NET Power Inc. (NPWR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to NET Power Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Bryce Mendes, Director, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to NET Power's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call today, we have our Chief Executive Officer, Danny Rice; our President and Chief Operating Officer, Marc Horstman; and our Chief Financial Officer, Lee Shuman. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, which is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.netpower.com. During today's call, our remarks will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those stated or implied by forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, which are discussed in our SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. A full description of these risks is available in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, each filed with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over to Danny Rice, NET Power's Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Bryce, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning. We spent the last 4 months in an intensive customer engagement and marketing process. We talked to a broad set of prospective power buyers, the hyperscalers, the data center developers, general industrial companies looking to procure power, and what we heard was unambiguous. The market needs speed, scale and reliability, and it's going to pay a fair price for it. And given the shortage of having speed to reliable power at scale, which I think we'd all agree is mission-critical to the U.S. winning the AI race, the tech industry needs to see as much capital pointed directly at solving that problem today. So in our case, I think NET Power is unique because underneath our clean gas technology layer is a fundamental understanding of all things gas power generation, both the equipment and the know-how for where these projects make good sense to site for end customers. So the market told us that our 80-megawatt clean gas is very credible, but what they really need is a lot more power and they need it sooner. We believe the clean piece is important, but just as it's always been, will only come at scale once society's basic energy pillars of reliable and affordable power are fully in place. And power demand is outstripping supply today, so it's incumbent upon us to take a step back and reassess our allocation of our capital and our skills to help meet these basic energy needs while preserving the ability to do what we originally came here to do, which is to transform natural gas into the lowest cost form of clean firm power, that's still our North Star, so this transition to leading with unabated power, first is simply a more actionable and likely lower risk pathway to eventually get to a cleaner energy future. Now that isn't a judgment about the long-term importance of CCS. We believe in it, and it works. Just several weeks ago, the Entropy team commissioned the world's first clean gas power plant in Canada, and that's a huge milestone for the industry. And we're sitting here with tens of billions of tons of annual CO2 demand in the Permian Basin for EOR. And as oil prices rise, as they have been recently, the demand for CO2 just continues to grow. So I want to spend a moment to why we believe this strategic recalibration is durable. We view it as a pragmatic response to a structural market condition that we think runs for many, many years. The grid has quickly become a binding constraint on data center growth. First, in markets like PJM and MISO, but it's quickly made its way to ERCOT as well. And it's interesting, I think a lot of folks in the industry viewed ERCOT as a safety haven for speed to power. And for a long time, that was especially true; shorter queue times, better grid reliability and access to lower-cost power. But I don't think Texas was really prepared for the onslaught of demand that's now showing up, and now ERCOT queues are getting backed up into the 2030s with no real end in sight to when new supply will catch up to meet this new demand, so it's forcing creativity to bring this power to market. And the overwhelming response that we're seeing is solutions like behind the meter, on-site generation with targeted reliability that has become the most actionable near-term solution in the market. And we see ourselves as part of that ecosystem. We have the site, we have the Oxy land relationship, and we have the technical capabilities to deliver firm dispatchable power at scale. That's what the market really needs today, and we believe allocating our capital in this manner is the right thing for shareholders and the power industry alike. On the point of grid constraints, it's a primary concern for local communities too. Over the past several months, we've listened closely to the local and national conversations around data center development. The Texas legislative activity, the moratorium discussions, the scrutiny on water consumption and grid impact, the broad and diverse community questions around this new kind of infrastructure. These are real concerns from real communities, and they deserve real solutions. The pressure emerging around conventional data center development is, if anything, accelerating the demand for what we aspire to build, behind the meter and completely off-grid power solutions that don't strain the grid, don't sit in an interconnection queue and are sited and designed so that carbon capture can be added over time. That's not just commercially attractive, it's the kind of project that has a credible answer for a regulator or a community asking hard questions. Through every step of Project Permian's development and evolution, our focus has been to be a good neighbor who endeavors to add long-term value to the communities where we live and work. We think the direction of the concerns point toward our recalibrated model, not away from it. So with that as the backdrop, our commercial strategy is now organized around what today's power customers are actually prioritizing: speed to power, reliability and scale. Natural gas power generation colocated with customer load and deployable in a fast time line is how we meet that demand. We are redirecting near-term capital and execution focus towards the development of unabated natural gas power generation capacity with carbon capture retained as an option, a credible, meaningful preserved option to be layered into projects over time as customer requirements, project economics and financing support it. We actually think this will be a very differentiating strategy as time moves on, particularly once power supply catches up to demand and the focus begins to ship back to finding low-cost ways to decarbonize our country's newly installed power generation asset base. The key will be possessing the skills to do it, which we will retain, but also having projects in the right areas where it's technically and geologically feasible to do carbon capture. So let me expand on what this means for our projects and our partnerships. Project Permian, our site in West Texas, is being redesigned for colocated demand. Based on current market feedback, we do not expect to deploy post-combustion carbon capture in the initial phase of deployment. The project is being designed to preserve the ability to add capture in later phases, the siting is right and the Oxy relationship for CO2 offtake via enhanced oil recovery remains intact as a future pathway. What we are not doing is requiring customers to pay for clean power before they've asked for it. The site's capacity for approximately 1 to 1.5 gigawatts of power generation across multiple phases and the initial phase is being sized to meet where -- what the market will actually contract for it today. On our relationship with Entropy, we're discussing our revised framework under which the parties may pursue deployment of Entropy's post-combustion capture technology in later phases of NET Power's projects as and when supported by customer demand, economics and financing. But today, it just wouldn't make sense for us to commit capital for something that isn't actionable yet. So we're going to try to preserve the relationship and the great work our teams have already done together, that work has shed a lot of insight on project design to accommodate carbon capture so that the retrofit option is a consideration in broader power site design. Clean power remains a long-term destination. The North Star for us hasn't changed, but what has changed is the order of operations. We build the power first, a lot of it on an accelerated time line to meet customers' needs now and we capture when it makes sense. So I'll pass it over to Marc to give you a brief operational update and then Lee will cover the financials. Marc?

Thanks, Danny. Good morning, everyone. I'll keep this brief. We're reorienting our project execution around unabated, behind-the-meter power generation, which means firm power at three 9s reliability, and that is 99.9% uptime, which corresponds to the plant being down for only a handful of hours a year. This co-located with customer loads on the 2028 time line this market is asking for. The configuration we're developing for Project Permian and other sites pairs battery energy storage, reciprocating engines and gas turbines to build in redundancy, so single units outage or scheduled maintenance doesn't take down power for which the customer desperately needs and requires. Our modeling to date shows a single large unit can't meet a three 9s target on its own since planned maintenance alone would exceed the outage budget. Multiplying smaller units is what gets you there, and it's the direction the broader market has moved. On the commercial side, we're going direct to hyperscalers and their data center developers, leading with speed to power and land access, pairing our power development with the customer's campus build-out as coordinated parallel work streams with the design preserving the option to add post-combustion capture later. In concert with a potential customer, we're working to secure an additional 120 megawatts of gas power equipment with early delivery, which combined with our already secured gas turbines would bring our total secured capacity to nearly 200 megawatts for the first phase of this larger project. Our relationship with Oxy remains an important differentiator. A multi-site land footprint across West Texas is the kind of scalability the largest data center operators are asking for. We're actively working with Oxy to advance land rights for our power development, and that is a near-term priority for us. With that, I'll hand it over to Lee.

Thank you, Marc. Good morning. Here's a quick financial update. We ended the second quarter with approximately $310 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments and no debt. Our current cash position is sufficient to support ongoing operations and development activities in Project Permian, plus portions of the equipment for the project, funding for the project through construction to commercial operations will require project level financing, partner capital, additional equity or some combination of those sources. We remain optimistic about our ability to secure capital to complete the project. Our balance sheet gives us the runway to be deliberate about this process. We are measuring every dollar we spend against what it takes to get to a fundable project, and we remain -- and we are managing the business accordingly. With that, I'll hand it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Today's first question is coming from Nate Pendleton of Texas Capital Bank.

Can you build on your prepared remarks a bit on how you view the longer-term strategic positioning for NET Power, with this new focus? Specifically, how do you think about where NET Power wins against other developers that are also trying to put power on the grid in West Texas?

Yes, Nate, it's a good question. Look, I think if you just look at -- if you take a step back and you look at the market right now, I think we really have these two potential phases. And I think the phase that we're in right now is we're definitely in a shortage situation. And by that, I mean there's not enough power generation being built. And I think one of the questions we always ask ourselves is what's our competitive advantage, what's the differentiating feature of us versus everybody else. I think when markets eventually get to like stabilization and markets are at equilibrium, I think you definitely need to have like a strategic differentiator versus your peers, but we're not in that market. We're in a very, very supply constrained market. And value creation doesn't necessarily have to come from differentiation. It has to come from just capabilities to be able to meet the market's demand. And I think that's one of the things that we heard sort of loud and clear over the last few months is, yes, the clean piece is really interesting, but what we really need is just we need a lot more power and we need it faster, and if you guys have the capital, both the intellectual human capital as well as the financial capital and the wherewithal to be able to do that, that's where we want to see you allocate your capital. And so I think from where we are right now, it's -- the market is extremely short power. And if you have the capability to be able to do that, that is value additive, that's value creative. And I think as we think about long term, once the market actually gets to stabilization, and by that, it's once supply has been built up to be able to restore reliability to the grid, once everybody's basic power needs are being met, which we would argue they -- we're on the precipice of that happening, I think once you get to that sort of parity, I think that's where you really have to take a hard look at what's your strategic differentiator versus everybody else. And so as we sort of think about just this transition from the market being short powered today, us being able to install the unabated powered gives us the opportunity to create a ton of value because of the shortage. And then as we transition into the market in, call it, 10, 15 years, where the market's at equilibrium, I think that's where like this core strength of decarbonizing the gas power generation really becomes that differentiator. And so that's why it's important for us that we're continuing to hold on to that -- continue to preserve that. And the easiest way for us to be able to preserve that is really making sure that we're putting our projects in the areas where sequestration is possible. So I don't think you'll necessarily find us going into areas where the ability to capture and sequester the CO2 is impossible. But I think the nice part about West Texas, especially as you're not compromising on the merits of the unabated gas power, the abundance of the natural gas, the land availability are second to none out there. So as you're thinking about places to be able to put just unabated gas power generation, West Texas is incredible. And when you kind of layer on what's going to happen in 5 or 10 or 15 years when the clean piece starts to come into focus again, you're going to want to be in those places where you can take your existing assets and decarbonize them. So for us, this West Texas location really sort of fits into both those buckets of we can use these assets that we have to meet the market's needs today to create value while still preserving the optionality, and really like the intent and the ability to be able to decarbonize and really flex the differentiated skill set that we possess versus the broader market.

Got it. That makes complete sense. And then you just alluded to the customer conversations that drove the change. Maybe how should we think about the path and timing from here to assigned offtake on the back of so many conversations that you've had already?

Yes. I mean those conversations are in progress today. As Marc kind of noted in his comments, we're in the middle of securing additional power equipment to meet these power needs of the customers. So we're not necessarily going out there on spec the way we did for the first power generation units that we secured last year. That was really to get our foot in the door to do the PTC, but we're now able to take that asset and use that as part of the starting block of the first phase of the Project Permian site. So this next tranche of megawatts that we're securing is really at the behest of one of these prospective customers that we hope to work with. So it's not speculation on our side. It's really just in coordination with them. So hopefully, in the next couple of months, we'll have more to share. But I think like the reality is the ultimate success of this project is making sure that all potential stakeholders are aligned, and so the community point is going to be a big one and so we want to make sure that we're doing things on the appropriate time line and disclosing things appropriately as it moves along.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is coming from Noel Parks of Tuohy Brothers.

I was just curious, in the discussions you've had with potential off-takers to a degree that data center development is a huge part of the incremental demand, are the parties you're talking with more in a project origination stage, would you say? Or are they generally sort of well in progress down the development pathway where maybe when they start -- set the process in motion, the interconnect delays, et cetera, weren't as glaring an issue as they are now?

Yes. Noel, are you talking about like our project specifically? Or are you talking about the potential customers' projects in general?

Potential customers' projects.

Yes. I mean I think if you look at just like the site that we have in West Texas, it's fairly uniquely positioned. It's not just the one site, I mean we were originally contemplating this would be a grid connected project, but I think as everybody is starting to have real concerns around just the reliability of the grid, it's been pretty incredible even in a place like Texas, like Texas has been a safe haven for folks for a few years now, and that's why you've seen such an influx of demand for interconnect into the ERCOT grid. But now that the ERCOT grid is starting to indicate that new supply isn't showing up fast enough, I think it's causing people to have some pause around having grid connected projects, and I think everybody is now starting to really just take matters into their own hands, saying, if we can't depend on the grid, we have to be fairly self-sufficient. And so that really lends itself to the behind-the-meter, off-grid sort of model. And this is more of just a coincidence, but it actually like fairly aligns with what we were actually doing on the PCC piece, which was start on the smaller gas turbine units, let's not go after the big ones to start. And so we were really designing this sort of site around smaller gas turbine units, which when you -- like Marc said in his prepared remarks, when you aggregate a bunch of smaller units, you're able to get a much higher reliability factor that is a lot more conducive to sort of this behind the meter application. And if we had one large frame turbine producing 400 megawatts, you're going to have to have so much redundancy there because you have a massive, massive single point of failure risk. So we've sort of been designing this for the PCC, but it's also very conducive to removing the PCC and have the reliability in this behind-the-meter sort of application. So I think the design that we had been working on really for the PCC piece actually works incredibly well in the unabated version. The only real difference is rather than spending an extra 2x on the PCC piece, we can take that capital and allocate it to essentially double the amount of installed megawatts for the behind-the-meter off-grid application. So that's been like the biggest piece of the feedback for the market, it's like the feedback has really been like, you guys have like the gas skill set, you're kind of doing it the hard way by also doing the PCC, take that capital and allocate it to what we need right now, which is we need as much firm reliable power generation on an accelerated time line as you can give us. So we've taken that market feedback, we're running with the market feedback in concert with this potential customer, we're securing additional turbines to -- or additional power equipment to be able to meet their power needs on an accelerated time line. So I think everybody from the NET Power side is fairly aligned with the strategy. The important part for us is making sure that we preserve this optionality to do the carbon capture because we are quite confident it's going to come back at some time in the future, and we need to be ready for it for when it does happen.

Great. And as you're looking at scenarios going forward, how long we might be in the shortage situation before utilities and the grid catch up on their interconnectabilities? I heard some people say maybe 5 years out and/or before sort of global production of gas turbines, ramps could be more in alignment with kind of near-term needs. As you were looking at this, did you have sort of like a range of how long you thought the shortage situation might last? And I was just wondering kind of if you have sort of a nearer-term scenario, longer-term scenario, just as what that period might look like?