Venture Global (VG) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Tue, Nov. 10, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Senior Vice President of Investor Relations - Benjamin Nolan
• Chief Executive Officer, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder - Michael Sabel
• Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer - Jonathan Thayer

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $4.8 billion, representing a 43% increase compared with $3.3 billion during the same period in 2025.
• Net Income -- $2.5 billion, representing a 493% increase compared with $429 million in the third quarter of 2025.
• Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA -- $2.6 billion, representing a 69% increase driven by higher sales volumes and LNG prices net of feed gas costs.
• EBITDA Guidance -- $10 billion to $10.3 billion for the full year 2026, raised from the previous range of $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion based on the market outlook for the fourth quarter.
• EBITDA Margin -- 54%, reflecting higher volumes and pricing without a commensurate increase in operating costs.
• LNG Sales Volume -- 465.8 TBtu, representing a 25% increase compared with 373.0 TBtu in the third quarter of 2025.
• Net LNG Sales Price -- $10.16 per MMBtu, compared with $8.92 per MMBtu in the third quarter of 2025.
• Cargo Export Volume -- 124 cargoes, which was at the high end of management's expected production range for the quarter.
• 2026 Cargo Guidance -- 509 to 518 cargoes, with the low end of the range increased by nine cargoes.
• 2027 Cargo Outlook -- 575 to 625 total cargoes, which includes an estimated 10 to 20 cargoes from the CP2 project.
• Portfolio Contracting -- 99% of expected 2026 cargoes are now contracted, up from 91% reported in August 2026.
• New Offtake Agreements -- 2 million tonnes per annum in new or increased 20-year agreements, including contracts with ConocoPhillips and China Gas.
• Total Assets -- $68.1 billion, an increase of $18 billion compared with $50.1 billion as of Sept. 30, 2025.
• Cash and Liquidity -- $5.1 billion in cash and restricted cash at the end of the third quarter, supported by a new $3 billion revolving credit facility.
• Debt Repayment -- $2.8 billion of the $3 billion equity bridge loan supporting the CP2 project has been repaid since the start of 2026.
• Plaquemines Phase 1 COD -- Commercial operations commenced on Oct. 31, 2026, 53 months after the final investment decision.
• CP2 First LNG Timeline -- First production is targeted for July 2027, which would be 24 months after the final investment decision.
• CP2 Phase 3 FID -- Management expects to reach a final investment decision on the 10 million tonne per annum expansion in early 2027.
• Plaquemines Bolt-on FID -- Management is targeting a final investment decision for the first phase of this expansion in mid-2027.
• AI Utility Power Targets -- 5 gigawatts by the end of 2031, with the first 250 megawatts expected to come online in late 2028.
• Dividend Declaration -- The board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.04 per share, payable on Dec. 31, 2026.

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RISKS

• Sabel stated, "completing Phase 1 commissioning and rectification activities at Plaquemines, which did modestly impact production during the quarter," noting that these activities were necessary to reach commercial operations.
• Thayer warned that there will be a margin impact from the start of long-term contracts at Plaquemines, stating, "it is worth reminding you all that there will be an impact to contracted Phase 1 margins from the start of our long-term contracts at Plaquemines."

SUMMARY

Venture Global, Inc. (NYSE:VG) reported record quarterly financial results for the third quarter of 2026 and raised its full-year EBITDA guidance based on increased production and higher market prices. Management reported the commencement of commercial operations at Plaquemines Phase 1 on Oct. 31, 2026, marking the completion of one of the fastest greenfield LNG projects of its scale. The company stated that it is expanding its business model to include a vertically integrated AI utility offering, which will provide off-grid power and infrastructure to support data centers. This expansion is supported by new frame agreements for up to 16 power islands and associated grid equipment. Management indicated that the company's existing land, pipeline capacity, and in-house execution teams provide a turnkey solution for hyperscale customers without impacting public electricity grids.

• CP2 construction is progressing with 24 of 36 liquefaction modules on-site, leading management to pull forward the target for first LNG to July 2027.
• CEO Sabel stated, "demand for long-term contracts as stronger than it has ever been, particularly from Asian buyers," reflecting a shift in market interest from Europe to Asia.
• The company announced the Cloud Connector pipeline project, a new gas supply line from North Louisiana to support the Plaquemines expansion and the AI utility site.
• Management reported that the AI utility business is designed to operate in island mode, meaning it will not rely on local electric grids or water utilities.
• Sabel noted that the company does not expect to require outside equity to fund its current build plans, citing projected cumulative cash generation in excess of $30 billion through 2029.
• European gas storage levels were reported at their lowest early November levels since 2013, which management indicated may drive significant natural gas demand through the winter heating season.
• The company anticipates that Plaquemines will produce 234 cargoes in its first year of operations, serving as a baseline for the expected ramp-up at the CP2 project.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• COD: Commercial Operations Date, the date a project officially begins commercial service.
• FID: Final Investment Decision, the point at which a company commits to the full execution of a capital project.
• Henry Hub: The primary pricing point for natural gas futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
• Island Mode: A power system that operates independently of the public utility grid.
• LNG: Liquefied Natural Gas, natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state for easier transportation.
• MTPA: Million Tonnes Per Annum, a standard unit of measurement for LNG production capacity.
• SPA: Sales and Purchase Agreement, a long-term contract for the sale of LNG.
• TBtu: Trillion British Thermal Units, a measure of the energy content of natural gas.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Venture Global, Inc. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Ben Nolan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ben, please go ahead.

Benjamin Nolan: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Venture Global, Inc.'s Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm joined this morning by Mike Sabel, Venture Global's CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder; Jack Thayer, our CFO; and other members of Venture Global's senior management team. Before I begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. I encourage you to refer to the disclaimers in our earnings presentation, which is available on the Investors section of our website.

Additionally, we may include references to certain non-GAAP metrics such as consolidated adjusted EBITDA, which we may refer to as simply EBITDA during this call. A reconciliation of these metrics to the most relevant GAAP measures can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation posted on our website. Finally, the guidance in this presentation is only effective as of today. In general, we will not update guidance until the following quarter and will not update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. I'll now turn the call over to Mike Sabel.

Michael Sabel: Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to share our third 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 the call over to Jack, who will provide a more detailed review of our financial results as well as updated guidance for 2026. Following all prepared remarks, we'll open the call to Q&A.

Beginning on Page 5, you can see several highlights for the quarter, including the company's largest ever quarterly EBITDA of $2.6 billion and significant growth year-over-year in volumes, revenue, income from operations, net income and EBITDA. We are increasing our 2026 EBITDA guidance to $10 billion to $10.3 billion from $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion based on current market outlook for the remainder of the year. Jack will discuss these numbers in greater detail. We are also raising the low end of the expected cargo range by 9 cargoes for 2026. Turning to Page 6.

Our operational and financial performance was very strong in the third quarter, and the capstone of that operational execution occurred on October 31 as we commenced commercial operations at Plaquemines Phase 1. The team delivered COD within the original window period of our Phase 1 contracts and has now loaded 6 SPA cargoes to customers since COD. Although this milestone occurred after the end of the third quarter, we wanted to highlight the significant achievement and recognize our team who successfully and efficiently completed complex and challenging rectification and commissioning work while sustaining our industry-leading safety record.

Plaquemines Phase 1 commenced commercial operations just 53 months after FID, making it the fastest greenfield project of its size to progress from FID to COD and surpassing the record previously set by Calcasieu Pass. Commercial momentum continued in the third quarter as we executed 1.5 MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements. We are pleased to add ConocoPhillips as a new customer with a 1 million ton per annum agreement, along with a new offtake agreement with China Gas for 0.5 MTPA. Additionally, just last week, one of our existing high credit quality customers increased their contracted volume by 0.5 MTPA.

Demand for long-term contracts remains robust, and we expect to add more high credit quality 20-year SPAs before the end of this year. As we announced last month, we have entered into definitive reservation agreements with GE Vernova, GE Grid Solutions and Baker Hughes for up to 16 Power Islands and associated grid equipment, enabling us to develop an island mode data center solution as a natural extension of our LNG business.

Building upon our LNG and power expertise to create the first industrial AI utility offering, we believe our existing ability to deliver near-term power turnkey in-house engineering, procurement and construction and manage significant volatility in power loads without relying on the public grid can provide a differentiated and actionable solution for compute providers. Importantly, the agreement framework preserves Venture Global's flexibility on the timing and scope of future developments. Also, any potential AI utility development would be separate from and complementary to Venture Global's existing LNG operations and would not impact the company's LNG sales agreements or other existing commercial commitments. The production and delivery of low-cost, clean American LNG for the next several decades remains our key strategic objective.

Moving to Page 7. We have now contracted almost all of our 2026 cargoes with over 99% of the portfolio contracted from the 91% previously reported on our second quarter earnings call in August. The 124 cargoes produced in the third quarter were at the high end of our expected production range, and we are raising the low end of the cargo range for the full year by 9 cargoes. During the quarter, we were completing Phase 1 commissioning and rectification activities at Plaquemines, which did modestly impact production during the quarter. Moving into the fourth quarter, as anticipated, we have already seen an improvement in production.

We will provide further 2027 production and pricing guidance on our fourth quarter call early next year, and we are maintaining our 2027 outlook for 575 to 625 total cargoes next year, which includes 10 to 20 cargoes from CP2 during the third quarter as we now expect production there to begin midyear 2027. Taking a closer look at CP2 on Page 8. Construction continues to progress, and we are moving forward the target of first LNG to July 2027. That would be approximately 24 months after CP2 Phase 1 FID and meaningfully sooner than our previous industry record of 29 months from FID to first production.

With each phase of our projects, our team has improved efficiency and speed to first production, which has consistently proven beneficial during this period of historically tight global LNG. For reference, Plaquemines produced 234 cargoes in its first year of operations. Building on lessons learned at that facility, we believe CP2 can ramp production even more quickly. On Page 9, we discuss our bolt-on expansions at CP2 and Plaquemines. For the CP2 Phase 3, we are working with our legacy banks and expect to have financing in place soon, positioning us to make a final investment decision on the 10 MTPA expansion in early 2027.

For the Plaquemines expansion, as previously disclosed, we are targeting FID of the first phase around mid-2027. To facilitate the expansion, we expect to build a new pipeline from North Louisiana called Cloud Connector to provide gas to support our Plaquemines LNG expansion, adjacent AI utility site and enable enhanced production from the original 2 phases of Plaquemines. On Page 11, you will find our insights on the state of the LNG market. Current prices are a reflection of both increased global natural gas demand and fewer cargoes coming out of the Middle East. Gas storage levels, especially in Europe, have grown at a slower-than-normal pace since summer as Europe consumed large quantities of natural gas to support power demand.

Since July, monthly LNG imports into Western Europe have surged by 45%, yet even with increased LNG imports, inventory builds have lagged typical levels as EU gas storage is at its lowest early November level since 2013, pointing to stronger underlying demand growth. Europe has been using gas as a balancing fuel to offset variability from other sources of electricity. Severe droughts led to lower river levels and limited the cooling capacity of nuclear power plants, contributing to a 7% year-over-year decline in electricity generation from EU nuclear facilities.

Looking ahead to the winter, wind power represents approximately 20% of Europe's electricity generation and forecast for the next several months call for volatile wind conditions with periods of low wind alternating with high output storm periods. This outlook underpins potentially significant natural gas demand during the heating season. In Asia, many markets looking to manage geopolitical risk have increased coal consumption as an alternative to buying spot LNG. The switching has pressured coal inventories and contributed to sharply higher coal prices. As highlighted by recent Indonesian coal force majeure events, coal is providing less relief. As a result, LNG markets in Asia and throughout the world are becoming increasingly inelastic. These examples illustrate several drivers of near-term demand.

If LNG volumes coming from the Middle East remain limited, we expect LNG prices to remain volatile this winter and potentially move higher from currently elevated levels. Notably, Plaquemines' production this past year offset roughly 1/3 of the global supply impact stemming from disruptions in the Middle East, helping stabilize prices for consumers globally during this period of volatility. As CP2 targets starting production in July, Venture Global's LNG projects will continue to offset potential broader supply disruptions, support global demand and act as a reliable stabilizing force in the market. While LNG prices remain high, energy buyers have taken an all-of-the-above approach encompassing fuel switching, demand management and utilization of storage.

We have not seen permanent demand destruction or a shift away from LNG as a strategically significant energy feedstock. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than continued demand for new long-term contracts and the robust growth of new LNG import project development activity. As shown on Page 12, we count more than 30 incremental projects that have been announced and are in various stages of development since the beginning of the year. While not all of these projects may materialize, demand for power and LNG is unquestionably growing. At least in the case of Venture Global, I think it is fair to characterize demand for long-term contracts as stronger than it has ever been, particularly from Asian buyers.

We believe this strong contract appetite reflects continued growth in global energy consumption throughout the world and the value proposition of buying long-term fixed margin Henry Hub-linked LNG at prices that make electricity affordable and available in all market cycles. Turning to Page 14. As announced earlier in October, we entered a power frame agreement with GE Vernova and Baker Hughes for up to 16 Power Island units. Each island has gas turbines, heat recovery steam generators and steam turbine generators, which gives us about 720 megawatts of combined cycle capacity per island.

We have also entered a second frame agreement with GE Grid Solutions for associated gas insulated switch systems, power transformer and equipment necessary to manage the load volatility inherent to compute. These new frame agreements provide for incremental power supply optionality above and beyond the remaining equipment available under our long-term Baker Hughes master agreement, which governs the supply of key power and liquefaction equipment that has successfully underpinned our growth for over a decade. Under these contracts, we plan to order 1 power plant before the end of this year and a second one early next year. As we secure offtake contracts with investment-grade customers, we have the option to build out further power and data center infrastructure.

We intend to develop this business with the same disciplined approach we have always taken. This means advancing incremental capacity alongside investment-grade customer commitments and maintaining a clear focus on attractive risk-adjusted returns. We expect the first 250 megawatts to come online in late '28, are targeting 5 gigawatts by the end of 2031 and have the potential to reach 10 gigawatts by 2034 across our 2 sites in Cameron Parish and Plaquemines Parish. On Page 15, if you look at the AI ecosystem on the left, there are 5 necessary contributing layers of energy, infrastructure, chips, models and application. Our AI utility offering is focused on 2 of the most difficult layers to deliver, infrastructure and energy.

We believe our ability to provide both on an integrated basis can offer a differentiated turnkey solution at scale. We view this as additive to our current LNG business and is a natural extension of what we have done since Venture Global's founding, successfully and quickly building and operating power equipment and infrastructure at a massive scale. We already have approximately 15,000 acres of land and access to roughly 13 Bcf per day of pipeline capacity, making us one of the largest gas buyers in the country. We have over 4 gigawatts of island mode power currently operating or in development on our own private grid and a 1,000-person in-house execution and EPC team.

We've built ports and fabrication yards, developed supply chain and quality control teams and executed thousands of scopes across $70 billion of industrial assets. Compared with our LNG projects, power for compute is a relatively simpler and narrower scope. Data centers place heightened demand on power systems as their load is not steady. Power demand can rise or fall sharply, which creates a real reliability challenge for most power providers, necessitating utility grid connectivity to manage this volatility. Venture Global's design is built to meet this volatility challenge as our industrial energy grid already reliably absorbs significant load swings in island mode in our liquefaction facility operations today.

For potential customers, that adds up to a dramatically better and more reliable product, one that offers speed and scale. We believe initial compute capacity could be available in late '28, early '29 and could scale to 5 gigawatts by the end of 2031. Also, our Island Mode solution solves for the challenge of connecting to the public power and water grid bypassing interconnectivity hurdles. Venture Global's AI utility would have no added cost to local consumers. Our solution is designed for reliability with a target of greater than 99.9% uptime supported by multiple layers of redundancy.

We can achieve all this with no impact on the local community as we don't rely on the local electric grids or water utilities. Further, we are well capitalized and do not expect to need any outside equity to fund our current build plans. Operationally, this is a natural fit with our existing construction program, which should be ramping down from large-scale greenfield operations at CP2 and focused on the smaller brownfield scopes at CP2 and Plaquemines as construction begins to support our AI utility offering. Customer interest to date supports our view that this is a low-risk, high-value, differentiated market offering.

We are working hard to secure commercial agreements and are excited about the opportunity to deploy our unique combination of experience, skills, infrastructure, equipment and capital in this rapidly growing market that needs partners capable of delivering this 1-of-1 turnkey offering. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jack Thayer, who will review the quarterly performance, provide an overview of our project performance and discuss our updated financial guidance.

Jonathan Thayer: Thank you, Mike, and good morning to those of you on the line. I'll be starting on Slide 17. I'll be referring to the Venture Global, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. The 10-Q is available on our website, and some of the key results are summarized on Page 17 of the presentation. During this call, I will highlight results we 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 $4.8 billion for the third quarter of 2026, a $1.4 billion or 43% increase from $3.3 billion during the equivalent period in 2025.

This increase was driven by $827 million from higher sales volumes with 466 TBtu in the third quarter of 2026 compared with 373 TBtu in the third quarter of 2025 and $580 million from higher net LNG sales prices with $10.16 per MMBtu earned in Q3 2026 compared with $8.92 per MMBtu earned in Q3 2025. Our income from operations was $2.3 billion in the third quarter of 2026, a $1 billion or 74% increase from $1.3 billion in the third quarter of 2025. The improvement was primarily driven by higher sales volumes and prices.

Operating and maintenance costs increased $58 million year-over-year, primarily due to increased commissioning work at Plaquemines and expenses related to the ramp-up of operations and readiness at CP2. G&A expenses increased slightly year-over-year attributable to higher headcount. Our development costs were lower than in the same period last year because as similar to last quarter, we were able to capitalize more costs associated with our pipeline and bolt-on expansions. Our net income attributable to common stockholders, which we refer to as net income was $2.5 billion for the third quarter of 2026, a $2.1 billion or 493% increase from $429 million in Q3 2025. Again, the most impactful driver of higher net income was increased volume and prices.

But in the quarter, we also recognized a $1.4 billion noncash gain on interest rate swaps, which was slightly offset by higher income tax expense. Shifting to consolidated adjusted EBITDA. We earned $2.6 billion during the third quarter of 2026, a $1.1 billion or 69% increase from $1.5 billion in Q3 2025. This increase was driven primarily by higher sales volumes as well as higher LNG sales prices net of the cost of feed gas. Similar to last quarter, our EBITDA margin was once again 54% as higher volumes and better pricing were not accompanied by commensurate increases in costs.

In September, we secured a new $3 billion revolving credit facility for general corporate purposes, including to fund early project costs at the CP2 and Plaquemines bolt-on expansions. Through September, we also utilized project distributions to repay $1.8 billion of CP2 Phase 1 equity bridge drawn capacity. We expect to repay the remaining $0.2 billion balance of the $3 billion facility in Q4 2026. Bolstering our liquidity, we also finished the quarter with $5.1 billion of cash and restricted cash. As you can see on Page 18, we are providing a consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $10 billion to $10.3 billion for 2026, which is up from $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion when we reported in August.

This range contemplates a current market liquefaction fee of $21 to $22 per MMBtu for cargoes remaining to be sold in 2026. On average, if the fixed liquefaction fees over the remainder of 2026 increase or decrease by $1 per MMBtu, we expect our consolidated adjusted EBITDA range to adjust accordingly by $20 million to $30 million, reflecting an LNG portfolio where 99% of our expected 2026 cargoes are now contracted. We plan on providing 2027 EBITDA guidance on our next quarterly earnings call. It is worth reminding you all that there will be an impact to contracted Phase 1 margins from the start of our long-term contracts at Plaquemines.

We also expect continued basis impact on the gas used at that facility, and there are likely to be some costs associated with ramping up the start-up of CP2 and the development of our AI utility business. Given the positive market backdrop and our progress on CP2 construction, we're optimistic about another year of strong results. I'll now turn the call back over to Mike.

Michael Sabel: Thank you, Jack. At this point, we'd like to open up the call for Q&A.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question is from the line of Praneeth Satish of Wells Fargo.

Praneeth Satish: Maybe can you walk us through how quickly CP2 ramps after first LNG? I guess looking at your full year 2027 guidance, it implies a big step-up in the fourth quarter of '27. Just trying to figure out how much of that is seasonality versus the CP1 debottleneck versus the CP2 ramp. So just anything on the slope of production at CP2 would be helpful.

Michael Sabel: Sure. No, the best guide is to look at the ramp-up for Plaquemines, which in the script we just read here, we reminded that we produced 234 cargoes in the first 12 months for Plaquemines. We studied as we do very carefully the opportunities to improve on that. And we think there are opportunities for improving the ramp-up for CP2 relative to Plaquemines. But that ramp-up for Plaquemines, we view as a really good baseline opportunity. So given the massive scale of CP2, we think the opportunity there is significant.

Jonathan Thayer: Mike, we also will see some improvement at Calcasieu Pass in the fourth quarter as we benefit from debottlenecking that we're doing there during the summer.

Michael Sabel: During the summer, yes.

Praneeth Satish: Maybe switching gears to the power side. So obviously, a big opportunity for you guys. But can you just help us understand how you're thinking about financing for the first set of power islands? And really, it's on the debt side. I guess we've seen financing costs widen for some of the data center projects where they don't yet have customers fully committed. And so do you think that is a risk to the pace of your build-out and maybe points to something of a more measured build-out as you wait on customers? Or do you think the economics are still strong even with an increase in financing costs?

Michael Sabel: The margins are still fantastic even with higher financing costs, assuming that we're able to contract on a triple net lease basis in line with where others are contracting in the market. The -- when you look at the timing of the first compute that we think is possible to bring on matching with the delivery schedules of the equipment is late '28, early '29. And so it's out a couple of years. And that we're looking to build in 250-megawatt compute building increments and then ramping up after over the course of '29 and into 2030.

So there's a reasonably gentle ramp-up in what that cost would look like that spreads into really mostly into '29 and 2030, which matches up nicely with the big ramp-up in cash generation by the LNG business. So we think that timing is going to turn out to be well suited for the buildup in cash that we expect as we more than double the production capacity, bringing online CP2 and the first bolt-on for CP2 and the first bolt-on of Plaquemines. The first power plants, we will begin to place some orders for those as we've guided to shortly.

But the payments for the power plants are spread out over a few years as we -- as those get built. We believe we purchased them at a great price. We haven't disclosed individual prices of the power plants, but we believe we purchased them at a great price that makes them very attractive economically. The first power plants we can deploy into the bolt-on expansion area for LNG. And so we think we have really nice kind of optionality on how we take advantage of the value from those power plants.

Again, we think the market, particularly for -- we know the market for power plants that deliver in the next few years is extremely attractive, just given the demand of hyperscalers and utilities, not just in the U.S. but globally chasing power generation equipment.

Operator: The next question is from the line of John Mackay of Goldman Sachs.

John Mackay: Maybe picking up on that last question a little bit, but just thinking about the remaining LNG build-out, can you just remind us the capital you need to fund the remaining 85 MTPA? And then any kind of guidance you can give us on kind of the cash generation you'd expect to make over that period? Just trying to think of completing the LNG build-out as you kind of make this shift into the data center side.

Michael Sabel: So the next financing is going to be for the bolt-on for CP2 Phase 3, which is adding 12 LNG trains and approximately 10 million tons of additional production capacity. The financings are going to look generally similar to what we've done, which will be a combination of bank construction debt at the project level and other debt facilities at the project level, a little bit of contributed equity from -- cash equity from the parent. And we do not expect to raise any parent level equity or debt like has been the case for the previous transactions. The bolt-on for Plaquemines, we're guiding to the first half of next year. The first phase of that is adding 8 trains.

So it's a little bit fewer trains in the next phase for the bolt-on and Plaquemines. And that number of trains matches up nicely with how it integrates with the balance of plant for Phases 1 and 2 at Plaquemines. And so that financing sequence, we expect to have done by the middle of next year before we begin to shift over to the financings for the build-out of the AI compute opportunity, again, provided we're signing customer contracts to match up with that growth. The cumulative EBITDA from today for '27, '28, '29 is significant.

And my view is that it's going to, in aggregate, be in excess of $30 billion, depending on your price assumption on the sale of cargoes in the future. And so we have significant retained earnings accumulation that supports the LNG build-out plus any incremental equity to support financing for contracted data center buildings and also amortization of debt and a nice cash cushion. Today, if you took note from a few minutes ago, Jack showed that we have today $5.3 billion of cash. And so while we've been growing our business significantly in the last year, adding $18 billion of assets and increasing production capacity, we've also been able to manage the cash balance attractively.

John Mackay: Maybe just thinking about the LNG build-out, but pulling the macro in a little bit. Can you just share some of your thoughts on what the contracting environment looks like right now? We've seen kind of a new buyer come into the U.S. contract market that's a little different from what we've seen before. So any kind of thoughts you can share on the general contracting environment and what your appetite to sign new long-term deals is right now?

Michael Sabel: Yes. No, it's an extremely attractive 20-year -- or active 20-year market for us right now, probably as good as we've seen since the beginning. And we're expecting to sign more 20-year deals this year and next year. The market has shifted to -- for the moment, at least to more buyers coming from Asia than Europe, which is a pivot from the last couple of years, one we expected, but has arrived now. We feel good that we'll be able to layer into the portfolio the additional 20-year SPAs that we want. And we also think that we'll see increasing appetite for midterm deals as well, 5-year to 10-year deals.

And so we'll probably look to add some of those next year as well.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Spiro Dounis of Citi.

Spiro Dounis: I want to just follow up actually on that last question with respect to contracting activity. Mike, can you maybe level set us on what's still needed to commercialize the next expansions at Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines. The slides point to about 30 MTPA still available. So I wanted to get your sense on how you're thinking about what that looks like post FID and how much you'd be willing to contract out?

Michael Sabel: We're in a good position to finance today what we need to -- where we already have what we need to do the FID for the CP2 bolt-on. And it's a brownfield expansion. We expect to be able to turn that incremental 10 million ton or 10 trains that are inside the wall for the Phase 2 fairly quickly. And so it creates extra opportunities for how we finance that project. We expect and plan to have more this year, some of which will be assigned to that bolt-on expansion and others that will shift over to the Plaquemines bolt-on. For the Plaquemines bolt-on, we could finance that one ahead of additional 20-year deals.

But given the cadence of our activity, we would -- we expect to have 2 or 3 more or more to support the timing of the FID for Plaquemines. We expect to have all of that contracted on a multiyear basis. A 5- to 20-year basis is probably the likely range. We have a heavily weighted portfolio today, heavily weighted to 20-year deals. So our overall portfolio length is really long. And we'd like to add more midterm deals so we can add more price and still end up with a very long term.

So of that remaining 30 million tons out of the -- I can't remember what page number that is, Ben, but out of the 85 million, we have coming online in the next few years. Those will be done on a blend of 5-year deals, 10-year deals, 20-year deals, 2-year deals that we have a few years to blend those contracts in. We're not going to rush out and do them all in the next few months and quarters. We'll spread them out to leg into kind of a blend of term. If we did half of that on a midterm basis, we're still going to have a contract length that's 13, 14, 15 years in term.

It is still a long-life portfolio.

Spiro Dounis: Switching gears back over to the power side. And just to focus on the power returns, I guess. And I'm not sure how much you can say right now, but can you talk about the relative returns on power and how that compares to LNG and where some of those trade-offs might be? And similarly, is there an easy way to think about the unit economics and CapEx on each of these 250-megawatt units?

Michael Sabel: So the returns, if we just did power and didn't also build the data centers might be a little bit higher, but we wouldn't be deploying that much capital. The returns on a combined basis of power plus data center buildings is higher than the returns on the LNG side, provided that we're contracting in line with where others are contracting in the market. It's not an either/or though. We're going to continue building the LNG, and we're going to build out our grids in order to support data center demand. So we think it's a very attractive addition, again, if we're able to execute the triple net lease contracts.

And we think that it will provide a really nice kind of a blend of contracts that are also long term, but don't have the same commodity price exposure. And so as we layer those contracts in, it will blend out that volatility and we think be very attractive for shareholders.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Manav Gupta of UBS.

Manav Gupta: Mike, I'm trying to understand, as I look at the Slide 24, what is, in your opinion, the optimal mix of contracted versus uncontracted capacity as you are trying to enter a new year? So let's say, where would you like to be somewhere in December 2027 and then again, December 2028, as you enter those years, what would be the right mix of contracted versus uncontracted capacity?

Michael Sabel: So not all the volume, obviously, in these charts exists today. It's -- some of it's -- a lot of it's in construction with CP2 and in development with the bolt-ons. And so we don't have to do it all this quarter and next quarter, and we think that wouldn't be smart to do. And so we have time to blend in the contracts. The -- we have over 50 million tons of contracts today, almost all on a 20-year basis. And so we have room in our portfolio to capture more price by doing shorter than 20-year deals.

And so we expect the vast majority of this to all be contracted in the next couple of years, but we'd like to do more midterm deals to blend down the 20-year term and hopefully achieve a higher price in the market today, as I'm sure you know, as you go shorter in contracted term, the prices are higher. And we have room to add a decent amount of midterm deals and still have a very long portfolio of contract term. It's difficult to give an exact blend today of where we're going to be a year from now and 2 years from now because we don't know the market price to be able to do it.

And obviously, we're always reacting to the market price. We think that the fundamentals that are true in most commodity markets will continue to be the case here, which is replacement cost drives the market price over time. And we think that construction costs are going to continue to inflate. We think that interest rates are more likely to stay the same or go higher than go lower in the next couple of years. And that signals higher replacement costs. And so we think over a multiyear period supports increasing price opportunity that we want to blend into over time.

Manav Gupta: My quick follow-up is on the power side. A lot of companies are trying this. I'm trying to understand from Venture Global's perspective, what are the strategic advantages that your company has? Why would you feel that the AI data centers would like to partner with you? What advantages can you bring to the table versus some of the multiple solutions that are out there?

Michael Sabel: Sure. Well, the -- one of the big challenges that exists in the compute market today is really the scarcity of electricity being available to power the buildings in the compute. And a big part of that is the ability or the difficulty in connecting to utility grids as they have in the past and it's political and regulatory. And the other component of it is the ability to manage the scale and variability of the compute loads as the compute utilization goes up and down, sometimes in milliseconds. So the market in response, as we've all seen over this year is to start to build power plants separate from the utility grids and contribute that power to the grids.

The data centers largely remain connected to the grids in parallel to connecting with the incremental power which means that they continue to use throughput capacity in the transmission lines and the grids of the utilities, which we think will remain to be a large impediment to the growth of the market. In our case, we have developed over many years and built and now operate multi-gigawatt grids that manage the variable load of our LNG facilities and have demonstrated to be very reliable in managing that variability and providing high-quality power for, in our case, LNG production.

And so for us, we can expand our existing grids to provide significantly increased power generation combined with data center buildings to support the compute demand all in island mode. So we're not connecting and reliant on the utility grids. We have no impact on the community's grids or available power generation or prices, and we're not reliant on the water utilities either. So in an environment where we think that's one of the primary challenges to growth, we think we solve entirely. We also have built out, as you know, our own execution team that engineers procurers builds, commissions and operates these complex electrical grids. And so we think it's including gas supply.

And so we think it enables us to be a turnkey solution on 2 of the kind of layers of the AI ecosystem, energy and infrastructure and provide very, very high-quality product for the hyperscaler customers.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury of Bank of America.

Jean Ann Salisbury: I know it's early, but do the midterm election results affect how you see the power frame opportunity in the geographic areas that you're targeting, which from Slide 14 looks like it's basically all Louisiana. And could you actually see Louisiana potentially gain market share in data centers from this?

Michael Sabel: Yes. We think the Louisiana has a significant advantage in the market. For the moment, it seems like they might be the only store open on Sunday here for data centers. And combined with our offering, which is Island Mode, we think that it creates a significant scarcity value at scale for how we can execute this. It appears that the other states are going to take a while to kind of decide what they want the new rules to be for expanding power data centers and compute. And Louisiana, particularly with what we've already executed and how large an investor we are today in Louisiana is open for business.

And we think Louisiana has a great opportunity to significantly add to their existing gas businesses in the state and become a major supplier of compute in the United States.

Jean Ann Salisbury: And then a follow-up on Slide 14. Thank you for the split of your outlook for the power frame business into Cameron Parish versus Plaquemines Parish. Currently, there's some pretty severe gas constraints going into Plaquemines Parish, which I guess would just get worse if you added power and Plaquemine bolt-ons. Do you think that you need to see pipelines come in to fix those constraints before you'll be able to really get customers to sign up there?

Jonathan Thayer: Jean Ann, this is Jack. So importantly, there are 2 pipes that are coming online in 2028 that will address some of that constraint that we've been seeing in our basis projections. But I would add that the Cloud Connector pipe that Mike announced in his prepared remarks is really an avenue for us to secure significant gas. That pipeline will ultimately go up to Perryville. And you've seen increasingly improved connectivity heading west to east as projects have been announced that look to develop not just the Permian assets and the gas associated with them coming over, but also the development of the Western Haynesville and the Shelby Trough and that gas coming over as well.

I'd also note that production within Haynesville has been incredibly high volumes in what has been a low price environment. That's always viewed as the most price-sensitive market. But we see developers and upstream producers earning attractive returns in a low price environment, and we expect them to continue to maintain their production and in fact, grow their production as new demand comes online.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Chris Robertson of Deutsche Bank.

Christopher Robertson: Just first question on the Power Island AI side. I think the power offering is pretty clear. But can you talk more about the additional infrastructure offering that you guys will be providing, including some buildings and other design elements? And can you talk about -- was this engineering work already done in-house? Or are you still developing plans around that?

Michael Sabel: Sure. No, the infrastructure offering is really just the data center buildings in combination with the integrated power. That's the bulk of that. Obviously, it includes cooling systems as well. There's an envelope inside the building where we hand off to the customers of the compute. And again, we're -- when we sign these, we're signing triple net leases on the power buildings. And so the envelope inside is going to depend on who the customers end up being. And we're building -- our target is to build incrementally 250-megawatt compute buildings. And so we have room to have multiple customers between buildings, if that's how it turns out.

And so it's possible there would be different designs within the buildings. We manage as we build on the LNG infrastructure side, teams of multiple subcontractors. And the -- it will be similar for the data center buildings where we tap into specialist contracting firms that provide different aspects of the construction and engineering for specialized systems. And that's exactly the same way we do it at a larger scale on the LNG side. And -- but the power systems, we're very familiar with, which are the gas insulated switch buildings, e-houses, the transformers and the power generation itself is nearly identical.

We'll be adding layers of batteries and aeroderivatives, but we, in our LNG facilities have networks of battery systems and aero derivatives as well designed to manage variable load. So it's very, very similar.

Christopher Robertson: Maybe 1 for Jack or Mike, you could probably answer this as well. But 2027 will be the first full year of commercial operation at both CP as well as Plaquemines in terms of the base production. So can you talk about maybe expectations around what percentage of full year EBITDA or revenues for '27 will be derived from the contract agreements versus any spot or commissioning volumes?

Jonathan Thayer: In terms of -- Chris, in terms of 2027, the split will be given that Phase 2 will come online the middle of next year for Plaquemines in COD format and those contracts will start. We'd still anticipate that the prevailing market prices will be the major driver of our earnings and EBITDA during 2027. And that forward curve looks attractive at current prices. And as we play through the winter here, we anticipate that bow waving into '27 as Europe, in particular, addresses a storage shortfall.

Michael Sabel: I would pause and think about the data we talked about earlier in the call, which is the ramp-up for the first 12 months of Plaquemines was 234 cargoes and how hard we've worked kind of looking for opportunities to make improvements in that ramp-up schedule. And obviously, the guidance we just gave to vectoring towards a July 1 LNG date. And so it's a pretty significant move moving the first LNG date from the winter into the summer there to the middle of the year.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Elvira Scotto of RBC Capital Markets.

Elvira Scotto: So you talked a little bit about this already, but with the new AI data center initiative, obviously, given your expertise in power, this seems to make a lot of sense. But how should we think about capital allocation? How are you deploying human and other resources to LNG versus power? And what are the latest thoughts on that sort of getting to investment grade in light of this new business and then just capital return to shareholders?

Michael Sabel: So wow, those are a lot of great questions. So first of all, in terms of resource timing, we're actually getting ready to come off peak at CP2 already, which when you think about our guidance on when we're going to get to first LNG would be expected. And so in the bolt-on at CP2, a lot of that activity happens at the factory. The incremental 12 LNG trains, the first bolt-on train is going to be the 91st train that we commission and turn on. And that's being built over in Italy, and they'll roll over and slide on to foundations, the power plant we ordered a long time ago. It's a similar power plant.

We have very little pipe rock for this Phase 2. So the -- when you compare and then -- the Plaquemines bolt-on looks like it's going to just trail by about 6 months. And that's 8 trains in the first phase of that. So it's a very manageable execution that kind of just staples on to the remaining activity. And the big ramp-up for the data centers, again, if and when we sign offtake contracts, happens really more -- some in '28, but really more '29 and -- and so it gives us a great scope to apply this amazing team, this giant team that we've built that has, we think, an amazing set of skills and capacity.

And so from an execution allocation perspective, this blends in really nicely with kind of the tapering of the most intense LNG construction and commissioning activity. That lag in timing also plays very nicely into the deployment of capital. Again, as we are able -- if we're able to sign triple net leases, that capital requirement pushes out into '29 and '30. The 250-megawatt buildings -- the rest of the industry builds those today is kind of in the $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion range, not including the chips. And so our -- and we're going to do this if we're able to do this with investment-grade counterparties.

And so the incremental capital requirements for those are manageable relative to our size, particularly out in '28, '29, '30 as we're significantly ramping up production and cash flows. We load, give or take, 43 cargoes a month now. And 24 months from now, that will pass 90 a month. And so we have a very significant buildup of cash. And so we think it's a really nice way to deploy a lot of extra capital that we think actually will improve our path to investment grade as we increase contracted long-term sales of the triple net leases and hopefully significantly increase our cash generation and earnings.

But we have in coming years, cumulatively tens of billions of dollars of cash generation. And so we have plenty of room to manage to investment grade at project levels and at the parent level, pay down debt and buy back stock if we think the stock price remains attractive and too low from our perspective.

Elvira Scotto: And then just in terms of -- I mean, I know you announced this recently, but presumably, you've been working on this for a while. But can you give us a sense of just the appetite from hyperscalers? Have you already started having discussions with some counterparties? And then what's the sort of typical lead time from customer commitments to revenue commencement?

Michael Sabel: So we've been working on this for 7 to 8 months now. And only announced it recently as we executed, I think, 3 weeks ago now, the expansion of the frame agreement with GE. And we really needed to have that in place to have the most serious conversations with potential customers because the scarcity in the market has been the ability to actually acquire the near-term power generation equipment and the switchgear and transformers. And so that needs to be in place for not just us but any counterparty to close out deals with customers on specific schedules. We've never -- on the prediction and timing, we've never signed a triple net lease before.

So we're not experts on predicting the timing of those. We've done, give or take, $140 billion of long-term contracts with LNG customers. So we're able to give you better predictions on that side. And so we want to remain very conservative on comments on timing. We think -- we know we can execute it. We now know we've secured the supply chain to match up with our execution capacity. We have room to do it. We've permitted for 10 years, similar infrastructure in our locations. We're in a great state to do it. We have the capital capacity to do it, but we haven't signed the deals yet. And so that's what we're working on.

Operator: We've reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder, for closing remarks.

Michael Sabel: Great. Thanks for everyone's time this morning. We are extremely pleased with the progress that we made this quarter, and we're hard at work safely executing our current construction and growth projects and look forward to speaking to many of you in coming days and weeks and are excited for our next quarterly call already. So thanks, everybody. Have a great day.

Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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