Venture Global (VG) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

Thank you, Trevor. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Venture Global Inc. 2nd quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm joined this morning by Mike Sable, venture global's CEO, executive co-chairman and founder, Jack there, our CFO, and other members of venture global senior management team.

Before I begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from what is described in these statements. I encourage you to refer to the disclaimers in our earnings presentation, which is available on the investor section of our website. Additionally, we may include references to certain non-GAP metrics such as Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, which we may refer to simply as EBITDA during this call. A reconciliation of these metrics to the most relevant GAP metrics measures can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation posted on our website.

Finally, the guidance in this presentation is only effective as of today. In general, we will not update guidance until the following quarter and will not update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. I'll now turn the call over to Mike Sable.

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

We are increasing our 2026 EBITDA guidance to $8.7 to $9.1 billion from $8.2 to $8.5 billion, based on current market outlook for the remainder of the year. Given outsized LNG price volatility related to events in the Middle East, we have maintained a broader than usual guidance range than in the past. As we contract the remainder of our expected volumes for the year, we expect to tighten this range following third quarter. Jack will discuss these numbers in greater detail in a moment.

Turning to page 6, in the second quarter, we exported 127 Cargos while maintaining our incredible record of safety. Commercial Momentum continued in the second quarter where we executed over two MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements with new and existing customers, including total energies, VTOL, EMBW, and Atlantic Sea. The market is welcome venture globals ability to offer customers' optionality in uniquely contracting short, medium, and long-term volumes. I'm also proud to highlight that we exported our 1,000th cargo just four years after venture globals' first cargo in the first week of March 2022. The team has worked tirelessly to make us the safest, most efficient, and best performing LNG company in the industry, and we now have the track record to prove it.

These efforts, along with the investments, innovations, and process improvements we have made to our machines, position venture global well to export our next 1,000 Cargos in a fraction of the time. And in just a few years, we should be exporting more than 1,000 Cargos every year.

With our continued operational and commercial execution, we are confident in the resiliency of our cash flows. On that basis, the Board has recently improved an increase in our quarterly common dividends to 4 cents per share, a 122 percent increase. We are pleased to show this dividend growth and reward our shareholders. This quarter, we were very active in optimizing our capital structure and reducing our capital costs. We refinanced several tranches of term loans, bonds, and even preferred equity, which totaled more than $5.3 billion of capital cumulatively, and should reduce our annual interest in coupon obligations by more than $100 million. We added a new $1.5 billion term loan against our nine LNG carriers, which had previously been funded by cash.

We appreciate our capital partners and the team who has worked tirelessly to bring all these transactions together. Venture Global has now raised or refinance more than $103 billion of capital.

Moving to page seven, our contracted position for 2026 has increased markedly to over 91 percent of the portfolio from the 84 percent previously reported on our first quarter earnings call in May. The 127 Cargos produced in the second quarter were at the high end of our Cargos range for the full year. While normal seasonality does impact production during warmer months, I do think it is worth noting that we have made operational and capital investments to reduce the adverse impact of summer temperatures, which you can see is demonstrated in our relatively stable production profile. Rather than artificially increasing LNG production by deferring maintenance to capitalize on stronger market demand, our solid production performance during the summer months reflects our ongoing focus on innovation and operational improvement.

In fact, instead of postponing maintenance, we completed significant planned work during the quarter, including hot gas path inspections on the gas turbines at Caukshire Pass, activities that would typically require substantial production downtime at most LNG facilities. Given our modular configuration and built in redundancies, the impact of maintenance on our LNG production was inconsequential. Importantly, we are still early in our optimization journey and expect to debodel neck and deliver further enhancements to our output and operational performance over the coming years.

Turning to page eight, our in-house engineering procurement and construction team is working hard to safely keep CP2 on time and on budget. Now, just over a year from FID, which was July of last year, July 28, the project has roofs raised on all four LNG storage tanks, 16 fabricated liquefaction modules on site, and five of the gas and steam turbines that made up the power plant on foundations. For those power plants, we are assembling our heat recovery steam generators, the Herzigs, off site at our Morgan City facility in Louisiana. We have now built and transported five Herzigs to CP2. You can see one of them arriving and on the barge at CP2 in the picture here, which is no small task as they are nine stories tall in each way, more than 1,500 tons.

This is the first time we have built our own Herzigs, which are some of the largest modular Herzigs ever built. By taking the scope in-house and managed by our internal EPC team, we have removed one of the major bottlenecks in our construction schedule, which should streamline our timeline for first LNG.

On page nine, we have our bolt-on expansions at CP2 and plaquemons. In May, we filed an application with FERC for the expansion of CP2, which would be entirely within the existing CP2 footprint. We were pleased to receive a pre-filing waiver from FERC and have already ordered long lead equipment, such as power modules and liquefaction trains, from our long-standing partners at Baker Hughes. We expect to make a final investment decision on the 10 MTP expansion in early 2027 with first LNG production at the CP2 expansion in late 2028. For the plaquemons expansion, you can see the first phase of our bolt-on expansion plans depicted on the slide.

As previously disclosed, we expect the first phase to include eight liquefaction trains producing 6.4 MTPA of LNG. We filed to permit the full 31 MTPA expansion of plaquemons to be constructed in multiple phases late last year in a targeting FID in the first half of next year with production from phase one in 2029. To facilitate the expansion of plaquemons, we expect to build a new pipeline to North Louisiana called Cloud Connector and once producing from phase one, our runway production across all three projects is expected to be approximately 85 MTPA.

As you can see on page 10, we currently have around 53 of this 85 MTPA committed under long and medium-term contracts. Notably, 100% of our nameplate capacity across our first three projects is contracted. The additional 32 MTPA available for marketing is comprised of excess capacity in the addition of the CP2 and plaquemons phase one bolt-on expansions. We continue to maintain a portfolio approach and anticipate contracting the majority of this capacity through both the mix of long-term agreements to support new financing and medium-term contracts designed to enhance returns and retain flexibility. To help understand the portfolio approach I just described in the option value it creates for venture global. On page 12, we show the frequency distribution of implied liquefaction fees between the emergence of shale gas into the U. S. market from 2010 to 2010.

As you can see, after adjusting for the cost of gas as well as conservative shipping and logistics costs, the average liquefaction fee would be over $6 for MMBTU. While that does include several periods of significantly elevated prices, it also includes the COVID-related downturn of 2020 and even adjusting for those, the median fee would still be nearly twice that of a 20-year contract price and inevitably those periods of elevated pricing take place a few times a decade. This substantial spread with asymmetric extrinsic option value highlights the premium available for short and intermediate-term contracts in the LNG market. We believe our contracting approach and balance portfolio provide downside production with the ability to monetize our available LNG capacity at long-term rates establishing a pricing floor.

At the same time, our blended portfolio approach provides flexibility to capture materially better returns on medium-term contracts and remain in a position to harvest outsized returns on shorter-dated contracting during periods of cyclical strength. These consistently higher blended returns influence our capital allocation decisions as we believe retaining and monetizing the additional upside option value from a balance portfolio dramatically enhances the cash flow and absolute value of our LNG assets.

Turning to page 13, while LNG supply has of course been impacted by the events in the Middle East, demand has been resilient. As you can see, most of the substantial Asian markets have experienced a meaningful rebound in imports following the initial impact of elevated prices for the recent months higher on a year-over-year basis. High temperatures in both Asia and Europe have driven greater power demand and industrial demand from sectors like the fertilizer market has also proven to be inelastic. Importantly, as you can see here, European gas inventories remain well below normal levels which will likely drive higher winter demand and pricing. In fact, Europe is increasingly approaching a point at which it is exposed to severe winter weather, dangerously exposed both physically and economically.

Now I'll turn the over to our CFO, Jack Thayer, who review the quarterly performance, provide an overview of our project performance and discuss our updated financial guidance.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning to those of you on the line. I'll be referring to the Venture Global Incorporated Form 10Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. The 10Q is available on our website and some of the key results are summarized on page 15 of the presentation. During this call, I will highlight results I believe are salient to this audience and I encourage you to review the entirety of our financial statements in detail. Beginning with revenue, our top line was $4.6 billion for the second quarter of 2026, a $1.5 billion or 48% increase from the $3.1 billion during the equivalent period in 2025.

This increase in revenue was driven by $1.3 billion from higher sales volumes, 466 TBTU in the second quarter of 2026 compared with 329 TBTU in the second quarter of 2025, and $102 million from higher net LNG sales prices. Our income from operations was $2.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a $1.2 billion or 111% increase from $1.0 billion in the second quarter of 2025. This shift was primarily driven by the higher sales volumes I previously mentioned, augmented by higher LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas. Our operating and maintenance costs were $118 million higher respectively year over year due to the increased commissioning work at Plackmans and from more venture global owned ships being in operation.

GNA expenses were largely unchanged year over year despite a larger head count. Our development costs were lower than the same period last year as we were able to capitalize more costs associated with CP2 and our pipeline and bolt-on expansions. Our net income attributable to common stockholders, which we refer to as net income, was $1.3 billion for the second quarter of 2026, a $979 million or 266% increase from the $368 million in the second quarter of 2025.

Higher interest expense was offset by favorable changes in interest rate swaps and income taxes were higher due to an increase in net income. Shifting to consolidated adjusted EBITDA, we earned $2.5 billion during the second quarter of 2026, a $1.1 billion or 79% increase from $1.4 billion in the second quarter of 2025. This increase in consolidated adjusted EBITDA was driven chiefly by higher sales volumes as well as higher LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas.

Our EBITDA margin was 54% for the quarter as higher volumes and better pricing was not accompanied by commensurate increases in costs. Once again, this quarter our treasury team was busy refinancing $5.3 billion since our last earnings call. In June, we refinanced $2.25 billion of entry global incorporated senior secured notes, and we raised $1.5 billion in vessel financing.

In July, together with our partners at Whitewater, we reprised the $1.07 billion senior secured term loan B. As Mike mentioned earlier, we're expecting our refinancing efforts thus far in 2026 to have saved more than $100 million in annual interest costs and preferred dividend coupons.

As you see on page 16, we are providing a consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $8.7 to $9.1 billion for 2026, which is up from $8.2 to $8.5 billion when we reported in May and conservatively reflects the current market in volatility. This range contemplates a current market liquefaction fee of $12.50 to $13.50 per MBTU for Cargoes remaining to be sold in 2026.

This conservative range represents a modest discount to the current TTF and JKM forward price expectations. On average, if fixed liquefaction fees over the remainder of 2026 increase or decrease by $1 per MBTU, we expect our consolidated adjusted EBITDA range to adjust accordingly by $180 to $210 million, reflecting our accelerated pace of contracting and our 91% contracted position.

Lastly, before turning it back to Mike, on page 17, we walk through the capital allocation priorities we laid out last quarter, funding expansion, strategic deleveraging, and balance sheet optimization and return of capital.

First, as we discussed, we're making excellent progress not only on the construction of CP2, but increasingly on the bolt-on additions at both CP2 and placements, having already made material equity contributions to both expansions.

Second, with respect to the balance sheet, I just walked through some of the refinancing measures we have taken, and through July of this year, we have repaid $1.4 billion of debt, including about $1.3 billion of the bridge loan at CP2, and reduced our annual interest and coupon obligations by more than $100 million. With COD of placements in Q4, and with the start of production at CP2 next year, we anticipate positive developments with respect to our credit ratings.

Lastly, this morning, we announced a 122% increase in our dividend to $0.4 per quarter. Over the longer term, we believe our portfolio of high return bolt-on opportunities will remain in an attractive avenue for future investment. However, the relative scale of the incremental capital investment is expected to decline compared to our growing cash flows, creating more opportunities for other capital allocation priorities. Specifically, we plan to continue to retire and refinance higher cost capital as bonds mature or are callable. We are confident in the resiliency of our cash flows and expect to grow our dividend over time.

Additionally, we may also pursue share repurchases as other incremental means of enhancing shareholder value and returns as our capital program matures. I'll now turn the call back over to Mike.

Thank you, Jack. At this point, we would like to open up the call for Q&A.

Sure, thanks Manav. The basis obviously of all of it is the execution by the team and the production at our facilities. So we continue to be confident of the quality of the continued production that we expect for the balance of the guidance activity, continue to produce well. And we highlighted those comments because it really is pure kind of operational demonstration of the uniqueness of the configuration of our facilities where we have multiple gas turbines not embedded directly in large liquefaction trains, but in multiple power plants that provide electricity for electrically driven compressors in our liquefaction trains. So it gives us maximum redundancy and availability even through maintenance. So we're pleased to see a demonstration of the execution.

Obviously, I've had a lot of volatility this year in the macro markets for LNG pricing. And the combination of just confidence in production and what we are anticipating conservatively, as Jack said, the markets look like for the remaining of the year feel good about increasing the absolute level of the cashier but not generated for the year which on the upper end moving past $9 billion is something that we're very, very proud of.

I think, Manob, on page 23 and the presentation, we actually answer that question for not just 27 but 28 and 29 and do we go to 2030 as well?

No, we stop at 2029.

It's 650 to 700 or 27. That's a great chart because it shows the magnitude of the growth that's coming just from executing on CP2 and the brownfield expansion at CP2 and the first small expansion at Blochman's. Importantly, Mike, it kind of plays the COD at Plaquen's faces one and two as well. So with a greater contracted position, we're still maintaining significant optionality and exposure to the prevailing markets in a positive fashion.

Correct. As of now, we remain on schedule for and expect to be for Plaquen's COD's faces one and phase two.

Thanks, Manob.

So it's a really, it's a really interesting question. We obviously are thinking about it every day. If you go back to right before the recent conflict started in the Straits of Hormuz, and if you recall the net spreads in the market that we were realizing were five to six dollars closer to six dollar net spreads prior to shooting, at that point we were very busy on 20 year contracting activity and discussions. And we have continued to be very busy and are active in and actually a significant number of negotiations on a 20 year contract basis. You've seen us do several billion dollars of five year deals and we continue to have interactive in those discussions as well and expect to have you know, multiple deals completed between now and the end of the year.

Obviously that's a there has been an uptick in interest on the, you know, the five year term in the last, in the last, you know, 90 days. So as this conflict has become more difficult to predict, I think there's been a, you know, I was going to say slight, but maybe a little more than slight uptick in shorter term contracting interest.

I think, I think it's, it's really just as we continue to progress through the later stages of phase one of Blockamins, our confidence as we continue to operate there gets better and obviously we continue to see generate mass amounts of process data as well, that supports a lot of our analytics about production, forward production.

And, you know, as we described in, I think in July, we passed our 1000th cargo. So it's just, there's a huge increase every month in our operational knowledge that allows us to make those that, you know, we perform frequently. And as we get through that activity, that also gives us more clarity in what forward production can be. We mentioned a little bit in the comments about increased confidence in warm weather production at Blockamins. And that's, that's something we're very pleased with. And that's a, that's a part of it as well.

Yep.

Good morning, Gene Ann.

So our, our, our plan and our target is to largely contract which we've already done in the nameplate capacity, largely contract all of the excess capacity production on a multi-year basis. And we have several years of commissioning cargoes both from CP2 and from the bolt-ons that are coming. And those for several years will give us nice exposure to that, that upside option value that that slide refers to. And so ideally, ideally, and we expect to be able to do it, but the excess capacity will be largely all contracted in a multi-year basis where when you look at the total portfolio, we are overweighted in 20-year contracts. So while we are going to do more 20-year contracts, our emphasis is going to shift more to much shorter contracts for the balance of that portfolio to drive the much higher price.

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

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

We've been, for a while, we've been looking in at that we've been, we've been, we've had our eyes focused on the first half of 2027. We think the customer demand can comfortably support that. And the constraint's not going to be the timing of the off-take contracts.

Thanks, Janim.

They'll be, they'll be, that's a great question. It'll be a mix. The, when you look at the timing that we just described, you'll notice that they come on, they come online fairly quickly because they're, because they're a true bond field that benefit significantly from the existing installed facilities. The time from FID to production is much shorter, even faster than what we've been able to achieve to date and may, in fact, set new records on, on, on timing. It gives us extra flexibility on the mix of term that we need for the contracts and doesn't require as many of those to be 20-year contracts. So we will do some 20-year contracts, but it'll have more mid-term contracts than projects have been able to execute successfully in the past.

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

If a lot of it was largely just, we were significantly below the rest of the group on an, on an absolute and, and a percentage yield basis. And even after this increase, that's the case. And that's obviously just because we only recently started, started a dividend. And so it's just, it's just part of the catch up. And our plan is continue to grow the dividend over time. It's a reflection also of our maturity of our, of our growth and our, and our businesses.

As we, you know, we passed $60 billion in assets and we feel good about the progress of turning on CP2 and the, and, you know, in a giant increase in the execution of all the 20-year contracts that are associated with, with CP2, that we can, we feel very comfortable in, in absorbing that. As Jack described in his comments in the future too, that could be combined with not just dividend increases, but also potential share buybacks that, you know, obviously will be part of the, part of the discussion as, as Jack described.

Thank you.

Good morning, Zach.

Jack, do you want to take that question?

Sure. So, so as you surmised, that's, that's headed directly towards our, our Blackman's facility and we would expect that pipeline to connect into our cloud connector. Uh, our cloud connector pipe and, and we have capacity on that pipe.

The, I'll make some comments in Jack if you want to, if I miss, if I miss some things, jump in. The, we're always in the market, negotiating and contracting a mixed blend of gas supply, and we do it opportunistically. The, and so yeah, we keep careful watch on that. Our, our view is that there's, there's plenty of gas to support the, the domestic demand, both for LNG, domestic production and, and, and also incremental demand that we'll layer on in years to come from data centers. And we're more focused on the interconnect and transportation and pipeline capacity to access the plentiful gas. And so you've seen us make, you know, significant and, and meaningful investments in this area.

And we'll continue to, to, to, to do some of that. And that was part of the long range planning that you saw play out for us with the significant investment in our nitrogen removal unit at CP2. Several of those large units are doing on foundations last Saturday. I saw the second rolling onto foundations done at CP2. And in addition, the longer CPX lateral, which approaches 100 miles down to Sillsby and our beautiful black thin pipeline that we partnered with Whitewater that, that heads to 80 and our transportation agreements that that take us all the way to the Waja. And so it's, we've been, we've been focused on this, you know, I think a few years ahead of the rest of the market and feel in a very strong position and continue to, on a, you know, spend a significant amount of our time and kind of medium and long term planning on that front.

Yeah, it's a mad. Just, just two quick points, Mike. That was a comprehensive answer. First of all, power plants relative to LNG facilities are relatively small consumers of, of, of natural gas. I would say roughly less than 10% relative to an LNG facility for, is consumed at a, at a power plant. I think the other comment I'd make is the majority of, of our pipes are in, are in trust state, which allows us to control 100% of the capacity on those pipes, whether it's, whether it's our own pipes or whether we're contracting for significant capacity on, on laterals that connect into our facility. So the amount of dedicated supply and dedicated delivery that's coming to our facilities, we think gives us a significant competitive advantage relative to others who are not spending the money to build that dedicated connectivity and are, are looking to contract on it on a, on a relatively short term basis and will be more exposed to competing for access to gas over time.

We think it's a, a real strength of our portfolio.

Good morning, Craig.

So, uh, we're, we're, we're uniquely in the market now, um, able to talk to customers about almost any term that customers have need for, uh, because as we, um, are bringing on, uh, placements, um, to, to COD, we still retain a large volume of, uh, um, capacity that's not contracted on a 20 year basis. And as CP2 comes online, um, that's going to increase dramatically. And as you, um, uh, will note from our comments and the presentation today, uh, we have what we think are very attractive schedules for the CP2 and placements, both ons to come on online in 28 and 29 as well. And so it gives us tremendous, uh, availability, uh, that, that we think is having material positive impacts on the price of, of, of LNG globally and gas.

Uh, and so, uh, yes, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're expecting multiple deals of, uh, buried terms, um, this year and, you know, next year and year after, of course. So it's, you know, we've been waiting and watching progress on our projects to get to this point, uh, in our, in our growth that would enable us to have that advantage.

So that's my favorite slide and in the deck. It's a slide 12, slide 12 that shows the, um, the data for the last 16 years on what pricing is looked at on a average and a medium basis over that period. It shows that there's tremendous option value in our configuration and execution. Frankly, I don't think is captured in our value at all because we, um, like the rest of the market have contracted the nameplate capacity of our production, but because of our configuration and our ability to, uh, convert the massive amount of data we generate into process engineering that produces significant extra volumes, uh, gives us that upside option value that over time, long periods of time have, uh, proven extremely, uh, valuable and, um, and, uh, well above the long term contract prices.

And as you include just construction costs inflation in projected periods, uh, you have additional, you know, floor price support that, that's still coming. So in that, we think that that, as I described earlier, my answer shows up in the behavior of all the trading companies that, uh, continue to grow their contracted portfolios, um, rather than deploying their balance sheet capacity and capital in building, um, mostly new production capacity, they continue to allocate more of their, their business in contracting from other producers and on selling it higher, much higher prices than the long term contract prices. And, and there's a lot of data. I mean, really, all the data shows that that, uh, at least in the last 16 years has been the correct strategy.

No, we, um, we, uh, we agree and we, uh, we think about, we think about it every day as we, uh, plan and schedule our, our investments in, in growth. I think the first stop in thinking about the your comments on the, the multi-year projection is really what the actual physical production capacity curve looks like. You know, we, we, we load roughly what we do in 43 cargos a month or so today. Uh, you know, that's going to more than double as we turn on CP2 and add these boltons in, you know, two, two and a half years. So that's a massive increase on already a very large, uh, LNG production business in a short amount of time to have a, a, a doubling in scale.

And you can layer on multiple pricing scenarios, uh, on top of that and on page 23, we're trying to show what that looks like. And we're, we're coming upon as we turn on the facility's tremendous, um, increase in production capacity. And we think, um, the way that the market, meaning the commercial contracting customer market is, uh, executing their, their, you know, portfolio strategies, um, shows that there's, uh, a more bullish view than a pessimistic view on expected prices that, uh, we believe will brought very nice returns, very, very nice returns on our, on our investments and produce a lot of, a lot of, uh, increases in cash generation in, in the next few years.

Good morning, Wade.

We're, I mean, these are very large complex construction projects and that, you know, and so we're just being disciplined and being conservative. Uh, you know, the market, you've seen how we've executed on a timing basis, the, the, the first LNG first, Coxy Pass and Plaquemons was 29 and 30 months respectively. And so, you know, we've done it before, the first LNG train, uh, you know, as you've heard us say and know that CP2 is going to be the 55th train that we've done. So the teams have executed, um, these configurations, uh, a lot now and it's going extremely well from an execution standpoint. We're, we're just, we're just being disciplined and conservative at this point on how we're providing guidance.

You know, obviously we're very careful when you say the second half of, of, uh, next year, uh, you know, this in, in our definition, the second half of, of next year starts July 1 and goes to December 31 of next year. And that's a pretty broad range and, uh, but we're, we're being precise in kind of the language, but we're also, we're also sprinkling in and you saw it in the commentary here. Um, the data points about the progress at, at, at the site, you know, July 28, just a few days ago, uh, a little less than two weeks ago was the one year anniversary at CP2. And, uh, most projects after 12 months may still be doing, uh, finishing engineering and doing test piles.

And we have, uh, complete modules sitting on foundations, being integrated and having cables pulled. And so CP2 knock on wood in addition to our focus on safety is, um, progressing as well as a LNG facility is ever progressed. So we're being, we're being disciplined. We, we obviously know as the market investors contemplate, uh, the next couple of years, the significance of the timing of when CP2 turns on. And, um, and so it's certainly, it's certainly, uh, tempting for us, uh, to provide more detail on it. But for the moment, we're being, uh, conservative, but, uh, it is going very well.

Thanks for that, Mike.

The, uh, there definitely is rhythm to the conversations with customers, not just for us, but the whole market. The, uh, when you do multi billion dollar 20 year contracts, they typically, um, happen after years of conversations. And, and so, uh, they, they, they, very often are the timing of concluding those contracts are not being driven by current macro environment, but just the, the byproduct of multi year conversations and contract roll off by utility customers that are doing very long range planning. And so you can, sometimes you can't, and you shouldn't read too much into the macro relationship with contract announcements.

Um, for us, the contracting activity has remained very steady all the way from last year to today. And we're, we feel really good about, um, the, the cadence of those conversations and, and, uh, matching up with, um, how we want to continue to contract our portfolio. The, um, uh, it's pretty, it's pretty, uh, broadly distributed between Europe and Asia. Europe was running a little bit ahead, I think last year of the, the pace of Asian contracting. And I think today, the Asian contracting is, this is a very general as caught up with, um, kind of the number of, uh, and level of interest from, from Europe.

The demand on the demand side, it remains very, very positive. You continue to see periodically new announcements on reas terminals and power plants, uh, trying to, uh, continues to make very, very significant, um, progress and construction of reas terminal capacity. That's, uh, a very, very significant percentage of the, the, the global, the, the total global on G market. And you're starting to see a lot more, uh, global announcements of very large scale, uh, data center, um, a demand that a large portion of which will be, uh, gas fired, um, electricity. And so, uh, there's still a lot of growth coming internationally in our view, uh, on top of the, the, the, the very strong, um, trend, um, being driven by growing global middle class, um, that has the same, the same, uh, typical demands that we've seen over, over decades, um, as the rest of the world that, that, that, you know, as you, you start with, um, a lot of cold production capacity and layer and more gas on top of it.

And we see that strong trend continuing and new demand on top of it that will be significant in certain markets for data center, uh, demand.

Good morning, Sunil.

So as Jack mentioned in, uh, in his comments, the, um, the, the, the, the growth of our LNG production and how that translates, um, incoming years to increase, um, cash generation. You know, as I described a moment ago and the next couple of years or so, we'll, we'll double from our current production capacity. Um, even in, in, uh, a pretty broad range of, uh, sale contract pricing, uh, we generate a lot of cumulative cash, tens of billions of dollars of cumulative cash in the next few years. And so it, it gives us the cash generation that supports, uh, continued growth that we've been describing, but it also continues, it supports, um, investment grade path at the project levels and at the parent level.

It supports, uh, dividend growth and supports, uh, stock buybacks in the future. It's just the, the, the, the incremental scale of the production, the new production that we've described is just getting smaller in a relative basis to the, the scale of our earning assets. We're, you know, we're passing 61, 62 billion dollars of assets. And if you look at, uh, I think we've added 8 billion plus this year and year and year basis around 15 billion dollars. And that general path is going to continue for a few years. So we just are building a big earning asset base that generates a lot of cash. You know, if you look at our absolute levels, it's, you know, we're our first, our, our first, the first cargo we loaded was the first week of March 2022.

And here we are in 2026 projecting 9 billion dollars of cash, even though this year, that's, you know, that, uh, that's, that's, that's material. And so it's, uh, it's just a, it's a big, big, big, um, uh, amount of, uh, on G volume.

So we don't control, we don't control the schedule, um, of the, the, the arbitration processes, those are, those are controlled away from us. And so we, uh, expect, uh, resolution of the next one, you know, we thought it would be in the first half of the year.

We, we, we still expect it before the end of the year. Uh, and then we have a, uh, the next one after that, we have a hearing that begins in the end of November and we'll extend it to next year. Again, if we don't settle, uh, we, you've seen us obviously, uh, settle, uh, several of them successfully and, uh, we remain, um, open and constructive on, on, uh, settling what, what remains outstanding and we remain optimistic on being, um, uh, uh, you know, sick, successful in, in, uh, in, in working through them.

Thanks, Sunil.

Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time this morning and look forward to, answering, uh, follow up questions and, uh, look forward to seeing many of you in person in, uh, in coming months.