New Fortress Energy Inc. (NFE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the New Fortress Energy Investor Update call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce Josh Kane from Investor Relations.

Thank you. I would like to welcome you to the New Fortress Energy Investor Update call. Joining me here today are Wes Edens, our CEO and Chairman of the Board; and on the line is Andrew Dete, our point person on the ground in Brazil. We've got some great questions over the past week since the announcement of the deal, and the purpose of the call is to address those topics. And of course, we'll have Q&A at the end of the call for additional questions. Throughout the call, we're going to reference the materials that were posted to the New Fortress Energy website. If you've not already done so, I suggest that you download it now. Before I turn the call over to Wes, I would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward-looking statements, including regarding future earnings. These statements, by their nature, are uncertain and may differ materially from the actual results. We encourage you to review the disclaimers in our press release and investor presentation regarding non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements, and to review the risk factors contained in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Now I would like to turn the call over to Wes.

Great. Thanks, Josh, and welcome, everyone. So we just posted this on the website just a few minutes ago. So as Josh said, if you could just refer to that, that's what will go through. And again, we announced the transaction roughly a week ago. We've gotten a lot of good questions about it and had good conversations with both investors and analysts. And I just thought it'd be a great opportunity to take and synthesize a handful of those most frequently asked questions into a presentation, address them with you. Of course, there may be a lot of other great questions you have as well. So the goal for this is to do a bit of a teach-in on both the transaction and what we think the market opportunity is for Brazil, in particular, because that's the focus point of this. And then we'll open it up for questions from folks. So if you just start by flipping to Page #3. So again, just by way of recap, last week, we announced 3 separate transactions, $5.1 billion in total enterprise value, and it really was 3 different transactions. The biggest of them was the Hygo transaction itself, which is we bought from Golar 100% of the stock of Hygo Energy. You bought from Golar and from Stonepeak. We paid basically $2 billion for that, plus we also paid off the preferred stock that was outstanding. So it's $2.18 billion in equity value. We're paying for that with $580 million in cash, $1.6 billion in NFE shares, and the plan is to leave the current asset level debt in place. The next transaction was actually something we did independent of this. We just happened to announce it at the same time, which is we are establishing a terminal in Suape. Suape is an industrial port, just south of Recife in Brazil. We basically bought 288 megawatts worth of PPAs -- old PPAs issued in 2006, I believe, that were -- they're diesel based, and we're going to convert those to gas. Those are going to be put into the area of the Suape port, and thus, they'll be kind of the anchoring transaction for a new terminal which we're developing there. Andrew Dete, who's on the phone with us in Brazil, can give a little bit of context there. That expands our terminals in Brazil by one in an area that we think has got tremendous promise. Lastly, we're buying the -- all the common stock of Golar LNG partners for $1.5 billion. It's all cash. We're assuming equity -- or entity level debt of $389 million. There's also $138 million of preferred equity, which is outstanding, and the thought is to refinance that debt and put that on balance sheet. These are ships that, for the most part, we have a home for immediately, but I'll walk through that. That's one of the questions that we get asked frequently. So those are the transactions we're talking about today. So just by way of recap, the next couple of pages, I mean, to recap, our business is actually a very simple one. We sell power and natural gas in developing countries around the world. We provide capital, the infrastructure, the assets and of course, the people and expertise to do it. The market demand for the products that we are selling here is tremendous. So over 1 billion people in the world lack electricity entirely. Many billions of people lack affordable energy. And so, our solution is natural gas, which is a great transition fuel to go from dirty distillate liquid fuels into something which is much cleaner. And then, of course, our long-term goal is to really be one of the pioneers in the energy transformation to convert even the natural gas into hydrogen and making it emissions free. So Page #5, we grew the portfolio substantially. So grow from 5 terminals currently. So 2 terminals in Jamaica, one in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Terminals in La Paz, Mexico, Puerto Sandino in Nicaragua, they are both in the final stages of development. So that's the portfolio that we had prior to the transaction. This transaction then puts a bunch of new dots on the map. So Barcarena in the north, Suape next to Recife. Sergipe, which is where the big power plant is located. And then Santa Catarina in the south. So this rings a large portion of what is one of the most attractive markets, maybe the most attractive market in the world. And if you look -- flip to the following page, Page #6, the title of the page is not all terminals are created equal. And this is something I think there's been a lot of confusion about it. So I just wanted to walk you through kind of how we think about it. So let's start with our own terminals on the left-hand side of the page. So our terminals pre-acquisition, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, currently, our volumes that we have that are committed to 3.35 million gallons per day. Our estimate of the maximum size of those markets in total is 8.5 million gallons. So today, we're roughly 40% of the markets. We still think there's a substantial amount of incremental growth. These terminals are highly productive, we generate excellent margins in these markets. We are pioneers in bringing in natural gas in every single one of these cases, that's great. When you look at the acquisition -- the terminals that we acquired on the right-hand side of the page, Barcarena, Suape, Sergipe, Santa Catarina, the total amount of the market size is incrementally much, much larger. So we go from a total market of 8.5 million gallons in total to 45 million gallons per day. So 27 million tons in total. And that number actually may be understated, but what we're actually using in the 27 million tons is that portion of the country that we service, so this excludes basically São Paulo and Rio, which are obviously the 2 most densely populated parts of Brazil. But there are other strategic parts of the country that we think have got a tremendous amount of growth. So the punchline is we roughly increased the amount of terminals that we have by 2, but 9x the incremental growth with total gallons per day of 50 million gallons per day, so much, much different business. With this transaction, it's not the least bit of an overstatement to say that we now have become the premier global gas to power company in the world. And you can see now as the geography lays out on this page, where we now are sitting. So obviously, in the Caribbean and now in South America, we have a substantial amount of business. We have a 50% interest in the ship that has shown off the coast of Africa, which is the first of the floating LNG, that will be one of the last things I talk about. They have FSRUs that we now own or will own once the transaction closes, and strategically very important places that we think can also be incremental terminals themselves perhaps as we move forward. So gradually, our reach is spreading from left to right across this. And we've obviously been very focused on where we are most needed in the world. Brazil is one of the handful of markets that we think is the most attractive. It's one of the largest populations in the world. It is -- has a huge need for natural gas. It's growing rapidly. And so all these things together, we think of the handful of the best markets in the world, it is actually literally at the top of the list. There's another 4 or 5 markets that we're also very focused on that we'll talk about in the coming months and over the course of the year. But right now, we feel like we've actually taken a major step ahead by taking a real leadership position in what we think is the best market. And if I put some numbers to this, on Page #8. So we announced the transaction, we used the CapEx numbers that were actually given to us by the Golar folks. And since then, we have actually spent some time try and put a little bit of a sharper pencil to them. And the bottom line is that to actually turn the terminals on, we think that the amount of capital it takes is actually quite modest. I've visited personally all the terminals, except for Santa Catarina. There's a substantial amount of port infrastructure that we're basically inheriting through each one of these things. So the amount of capital and the amount of time that it's going to take to turn these on is actually quite limited. Andrew will talk about that a little more specifically, but the bottom line is that the terminal project cost to turn on Barcarena, Suape, Sergipe, Santa Catarina, $115 million is our estimate. We are committed to building the power plant in Suape. That's one of the things that catalyzes that transaction overall. So that's another $160 million. So the total amount of capital that we're looking at here is $275 million in capital to turn on the portfolio. It's a very modest amount of capital and also the time that it takes to turn this on is likely to be much less. Our goal is to be FID and all of these terminal transactions in the second quarter, and I think it's our goal to turn these on by the end of the year. And I think we'll have a more refined view of that as we get with all the engineers and people down there. But I think based on what we see right now, those are very reasonable guesses. Now this market is different than the other markets we have been involved in, in that the volumes are much greater. And as a result, the margins are likely to be less. Now I've got -- there's a punchline to that, that I'll get to at the end of it. But even using margins that are much less, you can see just to this chart on the right-hand side what the opportunity is from a growth perspective. So using operating margins of $1.50 to $2.50, using market capture of 10%, 25%, 50%, you generate incremental P&L of $206 million on the low side, $1.7 billion on the high side. Again, think back to what the margins that we have in our current business right now are roughly $4.50, right? So we're using margins to start it with this that are likely to be lower, but the volumes are much greater. If we get any kind of the market capture that we get in other markets, this can be a tremendously growthy transaction for us. And so even though today, the terminals aren't running, they're not generating revenue, where we obviously bought them with the intention of doing exactly that, and I think that as we commercialize these terminals, you'll see a tremendous amount of growth across the portfolio. Now Page 9, we try to bring that all together. And so what we used as a base case in the Hygo and Suape case was $250 million in margin. So that's $250 million. And if you look at that previous page, that is at the very lowest end of what we think is actually possible with the new portfolio. So with the $250 million from that and the operating margin from the Sergipe power plant, $410 million from Hygo and Suape, NFE, our estimate today, $420 million in operating margin plus another $500 million from growth, that's $920 million. The GLMP, which is really the in-place cash flow off the ships portfolio, another $315 million. So simply like putting these together, executing this over the course of the year, we think our run rate numbers for next year are effectively $1.6 billion. So it's a big departure from where we are. And in addition to the growth of all this, of course, what happens what is very, very important to us is the diversification that it brings. If you look at our current portfolio, our biggest couple of assets generate 34%, 27% of our total earnings. With this transaction, once it is put in place and we have actually commercialized and turned on the portfolio, our largest single concentration in any one asset, we estimate to be 8%, so it actually goes down substantially. So not only growth, but diversification. That makes a big difference for us, obviously, in terms of the risk that we have of any one operation causing us some grief. It helps us a lot on the financing side. So those 2 things, growth and diversification, is what we're really focused on. Page 10, what this does, though, is that it does well expand the footprint across the world that allows us to hopefully be the pioneer that we want to be to lead this carbon-free power transition, and geography is going to be a significant factor as this gets rolled out. As we have said, our goal is to find the best technologies that we can commercialize and then deploy across the portfolio. Obviously, the more global we are and reach the bigger impact we can have in reaching that. So now let's go to Page 11. Here's some of the frequently asked questions that we have on the transactions. Starting with what might be the most important one, which is on Page 12 and 13, which is, how do we pay for this? And there's a lot of confusion about this, and I think that this is something that should be helpful to both the analyst and the investor community. It's like, look at Page 13. So here's the math. The committed expenditure is $580 million in cash for Hygo, plus another $300 million to $400 million in projected costs, and that's basically on the existing portfolio that we have, plus the incremental capital that takes to turn on the Brazilian assets, $880 million to $980 million. This can be funded by a combination of cash. We have about $600 million in cash, a revolver that was actually put in place last night, which is a $200 million revolver. We expect to make $300 million to $400 million in operating margin over the course of the year. And then lastly, and this is a big one, there's roughly $1 billion-plus in potential asset sales to fund internal growth, and I'll talk about that in a second. So the bottom line is that right now, with the capital structure and the financing that we have in place, we don't need to raise additional equity to pay for the transaction. We have a lot of flexibility in terms of the timing as our capital expenditures roll out. And so obviously, we're very mindful of being able to fund ourselves properly, but we feel like we've actually put a great capital structure in place that gives us a lot of flexibility. So how does this fit with the capital-light business model, Page 15? The model that we have is basically -- for a very capital-intensive industry, is actually relatively quite capital-light. So the basic business, on the left-hand side; one, we develop the terminals and the power plants. Power plants, in many cases, serve to anchor our entry into a market. Number two is we're going to look to recycle those assets once they're stable in order to generate capital to then be redeployed into high-growth terminals. So the right-hand side, there's 3 assets that are very much candidates for being equitized in this way. Jamalco, which is the power plant that we built in Jamaica, which has actually been running flawlessly is a top of the order dispatch or it's a terrific asset, and it's got some significant growth, we think, in terms of additional power build down there. Number two, the assets that we're buying in the Hygo transaction, Nanook, which is a 25-year firm contract, dollar-based on that. That would be one of the best FSRU contracts on Earth, but it's a very, very stable asset at this point. And then the Sergipe power plant itself, we think, is also something that is actually a highly desirable asset by people that want to own power assets. We think there's tons of great investment characteristics of it. Those 3 things together could generate over $1 billion in equity value in the ordinary course. And so again, while we're not in need of selling any of these things, it's just in our business model we want to take development risk, commercialize activities. And then as you have stable assets that generate -- you can sell those and they can provide significant internally generated cash flow. That's actually what will create the business model that we want, is one that we don't need to go and equitize our businesses in the ordinary course. Obviously, we did sell some equity for the first time since our IPO back in December, but we have no plans to sell any equity at this time. So Page 16, there's a couple of pages here on why Brazil. And what I'd like to do, and hope our communication link will work here properly. But Andrew Dete, who is a very talented guy for us, he is in Brazil right now, and he's our point person for us on our operations down there. But Andrew, do you want to pick up the next couple of pages, please?

Yes. Thanks, Wes. Everyone, nice to talk with you from Rio. I'm on Page 17 here. We're tremendously excited, as Wes talked about, to be coming to Brazil and to be sort of able to implement the strategy that the Hygo team has put together and really add to it. Wes hit on this a little bit, but what we're so excited about is when we look across potential countries that we're going to be in, there's really no place like Brazil in terms of having the population, in terms of having the gas demand and the sort of established power and industrial base, and also basically an emerging gas market. And so I think as people who have followed this will know, the monopoly that Petrobras has had in the market is changing. And for us, it's just an incredibly exciting time to be coming into this market in terms of things we can do. And we'll go through kind of how each terminal is strategic to us. But overall, Brazil really changes the game for us, and I think it's really the perfect time here. The Hygo team has done a tremendous job of putting together the strategy that we're going to go forward and implement with our flavor and our own way of doing it. But it really has created really a first-mover advantage for us in a market that we think is incredibly attractive. So on Page 18, we have the map of the terminals that Wes has gone through. And I'll kind of go north to south here and describe just a little bit of these, and we can pick up some further questions in Q&A. The first one is the Barcarena terminal in Pará state. And so this is kind of a classic sort of NFE strategy where we're competing with a lot of the sort of other fuel sources that are not connected to the gas grid. So in this case, in Brazil, diesel has been $20 in MMBtu. HFO is currently about $15 MMBtu. And our terminal is co-located with actually the largest HFO user in the country, which is the Alunorte refinery owned by Norsk Hydro. We also have a 25-year PPA here with a company called CELBA, which is -- which holds the power asset. And pro forma for the transaction, we're going to own 100% of that company as well. So we're tremendously excited about the opportunity at Barcarena. We're going to bring gas to a region that, as we talked about, really uses diesel and HFO in very big volumes today. And then we'll sort of have access to there from basically the entire Amazon Basin. And there's a tremendous amount of other opportunities to do, both in Pará and up and down the river here. Just continue to go south to Suape terminal in Pernambuco state, also super exciting for us. And now we're really talking about being on the pipeline grid, but in a very advantageous way. Really sort of in the Northeast -- in the northern part of the TAG pipeline, which really runs from kind of the Rio, São Paulo region in the south all the way to the Northeast here. Suape is a tremendous industrial port development. There are a whole host of manufacturing and industrial customers at the port site itself. And we're super excited to be the first one really to bring LNG to that market. As Wes mentioned, we're also purchasing 288 megawatts of 15-year PPAs that we'll be moving to the Suape site and building the power plant there as well. And so we have some good initial demand from the power plant, and then expect to be able to sell to customers in and around the port site, other customers in Pernambuco state, and then to access the TAG pipeline here and to be able to market gas up and down the pipeline. As I've been mentioning, the Hygo strategy is when we've really loved, which is each of these has a very strategic locational advantage. And in this case, it's really accessing a market that is typically actually access through a very long pipeline from the south region where most of the offshore gas comes onshore. And so today, most of these customers are buying at something like 12% of Brent plus maybe $1.50 to $1.70 per MMBtu on the pipeline. And so that creates a really great locational advantage for us in the Northeast. It's something that we really believe has sustainable margins as we go forward because there's great demand there, and we're going to be locationally advantaged by being at the Suape port. So we're super excited about this terminal. It really aligns well with our strategy. The fixed jetty infrastructure that's in place, as Wes mentioned, also really makes us a very sort of low capital deployment to get the terminal up and running. For both Barcarena and for Suape, these are really FID-ready today. And so we really are excited to announce, as soon as the transaction closes, our next steps on building these terminals. There's really nothing standing in our way from getting started. And so we're super excited about getting those up and running as soon as we can. The third here, continue to go south, is Sergipe, mentioned, obviously, the largest thermal power plant in Latin America, 1.5 gigawatts, also offers the opportunity to connect into the TAG pipeline. And so, for us, a very strategic kind of play on just more than part of TAG pipeline here as well and give us other advantages. Then we actually go south to the Santa Catarina terminal in Santa Catarina state. This one, tremendously exciting for a very similar reason, but in a different way. So located on the TBG Pipeline, which today imports gas from Bolivia. That gas supply has been declining year-over-year. And also, there's a relatively expensive charge to actually transport the gas from Bolivia west to east on this pipeline and then south kind of through the southern states of Brazil. And so we're super excited about our future advantage we have here as well and our ability to plug into this TPG pipeline and compete for the gas demand throughout the southern region. And so again, we have a terminal that we think is really strategically located to compete against both declining and somewhat higher-priced gas molecule and transport. This one, there's a couple of permitting things just to be finalized, but we think this one will be ready for FID in Q1 of this year as well. And so to take kind of this portfolio strategy from Hygo and to be able to just advanced development of this and to really get all these terminals to FID in Q1 of this year is our goal, and we think that's very possible. And then we intend to announce a number of commercialization activities and strategies around each of these terminals kind of align with the strategy here we're talking about. All of them are capital-light, all of them are ready to go. And we just think that brazil is a market that's going to be incredibly important for us. And we're super excited to kind of be inheriting and adding to this portfolio approach, which really combines the growth of the market with really sustainable margins through some locational set of advantages.

Great. Thanks, Andrew. That's actually awesome. So next section is answering basically a math question. I like math questions, and this is a pretty simple one. So the question we get asked is, why do we buy a bunch of ships? And is that a new business line for us? Can we do something really different here? And the answer is, it's not a new business. We're actually in the ships business by virtue of being in the terminals business. So in the logistics chain, we have big ships and we have small ships. And we have ISO containers and we have trucks and we have chassis and pieces of logistics equipment. Ships, obviously, are bigger. They're more capital intensive. But if you look at Page #20, just to walk through an example, and I used the calculation for the Golar Winter. So our choice is we can either buy an asset and own it and operate it or we can lease it. It's actually very simple. And when you are looking to use assets for a very long period of time, and again, our timeframe here is decades, not months or years, it makes a lot of sense to buy, so as long as your cost of capital is basically lower than the least cost of capital it is on the other side of it. So -- and this is just a simple page to kind of reflect exactly that. So take our own cost, I think, $120 million asset value, amortize it over 20 years. It's a $6 million charge that we're going to pay. A noncash charge, but obviously, the asset is worth less eventually what we're paying for it. We then have operating maintenance expenses of $9 million. We're assuming that we're capitalizing with a 25% equity, 75% debt that's financed on our balance sheet at 5%, that's $5 million. So our total cost is $19 million. If we were to lease that market -- lease that asset in the market today, the lease rate for it on a long-term basis would be $70,000 a day, $26 million. We end up saving $7 million by putting that on our balance sheet. And so it's an asset that we need. It's an asset that is essential to our business, just like the ISO containers and just like the trucks are, where we save $7 million. And as one example, if you flip the page to Page 21, you can see that what we need is on the left-hand side. So we need 8 FSRUs, we need 4 FSUs, so 12 vessels in total. We're buying, through this transaction, 9 FSRUs, four FSUs, so 13 vessels. So coincidentally, it actually happens to match up nearly perfectly with what our needs are with the assets they have. The net of it is, when you take the total cost of lease of $215 million, total cost to own of $150 million, the savings just on this one transaction will allow is $65 million a year. You control your own assets, you control your own destiny. It's the obvious choice to make. So this is not a new business that we're going to add to, it's not a capital or balance sheet clogging activity. What it is, is if for a modest amount of capital, we end up saving a very substantial amount of operating income every year. So if for some reason, by the way, the lease rates went down so much and we were able to replace our capital with much cheaper capital, of course, I'd be happy to do that. But you can see here that we really derisk ourselves substantially. And I think that we basically end up with a good deal on the portfolio that we're buying because we are derisking it by being the takeout for the ownership. So Page #22, how does this fit into our business model? Overall, how does Floating LNG pick in? So Page 23, what is Floating LNG? It's basically a liquefied that's stuffed into a ship. And it really uses the same technology, the same techniques that are used onshore. It's just done on the water. And of course, Golar has been a real pioneer for all things. They actually did the first FSRU. They did the first Floating LNG. So I'd like to think that those guys are experts, and have been real industry leaders at doing things on the water. And then we have been developing our expertise to do things logistically and on land. So in that way, it's been a very, very good marriage between what they have done and what we have done historically. So this asset, well, what does it allow you to do? It allows owners to monetize stranded gas assets offshore. There are very attractive gas assets that exist all over earth that are under the water, and it's hard to get that from under the water onto land where you can use it. Putting a ship in place there allows you to basically like reduce their costs substantially and actually turn them from a stranded asset and a non-cash flowing asset into one that produces a lot of cash flow. From our standpoint, we gain access to potentially a low-cost source of LNG. One of the biggest problems in the business, and I say -- I've said this many times before, but if you want to make a great fortune, find a great problem and solve it. One of the biggest problems in the entire industry is that the whole industry is indexed on an LNG, on the gas basis to either Brent-based or Henry Hub. And that's fine because those are indexes that people can quote and they can use and whatnot. What's not fine is that there are no customers out, there are virtually no customers that actually are natural off-takers, either Brent-based pricing or Henry Hub-based pricing. What customers want is stable cost of energy so they can run their business. They want to know the cost of electricity to run their resort or to run their refinery or to run their trucks, so they're shipping, right? And so there's not a natural offtake for what the entire industry does right now. And if you can solve for people the problem of volatility in their future prices, I think you actually then establish yourself in a real dominant position to really benefit from that around the world. And so what is possible, I believe, is with this technology, I think you'll be able to access these gas fields and pay tariffs for people for extracting those resources, and by doing so, create for yourself potentially a fixed rate or a very stable rate for your LNG itself. And that would be a big game changer for us. So we inherited a 50% interest in the ships south to the coast of Africa, the Hilli. We're excited about that. We're partners with Golar in that regard. And it gives us a great chance to kind of take advantage of the 10-plus years of IP that they have put into this thing, be partners with them and establish kind of a front-row seat. I don't have any plans tomorrow to go rush into the Floating LNG business, but it's something that I think is actually really, really interesting. And if you look at Page #24, just to kind of put some numbers and dimension around that. So if -- let's just use a hypothetical. Step 1, own the terminals, develop a portfolio of high throughput terminals, 10 million tons of production, right? So markets like Brazil, markets like Ireland that we're actually developing the terminal there as well. And we hope to be FID on that in the middle part of this year. Those are markets that are going to be higher volume, they're going to be lower margin. You're going to be able to access them as a sync effectively to bring in gas in large volumes. If you did hypothetically build your Floating LNG. So let's say, you built a -- I use a 2.5 million ton LNG production vehicle and it cost $1 billion to build, so it's $250 million in equity. If you build 10 million tons of this, right, you supply your system with $3 LNG, that is $2 million to $3 million -- or $2 to $3 in marginal benefits. So $2 to $3 in margin, incremental to what we have right now. That's $1 billion to $1.5 billion in margin on maybe $1 billion investment. So these are very broad numbers. They're very illustrative. They're hypothetical. You can see why they are so interesting because not only does it actually generate potentially substantial amounts of margin on the high-volume businesses we're putting in place, in places like Brazil and in Ireland and other places, but also, what we're doing is potentially being able to fix for our customers, the downstream people, a source of supply that is a lot more stable than what they have right now. Those 2 things together are real game changers. And so it is not something you're being asked to pay for a lot of the shareholders right now. But I think it's gotten it gives us a tremendous amount of upside incremental to it. So with that, there's other things that are in the appendix in terms of sources and uses, whatnot. I'm not going to go through. So with that, operator, we will pause, and I'm happy to take questions from analysts or investors. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from the line of Alonso Guerra-Garcia with Scotia Bank.

Congrats on the transaction. I appreciate the detail. I guess, Wes, thinking broadly about the strategy, you rolled out the ISO Flex last year with a target of expanding more rapidly in new markets. And now the acquisition of the Golar assets gives you a pretty wide range of steam vessels ready for conversion and FSRUs that are ready to be deployed. Can you talk to how the Golar assets sort of fit in with your ISO leg strategy, I guess, to target new markets going forward?

We have. So just by way of kind of reference. So ISO Flex is a way for us to access markets more quickly than a traditional FSRU. So ISO Flex is basically taking a big ship in FSU, filling directly through a manifold, a series of ISO containers that are on a small ship, bring that ship to shore, lifting off of the crane. And so you can bring ISO containers on shore. Much more rapid than you can develop an FSRU terminal, which typically takes 2 to 3 years to do so. So the first 2 terminals that we have that will use ISO Flex are Mexico and Nicaragua terminal. So in a few short months, you'll be able to go down there and take a look at actually the operation in place. But we think that, that is the perfect infrastructure solution for those markets. It allows us to build them more cost competitively and more quickly than they do. Now in the case of the Brazilian terminals, these are a product that has -- we've already spent a couple of years on them. So there's been a lot of work that has gone into this. And the infrastructure that we are inheriting from each one of these places itself is actually -- is a big benefit. So as Andrew talked about and Suape, as an example, there's a big port terminal that exists right now. And so we are benefiting from that. So the time line to develop these projects into FSRUs, is it less than it would be if it was truly a greenfield start. So it's not that it is a departure from the ISO Flex at all. And in fact, I think you'll find cases where we use ISO Flex as a way to open up a market because it allows us to access it quickly. And then over time, that kind of morphs into something that uses an FSRU solution. So the 2 are highly complementary. These just happen to be terminals that are already in highly advanced forms of development. And because of that, they're actually suitable, more suitable for the FSRU solution. And given the volumes that are there, it's also -- it's the appropriate -- it's the right tool for the job effectively. So...

And then maybe as a follow-up on the renewable fuel side, in net CRO, obviously have been a big part of the long-term vision for New Fortress. Does the Hygo acquisition help facilitate advancements on hydrogen use or the terminals and power plants being designed similar to your current sites to be able to take hydrogen longer term?

Well, I think that the natural gas assets that we're putting in place, we think that the bulk of the infrastructure that we were using can be used for hydrogen, when it's actually cost competitive. I think that we're very focused. I've been -- in spite of the COVID stuff I've traveled a little bit. So I was in Sri Lanka a week ago. I was in Columbia. Yesterday, I will be here Brazil next week. So managed to get around a little bit. And I'd say that in meeting with heads of state, energy ministers, people that are in charge of the energy programs for these countries, virtually the first thing they want to talk about is fossil-free energy. So it's not a fad. It's not something that people are talking about because it sounds good. But I think people legitimately are very interested in long term. I think I do feel like with the new administration taking their place in the U.S. here yesterday. I think there's going to be a real focus on green energy. Obviously, I'm a huge advocate of that. I think you're going to see a lot of policies and capital come into the market. And at the end of the day, it's about one thing, and that one thing is cost. And if you can make hydrogen available on a cost-competitive basis, it's going to be utilized in energy. It's going to be utilized by industry. It will be utilized in transportation. And the assets that we are in the process of assembling around the world, we think are the perfect deployment of those things. And so as I said, I don't want to be the mad scientist trying to figure out the right technology here, that's not that's not really what we view our mission to be. But I do want to be the company that is a real leader in terms of commercializing that and then actually getting it put in place. So we think that these assets are -- as I said, the geography, when you look across the world, it's going to be significant here in the coming months and years. And I think that you're going to find a lot of different applications for it. So that's the goal.

And our next question comes from the line of Max Yaras with Morgan Stanley.

I appreciate the terminal details you guys gave on Slide 6. Just wondering, how do we think about maybe how much of that addressable market you guys could achieve in the near term and then that $1.5 margin you talked about? Can you kind of walk us to how you get there? What is reasonable?

Well, we're brand-new in Brazil. So we actually -- there's a big staff that we have inherited. Those guys have spent a lot of time. Actually, Andrew is with the gas marketing group right now down in Rio, and I'll be with those guys next week. So I think that our business plan for each one of the terminals is something that it will develop in the next couple of months. And as I said, our goal, first and foremost, is to get the terminals built and actually operational here as soon as possible so we can access those markets. That's the real goal. I think Andrew did a great job in kind of going from top to bottom. The businesses that we have developed thus far, I would describe the terminals as being largely merchant operations. In other words, we are looking to bring in our own gas, sell that gas on to customers, either power plant users or industrial users, transportation users and actually make the spread between where we buy it and where we sell it. All of our costs. That's kind of the base level business. When you get into these higher volume markets, there's another type of business that kind of arises, that I would describe as the capacity business. And so when you look at Europe is a good example. I think there's 37 or 38 terminals in Europe along the coastline. And basically, Europe itself doesn't have a lot of natural resources themselves. And so they either import through these terminals on the western front essentially, or in the east they bringing gas largely from Russia. So that's the way that the gas kind of comes into the country. A lot of the way the gas comes in through those terminals is what we would think of as kind of capacity payments. So a large producer of LNG, Qatar, Petronas or Shell would actually basically rent space at the terminal to then have the right to then put gas into the pipeline system themselves. And so rather than being kind of the owner and the merchant of the gas that's coming in, you become the landlord in providing the essential infrastructure to do so. And so the margins for that are lower. That's why we show lower margins for some of these big Brazilian opportunities, but the volumes are quite a bit higher. And obviously, the winning squared solution would be finding yourself in a very high-volume market where eventually you could provide your own gas that would be really competitive, and that's the floating LNG an option. And that's where your margins actually then can be consistent with what we do right here. But -- so it's a little bit of a different business, but it's obviously still a very good business. And I think I always ask myself the question when I look at any business, would I rather be the landlord or the tenant. And so the example I always use is the airlines business. The airlines business seems like a tough business to me. So I don't want to run airlines, I don't want to be the tenant in that case. But we've had businesses that have leased airplanes and leased engines for many years, and that's a great business. And so in this case, we have been -- we really have been the tenant, in other words, running as a merchant operation in the terminals we have right now, but in some of these cases in Brazil and these high-volume markets, it may well be the being a landlord, maybe the right business strategy for that. And so kind of adapting to what the market kind of offers is how I think about it. And this is exciting for us because this is -- obviously, it's a gigantic market. It's got all the dynamics that are positive that Andrew described. And now once you have these terminals in place, it's just a matter of going out and commercializing. And I feel like we've got a good chance of doing so. But we'll have much more specifics in terms of each one of the portfolios. And frankly, even as you look from the top to the bottom, it may be that some of the terminals have got characteristics that are different. So Barcarena, in particular, the one of the north that I visited essentially, the mouth of the Amazon River. And so there's a huge refinery right there that we think we could be a landlord for and they just may tap into us and access gas. But then as you look up the river and you look at all the diesel that's being used and transport up and down the river, power plants have burned diesel up and down the river, all the things that could happen in the trucking industry and whatnot, being also a merchant in that business may be the best of both worlds. So we'll see is a basic answer, but there's a lot of different ways that these things could evolve positively.

Got it. That makes sense. Maybe one for Andrew. You talked about FID on a few new terminals in Brazil in 1 to 2Q this year. What are the specific milestones left on some of the maybe Suape, Barcarena, Santa Catarina?

We'll have a much kind of more comprehensive answer to that, I think, in the next a month or 2. We inherit a highly developed group of terminals and a group of people that have turned on successfully the terminal and the power plant and Sergipe. So whenever I look at someone's capability, the first question I was asked myself is have you done for us lately? And can they show that they have real capability? They built the biggest power plant in Latin America. They built the terminal, they actually have the thing actually put in place. So we feel really good about the technical capabilities of the people that are there. And we'll have very specific milestones. But I'd say, again, just in terms of the bird's eye view of it, the existing infrastructure that we are inheriting in these places is actually considerable. So the real gap between that and actually putting in place is much more modest than it would be in other cases. So I feel good that we're going to be able to do this thing. And one other thing I should have mentioned, and maybe Andrew should have mentioned or we both should have, but we are also inheriting a partnership with BR Distribuidora. So BR Distribuidora is of the largest companies in Brazil. It is the downstream company that was spun off out of Petrobras. I think it's $25 billion revenue. So it's a very, very large company, that many thousands of service stations, et cetera, they struck a very, very comprehensive partnership with them to develop downstream capabilities, in particular, in the transportation industry. Brazil is unique in that there are many, many trucks that go up and down the highways and in and out of the rain for us there. And with a relatively modest amount of infrastructure investment, you can access those things. They pay a tremendous amount of money for diesel, that's very expensive, number one. They also burn a tremendous amount of diesel and environmentally, that's obviously not a good outcome. So those 2 things together, we think that there could be a lot to do there, but that -- and that probably a service both out of Suape and out of Barcarena. So those are both sites that could see a lot of commercial activity in the transportation side as well.

Got it. One more quick clarification, if I could sneak it in. The $800 million projected CapEx, are we saying that, that now could be about $275 million? Or is that not inclusive of all the other original plans?

Yes, that's exactly right. So their CapEx number includes them building out power plants that they have PPAs in hand for. And we're not discarding that at all. We're a big fan of power plants has off-takers for our product, and that's great. But we also think that there may be the opportunity to build those in partnership with other people, reduce capital expenditures, et cetera. So we're not at all opposed to developing power plants. But we think that from a capital standpoint, our focus is very much on the here and now. And so to the extent that we can moderate our activity. We simply put -- we don't need those power plants to anchor the activity of these terminals period. And so Suape, we -- clearly, that's something we have committed to. And so that is an FID project for us. The other places is something that we'll definitely look for other avenues to explore. But in terms of the need for capital, it definitely reduces it from the $800 million to the $275 million.

And our next question comes from the line of Sean Morgan with Evercore.

So just a question kind of regarding the CapEx to follow-up on the last one, but sort of different. I noticed that now Barcarena, we have $35 million to sort of get -- and I know this isn't full development, but just to get it up and running. And before there was a -- I think it was around $80 million of CapEx required for an FSRU conversion in order to get that started. So are you planning to earmark, one, the GMLP FSRUs that's already kind of owned to basically service that or would you be using the ISO container strategy as sort of your beachhead to get up and running? And how do you sort of avoid that initial cost?

Yes, it's the former, right? So we have FSRUs. As we look at the -- there's a number of ships that kind of come off higher naturally over the next 2 years. And so that's what we consider to be in the kind of immediately available tool. And so we think there's FSRUs that would be available there. We would not be to spend the incremental dollars to do so to convert it ourselves.

Okay. And then did you -- as part of the acquisition, will you be taking on chartering people to sort of manage the ships that are on existing charters and the FSRUs are on existing charters? Or do you only have a partnership with Golar?

Well, it did -- both is the answer. We take on a bunch of people directly that obviously have a ton of technical capabilities. And then we have service arrangements with those guys to provide incremental services to us. So very, very typical in transactions like this to have kind of long-term service agreements for people to provide functions that either you don't want to or choose not to perform yourself, but we get both. We get a bunch of technical people and we get services with those folks. So -- and obviously, they're experts at it, so we feel great about that.

Okay. And then just the last one. I know you guys are really early on the FLNG, so I appreciate this may be a bit premature to ask this. But with the Hilli being 50% utilized, is there any interest? Have you put a feeler super raincoat to potentially doing some sort of offtake arrangement sort of in the medium term to address some of the gas needs that you'll have going forward as you try to FID these additional terminals in Brazil and continue with the growth at Nicaragua and Mexico?

Yes. So 100% of the conversations on the FLNG stuff have been Golar with Perenco, other counterparties. So the other guys have put it in place. I think, obviously, that asset is 50% utilized. And the logical conclusion is exactly what you say, which is like this trend to find a way to generate some LNG, which is cheaper. Like I used the example, which is a very simplistic one of saying, here is what 10 million tons of LNG would do for us, if you had 10 million tons, whatever. It's designed to be an illustration. And the math is obviously compelling. If you built 25 million-ton vessels, they each cost $2 billion. You put $0.5 billion up. So it's $1 billion in equity. You might generate $1.5 billion in incremental margin a year. So you don't need to calculate to figure out kind of what the returns on that could look like. Now there's obviously the big question mark is, can you develop the downstream to actually take in that amount of volumes with places like Brazil and Ireland and other markets we're looking at. I believe the answer is absolutely yes. And if you can. And then the -- what I think is going to happen on the FLNG stuff is much -- is very similar to what has happened in the FSRU stuff, which was -- it was a pioneering thought to put regas onto a ship 20 years ago. Now when you look at it, it is the standard infrastructure package for virtually every terminal that's being developed around the world, right? So it's cheaper, faster, better. I think FLNG, it's not one size fits all. There's obviously a lot of land-based gas that gets liquefied in this way. But there's a lot of like gas that sits under the water offshore, it is really not accessible in an economic way without this thing. So it would not surprise me at all to see -- if you fast forward 5 years from now, you'll see this be a very mainstream activity. And I think, again, the biggest problem that you're trying to solve from my standpoint is the stability of price, right? Brent-based pricing, Brent has had a bit of a run here. And I think I'm not the prognosticator of what's going to happen in the future. But if you had Brent go up a lot, as economic activity turned on kind of post-COVID, it'd be a nasally surprise for the people that have Brent-based offtake and they're just trying to run their businesses. So that's the big problem that I think needs to get solved. And I think this is one of the potential solutions to it.

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Lewis with BTIG.

I guess I'd like to expand on Sean's question. And really, as you think to integrate, and clearly, you need gas longer term. Would New Fortress consider investing more in the actual acreage of natural gas or is it something where you're really just looking to contract out to the Perencos of the world?

Yes. And I am definitely not looking to be an acquirer of gas assets. That's not my goal at all. I think one of the things about the FLNG stuff that I think is interesting is that the relationship you could be using is simply a tariff relationship where you access those gas fields, you provide a tariff payment to whoever owns it, and you don't have to buy the asset, and it's really a win-win. They get gas, it monetizes in a meaningful way. We get access to low-cost and stable priced gas. So that's obviously the goal. These are very hypothetical conversations, but I can tell you being an upstream gas owner is not something that I desire to do. So I would never say never about anything, but that's not something that's remotely close to something we're interested in today. So...

Okay. Great. No, no, that's super helpful. And then when we think about the opportunity, you kind of highlighted those few assets that are developed and up and running that you potentially could monetize, is that kind of how we should think about maybe New Fortress 2.0 where some of these terminals get fully developed and are up and running and producing we could continue to see new Fortress kind of sell off pieces of those? And when you talk about those assets that are potentially for sale, would you see a scenario where New Fortress would at least maintain some ownership in it or would it just be a full monetization of the asset?

Yes. So to be clear, the terminals themselves are what I consider to be the lifeblood of the company. So I have no interest in really selling the terminals. I'm not I'm not religious about many things, but actually owning those terminals and having the control of them is what actually runs our business. So that's not something that we would consider. The downstream assets is something like a long-term charter on an FSRU, a power plant that is fully operational and fully utilized. Those are the kind of things where there's definitely lower cost of capital and people that are in those businesses, and they have the right pools of capital for them that we think are more appropriate. And that will allow us then to internally generate cash flow to then go put into the high growth opportunities, which are really the terminal developments themselves. So in terms of the last question, would we consider partial ownership or whatever, the answer is there could be a lot of different forms of this. I am by nature, a simplifier. I don't want a really complex capital structure. And so I'm not a big fan of trying to need sure you or anybody -- an investor that's on the call to really go through and actually like with a microscope and trying to figure out what we own or what piece and whatnot. I think that ultimately, that in the long run is value destructive. And so again, there's a cost for everything, but I think having things that are very straightforward, having things that are simple, is something I'm very desirous of. But when you do have long-term cash flows, in a world where people are looking to find assets for their portfolio, and that allows us to take the development risk, turn them into something that's then suitable for those investment pools and then redeploy that capital. That's the cycle that I think long-term makes a lot of sense for us.

And our next question comes from the line of Martin Malloy with Johnson Rice.

On Slide 7, you've got some circles in some new geographic areas. Can you maybe update us on your thoughts in terms of timing of future FIDs outside of Central and South America?

I feel pretty good about putting some dots into those circles over the course of the next couple of months. It has been a challenging time to move around the world. With all the COVID stuff. That has definitely started to relax a little bit. There's -- people have developed kind of protocols and regulations for how you can enter and exit different geographies. So as I said, I've been was in Sri Lanka, a week ago, I was in Columbia, the last couple of days, I'll be in Brazil next week. So I mean, it's not easy to move around, but it's definitely much more feasible today than it was even 6 months ago. So -- and I think that as vaccines get rolled out around the world. And hopefully, that happens sooner rather than later. I think you can see some of these places unlock sooner rather than later. The need for our product, the need for cleaner, cheaper energy exists there with or without COVID. And frankly, it may be more pronounced because the countries lack capital and they need to save money. And so that's even more of a focus. But I don't want to make a specific prediction about when we'll turn on the next one. But I do feel very comfortable in saying that our goal at the end of the year is kind of 15 to 20 terminals. We're at 9 right now, and I feel like we're going to end up in that zone, absolutely. I think there's a good chance to get from here or there.

Okay. And then my next question, could you maybe talk about how you're thinking about the mitigation of natural gas price risk with respect to the Brazilian assets and as you announced commercial contracts?

Well, I think that as we contract some of the downstream there, I think we'll then be looking to the gas markets as we have done to date. So there obviously is a lot of interest from the owners of LNG, I've had many, many calls and messages from the different groups that are interested in being partners with us in different regards. And I think there will be great partnership opportunities as a result of it. But I think that, again, it's a nuance, but kind of going from this merchant model to more of a transactional model, which is a capacity payment is something that is going to evolve, I think, down there in this market. It's the same kind of thing we would find in Ireland. And I think that, that fits this partnership, and I think we'll find lots and lots of different options to do so.

That is all the time we have today for questions. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to CEO and Chairman of the Board, Wes Edens, for any closing remarks. .

Great. Well, thanks, everyone, for dialing in. Hopefully, you found this useful. We did our best job to try and lay this out in the simple form as we can. Josh and other folks on the Investor Relations team are great path to getting more questions up and answered as we get stuff. And if we think they are good questions, we'll actually post up additionally, but hopefully, this is helpful to you. But I thank you for the time and the effort you put in to calling in. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.