we're able to really focus on supporting these key relationships. And that's what we've been doing over the last couple of months. And as you can imagine, the initial reaction by a number of these players is to ensure that there is ample supply as the 7 million tons a month is replaced to keep the lights on literally in the short run. But clearly, our ability to support them is something that's helping to broaden and deepen the relationships and is certainly a tailwind to a number of those engagements. In terms of longer term, sorry, your second question, we'll see. I think even amongst ourselves, we disagree somewhat. I think that just like COVID, when you look in the rearview mirror that, that 2020 disruption, it is a small blip. It changed the dynamic purely by kind of delaying what we're expecting by somewhere between 12 and 18 months, but the overall trajectory remained the same. We expect this issue and hope that this issue is similar. But again, we're in a great position. We need to support our growth ambitions with relatively modest incremental commercial agreements. And clearly, we've proven that this is a very affordable, reliable and Cheniere is a great counterparty to help support the -- those long-term ambitions by our customers.

Got it. That makes sense. And then I just want to turn, I guess, to operations and execution. Maybe you could expand a bit more on the Corpus expansion seems to be tracking a bit ahead of expectation for time line there. And at the same time, being able to eke out a bit more capacity. I was just wondering if you could talk through what debottlenecks you were able to accomplish there? And I guess, what more could be possible?

Yes, Jeremy, thank you. So as I said in my prepared remarks, I'm extremely pleased with what we've been able to do in operations and production engineering. At Corpus, not only have the trains been coming in significantly above the guaranteed schedule from Bechtel or before the guaranteed schedule from Bechtel. But on our ramp-up, it's been higher and steadier. So the team has really learned how to make those smaller mid-scale trains hum, and that's producing some very good quantities for us. So -- and I would expect that those learnings to continue to work their way through 6, 7, 8 and 9 at a minimum. So that's been very helpful. The other thing that's been helpful is we figured out a couple of different operational modes to handle variability of feed gas at both Sabine Pass and at Corpus Christi. We've actually have worked with some good suppliers of solvents to come up with some creative ways to use solvents to mitigate the need for defrost. All of those things, there's 100 different things in our toolkit right now that we use every single day, and they all seem to be adding up to some meaningful amounts of additional production. And that's what you're seeing from us on this raise of guidance.

And then, Jeremy, on the growth and the expansion, just to put into perspective, right now, on the whiteboard is Sabine 7. You could tell from the CQP DPU guidance and where we ended up with Q1, we're reserving cash as we're in good shape to start LNTPs later this year and be in a position with the permit to FID that project early next year. In terms of the Corpus expansion, that's a bit behind just because we didn't file for the permit until after we officially announced FID and NTP on Trains 8 and 9. But that's in good shape and tracking to receive a permit, let's say, mid- to late next year. And in the context of the previous question to Anatol, we can be very disciplined on the SPAs, considering we have approximately 10 million tons of SPAs today that haven't been used yet to underpin or underwrite an FID project. That's more than enough to cover the Sabine 7 project plus debottlenecking -- and we're obviously in good shape on even the first train of the first phase of a Corpus expansion. So we can stay quite disciplined not just on how we grow and the parameters that we hold ourselves to that are like leaps and bounds beyond anyone else in the industry, especially in North America. And then we can be disciplined on the SPAs and eventually move forward and create some value for the company long term.

We'll take our next question from Spiro Dounis with Citi.

Maybe just picking up on some of those comments as we think about the contracting outlook, there does seem to be some expectation that we're now going to see perhaps a wave of contracting for U.S. sourced LNG. And I understand your point that a lot of the focus so far has been filling that near-term supply. But is the market wrong in maybe expecting some sort of contracting wave? And maybe just based on your discussions, would you be surprised if Corpus 4 Phase 1 is not underwritten with SPAs by year-end?

Thanks, Spiro. So I think your overall thesis is correct. There aren't that many options as we've discussed forever and even in these prepared remarks, we keep demonstrating that this is a great place to source volumes, right? Those -- the customers that are lifting from us FOB at today's NYMEX economics are lifting roughly at $6 an MMBtu and with the reliability and flexibility that we've demonstrated over a decade. So if not now, if not us, whom and when. That said, as we've also discussed and Zach alluded to, this is a very competitive market. We are in a market today where there are some credible projects that are moving towards FID and a lot of projects that have FID that have spare capacity that has yet to be placed into the market. So we're fortunate in that we will continue to not participate in that commoditized race. And we'll, as Zach already alluded to, pick and choose with whom we want to continue to partner. And crystal ball-wise, I think you'll continue to see from us the same thing that you've seen for the last 4, 5 years, which is additional volumes with existing customers. I make a joke that I'm kind of in a race with Shell. Shell keeps buying our counterparties and decreasing the number of our counterparties, and we keep trying to add some more long-term contracts with the Cheniere premium built in. So we're optimistic. We have made a significant dent into Corpus Train 4 and whether it's year-end or by the time we're ready to FID, we think we'll be in a very good commercial position to support that.

Got it. And maybe don't put the crystal ball away just yet. I just did want to touch on LNG prices here. As you think about Europe needing to refill that storage, Anatol your comments sound like there's a pretty aggressive ramp in cargoes that needs to happen to do that and perhaps it even extends into 2027. So curious, are you surprised that prices have not been stronger here? And when would you think you could start to see that play out in the curve? And when you look out beyond '27, '28, we haven't seen it move all that much. Do you think it's appropriate reflecting some of these lingering supply issues?

And I think I could say on behalf of the team, we are astounded that prices are where they are, that prices in Europe and Asia are backwardated into the winter, right? U.S. is up 50%, right, into the mid-4s in the winter, but the world gas market is strangely backwardated. Europe is in a very difficult position with really adjusted for flows, record low storage, banning Russian gas and the Indian subcontinent, the price-sensitive market has already been turned off. So we're going to be in an environment in Q3, Q4, we think, where there's very aggressive competition for those volumes globally. China has done an excellent job of using its storage and domestic production to be a relief valve again. And I think the current situation is masked by the fact that we're in the shoulder period and the physical disruption of deliveries from the strait being closed really only started to be felt a month ago. So we're very constructive on where prices will go into the second half of the year. And as you already alluded to, that probably reverberates into '27, which, again, will just highlight how attractive the long-term SPA from Cheniere is to those that can meet Zach's stringent credit requirements.

Our next question comes from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America.

I think you suggested in the past that after Sabine Pass 7 and Corpus 4 and the Blue Sky growth case, future trains beyond 75 MTA would be more likely to be at Corpus. Can you talk about the trade-offs between your two sites for expansion, both for the potentially next two trains, Sabine Pass 7 and Corpus 4 and then beyond that?

Yes. Jean Ann, it's Jack. Corpus has been blessed with having another 500 acres of basically untouched land. We bought that land from the old Sherwin Alumina site. We've been working on that property to make sure that it's environmentally ready to go. It has great access to the water. It has a power plant that sits literally right next to it, which is our Gregory power plant that we own and control. So it has a lot of -- and is close to the Permian. It's a 40-mile straw to Sinton, our Sinton station for gas supply to Agua Dulce. And we -- it just has a lot of benefits that I could see us continue to grow that site. If we switch to Sabine, while we still have property, we have a lot of wetlands property that we'd have to mitigate appropriately. That adds cost to it. And there's a few other nuances that we would have to do. But on the positive side, we have 3 berths already at Sabine. So it's not out of the question, but I do think additional growth after the first phases will probably happen at Corpus prior to Sabine, just my gut. And that is way down the road from where we are today.

We'll take our next question from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen.

First on the 2026 EBITDA guidance, I think you typically are a bit more conservative early in the year ahead of summer maintenance season. But given that it seems you're guiding to lower maintenance this year, is there a bit less conservatism baked into the plan at this point? And then my follow-up is maybe just on what you're seeing across the world from governments in response to higher global gas prices. It's the second kind of period of high prices and very volatile prices in the past 5 years. Have you seen any reaction, especially from the Asian countries to perhaps pivot more towards long-term planning for coal and renewable power over gas?

I'll take the first one on EBITDA. I know I hear a lot of analysts say that we're often conservative early on in the year. But I'll say like we basically -- I don't know if this is different than most companies, we don't overpromise. When you look at our proxies and where we set budgets and targets for the company, it's very consistent with our initial guidance. The reason we were able to raise it this time is quite a few things, like production coming through in a way, not just with mid-scale trains coming online quicker and ramping up quicker, thanks to like the just the teamwork with the Bechtel folks of handing it over. It's all the resiliency work we've done since last year that's boosting the production guide for the year. That's adding with margins, let's say, in the $9 to $10 range, $400 million. That doesn't sound too conservative. That just is what it is with where the current base case is on production. Then you add in margins are up since the last call on less than 1 million tons, that adds $100 million. Optimization, we don't bake in optimization that hasn't been locked in yet. We've been pretty clear with that on our guidance calls. We're able to add another $100 million. And then Henry Hub has actually come down since February a bit for the rest of the year, which offset that and was why we raised it by $500 million. Do we feel good about that range? Very much so, but there's still some moving parts in that, like if Henry Hub moves by $0.50 either way with how much LNG we're producing, like that's a $100 million swing. If Train 6 and 7 of mid-scale move by half a month, that's like a $50 million swing. And then we have about $50 million or less for every dollar move on those CMI margins, which seem pretty volatile at times. And then on top of that is just overall LNG production. If we add an extra 10 TBtu, that can be $100-plus million. And then O&M for the scale that we have, that's usually plus or minus $20 or so million a year. So when you add all that up, that's why we stick to a $500 million range. But again, this company doesn't like to overpromise. We prefer to overperform.

Yes, Jason. And on your question about pivoting away from gas, we really haven't seen that yet now. It's fairly early in this disruption. I do think that the market, having experienced it in late February was thinking that the resolution is going to be fairly quick. We were skeptical, and it still seems like the market thinks that this gets resolved in weeks, and we don't see normalization for months. After the Ukraine war, you did see a couple of governments and plans shift away from gas. again, we're not seeing that. And just to put into context, those entities that can transact on a long-term basis are seeing gas prices on a delivered basis from us that are well within, if not below, their planning ranges. So those places that, again, are creditworthy and are capable to transact on a long-term basis and are not whipped around by spot prices really have no reason to reconsider. But in the grand scheme of things, don't forget that our product, LNG is only about 3% of primary energy. So it's not a solution for the world. It's just a very elegant way to complement things like reliability, things like intermittency, things like emissions. So we're -- again, we're still optimistic that this will be in the rearview mirror soon, and the world will continue to grow to the 700 million ton-plus market that we expect in 2040.

Our next question comes from Alexander Bidwell with Webber Research & Advisory.

I wanted to look at -- I want to take a look at the future expansions at Corpus and SPL. We've been seeing a ramp in labor competition across various projects in the U.S. Gulf. Do you expect that to have a knock-on impact in terms of EPC costs for the future Sabine and Corpus expansions?

No. I think the timing of our FID will work very well with Bechtel's current schedule and their growth projections, and we haven't seen an issue with any of our mid-scale 5,000 workers there. So I don't see a problem, Alexander.

And I think there is a nice cadence with midscale completing Stage 3 this year and then 8 and 9 and then eventually the ramp-up starting next year and into '28, '29 with Sabine 7. And then again, upon that, after that, there's also the ramp-up with CCL4. So the cycle is in our favor, and it's slightly off from many of these projects that are -- have FID-ed recently are desperate to FID right now.

I appreciate the color there. And just, I guess, to follow up on the mid-scale train performance. Can you guys give us a sense of where, I guess, the natural differences have been in terms of OpEx and maintenance thus far versus your traditional large-scale trains?

Alexander, I think it's a little too soon for us yet. I would say it's been -- they've been a little bit equal, maybe a little higher on the mid-scale as we continue to debottleneck. So it's hard for me to segment sustainable operations and maintenance versus some of the debottlenecking activities that we've been doing on the individual trains to get more output out of them. But give us a little more time with having the operations under our belt and we'll try to help with some transparency there.

One note I'll make, though, is that the mid-scale trains will require more power. So you'll just see that incrementally in cost of goods sold related to those. Even though as we scale that up, it's going to be pretty straightforward and pretty consistent with the other 15 million tons at Corpus. So a little more scale beyond just 5 trains, and they'll get relatively close, and it will just be in different buckets to an extent as it requires more power.

We'll take our next question from Manav Gupta with UBS.

You are one of the few midstream companies that besides dividends also rewards shareholders with buybacks. And I'm just trying to understand, given the current environment and the amount of free cash you're generating, how are you thinking about stock buybacks here?

Well, I would say today, we feel very much so like we're enjoying the stock buyback. With that said, I'll say a few things. First and foremost, around our buyback, it's meant to be opportunistic and disciplined. Our stock basically varied between like $200 or less to $300 in Q1, and we bought over $0.5 billion at $202. So that shows the discipline and opportunistic nature of it. We did buy back over $1 billion in Q3 and Q4, but that had a lot to do with the fact that we bought back less than $700 million in the first half of last year, and we rolled over the allocations because though deployment may be bumpy or opportunistic quarter-to-quarter, the allocation and cash reserve for buybacks is not. That is very, very steady and why we were able to commit to a $10 billion buyback program through the rest of this decade quite easily. The other thing I would guide folks to is our payout ratio. And so as we think about a shareholder return payout ratio, which combines the dividend and the buyback versus our DCF, it's basically been around 50% to 60% a year, which is at the high end of almost any midstream peer. It just happens to be that we're basically the only one that does buybacks to the extent that we do. And I would continue to follow that through. So as DCF grows, clearly, there's more cash flow in the mix. But like the balanced capital allocation plan is firmly intact. And we are budgeting for this decade to FID, not just being set in early next year, but a first phase of Corpus as well by mid- to late next year as well. So with that cash flow kind of reserved and the fact that we could still commit to $10 billion, you should expect buybacks to continue to compound quarter after quarter. But if DCF keeps on going up, there will be more in the coffers for buybacks. That's where the excess cash goes. And if there's even a month delay in FIDs, that means there's more free cash flow as well for buybacks in the near term. So yes, expect more of the same, but it will be lumpy at times, but it will definitely be opportunistic.

We'll take our last question from Burke Sansiviero with Wolfe Research.

So understood that you aren't taking in any optimization that hasn't been locked in with the updated guide. But curious if you could provide any additional color on what potential upside optimization could look like for the balance of the year, all else equal?

It really can come from anything across the integrated platform. And there's just a different edge to this company versus anyone else in LNG, having the pipeline network that we do, the two facilities and then not just CMI handling the open capacity, but handling our DES contracts as well as our IPM contracts. That scale just gives us like a different level of ability to optimize, and we do expect more optimization through the rest of the year. remind you, there were certain things that have happened in the past quarter, including the winter storm Fern that we were able to provide some of our gas back into the U.S. gas market as it was needed. There were also a spike in shipping and in LNG prices after the war broke out in late February that we were able to provide ships and LNG to customers that needed them rather desperately. And those are things that obviously we couldn't even have forecasted the same week that some of these things occurred. So having the scale, having the integrated platform really does give us an edge that we were able to in the past three months buy cheaper gas upstream of our facilities that was part of the optimization upstream of Sabine and Corpus. We were able to source third-party cargoes, which you could see in the filings and in the financials for the past quarter. I think over like 30 TBtu was third-party sourced. That freed up some shipping and was able to optimize certain cargoes as well. So things like that, more likely to come. And yes, there was one thing conservative, I guess, about the guidance is that we don't bake in any more of that in the current guidance of, let's say, $7.5 billion of EBITDA.

And just as you think about the platform continuing to expand and these trains continuing to come on, additional DES and IPM contracts come with additional shipping that is paid for by those contracts. So as we are speaking with you today, we have, I believe, the highest number of vessels we've ever had in our portfolio, and that will continue to grow. And again, it's paid for by those long-term commitments, but gives us the opportunity to take advantage of volatility in the market. But as Zach said, our crystal ball is not good enough to tell you what opportunity will be here next week, much less over the second half of this year.

Understood. And just curious if you've been able to opportunistically hedge some of your open exposure into 2027 a little earlier than the normal cadence as margins move higher?

Yes, I'll speak to that. We do use like our financial capacity and some hedging capacity for the prompt year and sometimes for the year after. With that said, usually, we try not to financially hedge too far out considering how much volatility there could be and considering we're in the shoulder season right now, and we're heading into Asian cooling season and then eventually European storage filling season. So financially hedging is not really the priority for 2027. With that said, since the last call, we've sold over 1 million tons of open capacity in '27. So margins were basically under $4 as of the call. in February, and now they are closer to $6 to $7. And when we see that and we have willing buyers, we lock it in. So we've already made a dent on the open capacity next year, which only strengthens the cash flow visibility and obviously, the cash in the coffers for things like buybacks.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over for any additional or closing remarks.

This is Jack. I just want to thank you all again for your support of Cheniere.

This concludes today's call. Thank you again for your participation. You may now disconnect, and have a great day.