Cheniere Energy Aktie

Good day, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2026 Cheniere Energy Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Randy Bhatia. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cheniere's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. The slide presentation and access to the webcast for today's call are available at cheniere.com.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. Slide 2 of our presentation contains a discussion of those forward-looking statements and associated risks. In addition, a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the presentation appendix.

The call agenda is shown on Slide 3. After prepared remarks from Jack, Anatol and Zach, we will open the call for Q&A. I'll now turn the call over to Jack Fusco, Cheniere's Chairman, President and CEO.

Thank you, Randy. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review our results from the second quarter of 2026 and our further improved outlook for the full year. The LNG market in the second quarter continued to be defined by elevated volatility driven by the war in Iran and the resulting significant constraint on global LNG supply with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

This market disruption is significant, not just for LNG, but for many other commodities and products that benefit the world, which transit the straight and route to their respective end markets. We are hopeful for a timely and peaceful resolution and continue to pray for the safety of those in harm's way. Without a doubt, this supply disruption has brought to sharp focus the necessity of energy security and diversity of supply amongst LNG buyers. While in the immediate terms, buyers have been active in sourcing replacement LNG volumes procuring alternative fuel sources and implementing demand-side management initiatives, long-term security of supply and building a durable, reliable portfolio have been reinforced as a critical strategic priority, and our reputation as a customer-focused, safe and reliable operator only further distinguish us from competitors.

On my recent trips to Washington, I've met with Energy Secretary Wright National Energy Dominance Council, Chair Bergen and FERC Chairman Swett, among others. Our dialogue with Washington is extremely constructive, which is especially important amidst this volatile commodity market backdrop. We appreciate this administration's broad support for the U.S. LNG industry and its growth. Our regulators and policymakers seek and value input from industry leaders like Cheniere and they are focused on supporting energy infrastructure projects like ours with a robust yet transparent regulatory and oversight regime so that the U.S. can continue to meaningfully contribute to the energy security priorities of customers and countries around the world.

I encourage you all to read the recently published LNG impact study led by Dan Yergin at S&P Global which highlights the vast benefits and advantages of U.S. LNG, both at home and for allies abroad. To think that the first LNG cargo from the lower 48 in was exported just 10 years ago from our Sabine Pass facility, and now U.S. LNG is on track to be the second highest value export product from our country and $1 trillion contribution to our economy, is an incredible story, and we at Cheniere are proud to be at the forefront of this industry.

Please turn to Slide 5, where I'll highlight our key results and accomplishments for the second quarter of 2026, and introduce our second upwardly revised guidance ranges for the full year. I'm pleased to report that our excellent performance in the first quarter across all facets of our business continue through the second quarter. We generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.8 billion, distributable cash flow of approximately $1.2 billion and net income of over $3 billion. On the production side, we produced and exported 184 cargoes or 672 TBtu, a 20% increase over the same period last year.

Our production and operations continue to outperform our forecast in the second quarter, thanks to the completion and accelerated startup of additional trains at Stage 3 and enhanced operational reliability during the quarter. Today, we are further increasing our full year 2026 financial guidance to $7.9 billion to $8.4 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and $5.3 billion to $5.8 billion of DCF is the second quarter in a row we are upwardly revising guidance.

In this quarter, the new low end of the guidance is above the previous high end for both EBITDA and DCF. The primary drivers of the increase are further improvement in our production forecast of approximately 0.5 million tons at the midpoint, thanks to improved reliability realized outperformance and acceleration of new Stage 3 trains. Sustained higher marketing margins, both achieved and forecasted for the remainder of the year and contributions from the optimization activities achieved year-to-date, both upstream and downstream of our facilities.

Zach will cover guidance in more detail in a few minutes. But we look forward to delivering financial results within these further upwardly revised ranges for the year. During the second quarter, we continued to execute on our comprehensive capital allocation plan we were able to repurchase another approximately 2.2 million shares for $550 million, as sustained elevated volatility in our shares presented opportunities for a repurchase plan to be active over the quarter. We funded approximately $1.1 billion of growth CapEx with equity and debt declared a dividend of $0.555.

We continue to make excellent and safe progress on our growth and expansions during the second quarter. Our CCL Stage 3 project is now over 98% complete. Substantial completion of Train 6 was achieved in June and commissioning on Train 7 has commenced were first LNG expected imminently. We continue to expect Train 7 substantial completion in the coming months, well ahead of the guaranteed date in 2027. which will officially complete Corpus Christi Stage 3 and further reinforces Cheniere's execution track record for bringing LNG capacity online ahead of schedule and on budget.

On our mid-scale trains 8 and 9 and debottlenecking project, we have now safely progressed over 48% complete, continue to track ahead of the schedule across critical work streams. Piling has recently been completed, underground piping and still installation is progressing well and key materials and equipment packages, including the Train 8 cold box are arriving at site on or ahead of schedule as we move further into the construction phase of execution.

Turn now to Slide 6, where I'll provide some detail on our next growth project Phase 1 of the Sabine Pass expansion project. During the second quarter, we took another critical step towards our final investment decision on this expansion when we signed a lump sum turnkey engineering procurement construction contract with Bechtel Energy. We look forward to continuing our multi-decade relationship with Bechtel as we execute this project. Vector's commenced early engineering and critical equipment procurement under a limited notice to proceed, further locking in the project's cost and derisking the time line.

The EPC contract with Bechtel is approximately $4.7 billion and its scope covers on large-scale train at Sabine Pass Train 7, a boil-off gas reliquefaction unit and related infrastructure and tie-ins to the existing facility. Baker Hughes will once again supply the gas turbines and compressors. As we have described, Phase 1 is a very brownfield project, efficiently leveraging the site, in-place infrastructure and equipment at Sabine Pass to significantly reduce cost and enhance returns.

The project does not require support infrastructure, such as additional marine births, LNG storage tanks or a significant investment in additional natural gas pipelines. Train 7 is a replica of the first 6 trains at Sabine Pass with a design capacity of approximately 5 million tonnes per annum. The contract also includes the addition of a boil-off gas or BOG reliquefaction unit to debottleneck the large trains and will add approximately 1 million tons per annum of capacity across Sabine Pass. In addition to the EPC contract with Bechtel as part of Phase 1, we also awarded Baker use a multiyear services contract covering fleet-wide gas turbine upgrades across all of Sabine Pass in order to enhance power output and further increase LNG production across the facility.

In total, Phase 1 is expected to add over 6 million tonnes per annum of production capacity to our platform or a total growth of approximately 10%. We've been working hard developing the SPL expansion project. And it's both exciting and rewarding to see the pieces come together in our disciplined, highly contracted brownfield and returns-focused approach to project development pay off.

With the regulatory approvals expected later this year and the financing process already underway, we now have excellent line of sight in an FID on a significant accretive brownfield growth project that meets or exceeds our capital investment parameters, enabling us to continue to deliver the through cycle risk-adjusted returns our stakeholders have become accustomed to. With over 40 million tonnes per annum in the permitting process to potentially grow our platform to over 100 million tonnes per annum, we have an exceptional opportunity today to support not just tomorrow's global energy balances, but the long-term growth and prosperity of the economies around the world, including ours at home here in the U.S. I'm proud of the critical role we play in the global energy market, and I'm excited for our future as a leading global infrastructure platform.

With that, I'll now hand it over to Anatol to discuss the LNG market. Thank you all again for your continued support of Cheniere.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 8. As Jack mentioned in his opening remarks, security supply remained the defining theme for global gas and LNG markets throughout the second quarter. Although the ceasefire announced in mid-June raised cautious optimism that tensions would ease and LNG flows would gradually normalize, recent developments suggest the outlook for sustained deescalation remains uncertain. Throughout much of the quarter, LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely constrained. While the market has proven remarkably resilient, the disruption has reinforced just how dependent global gas and LNG markets remain on reliable sources of supply and how quickly geopolitical events can destabilize and tighten the market.

Let me walk through what we've observed during the quarter. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recovered only gradually following the mid-June seas file. Both crude and LNG tanker movements improved from their lows, but remained materially below pre-conflict levels throughout quarter end. Outbound crude tanker transits recovered to approximately 25% of their pre-conflict average while LNG tanker transit recovery was under 10%. That divergence reflects the greater operational complexity of restarting LNG supply chains. Unlike crude exports, LNG production requires upstream gas supply, liquefaction facilities, marine logistics and vessel scheduling to all return to normal before exports can fully recover and long distance cryogenic pipelines are simply not an option.

As a result, LNG flows remain significantly more disrupted throughout the quarter. The reduction in Qatar and UAE exports represented approximately 18 million tons of lower LNG supply during the quarter. Growth in production elsewhere, including our own Stage 3, largely offset those losses. but overall global LNG exports still declined by approximately 3 million tonnes year-over-year, and this decline is expected to grow over the rest of the year if the conflict persists. The key point is that this was not simply a regional disruption. It represented one of the largest sudden disruptions to internationally traded gas supply in recent years. Additionally, as Asian prices move to a premium over Europe, U.S. LNG flows shifted decisively east. U.S. exports to Asia reached a quarterly record of approximately 11 million tons, while deliveries to Europe declined materially from recent levels. Flexible destination contracts, once again allowed Atlantic Basin supply to respond quickly to changing market signals.

These developments were also reflected in global benchmark prices. As security supply became the dominant market priority, both TTF and JKM moved sharply higher following the disruption. While prices moderated after the ceasefire announcement, recent developments have pushed both benchmarks back up to levels last seen in March. By contrast, Henry Hub has remained stable throughout the period. Domestic U.S. gas fundamentals have remained largely unchanged, highlighting that this is fundamentally an international security supply event and is not constrained by U.S. natural gas.

As shown in the lower right chart, that divergence also extends into the forward curve. TTF, JKM and Brent continue to carry a meaningful geopolitical premium relative to pre-conflict levels while Henry Hub remains anchored by abundant North American gas supply. Regional demand also adjusted. China provided the greatest source of flexibility with imports declining by approximately 3 million tons year-over-year during the first half. its diversified supply portfolio, including domestic production, pipeline imports and fuel switching capability allow China not only to reduce imports but also to continue to redirect flexible cargoes into higher-value markets.

Finally, as has been the case all year, Europe entered the summer with storage materially below last year and the 5-year average, ending the quarter with an approximately 11 Bcm storage deficit versus last year equivalent to roughly 100 cargoes of LNG. That deficit persisted despite record amounts of LNG imports. Much of the incremental LNG received during the first quarter was consumed during the winter rather than injected into storage while weaker indigenous production and lower pipe imports further limited inventory rebuilding. Injections have also remained below last year's pace since the storage season began. Looking ahead, Europe is likely to begin the coming winter with less inventory than last year.

The '25, '26 winter began with storage 82% full and ended this March at 28%. And illustrating how quickly that buffer can be consumed. Even if Middle East LNG flows normalize soon, we currently expect Europe to struggle to reach the 80% storage target before the start of winter. Generally, negative seasonal price spreads have reduced the economic incentive to inject and any continued disruption through Hormuz would further reduce that starting position and leave the market more exposed to weather and competing Asian demand. Just as a rule of thumb, each additional month of [indiscernible] Strait of Hormuz LNG flows could reduce Europe's storage position by approximately 5 percentage points, carrying through from winter starts to winter exit absent and offset elsewhere.

Weather remains equally important in winter, a 1 degree Celsius warmer or colder than normal, can move that balance by approximately 10 percentage points. Taken together, these developments highlight 2 important features of today's LNG market, which has proven considerably more resilient than many expected, but resilience should not be mistaken for surplus. Flexible portfolios, destination optionality and demand-side adjustments have allowed the market to absorb a meaningful supply shock. At the same time, higher prices, Europe's slower storage rebuild and continued geopolitical uncertainty all point to a market that remains precariously balanced.

The next slide illustrates how regions drew on different sources of flexibility to build resilience and maintain security supply through the disruption and what we see as the implications for the industry longer-term outlook. The first chart highlights how global LNG consumption evolved across the major importing regions, during the first half of the year. Despite the loss of Middle East supply, higher spot prices and increased volatility, LNG consumption remained at or near the top of the 5-year range across most major importing regions.

Europe imported a record volume of LNG during the first half of the year as it competed to rebuild storage while replacing lost Middle East supply. While the JKT region and South Asia remained within their historical range, Southeast Asia reported its highest first half LNG importance over the past 5 years. The resilient demand across these regions despite the loss of approximately 18 million tons of Middle East LNG supply and materially higher spot prices demonstrates the importance of LNG to their energy systems and the limited short-term price sensitivity of many consuming markets.

China was the notable exception. First half imports declined 10% to approximately 27 million tons reflecting the broadest set of flexibility options of any major importer. It's diversified supply portfolio, including domestic production, pipeline imports, renewable generation fuel switching capability and flexible LNG contracts allow China both to reduce imports and redirect cargoes into higher-value markets. As a result, the market largely absorbed the supply shock through Chinese flexibility rather than widespread demand destruction.

The mechanisms differ by region. Europe responded through higher LNG imports, albeit slower storage injections, while North Asia relied primarily on fuel switching and storage withdrawals. And Southeast Asia balanced affordability through a combination of fuel switching, procurement timing and selective demand destruction. The middle chart illustrates that investment in new LNG supply continues against the backdrop of recent market volatility. Approximately 77 million tons of new LNG capacity reached FID in 25 followed by another 38 million tons so far this year.

Despite tighter near-term market conditions, the industry continues to advance the next wave of liquefaction capacity needed to meet long-term demand growth. Finally, the chart on the right illustrates how the global supply landscape continues to evolve. Over the past decade, the United States has emerged as the world's largest source of incremental LNG supply. That leadership has been enabled by 2 structural advantages: an abundant low-cost natural gas resource base and consistent access to deep pools of capital capable of funding large-scale infrastructure. As a result, the global LNG market is becoming both larger and more diversified, with the United States expected to account for approximately 270 million tons of operational capacity by 2035 and alongside substantial supply from Qatar, Australia and other producers.

Importantly, that growth is being delivered through a variety of commercial models serving different customers and projects. Cheniere's strategy has remained consistent throughout that evolution. We continue to have unwavering conviction in our belief that a highly contracted returns-focused business model provides the best foundation for long-term value creation. That approach has enabled us to build a recognized reputation for reliability while remaining disciplined in our returns-focused approach to growth. In an increasingly fragmented global energy market, we believe that combination of reliability, commercial flexibility and disciplined execution remains a meaningful competitive advantage.

An advantage that also accrues to our long-term customers as we approach Cargo #500 with an untarnished track record of cargo deliveries. Recent events have reinforced both the importance of LNG and the resilience of the global market. While geopolitical uncertainty has increased and market conditions remain tight, the industry's response has demonstrated the value of reliable and flexible supply, diversified portfolios and trusted long-term partnerships.

Those characteristics have defined Cheniere's strategy from the outset and continue to position us well to support not only our existing long-term partners, but also capture additional long-term opportunities as the market evolves. With that, I'll turn the call over to Zach to review our financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Anatol, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our financial results and further improved outlook for the full year. Before I begin, I wanted to reinforce that this highly contracted investment-grade LNG infrastructure company has been built for much more than as a trading proxy for prompt LNG prices. While today's results and upwardly revised guidance highlights the financial upside that can present himself by bringing trains on early, debottlenecking and most importantly, operating reliably in the midst of a highly elevated and volatile LNG price environment, we don't see these financial results as one-off going forward once LNG prices stabilize.

These forecasted results of $8-plus billion of EBITDA are levels we plan on achieving in run rate as we simply build out the Corpus Midscale trains and FID SPL Train 7 by early 2027. And that's in an LNG market environment of not over $10 LNG margins, but at a fraction of that in our $2.50 to $3 margin range before any upside. This should highlight the financial resiliency of Cheniere's disciplined business model for the long term that will continue to set us apart as the premier U.S. LNG company or for that matter, contracted infrastructure company in North America. Please turn to Slide 11.

For the second quarter of 2026, we generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.8 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.2 billion. Compared to 2Q 2025, our second quarter 2026 results reflect higher volumes of LNG delivered due to increased production from new capacity online at Stage 3 and no major planned maintenance outages during the quarter. Our second quarter results were also supported by higher marketing margins achieved and optimization due to continued gas price volatility. During the quarter, we recognized an income 657 TBtu of LNG which, while up quarter-over-quarter due to the in-transit cargo timing dynamic impacting 1Q that we discussed.

On our last call, 2Q volumes recognized are also partially lower due to several cargoes rerouting from Europe to Asia intra-quarter, pushing delivery into 3Q. During the second quarter, we also generated net income of approximately $3.1 billion, up nearly $1.5 billion from 2Q 2025. The increase is driven primarily by the noncash derivative impact related to our long-term IPM agreements, which are designed to secure long-term natural gas supply to our facilities, while providing stable fixed fee economics for our project infrastructure, similar to the economics of our long-term SPAs.

Historically, our net income has experienced significant variability related to these unrealized noncash derivative impacts due to the mismatch of accounting methodology for the purchase of natural gas and the corresponding sale of LNG related to our long-term IPM agreements. Near the end of the second quarter, we designated the normal purchases and normal sales accounting exception for approximately 75% of the volumes related to our IPM agreements after considerations of the evolving U.S. gas market transactions landscape. As a result of this designation.

These agreements will no longer be marked to fair value each period, eliminating derivative accounting adjustments for these volumes in future quarters. We expect this election for the volumes that are delivered directly into our sites to result in reduced variability in our net income quarter-to-quarter going forward as there will be less sensitivity to commodity prices related to these designated agreements, which is more reflective of the stable long-term cash flow profile afforded by our highly contracted infrastructure platform.

During the second quarter, we deployed almost $900 million of equity cash flow towards our comprehensive pillars of capital allocation, including accretive growth, shareholder returns in the form of buybacks and dividends, and balance sheet management. For the first half of the year, our capital deployment of equity cash flow totaled approximately $2.1 billion. And of that, over $1.3 billion was returned to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends. For the second quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.555 per common share. Bringing total dividend payout to common shareholders in the first half of the year to approximately $230 million, and we remain committed to growing our dividend by at least 10% annually through the end of this decade.

With the expectation to seek Board approval for Q3 for our next increase as this recent declaration completes a full year's worth of dividends at this level. In the second quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.2 million shares for $550 million, bringing total buybacks in the first half of the year to approximately $1.1 billion. for nearly 5 million shares. As a reminder, each quarter, we allocate capital to our share repurchase plan, which is then opportunistically deployed under our disciplined value-based framework as we work towards crossing over 200 million shares and then to our current target of 175 million shares outstanding later this decade.

With the continued volatility in the shares this year, the plan is working as designed and remains an advantaged form of capital return for our shareholders, enabling them to own more of Sabine and Corpus and our run rate cash flows while preserving the financial flexibility essential to our growing infrastructure platform and long-term capital allocation plan. Moving to the balance sheet. In May, we issued $1 billion of 2036 notes and $750 million of 2056 notes at CQP, marking our second 30-year issuance and first ever at CP further extending our maturity stack into the second half of this century alongside a growing list of our long-term LNG contracts.

The net proceeds were used to opportunistically redeem the $1.5 billion of senior secured notes due 2027 at SPL, further reducing the amount of secured debt on our balance sheet to fund a portion of the LNTP on Phase 1 of the SPL expansion project. We also amended and restated our Cheniere and CCH credit facilities, extending maturities and improving pricing, enhancing flexibility and preserving $2.75 billion of credit capacity. Our technical approach to liquidity and balance sheet management continues to afford us flexibility as we pursue further expansions of our existing brownfield platform while remaining opportunistic on our buyback program and preserving our investment-grade ratings across our corporate structure.

During the quarter, we funded approximately $1.1 billion of growth capital across our business, as we progress construction of Stage 3 and mid-scale 8 and 9, development of the SPL and CCL expansion projects as well as Gregory Power Plan. Of the $1.1 billion of growth CapEx in the quarter, approximately $200 million was equity funded and approximately $900 million was efficiently debt funded via our delayed draw Corpus Christi term loan as well as a portion of the net proceeds from the CQP bonds issued during the quarter.

As Jack noted, in conjunction with the signing of the lump sum turnkey EPC contract with Bechtel for Phase 1 of the Espial expansion project, we issued Bechtel limited notice to proceed with early engineering and procurement, increasing our spend on that project during the quarter ahead of an expected formal FID early next year. Last week, we launched the process to raise a senior secured delayed draw term loan at SPL and that, together with the proceeds from our recent CQP bond deals will fund the 50% debt component for Phase I.

While we fund the other half of the total project cost with equity cash flow by continuing to flex the variable component of the CQP distribution. With the EPC contract signed, the project fully commercialized and the financing process underway, we have significant visibility into the economics of Phase 1 at SPL, and we are confident that this highly brownfield project represents one of the most competitive risk-adjusted return profiles in energy infrastructure today. Looking ahead, we remain well positioned to fund our disciplined growth objectives and comfortably within our cash flow forecast.

While retaining our strong investment-grade credit metrics and our significant financial flexibility for shareholder returns through any commodity cycle. Turning now to Slide 12, where I will discuss our upwardly revised 2026 financial guidance and outlook for the year. Today, we are increasing the midpoint of our guidance ranges for full year 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow by $650 million and $550 million, respectively. Bringing an expected consolidated adjusted EBITDA to $7.9 billion to $8.4 billion and distributable cash flow of $5.3 billion to $5.8 billion.

We are maintaining our CQP distribution guidance for the year of $3.10 to $3.40 per common unit as we fund the LNTP for the SBL expansion. These increases are primarily driven by an upwardly revised 2026 production forecast from increased utilization and outperformance at both SBL and CCL. And the further accelerated ramp-up of our mid-scale trains as well as capturing higher margins on recent spot sales, along with the higher margin outlook for the remainder of the year. We are tightening our expected full year production range, increasing our forecast from 52 million to 54 million tons to 53 million to 54 million tons. Contributions from optimization activities, both upstream and downstream of our facilities locked in since our last call also supported our results.

With enhanced visibility in our forecast and continued forward selling by our team during the quarter, we continue to forecast less than 1 million tons or 50 TBtu of unsold open volumes remaining in 2026. Therefore, we continue to forecast that a $1 change in market margin would impact EBITDA by less than $50 million for the full year. Despite having very little open exposure for the balance of the year, we are maintaining the $500 million guidance ranges as results could still be impacted by a number of factors, particularly given the sustained elevated pricing and volatility in LNG markets the ramp-up and specific timing of substantial completion of Train 7 at Stage 3, the timing of certain cargoes around year-end, contributions from further optimization activities during the balance of the year, and the impact Henry Hub prices can have on lifting margin.

As we progress through the year and further lock in some of these variables, we will look to tighten these ranges as we have done in years past. And on our next call for 3Q, we expect to provide our 2027 production forecast and expected open capacity for next year, our first full year with all of Stage 3 operational. Our strong results year-to-date support today's full year guidance raise, both of which are a testament to the competitive advantages afforded by our world-class infrastructure platform and business model that yields decades of cash flow visibility thanks to our portfolio of long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparties, but also positions us to respond to market signals and capitalize on optimization opportunities throughout our business.

We believe our stable long-duration cash flow profile paired with this upside potential presents through-cycle risk-adjusted value for our shareholders that is unmatched in the market today and is only further supported by our disciplined all-of-the-above capital allocation framework. As we embark on this next chapter of growth at both Sabine and Corpus, we remain committed to creating sustainable long-term value for our stakeholders, while safely operating our platform in order to supply our global customer base with our secure, reliable and flexible LNG for decades to come.

That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and your interest in Cheniere. Operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question will come from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

As we look ahead to winter, Anatol, your comments paint a stark picture. How do you see LNG demand and trade flows balancing between Asia and Europe, particularly given your relatively low storage levels and inventory deficit. Do you expect increased competition for marginal LNG cargoes and what implications could that have for global LNG pricing trade patterns. And against this backdrop, could you provide an update on commercial discussions with existing and prospective customers across both regions? Power conversations progressing around upmental LNG offtake when we see additional SPAs that could underpin further expansion phases at both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi.

Theresa, thanks for the three questions in one. So first, we honestly don't know. I mean this is a very challenging environment. We're doing everything we can. You heard from the team about our operational excellence and how we're putting as much volume into the market as we can, trains arriving early. We're supporting customers wherever and whenever possible. But as you point out, it's no secret. Europe is in a very challenging position.

It was in the spring that has only been accentuated by these delays and the continued disruptions and we actually -- numbers today, we think it will be tough to get to 70%, much less 80% of inventory. And it will be a challenge, especially as Asia, as you point out, restocks, which has been 1 of the 1 of the flexibility levers that has allowed the market to rebalance and China goes into winter. So we will do everything we can to support our partners. All of this is even in the fog of war is a great tailwind for us, as we commented in the prepared remarks.

That reliability, our ability to, again, work with our partners, find solutions use the flexibility in our portfolio of the IPM agreements and the volumes that we have in that bucket that can go and solve short-term BTU shortage issue is all a tailwind, and we're very comfortable, as you said, we are partially commercialized the Corpus expansion. We're very comfortable that over the next 12 to 18 months where we'll have the kind of mid-single-digit millions of tons that are aligned with our commercial objectives to commercially support Phase 1 at Corpus now that Phase 1 at Sabine is commercialized.

Thank you for that comprehensive answer for bearing with me Anatol. Just a quick follow-up as a result. Do you think we've reached the limits of China's LNG demand flexibility, particularly with respect to fuel switching? Or do you believe that their imports could decline further from current levels?

Well, I think we're very close. The last few months, China has been at or above last year's levels in terms of imports. Again, we're going into the winter is clearly a period where the world is much more flexible during the shoulder and China will be as a system, we'll be keenly aware of its inventory levels and will not allow itself to, we think, to get into the position that unfortunately, Europe has found itself in.

So short answer, yes, I think China is at kind of at its limit for solving this issue for the world.

We'll now take our next question from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

Morning, Jeremy. Just wanted to follow up on some of the market dynamic questions there. And I was just curious, I think Anatol in the past, you might have said that there's a recency bias when it comes to contracting and with LNG prices being higher here, just wondering if that influences, I guess, the tone of conversations as you look to sign up more SPAs?

Thanks, Jeremy. I think what influences it is much more the importance of reliability and partnership in this period. The headwind, as we've discussed over the last couple of years is that in aggregate, from the start of '25 through today, over 100 million tonnes have been FID-ed. And a lot of that volume has not found its way to end users, which is -- which, of course, is not how we conduct business, but that is how the market is evolving. So you have those two kind of competing forces that what we've termed in the past that race to the bottom of the standardized 20-year offtake agreement is not a market that we participate in.

We participate in the premium market that values our reliability and what we've been able to do for our customers over the last decade plus.

Got it. That makes sense. And then just wanted to turn towards the kind of operational outperformance, if you will, I guess, the guidance moving up with improved reliability, being able to produce a bit more. I guess, if you could speak to maybe some of the drivers to that? And do you think effective capacity for these units or something marginally higher than what you thought in the past?

No. Jeremy, I'm always amazed and pleased with my folks, my operating folks because they are finding ways to not only get more production instantaneously out of the trains, but also to optimize maintenance schedules and their execution on some of the turnarounds and preventative maintenance program have been incredible. But we feel really good that the work that we've done on debottlenecking. I think we've touched upon it in the past like we added some new fin fans that we developed together with Hudson those fin fans for the same motor amperage provide over 40% more air flow, which provides more cooling during these hot summertime, it's providing real benefits, especially at Sabine Pass, and that's what we're seeing. Knock on wood, some of the root cause problems we had last year around the first quarter. We've we figured out and we fixed and those seem to be behind us. So everything that we've mentioned, we feel good is repeatable year-over-year.

I would just highlight, Jeremy, as well as we think about the numbers and how we started the year at 51 million to 53 million tons of production, and now we're at 53% to $54 million. Only 1/3 of that, if that is the Stage 3 ramp-up and just the trains coming on early and getting to full run rate or better quicker than we originally anticipated. More than 2/3 is all this outperformance that Jack mentioned.

It's all of the resiliency efforts and debottlenecking, but mainly resiliency efforts that we've done at both sites that has decreased downtime, decreased defrost, decreased even maintenance time for the year that we really had to bake in after the experiences we had in 2025. So it's paid dividends clearly to this year, even adding 0.5 million tons added $300 million to the guidance when margins are this high. And we're optimistic this will pay dividends not just for this year but going forward on the reliability improvements.

And Jack, even post the LS sales, it will always be the Jack Fusco Energy Center to us.

Thank you, Jeremy. But I was hoping that would change the name of that power plant before now.

Well, now they will because you just said it on an earnings call.

Our next question from Spiro Dounis with Citi.

I wanted to go back and pick on some of the comments addressed already, and maybe starting with the Middle East conflict here. So been months now after that initial conflict has begun. So I'm curious if you could just put a finer point on what's changed in commercial discussions pre and post conflict. It sounds like there's a hyper focused on supply security here. And so does that give you room on the margin or price side. And when it comes to timing, I assume it's been hard to think long term right now. But once the dust sort of settles, how are you thinking about the timing to see the conflict start to translate into longer-term SPAs? And would those contracts start to fill the hopper for trains beyond 75 Mtpa.

Thanks, Spiro. I'll start backwards. So I think going into the conflict because the world was very uncertain about the timing of the resolution the assumptions continue to roll on a fairly on a short-term basis. I think on the last call, we talked about our key partners in the theater that were affected by this finding solutions through the second quarter. Obviously, we went through the second quarter with the market being disrupted even for the brief period that volumes were moving out of the market.

And now we're going to probably exit the third quarter still in this fog of war and uncertainty about the disruption even if volumes start picking up today. So you're right that counterparties have been dealing with this period and figuring out literally how to keep the lights on. As we said in our prepared remarks, we've been surprised. Positively surprised by how certain markets have actually been more resilient in terms of their LNG demand than we would have expected. Now moving forward to the long-term issue, as you can also expect the discussions have continued to be very robust.

Again, we're very comfortable where we are and the progress that we will make in the coming quarters to continue to support Stage 4, we do think that those discussions are benefiting from, again, how we have performed and the ability of companies to have that diversification and flexibility. In terms of the quantity, the question you're asking is are we comfortable that we can get more than single-digit millions of tons at our usual kind of $2.50 to $3 range. there, the issue for now, again, is this competitive landscape where we think order of magnitude, 100 million tonnes is trying to find a home. So that's the tug of war.

We're, at this point, very comfortable that we can get our premium with our key partners, both existing and new ones. Am I comfortable that 20 million tonnes can be done at that level today. That's -- I'm less comfortable with that over that 12- to 18-month period than I am with the mid-single digits.

And Spiro, I wouldn't discount the fact that we later this month, we will have sent out our 5,000th cargo that we haven't missed a foundation customer cargo and that reliability especially during all the volatility that we've seen really since February of '22 with the Ukraine Russian conflict that reliability has been worth a significant amount of money for our long-term customers. And so hopefully, we can make Anatol's job a lot easier.

Yes. I got to think that counts for something. Second question, just a quick one here on nitrogen. It was a bit of an issue late last year, and I know you've been working to address the nitrogen content. So just curious maybe where you are on that process now? And with the influx of gas coming back out of the Permian with new egress, do you feel like you're prepared to deal with content going forward as well?

Yes. So with [indiscernible] in nitrogen, we have a couple of tools in our toolkit that we've been using. So one of them is processed oriented, where if we subcool we can actually liquefy the nitrogen in the process and evacuate it that way. And then other things are like Zach mentioned, the Gregory Power project, where we'll send high nitrogen gas to the power plant and have it burn it and consume it. We've seen the nitrogen stabilize at about 1.5% from the Permian. And which has been good, and we've blended it ourselves with some lower nitrogen gas that we've procured from some -- directly from some suppliers. So we've got a lot of different handles, Spiro, that we've been using to manage the nitrogen. And we have a few more upward sleeve that I won't divulge on this call.

We'll now take our next question from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research.

You recently got FERC approval to raise the capacity of the mid-scale trains, I think, by about 5 MTPA. How are you thinking about the potential to raise those capacities? And over what time frame could we think about this getting done?

Yes. I'll start, and I'll let Zach chime in. So we've been spending a lot of time since Train 1 with figuring out different ways to debottleneck the mid-scale trains. It's a mixed refrigerant. There's 12 different refrigerants in the cocktail. So our process engineers have come a long way in figuring out how to effectively mix the refrigerant to get the maximum amount of cooling out of the trains. And that's why you're seeing a big step up in the production of the mid-scale trains. I would think process-wise, it would happen relatively soon.

We have a program where we take it slowly, and we work with the different equipment suppliers to make sure we don't exceed any one of their limits. But I would guess over the next year or so that we should have worked it through most of the mid-scale trains.

I'll just add. It comes back to even when we FID-ed mid-scale 9, it was the mid-scale 89 and debottlenecking project. So we were going to get 2 trains out of this, but incrementally more volume out of all of Stage 3 and mid-scale. And that's paying dividends and why we need to tee ourselves up to be able to produce at higher levels. This is allowing us to bring the cost per tonne down on these FIDs and hold to the 7x CapEx to EBITDA. And at $2.50 to $3 margin levels.

What we're getting now is planning at even further ahead beyond midscale to 9 and maybe some of the tricks up our sleeves or the debottlenecking projects that we're planning that could maybe fold in with CCL expansion Phase 1 because what it's going to take is not just an incremental train, but the advantages of being so brownfield and with the scale that we have to bring that cost per tonne down when inflation is real, and we're living in an environment where margins are in the long run, run rate in a stable fashion $2.50 to $3.

So this is all going in the right direction. More to come on that, and we'll see how much we can get out of the mid-scale trains and the large-scale trains as a whole.

And sorry, just to clarify, it sounds like this is maybe partially incorporated in your kind of run rate production forecast, but not fully. Is that fair?

Yes. If you start going up to the high end of these approvals, that's not baked in whatsoever.

Okay. Second question, if you could just give a little more detail the guidance uptick is very large at $650 million. Is there any way to think about how much of the upside is tied to higher margins in the back half of the year and the limited spot capacity you have versus optimization? And if a lot of it's optimization. Can you just give some more color on the activities you executed on?

Sure. I'll break it out in a pretty simple way. By adding 0.5 million tons to the production forecast, which gets you to the new guidance range midpoint of 53.5% from the previous midpoint of 53%. Just multiply that by $10 to $13 margins, and we're talking about $300 million added to the guidance just from the production increase. Then you go back to the less than 1 million tons or less than 50 TBtu that we had opened as of the last call and opportunistically putting that away. In addition, Henry Hub is up a little bit since then through the year, and that got us $200 million. And then optimization was $100 million to $150 million in the upside there.

So if you put it all together, really, production drove this. And I would say we're still down to less than 50 TBtu open. So there is some exposure to the current market in the forecast. But as we speak, we are locking in cargoes for this year, even lurking unlocking in cargoes for next year. I think last call, I mentioned we had locked in around 1 million tons for next year that's probably up another 0.5 million tons in the last few months for next year as we see margins in the 8-plus range, well above run rate levels or where they were earlier in the year. So there's still some exposure there, but we're going to put it to bed. But why with such elevated margins, we kept to a $500 million range at this point in the year.

now take our next question from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America.

I just wanted to make sure I understood Zach's comments about the mark-to-market accounting change for 75% of the IPM volumes. I guess confirming that this new change has started with the 2Q net income number. And I don't know if you can like give us a sense of how much that could tighten the quarterly net income range in a volatile year such as this year or 2022.

Yes. No, we're glad to have made that designation. That designation happened in mid-June. And as we all know, with the volatility and spike in prices in Q1 and then kind of moderating in Q2. A lot of that occurred by mid-June and why there was a large unrealized gain in net income for Q2. But going forward, this will mitigate things. The market has evolved. There is more long-term gas supply deals in the in the United States or in North America that are not just priced off of Henry Hub, but off of global indices. And with the prevalence of those, it allowed us to make this exception.

For deals that are delivered directly to our sites at Corpus and Sabine and they're not optimized and are basically passed through into LNG and sold at a global price. That's about 6 of the 8 deals that we have. so 75%. And we ran some numbers like we've had 2 once-in-a-generation events in our industry since '21. And of those 22 quarters since '21, we've had 6 negative net income quarters because of unrealized derivatives. That would have dropped down to two if we were able to make this designation earlier. So it definitely mitigates the volatility in our net income and is much more representative of who we are and of the stable fixed fee cash flow, that is the base of the business.

So yes, less mark-to-market accounting occurring on our derivative and contracted positions going forward. So that should be clear to investors.

We'll now take our last question from Olivia Foster with Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask about the maintenance outlook going forward, particularly given the strong volumes in the quarter. for this year, can you remind us the timing and scope of maintenance activities were completed to address the feed gas composition quality variances that we had seen last year? And then looking forward, how should we think about the timing for the next major maintenance turnarounds. Is there a possibility that there will be a major maintenance turnaround at Sabine or Corpus in 2027?

All right. So we went into the year and made it pretty clear that we weren't going to have the same type of major maintenance that we had in '25 at Sabine that took out 2 trains for over half a month. So that alone was going to allow year-over-year Q2 to Q2 to be up on production. With that said, we had various planned maintenance scattered throughout the year as we were dealing with some of the resiliency efforts we wanted to take care of, considering what we went through in 2025 for feed gas variability and just some additional unplanned downtime that we had in '25.

That's basically all going to be taken care of by the end of this month. We usually take care of those types of efforts in Q2 and Q3 and besides regular planned maintenance here and there, but nothing at the scale of the major maintenance turnarounds that we have. So that's almost behind us for this year. And part of the reason why we were able to increased guidance on production and have the confidence to tighten it. Going forward, next year, we will give you more insight on our production profile for 2027 on the next call. But when you have 9 trains and eventually 9 mid-scale trains all up and running, there's always going to be planned maintenance and almost always going to be major maintenance.

With that said, the trains are running quite well. And we've been able to optimize those major maintenances over time and spread them out a bit further than originally budgeted. And that's going to be a tailwind going forward In '27 and beyond. So more to come on that, but next year will be the first year with all of Stage 3 up and running. So we've given guidance that it's kind of in the mid-50s when we have Stage 3 up and running, and there's nothing holding that back. And with the work that we've done this year, we'll see what type of guidance we can give you in November.

And that does conclude our question-and-answer session for today. I'd like to turn the conference back to our presenters for any additional or closing comments.

Well, this is Jack. I just want to say thank you all for your support and for your attention to Cheniere.

And once again, that does conclude today's conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cheniere's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. The slide presentation and access to the webcast for today's call are available at cheniere.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. Slide 2 of our presentation contains a discussion of those forward-looking statements and associated risks.

In addition, a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the presentation appendix. The call agenda is shown on Slide 3. After prepared remarks from Jack, Anatol and Zach, we will open the call for Q&A.

I'll now turn the call over to Jack Fusco, Cheniere's President and CEO.

Thank you, Randy, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review our results from the first quarter of 2026 and our improved outlook for the full year. Certainly, a lot has changed since our last earnings call, which took place just before the start of the war in Iran. What has unfolded in the wake of that operation is another major shock in the global energy system, the second such shock in just over four years. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the weaponization of energy, including the damage to a portion of QatarEnergy's LNG facility at Ras Laffan are tragic consequences. The effects of which are being felt all over the world. The sudden cessation of reliable supply of Middle Eastern oil, natural gas and the many other products that normally transit the strait every day on their way to dependent markets around the globe shines a bright light on the criticality of supply security and a diversified portfolio.

What we sell at Cheniere is access to a secure, reliable and affordable product that provides the energy to power homes, businesses and economies. Prior to the war, the LNG market already demanded more production than the market could supply as evidenced by the elevated spot market margin we had in the first two months of the year. The disruption of Middle Eastern volumes only exacerbates that supply shortage, increasing prices and restricting availability of supply to the wealthiest buyers at the expense of fast-growing energy-hungry emerging markets. At Cheniere, we look forward to the resolution of this conflict that will enable the renormalization of commerce to one of the world's most important freight gateways so that prosperity through energy affordability and availability can benefit all. Please turn to Slide 5, where I'll highlight our key results and accomplishments for the first quarter of 2026 and introduce our upwardly revised guidance for the year. Our performance in the first quarter has gotten off to an excellent start to 2026.

We generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of over $2.3 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.7 billion. On the production side, we picked up where we left off at the end of 2025 and produced and exported a record amount of LNG in the first quarter. The 187 cargoes we exported through March topped the previous record set in the fourth quarter of last year. I'm extremely proud of our operations team whose tireless efforts to engineer and deploy solutions to address the feed gas composition-related challenges we experienced last year continue to bear fruit and drove enhanced operational reliability during the quarter. Today, we are increasing our full year 2026 financial guidance to $7.25 billion to $7.75 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and $4.75 billion to $5.25 billion of DCF.

This significantly improved outlook, the previous high end of the EBITDA guidance is the new low end is driven primarily by an improvement in our production forecast of approximately 1 million tons, higher marketing margins as well as higher contributions from optimization activities achieved year-to-date, both upstream and downstream of our facilities. Zach will cover guidance in more detail in a few minutes, but we look forward to delivering financial results within these upwardly revised ranges for the year. During the first quarter, we continued to execute on our comprehensive capital allocation plan. We repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares for approximately $535 million, funded approximately $1 billion worth of growth CapEx with equity and debt. We paid down over $0.25 billion in debt, and we declared a dividend of $0.555.

Moving to our growth projects. We continue to make excellent and safe progress on our growth and expansion during the first quarter. Our CCL Stage 3 project now stands at approximately 97% complete. Substantial completion was achieved on Train 5 in March and Train 6 and 7 remain on track for substantial completion in the summer and fall, respectively, with each now tracking a few weeks ahead of schedule that had informed our initial 2026 production forecast in October of last year. First LNG at Train 6 is expected within a few days. On our mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 and debottlenecking project, we have safely progressed to approximately 37% complete. And while it's still early, are tracking ahead of schedule on a number of execution fronts. Piling is nearly complete with approximately 8,000 piles having been driven. The first structural steel has been erected and the next major construction milestone is the first above-ground piping, which is scheduled to be installed this month.

With regard to our future growth, our line of sight on the Phase 1 expansions at both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi continues to improve. As we disclosed on our last earnings call, we are budgeting for limited notices to proceed this year on the first phase of the Sabine Pass expansion, Train 7. We are working closely with Bechtel to finalize the EPC contract and would expect to begin issuing LNTPs shortly thereafter, which should be seen by the market as a clear signal that we are on track to reach FID. At Corpus Christi, we are making excellent progress on our development of the CCL expansion project. We were pleased to receive our scheduling notice from FERC last week, supporting our expectation of FERC approval on that project in the first half of next year. We are extremely excited about these Phase 1 projects, which we believe represent the most compelling risk-adjusted infrastructure investment opportunities on the Gulf Coast or maybe all of North America and are expected to accretively grow the Cheniere production platform by approximately 10% each.

Turn now to Slide 6, where I'll discuss my key strategic priorities for 2026. My priorities for 2026 are simple: execution, growth and capital allocation, and I'll drill down briefly into each. First, on execution. My priority is to maintain our track record of delivering top-tier safety metrics while furthering our operational excellence program and being a trusted and reliable supplier to our customers. In dealing with some operational challenges last year, the team has responded with determination and resolve and its efforts are paying significant dividends. The team has increased the utilization across both sites by identifying root causes and innovating solutions to address the issues impacting reliability, not just the symptoms. In addition, the team has increased production through identifying and executing on debottlenecking opportunities while seamlessly executing on our planned maintenance activities. And we are focused on managing our platform in a market with elevated volatility.

Despite the volatility, our coordinated teams across the globe have done an excellent job managing our positions and assets, ensuring we deliver on our obligations to our customers while optimizing the portfolio through volatile domestic gas markets like we saw during the winter storm Fern as well as very volatile international gas and shipping markets that have prevailed since early March. Next on growth. With Trains 1 through 5 to Stage 3 substantially complete, our immediate priority is a safe completion of Train 6 and 7. As I just mentioned, these trains have accelerated since last year, benefiting from lessons learned on the first trains as our partnership with Bechtel has not only resulted in early operations of the trains, but also shorter time lines on both commissioning and ramp-up to full production. I expect those learnings to continue in order to benefit mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 as those trains move deeper into construction later this year.

On our SPL expansion and CCL expansion, we are aggressively executing project development work streams across regulatory, financing, commercial and EPC contracting as FIDs on those projects come into focus. Last week, we received our scheduling notice from FERC on the CCL expansion project, a critical step in the FERC process, and it is aligned with our expected time line of FERC approval in the first half of 2027. And finally, on capital allocation. We had a major update on the last call with the achievement of the original 2020 Vision plan, the new $9 billion authorization the Board approved during the quarter for share buyback and our new share count and run rate DCF targets. We are in an enviable capital allocation position, enabled by our incredible long-term contract portfolio that provides decades of cash flow visibility, our brownfield growth opportunities, investment-grade balance sheet and opportunistic repurchase plan.

In February, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first cargo, and next week will mark my 10th anniversary at Cheniere. I'm extremely proud of the many incredible milestones we have accomplished together in that time. While these anniversaries offer the opportunity to look back, I prefer to look forward. And what we have in front of us are incredible opportunities, an opportunity to accretively grow Cheniere in the near term and secure the next phase of growth beyond that, an opportunity to grow our platform by another 20%, benefiting Cheniere's stakeholders while providing the world with more of the secure and reliable energy it needs to improve lives, grow businesses and help emerging markets emerge. I'm incredibly excited about these opportunities, and we are laser-focused on turning them into achievements in the coming years.

With that, I'll now hand it over to Anatol to discuss the LNG market. Thank you again for your continued support of Cheniere.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 8. The past quarter has been defined by geopolitical disruption, most notably the escalation in the Middle East and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has put significant strain on global energy markets, including, of course, LNG. While the situation remains fluid, our commercial focus is twofold. First, supporting our customers through near-term volatility; and second, understanding what these disruptions mean for longer-term LNG market structure and contracting. We continue to hope for a safe and timely resolution, including the return of Qatari and Emirati LNG volumes to global markets. Coming into the year, the industry was expecting a roughly 40 million ton LNG supply growth. This expected supply growth continues to be offset by the halt of Middle East LNG flows through the strait, which removes approximately 7 million tons of supply each month.

Additionally, U.S. exports were temporarily reduced during winter storm Fern to help balance the domestic gas market. And in late March, Australia's approximately 9 million ton per annum Wheatstone facility and other gas processing plants experienced a multi-week outage following Cyclone Narelle. In aggregate, these disruptions displaced nearly 8 million tons of supply in the first quarter alone. With tanker and LNG vessel traffic through the strait remaining constrained with limited visibility on timing of normalization, approximately 7 million tons of LNG supply per month or approximately 100 cargoes continues to be disrupted. The immediate effect of the crisis was a sharp repricing across regional gas markets. And given most Qatari volume is sold into Asia, we saw the JKM, TTF spread flip in a way not seen since the third quarter of 2023, creating a strong pull for LNG into Asia. Destination flexible U.S. cargoes responded as expected with flows reoptimizing toward Asia to capture higher netbacks. This is exactly the flexibility the market relies on in periods of imbalances or distress, underscoring a key advantage of U.S. LNG in the global gas market.

While today, our customers are squarely focused on replacing near-term lost volumes, the flexibility and security of the U.S. LNG through long-term contracts is being highlighted in our commercial conversations and negotiations today. On the demand side, impacts have been more gradual. Middle East cargoes that were already on the water continued to arrive through March, which delayed the full physical effect of the supply disruption. Asia's LNG imports were 5% higher year-on-year for January and February, but started decreasing in March, dropping by 1.5 million tons or 7% year-on-year, with import declines in price-sensitive markets expected to continue in April. Now several months into the disruption, we're seeing clear differentiation across markets in Asia to cope with the supply shock. China has again demonstrated system flexibility, halting spot purchases and redirecting cargoes to markets of higher need. Price-sensitive Qatari-dependent markets such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have taken measures to reduce demand and seek alternative fuel sources.

While higher affordability markets, including Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand have stepped in to procure replacement cargoes, and we have been actively supporting our customers navigating this volatility. In Europe, the situation is increasingly tight as storage levels exiting the winter are near 5-year lows with a deficit of 13.2 bcm, about 10 million tons or approximately 150 cargoes of LNG equivalent versus the 5-year average. While the region is relatively less exposed to disrupted Middle East LNG flows compared to Asia, the absence of Russian pipeline flows and the impending ban on Russian gas and LNG have further pressure. To reach adequate storage levels ahead of next winter, Europe will require almost 10 million tons more LNG than last year to reach minimum storage levels of 80% and approximately 15 million tons more year-on-year to reach historical levels of 90%. This highlights Europe's dependence on LNG and intensifies the competition for marginal LNG supplies with other basins, especially as we look ahead to winter.

Europe's imports grew 12% to approximately 40 million tons in the first quarter despite a month-on-month drop in March, which remained flat year-on-year as more cargoes started heading east. Across global markets, pricing dynamics evolved in two distinct phases in the first quarter. At the start of the year, benchmark gas prices were moderating, reflecting expectations of that forecast 40 million tons of incremental supply to enter the market. First quarter JKM averaged $10.40 MMBtu and TTF $11.60, down by roughly 30% and 20% year-on-year, respectively. Following the disruption in the Middle East, we've seen a clear repricing with prompt pricing and forward curves moving higher by $3 to $4 an MMBtu. However, despite the disruption of comparable magnitude, these prices still reflect much lower levels than in '22 following the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, which we believe stems from the market's expectation that the disruption will prove temporary and potentially quick to resolve.

The Henry Hub curve by contrast has remained relatively flat, reinforcing its position as a stable pricing anchor. Let's turn to the next page to expand on what this means longer term. Uncertainty around the disruption in the Middle East remains high, and we continue to hope for a swift resolution with limited lasting structural impact. However, even under that assumption, the supply outlook over the next few years has shifted. The industry has effectively lost two liquefaction trains in Qatar, representing approximately 12.8 million tons per annum of capacity, which could be offline for up to 5 years. We're also likely to see delays to major expansion projects in the region in both Northfield in Qatar and Ruwais in the Emirates. As shown in the chart on the left, even if flows normalize into the summer, most, if not all, of the previously expected growth in 2026 will be absorbed.

Directionally, '26 is much tighter than previously forecast and now '27 has become more structurally constrained, especially considering the record low storage position and supply dynamics across Europe heading into the 2026 winter I just discussed, likely creating a similar scenario ahead of winter 2027. Before eventually net supply growth resumes as new projects in the U.S. and smaller ones elsewhere commence operations and ramp up production the rest of this decade. We expect the market to return to a more well-supplied position as new supplies start fully offsetting volume losses in Qatari projects get back on track after that. So timing matters. But in most scenarios, the near-term buffer has been greatly reduced while the broader trajectory after the next year or two remains relatively unchanged. The LNG market is still expected to grow to approximately 600 million tons by around 2030.

As new supply comes online, we would expect that growth to help moderate prices. This would be particularly welcomed by price-sensitive markets that have been constrained in recent years by sustained higher prices. Importantly, demand growth continues to be driven by a diverse set of markets from established importers in Asia to emerging consumers in South and Southeast Asia who need to supplement rapidly depleting domestic fields to continued demand support in Europe, where the complete ban on Russian molecules has and continues to create a structural demand anchor for the LNG market. At Cheniere, our focus remains consistent, providing reliable, flexible long-term LNG supply to a broad and growing set of global markets and doing so through a mix of direct relationships that expand access while maintaining the credit profile in our customer portfolio required to support long-term investment. It is these strategic relationships that underpin not only our current business and infrastructure investments, but also our expansions.

With over 35 long-term creditworthy counterparties, we remain resolute in our commitment to them and our differentiated track record of performance, which is recognized and appreciated by our customers, particularly in volatile market conditions like these. That differentiation on reliability is a significant commercial asset, and we're leveraging this as we engage with customers today with a focus on commercializing the balance of CCL Train 4 now that SPL Train 7 is sufficiently commercialized.

So while the disruption we're seeing today is significant and it's difficult to fully assess in real time, over the long term, events like these tend to become relatively small inflections in a much broader longer-term growth trajectory. And from that perspective, the underlying need for reliable long-term LNG supply and the agreements that enable it is only being reinforced. With that, I'll turn the call over to Zach to review our financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Anatol, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our financial results and improved outlook for the full year. Turn to Slide 11. For the first quarter 2026, we generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of over $2.3 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.7 billion. Compared to the first quarter of 2025, our first quarter 2026 results reflect higher volumes of LNG delivered, thanks to the substantial completion of Trains 1 through 4 last year of Stage 3. Higher contributions from optimization upstream and downstream of our facilities and a onetime alternative fuel tax credit during the quarter. We recognized in income 646 TBtu of LNG produced from our facilities in the first quarter.

While meaningfully higher than 1Q of 2025, first quarter of 2026 volumes were impacted by in-transit timing dynamics that favored 4Q 2025 and 2Q 2026. Looking to the balance of 2026, it's likely 1Q will be our lowest quarter of volume recognized this year as asset production for the remainder of the year is expected to benefit from the rest of Stage 3 coming online, including mid-scale Train 5 at the end of 1Q and Train 6 expected to produce first LNG imminently. In addition, there are no major turnarounds planned this summer and lower ambient temperatures should benefit 4Q, making the last quarter of the year likely our highest quarter of LNG produced and recognized in income. Additionally, for the first quarter, we generated a net loss of approximately $3.5 billion, which is primarily the result of the unrealized noncash derivative impact predominantly related to our long-term IPM agreements and the mismatch of accounting methodology for the purchase of natural gas and the corresponding sale of LNG.

The derivative accounting treatment, coupled with the long-term duration and international price basis of our IPM agreements, result in fluctuations in fair market value from period to period as LNG curves move, which you may remember similarly impacting our GAAP net income results in 2021 and 2022. The surge in international gas prices and increased volatility during the quarter drove the unrealized noncash losses in our overall net loss for the quarter. Adjusting for these noncash unrealized derivative losses and the associated impacts to income tax and noncontrolling interest, we generated positive adjusted net income of approximately $1 billion for the quarter. This adjusted net income figure is aligned with our EBITDA and DCF and more representative of our financial performance in the quarter.

To be clear, as we deliver on our IPM agreements that are accounted for as derivatives or economic hedges that mitigate future cash flow volatility, we expect these noncash unrealized mark-to-market losses to unwind over time and generate mark-to-market gains as we realize the intended and corresponding fixed liquefaction fees from these contracts that pass through the LNG market price exposure to our IPM counterparties. While IPM agreements may contribute to variability in our reported GAAP net income, those agreements most importantly, provide a stable long-term cash flows similar to our SPAs that help support our contracted infrastructure platform and cash flow visibility for decades to come. As Jack and Anatol noted, our business model is built to thrive regardless of market environment, and the same goes for our capital allocation plan.

During the quarter, we deployed approximately $1.2 billion towards our capital allocation pillars of accretive growth funded with equity cash flow, shareholder returns in the form of buybacks and dividends and balance sheet management. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares for over $500 million, highlighting the opportunistic nature of the program considering the movement of our share price over the quarter. Given the volatility in the shares year-to-date, our disciplined value-based repurchase plan is working as designed, and we continue to opportunistically deploy the remaining over $9 billion under our current authorization according to the framework, which guides repurchase activity, working towards our current target of 175 million shares outstanding around the end of the decade. For the first quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.555 per common share, representing a payout of over $116 million for common shareholders.

We remain committed to growing our dividend by approximately 10% annually through the end of this decade. Shareholder returns achieved through the combination of our dividend and opportunistic share repurchase plan are a key value proposition for our investors, providing them with a stable and growing dividend and increased ownership in Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi over time, while maintaining the financial flexibility essential to our long-term capital allocation plan. Moving to the balance sheet. We repaid over $250 million of our indebtedness with cash on hand during the quarter, fully redeeming the remaining SPL 2026 notes and amortizing a portion of the SPL 2037 notes. Additionally, in March, we issued $1 billion of 2036 notes and $750 million of 2056 notes at CEI, making our inaugural 30-year issuance and extending our maturity stack into the second half of this century alongside a growing list of our long-term LNG contracts.

With a portion of the proceeds, we prepaid the $550 million drawn on our Corpus Christi term loan while also canceling an additional $600 million of unused commitments. We continue to maintain substantial liquidity with approximately [ $1.8 ] billion in consolidated cash and billions of dollars of undrawn revolver and term loan capacity throughout the Cheniere complex. Also in the quarter, we continued to receive recognition from the credit rating agencies as Moody's upgraded its ratings of our unsecured notes at CEI and CCH to Baa2 and Baa1, respectively, each with a stable outlook. We are now high BBB at both projects and mid-BBB or better at the unsecured corporate levels by all 3 credit rating agencies. During the quarter, we funded approximately $1 billion of growth capital across our business as we continue to progress the construction of Stage 3 and Midscale 8 and 9, development of the SPL and CCL expansion projects as well as our Gregory power plant to support incremental power needs at Corpus over time as the mid-scale trains are completed.

Of the $1 billion of growth CapEx in the quarter, approximately $300 million was equity funded and approximately $700 million was efficiently debt funded as planned via our delayed draw Corpus Christi term loan as well as from a portion of the proceeds from the recent CEI bond raise. We do expect to increase our spending on Train 7 at Sabine Pass later this year as we have budgeted for potential limited notices to proceed to Bechtel ahead of our expected FID early next year, which is why we are retaining cash at CQP by flexing the variable component of the CQP distribution this quarter. Looking ahead, we remain well positioned to fund our disciplined growth objectives comfortably within our cash flow forecast while retaining our strong investment-grade credit metrics and our significant financial flexibility for shareholder returns through cycles. Turn now to Slide 12, where I will discuss our upwardly revised 2026 financial guidance and outlook for the year.

Today, we are increasing the midpoint of our guidance ranges for full year 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow by $500 million and $400 million, respectively, bringing expected consolidated adjusted EBITDA to $7.25 billion to $7.75 billion and distributable cash flow to $4.75 billion to $5.25 billion. We are maintaining our CQP distribution guidance for the year of $3.10 to $3.40 per common unit. These increases are attributed to a few key drivers, including an increased production forecast for the year, an improved margin outlook and contributions from optimization activities already locked in year-to-date, both upstream and downstream of our facilities.

As Jack mentioned, thanks to increased utilization of our existing trains as a result of continued debottlenecking and resiliency efforts related to feed gas composition variability as well as accelerated time lines on the remaining trains at Stage 3, we are increasing our 2026 production forecast by approximately 1 million tons to approximately 52 million to 54 million tons for the year, unlocking incremental volumes available for CMI this year. With this increase in continued forward selling by our team over the quarter, we still forecast less than 1 million tons or less than 50 TBtu of unsold open volumes remaining in 2026. Therefore, we currently forecast that a $1 change in market margins would impact EBITDA by again less than $50 million for the full year.

Despite having very little open exposure for the balance of the year, we are maintaining the $500 million guidance range as results could still be impacted by a number of factors, particularly given the sustained volatility in the global energy markets, but also variability in our production forecast, the ramp-up and specific timing of substantial completion of Train 6 and 7 at Stage 3, the timing of certain cargoes around the year-end, contributions from further optimization activities during the balance of the year and the impact Henry Hub volatility can have on lifting margin. As we progress through the year and lock in some of these variables, we will look to tighten these ranges as we have done in years past. Our first quarter results, coupled with our revised guidance ranges, once again underscore Cheniere's ability to leverage our platform, respond to market signals and unlock optimization opportunities throughout our business, while still maintaining our highly contracted business model built upon a foundation of long-duration fixed fee cash flows from creditworthy counterparties.

Our conviction in which has only been reinforced as we look forward to funding additional accretive brownfield growth at both Sabine and Corpus while concurrently growing shareholder returns in the form of buybacks and dividends that can be relied on year after year. These dependable cash flows are essential to the over $50 billion natural gas infrastructure platform we have developed over the last decade plus as well as our disciplined all-of-the-above capital allocation framework and the durable through-cycle value of this approach has only been enhanced in the wake of the current market environment. Looking ahead, we remain focused on maintaining safe and reliable operations to ensure we can continue reliably delivering flexible, secure LNG as well as meaningful long-term value to our stakeholders around the world for decades to come. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and your interest in Cheniere.

Operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

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

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

Yes. Thanks, Jeremy. We're in a very enviable position as the plants run better. And as you see, we have some additional volume, and we only have these three dozen kind of critical long-term counterparties, we're able to really focus on supporting these key relationships. And that's what we've been doing over the last couple of months. And as you can imagine, the initial reaction by a number of these players is to ensure that there is ample supply as the 7 million tons a month is replaced to keep the lights on literally in the short run. But clearly, our ability to support them is something that's helping to broaden and deepen the relationships and is certainly a tailwind to a number of those engagements.

In terms of longer term, sorry, your second question, we'll see. I think even amongst ourselves, we disagree somewhat. I think that just like COVID, when you look in the rearview mirror that, that 2020 disruption, it is a small blip. It changed the dynamic purely by kind of delaying what we're expecting by somewhere between 12 and 18 months, but the overall trajectory remained the same. We expect this issue and hope that this issue is similar. But again, we're in a great position. We need to support our growth ambitions with relatively modest incremental commercial agreements. And clearly, we've proven that this is a very affordable, reliable and Cheniere is a great counterparty to help support the -- those long-term ambitions by our customers.

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

Yes, Jeremy, thank you. So as I said in my prepared remarks, I'm extremely pleased with what we've been able to do in operations and production engineering. At Corpus, not only have the trains been coming in significantly above the guaranteed schedule from Bechtel or before the guaranteed schedule from Bechtel. But on our ramp-up, it's been higher and steadier. So the team has really learned how to make those smaller mid-scale trains hum, and that's producing some very good quantities for us. So -- and I would expect that those learnings to continue to work their way through 6, 7, 8 and 9 at a minimum. So that's been very helpful.

The other thing that's been helpful is we figured out a couple of different operational modes to handle variability of feed gas at both Sabine Pass and at Corpus Christi. We've actually have worked with some good suppliers of solvents to come up with some creative ways to use solvents to mitigate the need for defrost. All of those things, there's 100 different things in our toolkit right now that we use every single day, and they all seem to be adding up to some meaningful amounts of additional production. And that's what you're seeing from us on this raise of guidance.

And then, Jeremy, on the growth and the expansion, just to put into perspective, right now, on the whiteboard is Sabine 7. You could tell from the CQP DPU guidance and where we ended up with Q1, we're reserving cash as we're in good shape to start LNTPs later this year and be in a position with the permit to FID that project early next year. In terms of the Corpus expansion, that's a bit behind just because we didn't file for the permit until after we officially announced FID and NTP on Trains 8 and 9. But that's in good shape and tracking to receive a permit, let's say, mid- to late next year.

And in the context of the previous question to Anatol, we can be very disciplined on the SPAs, considering we have approximately 10 million tons of SPAs today that haven't been used yet to underpin or underwrite an FID project. That's more than enough to cover the Sabine 7 project plus debottlenecking -- and we're obviously in good shape on even the first train of the first phase of a Corpus expansion. So we can stay quite disciplined not just on how we grow and the parameters that we hold ourselves to that are like leaps and bounds beyond anyone else in the industry, especially in North America. And then we can be disciplined on the SPAs and eventually move forward and create some value for the company long term.

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

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

Thanks, Spiro. So I think your overall thesis is correct. There aren't that many options as we've discussed forever and even in these prepared remarks, we keep demonstrating that this is a great place to source volumes, right? Those -- the customers that are lifting from us FOB at today's NYMEX economics are lifting roughly at $6 an MMBtu and with the reliability and flexibility that we've demonstrated over a decade. So if not now, if not us, whom and when. That said, as we've also discussed and Zach alluded to, this is a very competitive market. We are in a market today where there are some credible projects that are moving towards FID and a lot of projects that have FID that have spare capacity that has yet to be placed into the market.

So we're fortunate in that we will continue to not participate in that commoditized race. And we'll, as Zach already alluded to, pick and choose with whom we want to continue to partner. And crystal ball-wise, I think you'll continue to see from us the same thing that you've seen for the last 4, 5 years, which is additional volumes with existing customers. I make a joke that I'm kind of in a race with Shell. Shell keeps buying our counterparties and decreasing the number of our counterparties, and we keep trying to add some more long-term contracts with the Cheniere premium built in. So we're optimistic. We have made a significant dent into Corpus Train 4 and whether it's year-end or by the time we're ready to FID, we think we'll be in a very good commercial position to support that.

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

And I think I could say on behalf of the team, we are astounded that prices are where they are, that prices in Europe and Asia are backwardated into the winter, right? U.S. is up 50%, right, into the mid-4s in the winter, but the world gas market is strangely backwardated. Europe is in a very difficult position with really adjusted for flows, record low storage, banning Russian gas and the Indian subcontinent, the price-sensitive market has already been turned off.

So we're going to be in an environment in Q3, Q4, we think, where there's very aggressive competition for those volumes globally. China has done an excellent job of using its storage and domestic production to be a relief valve again. And I think the current situation is masked by the fact that we're in the shoulder period and the physical disruption of deliveries from the strait being closed really only started to be felt a month ago. So we're very constructive on where prices will go into the second half of the year.

And as you already alluded to, that probably reverberates into '27, which, again, will just highlight how attractive the long-term SPA from Cheniere is to those that can meet Zach's stringent credit requirements.

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

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

Yes. Jean Ann, it's Jack. Corpus has been blessed with having another 500 acres of basically untouched land. We bought that land from the old Sherwin Alumina site. We've been working on that property to make sure that it's environmentally ready to go. It has great access to the water. It has a power plant that sits literally right next to it, which is our Gregory power plant that we own and control. So it has a lot of -- and is close to the Permian. It's a 40-mile straw to Sinton, our Sinton station for gas supply to Agua Dulce. And we -- it just has a lot of benefits that I could see us continue to grow that site.

If we switch to Sabine, while we still have property, we have a lot of wetlands property that we'd have to mitigate appropriately. That adds cost to it. And there's a few other nuances that we would have to do. But on the positive side, we have 3 berths already at Sabine. So it's not out of the question, but I do think additional growth after the first phases will probably happen at Corpus prior to Sabine, just my gut. And that is way down the road from where we are today.

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

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

I'll take the first one on EBITDA. I know I hear a lot of analysts say that we're often conservative early on in the year. But I'll say like we basically -- I don't know if this is different than most companies, we don't overpromise. When you look at our proxies and where we set budgets and targets for the company, it's very consistent with our initial guidance. The reason we were able to raise it this time is quite a few things, like production coming through in a way, not just with mid-scale trains coming online quicker and ramping up quicker, thanks to like the just the teamwork with the Bechtel folks of handing it over.

It's all the resiliency work we've done since last year that's boosting the production guide for the year. That's adding with margins, let's say, in the $9 to $10 range, $400 million. That doesn't sound too conservative. That just is what it is with where the current base case is on production. Then you add in margins are up since the last call on less than 1 million tons, that adds $100 million. Optimization, we don't bake in optimization that hasn't been locked in yet. We've been pretty clear with that on our guidance calls. We're able to add another $100 million. And then Henry Hub has actually come down since February a bit for the rest of the year, which offset that and was why we raised it by $500 million.

Do we feel good about that range? Very much so, but there's still some moving parts in that, like if Henry Hub moves by $0.50 either way with how much LNG we're producing, like that's a $100 million swing. If Train 6 and 7 of mid-scale move by half a month, that's like a $50 million swing. And then we have about $50 million or less for every dollar move on those CMI margins, which seem pretty volatile at times. And then on top of that is just overall LNG production. If we add an extra 10 TBtu, that can be $100-plus million. And then O&M for the scale that we have, that's usually plus or minus $20 or so million a year. So when you add all that up, that's why we stick to a $500 million range. But again, this company doesn't like to overpromise. We prefer to overperform.

Yes, Jason. And on your question about pivoting away from gas, we really haven't seen that yet now. It's fairly early in this disruption. I do think that the market, having experienced it in late February was thinking that the resolution is going to be fairly quick. We were skeptical, and it still seems like the market thinks that this gets resolved in weeks, and we don't see normalization for months. After the Ukraine war, you did see a couple of governments and plans shift away from gas. again, we're not seeing that. And just to put into context, those entities that can transact on a long-term basis are seeing gas prices on a delivered basis from us that are well within, if not below, their planning ranges.

So those places that, again, are creditworthy and are capable to transact on a long-term basis and are not whipped around by spot prices really have no reason to reconsider. But in the grand scheme of things, don't forget that our product, LNG is only about 3% of primary energy. So it's not a solution for the world. It's just a very elegant way to complement things like reliability, things like intermittency, things like emissions. So we're -- again, we're still optimistic that this will be in the rearview mirror soon, and the world will continue to grow to the 700 million ton-plus market that we expect in 2040.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, I would say today, we feel very much so like we're enjoying the stock buyback. With that said, I'll say a few things. First and foremost, around our buyback, it's meant to be opportunistic and disciplined. Our stock basically varied between like $200 or less to $300 in Q1, and we bought over $0.5 billion at $202. So that shows the discipline and opportunistic nature of it. We did buy back over $1 billion in Q3 and Q4, but that had a lot to do with the fact that we bought back less than $700 million in the first half of last year, and we rolled over the allocations because though deployment may be bumpy or opportunistic quarter-to-quarter, the allocation and cash reserve for buybacks is not. That is very, very steady and why we were able to commit to a $10 billion buyback program through the rest of this decade quite easily.

The other thing I would guide folks to is our payout ratio. And so as we think about a shareholder return payout ratio, which combines the dividend and the buyback versus our DCF, it's basically been around 50% to 60% a year, which is at the high end of almost any midstream peer. It just happens to be that we're basically the only one that does buybacks to the extent that we do. And I would continue to follow that through. So as DCF grows, clearly, there's more cash flow in the mix. But like the balanced capital allocation plan is firmly intact. And we are budgeting for this decade to FID, not just being set in early next year, but a first phase of Corpus as well by mid- to late next year as well.

So with that cash flow kind of reserved and the fact that we could still commit to $10 billion, you should expect buybacks to continue to compound quarter after quarter. But if DCF keeps on going up, there will be more in the coffers for buybacks. That's where the excess cash goes. And if there's even a month delay in FIDs, that means there's more free cash flow as well for buybacks in the near term. So yes, expect more of the same, but it will be lumpy at times, but it will definitely be opportunistic.

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

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

It really can come from anything across the integrated platform. And there's just a different edge to this company versus anyone else in LNG, having the pipeline network that we do, the two facilities and then not just CMI handling the open capacity, but handling our DES contracts as well as our IPM contracts. That scale just gives us like a different level of ability to optimize, and we do expect more optimization through the rest of the year. remind you, there were certain things that have happened in the past quarter, including the winter storm Fern that we were able to provide some of our gas back into the U.S. gas market as it was needed. There were also a spike in shipping and in LNG prices after the war broke out in late February that we were able to provide ships and LNG to customers that needed them rather desperately.

And those are things that obviously we couldn't even have forecasted the same week that some of these things occurred. So having the scale, having the integrated platform really does give us an edge that we were able to in the past three months buy cheaper gas upstream of our facilities that was part of the optimization upstream of Sabine and Corpus. We were able to source third-party cargoes, which you could see in the filings and in the financials for the past quarter. I think over like 30 TBtu was third-party sourced. That freed up some shipping and was able to optimize certain cargoes as well. So things like that, more likely to come. And yes, there was one thing conservative, I guess, about the guidance is that we don't bake in any more of that in the current guidance of, let's say, $7.5 billion of EBITDA.

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

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

Yes, I'll speak to that. We do use like our financial capacity and some hedging capacity for the prompt year and sometimes for the year after. With that said, usually, we try not to financially hedge too far out considering how much volatility there could be and considering we're in the shoulder season right now, and we're heading into Asian cooling season and then eventually European storage filling season. So financially hedging is not really the priority for 2027.

With that said, since the last call, we've sold over 1 million tons of open capacity in '27. So margins were basically under $4 as of the call. in February, and now they are closer to $6 to $7. And when we see that and we have willing buyers, we lock it in. So we've already made a dent on the open capacity next year, which only strengthens the cash flow visibility and obviously, the cash in the coffers for things like buybacks.

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

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

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

Good day, and welcome to the Cheniere Energy Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Randy Bhatia. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cheniere's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. The slide presentation and access to the webcast for today's call are available at cheniere.com.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. Slide 2 of our presentation contains a discussion of those forward-looking statements and associated risks. In addition, we may include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as consolidated adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in the appendix to the slide presentation.

As part of our discussion of Cheniere's results, today's call may also include selected financial information and results for Cheniere Energy Partners L.P., or CQP. We do not intend to cover CQP's results separately from those of Cheniere Energy, Inc.

The call agenda is shown on Slide 3. Jack Fusco, Cheniere's President and CEO, will begin with operating and financial highlights as well as Cheniere's growth outlook. Anatol Feygin, our Chief Commercial Officer, will then provide an update on the LNG market; and Zach Davis, our CFO, will review our financial results, 2026 guidance and long-term capital allocation plan. After prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A.

I'll now turn the call over to Jack Fusco, President and CEO.

Thank you, Randy. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review our results from the fourth quarter and the full year 2025, and we look forward to 2026.

Before we dive into the results and outlook, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge a significant occasion that occurred here at Cheniere earlier this week. On Tuesday, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first export cargo, a milestone achievement that not only ushered in a new era of prosperity for Cheniere, but for the U.S. and global energy markets as well. The significance of that first cargo cannot be overstated. In fact, earlier this week, I participated in the Transatlantic Gas Security Summit in Washington, D.C., with Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, as well as leaders and ministers from over a dozen countries where the anniversary of our first cargo was commemorated.

Getting to the point of that cargo being exported was a Herculean effort. Cheniere charted an unprecedented path in order to realize our vision of enabling the energy abundance and affordability we enjoy here in America to reach international markets. In doing so, we resolved a mad of project development challenges to bring Sabine Pass to fruition while rewriting the LNG rulebook on long-term contracting by leveraging the vast natural gas resource and in-place energy infrastructure of the United States. Now 10 years and nearly 5,000 cargoes later, we have cemented our position as the industry's gold standard. We lead the U.S. LNG industry, thanks, first and foremost, to the Cheniere workforce and their steadfast commitment to safety and excellence, which they demonstrate every single day. We also wouldn't be here today without the unwavering support of our over three dozen long-term customers, construction partner, Bechtel, regulatory agencies, financial stakeholders and our community partners. Together, we have achieved something truly transformative in our first 10 years, and we are just getting started.

Please turn to Slide 5, where I'll highlight our key results and accomplishments for the fourth quarter. We had an excellent fourth quarter operationally, and we generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2 billion, bringing our total for the full year to $6.94 billion at the high end of our guidance range. We generated distributable cash flow of approximately $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter and approximately $5.3 billion for the full year, which is approximately $100 million above the high end of our guidance range. Net income totaled approximately $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter and over $5.3 billion for the year.

2025 was a record year for LNG production, totaling 670 cargoes or over 46 million tonnes. During the fourth quarter, we exported 185 LNG cargoes from our facilities. This is an increase of 22 cargoes compared to the third quarter as not only did we benefit from additional volumes from Stage 3 and the seasonal benefit in production, we also had improved production reliability and reduced unplanned maintenance compared to the third quarter as our efforts to mitigate some of the feed gas-related challenges we addressed on the last call delivered positive results across the quarter. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2026, we are on track to set another annual production record, aided by the expected completion of the remaining three trains at Stage 3. I'm pleased to introduce our 2026 financial guidance of $6.75 billion to $7.25 billion in consolidated adjusted EBITDA $4.35 billion to $4.85 billion in distributable cash flow and $3.10 to $3.40 in per unit distributions at CQP. These ranges reflect our forecast for higher production in 2026, offset by lower margins on spot cargoes than last year as well as the start-up of a number of long-term contracts over the course of the year. We look forward to once again delivering financial results within our guidance ranges.

We have great news to share on the capital allocation front. The 2020 Vision capital allocation plan we revealed in 2022 has been completed. And in typical Cheniere fashion, it was completed ahead of schedule. We have deployed over $20 billion across our capital allocation priorities and have achieved over $20 per share of run rate DCF. In conjunction with our advanced progress on capital deployment and share buyback, our Board of Directors has increased our share repurchase authorization to over $10 billion through 2030 after approving a $9 billion increase. Zach will have more to share on this major extension of our capital allocation plan shortly.

And lastly, early this morning, we announced a new long-term SPA with CPC Corporation of Taiwan for up to 1.2 million tonnes per annum on a delivered basis. It commences later this year and extends through 2050 and will bolster our contracted profile as we continue to grow our platform. This is our second long-term SPA with CPC following the approximately 25-year 2 million tonne SPA we signed in 2018, which commenced in 2021. In light of the recent volatility in the market, this SPA is a salient reminder that our product provides customers with long-term visibility, certainty and reliable supply through commodity cycles and contracting appetite isn't dictated by the trajectory of margins in the front of the curve, but to support the lasting demand for our product for decades to come. I am very proud that CPC has become another repeat long-term customer of Cheniere. It is clear evidence of how much the market values the reliability and customer focus that has come to define our first 10 years of LNG export operations.

Turn now to Slide 6, where I'll provide an update on our major growth projects. Construction progress on Corpus Christi Stage 3 has advanced to approximately 95% complete with the substantial completion of Trains 3 and 4 in the fourth quarter. Our forecast for the expected substantial completion of trains 5, 6 and 7 to occur in spring, summer and fall, respectively, is unchanged from our last call, but moving in the right direction based on recent progress. I am pleased to announce that first LNG has been achieved at Train 5 this week, supporting that forecasted time line.

On CCL Midscale Trains 8 and 9, groundwork and site prep continues progressing extremely well with work streams currently focused on concrete piling and school and steel fabrication as well as further materials procurement. Piling work is already halfway complete and all the piles for Train 8 have been set. Substantial completion for these trains is forecast in 2028, so I'm optimistic we have some advancement on that time line as construction progresses. And nearby at our Gregory power plant, work on the planned expansion in interconnect is going well. We are set to optimize our power strategy with the ramp-up of Stage 3 in Midscale 8 and 9. The SPL expansion project is our next major growth project that we are making significant progress along multiple parallel paths, advancing the first phase of this project towards FID as our visibility and confidence in this project continues to grow.

We have secured significant commercial support for this brownfield capacity expansion. We continue to prepare the CQP complex for conservatively financing the project, and we are working diligently on project costs with Bechtel while advancing the project through the permitting process. We currently expect to be in a good position to receive our permits by the end of this year and make FID on the first phase in 2027.

Back at Corpus Christi, our major CCL expansion is advancing well with the critical path items and FID time line of a brownfield Phase 1 approximately 6 months to a year behind the same at SPL as the full FERC application was submitted earlier this month. Including the Phase 1 expansions at Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi, we have line of sight to accretively grow our LNG platform by approximately 50% from today while adhering to our disciplined capital investment parameters and meeting the Cheniere standard with our most brownfield opportunities in focus. We are full steam ahead on these development projects and have excellent line of sight to bring both of these projects to life and deliver market-leading contracted infrastructure returns to our stakeholders.

With that, I'll now hand the call over to Anatol to discuss the LNG market. Thank you again for your continued support of Cheniere.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into the LNG market update, first, some comments about the SPA we announced this morning with our long-time customer, CPC. It's not only a core long-term transaction in its own right, but also an all but perfect summation of our strategy and value proposition. Like most of the transactions we have executed in this cycle, it is with a repeat customer. Reliable LNG supply is absolutely critical to Taiwan and its rapidly growing economy, and we take pride that CPC put its trust in our ability to perform. This approximately 1.2 million tonne contract is yet another transaction we have executed that extends beyond the middle of this century and features a number of bespoke components as buyers continue to value Cheniere's customer-focused tailored solutions. We look forward to starting this incremental tranche later this year with our usual unwavering commitment to our multi-decade partner, CPC.

All of the things that set us apart from the competition, safety, operational excellence, customer-first approach and a stellar execution track record, chief among them, have and will continue to contribute meaningfully to our commercial approach and ability to sign contracts like this one that support our disciplined growth plans. Together with constructive LNG market fundamentals supporting a clear need for more capacity, we'll continue to leverage our advantages in the market to accretively commercialize our brownfield growth projects and target market-leading multi-decade returns to shareholders.

Now please turn to Slide 8. As you can see from the chart on the left, '25 was another year of generally elevated and volatile spot prices as trade disputes and geopolitical conflicts fueled uncertainty and sent prices soaring at various points throughout the year. Overall, however, the general price trended lower over '25, aided by new LNG supply beginning to enter the market.

A key driver supporting the overall elevated prices relative to historical norms remain the strong pull on LNG cargoes from Europe. Europe set a new annual record for LNG imports in 2025 as demand rose approximately 27% year-on-year, reaching about 125 million tonnes. The key drivers for this growth remain the replacement of Russian gas and the replenishment of underground storage inventories, which were approximately 20 bcm lower year-on-year in the fourth quarter and remain at a 14 bcm deficit today or approximately 140 cargoes. European storage levels are once again starting the year at five-year lows, about 25% behind last year, in fact, with a cold snap in January spiking prices once again.

Until additional volumes come to relieve the market, Europe will likely maintain its premium pricing to ensure readiness for next winter. Furthermore, a 17 bcm year-on-year reduction in pipeline imports from Norway, North Africa and, of course, Russia were more than offset by LNG imports, as shown on the top middle chart. We expect these drivers will help keep LNG demand in Europe resilient, especially in light of the EU Parliament's vote to ban all residual Russian gas, including Russian LNG by 2027.

In contrast, Asian LNG imports in aggregate contracted slightly last year, likely as a consequence of the still elevated levels of TTF spot prices in '25, incentivizing greater deliveries into Europe. Asia's LNG consumption was down about 4% in '25, lower by 12.4 million tonnes year-on-year to 270 million tonnes, but still comfortably within the five-year range for the region. A mix of factors were at play across Asia driving these import levels. Seasonal demand was impacted due to milder weather in the region, while China, the largest and most diverse LNG market in the world, continued to redirect cargoes to markets of higher margin, namely Europe, as it took advantage of its LNG delivery flexibility.

While many of the major markets in Asia saw year-on-year declines, China was the largest as LNG imports declined 16% or 12.1 million tonnes year-on-year due to muted industrial demand, macroeconomic challenges and optimizing some of its LNG into higher-value markets. Gas demand growth of about 3% in China in 2025 was below the 7% average in recent years. Additionally, higher pipe gas flows from Russia, which were up 30.6% year-on-year and increased domestic gas production, up 6.3% year-on-year also contributed.

With that said, as we watched LNG prices fall in November and December and into January, we saw a rapid increase in Chinese LNG imports, highlighting the at-the-ready price-sensitive depth of demand for LNG. These are short-term dynamics, however. We continue to expect robust growth in China's appetite for LNG in the medium to long term to become the LNG industry's first market to surpass -- meaningfully surpass 100 million tonnes per annum. In contrast, across JKT LNG imports were up 1.4% or 1.9 million tonnes in 2025. The year-on-year growth in the market area was supported by the continued phaseout of nuclear power in Taiwan and active restocking in South Korea, both of which were partially offset by lower gas burn in Japan.

LNG imports to South and Southeast Asia decreased by 3.8% or 2.6 million tonnes year-on-year in large part due to milder weather versus '24 as well as these being price-sensitive markets. India's imports were down 7% to 25 MTPA, while those in Pakistan were down 15% to 6.7 MTPA. High spot prices, coupled with efforts to reduce gas sector circular debt in Pakistan led to levy and tariff increases, which curtailed LNG imports amid macroeconomic challenges following the devastating monsoon floods of last year.

In summary, slightly lower LNG imports year-on-year across Asia are in large part due to sustained elevated price levels in '25, but we are steadfast in our expectation that moderating pricing going forward will generate a market increase in gas and LNG consumption as evidenced by the late year surge in imports when prices moderated as well as the continued strength in long-term contracting across the region as counterparties seek to secure and diversify their gas supply into the second half of this century.

We expect the price trajectory to continue to normalize as supply additions increase. We saw this starting to materialize at the tail end of 2025 when production from our Corpus Christi Stage 3 trains, among others, began to ramp up in scale and size. Additionally, given the record level of U.S. FIDs taken last year, we see fairly ratable supply growth over the next five years, which we expect to further moderate and stabilize the forward price outlook to bring the depth of LNG demand to the forefront.

Let's turn to the next page to expand on this. Commercial activity in 2025 enabled project sponsors to greenlight over 60 million tonnes per annum of LNG capacity in the U.S. and about 10 MTPA in other regions. These projects are expected to enter service by the end of the decade, which, along with a few additional projects vying for FID this year, should support a steady stream of supply additions extending into the early 2030s, creating the next LNG supply wave.

The oscillation between feast and famine in relatively short cycles in the industry in recent decades has made it challenging for price-sensitive demand segments to grow and prosper. This has particularly been the case in the emerging markets of Asia, where there has been limited aggregate import growth since '21 amid the current multiyear period of low supply growth and high spot prices. The region's price elasticity is clearly illustrated by the correlation between the spot price of LNG in the price-sensitive markets in Asia, excluding JKT and the rate of growth in LNG consumption.

During the five-year period to 2021, spot prices in nominal terms averaged approximately $7 an MMBtu and Asia's price-sensitive markets grew imports by a compounded average rate of almost 20%. In contrast, the compound annual growth rate for these same markets dropped to just 1.7% in the period from '21 to '25 when JKM averaged $18 an M. We expect lower LNG spot prices with the coming growth in supply to stimulate demand in these markets over the coming years. While the scale of impact and specific growth drivers vary by market, the overall net growth in each of the Asian regions is expected to be above the levels seen over the past 4 years and in most cases, well above.

In summary, ' 25 marked the end of a multiyear period of low supply growth. We see '26 as the start of a multiyear LNG supply cycle, one that will improve availability and affordability of reliable supply and in turn, stimulate price-sensitive Asian LNG demand that has historically driven this industry. With two long-term contracts signed with two of the largest Asian LNG buyers in the last six months, we continue to do our part to support the long-term energy priorities and long-term demand growth of the region with our flexible and reliable LNG supply.

We believe that safely, reliably and affordably supporting this growth will allow us to capture incremental long-term commitments in support of our disciplined accretive brownfield growth strategy. With over 95% of our capacity for the next 10 years contracted and as you saw in Jack's slide, sufficient contracts in place today to fully underwrite much of our growth up to 75 million tonnes per annum, we are well positioned to further execute on our capital allocation strategy through the cycles.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Zach to review our financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Anatol, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our financial results and plans going forward. Turn to Slide 11. For the fourth quarter and full year 2025, we generated net income of approximately $2.3 billion and $5.3 billion, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2 billion and $6.9 billion, and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.5 billion and $5.3 billion, respectively. EBITDA came in at the high end of the guidance range and DCF ended up above the high end of the range despite being close to fully sold out on our open capacity as of the last call. This outperformance can be attributed to further optimization locked in during the fourth quarter, higher lifting margin due to higher year-end Henry Hub pricing and certain end-of-year cargoes being delivered in 2025 instead of early 2026.

Compared to 2024, our 2025 results reflect higher total volumes of LNG produced across our platform, primarily as a result of the substantial completion of Trains 1 through 4 at CCL Stage 3, which resulted in almost doubling our spot capacity year-over-year from approximately 2 million to approximately 4 million tonnes. that we were able to proactively lock in for '25 at similar levels as the year prior at over $8 per MMBtu margins on average.

The year also benefited from higher Henry Hub pricing and more volume supporting lifting margin and greater optimization activities upstream and downstream of the sites compared to 2024. These increases were partially offset by higher O&M costs, primarily related to the substantial completion of the initial mid-scale trains at Stage 3 and the major maintenance turnaround at SPL during the year.

While we have many significant achievements to highlight from 2025, I'm particularly proud of the execution of our long-term capital allocation objectives and the early completion of our 2020 Vision capital allocation plan, ahead of schedule this quarter after a strong 2025.

Last year, we deployed over $6 billion towards accretive growth, shareholder returns and balance sheet management. We paid out approximately 60% of our distributable cash flow towards shareholder returns in the form of share repurchases and dividends. During the year, we repurchased over 12.1 million shares for approximately $2.7 billion. And the fourth quarter was the second consecutive quarter of over $1 billion in share buybacks. This brought our shares outstanding down to approximately 212 million as of year-end. As of last week, we are down to approximately 210 million shares outstanding with less than $1 billion remaining on the $4 billion share repurchase authorization from 2024, once again highlighting the power of the plan to accelerate to be opportunistic and value accretive during periods of share price dislocation to the fundamental value of our highly contracted cash flow profile.

For the fourth quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.555 per common share, bringing total dividends declared for 2025 to $2.11, representing over $450 million for common shareholders. We remain committed to growing our dividend by approximately 10% annually through the end of this decade while maintaining the financial flexibility essential to our long-term capital allocation plan and our disciplined approach to accretive growth with an investment-grade balance sheet. In 2025, we repaid $652 million of long-term indebtedness, fully retiring the SPL 2025 notes, partially redeeming the SPL 2026 notes and amortizing a portion of the SPL 2037 notes. Earlier this month, we paid down the remaining $200 million of SPL 2026 notes, leaving us with no debt maturities anywhere in the Cheniere complex until 2027.

Our strategic management of our balance sheet earned us 5 distinct credit rating upgrades during the year, highlighting our trajectory to a mid- to high BBB investment-grade corporate structure. In 2025, we equity funded approximately $2.3 billion of CapEx across our business, including $1.2 billion on Stage 3 and deployed over $800 million towards the Midscale 8 and 9 and debottlenecking project during the year. We also began drawing on our CCL term loan during the fourth quarter with a $550 million draw, which in the context of almost $6 billion and over $1 billion funded to date for Stage 3 and Midscale 8 and 9, respectively, highlights part of how we have strengthened the balance sheet over time.

In addition, we continue to deploy capital towards the SPL expansion and CCL expansion projects Jack highlighted as we progress development and permitting as well as on our Gregory power plant to support incremental power needs at Corpus over time as Stage 3 and Trains 8 and 9 are completed. We maintain substantial liquidity with approximately $1.6 billion in consolidated cash and billions of dollars of undrawn revolver and term loan capacity throughout the Cheniere complex. We are ideally positioned to fund our disciplined growth objectives while retaining significant financial flexibility fundamental to our capital allocation framework.

Turn now to Slide 12, where I will discuss our 2026 financial guidance and outlook for the year. Today, we are introducing our full year 2026 guidance ranges of $6.75 billion to $7.25 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and $4.35 billion to $4.85 billion of distributable cash flow and $3.10 to $3.40 per common unit of distributions from CQP. Compared to 2025 results, these ranges reflect additional production from a full year of operations of Trains 1 through 4 of Stage 3, the substantial completion of Trains 5 through 7 across this year, higher levels of contractedness as several new contracts will commence during the year and lower margins on spot cargoes as prices have moderated.

We also have a onetime benefit from the confirmation of the alternative fuel tax credit in the first quarter, contributing over $300 million to EBITDA and DCF in our cost of sales. Our production forecast remains approximately 51 million to 53 million tonnes of LNG across our 2 sites this year, up approximately 5 million tonnes year-over-year, inclusive of forecast Stage 3 volumes from Trains 5 to 7 and planned maintenance and resiliency efforts across both sites, with approximately 4 million tonnes of incremental contractedness in 2026, or approximately 46 million to 47 million tonnes of long-term contracts, approximately 1 million tonnes of commissioning in transit timing volumes and over 4 million tonnes of volumes forward sold by CMI to date, which is up from approximately 1.5 million tonnes as of the last call. We now forecast less than 1 million tonnes or less than 50 TBtu of unsold open capacity remaining in 2026. Therefore, we currently forecast that a $1 change in market margins would impact EBITDA by less than $50 million for the full year, underscoring the cash flow visibility of the contracted platform.

Despite having little open volumes exposed to the market currently in the forecast, we are introducing these $500 million guidance ranges consistent with our prior practice of initial guidance. as results could still be impacted by a number of factors, including variability in our production forecast, the ramp-up and specific timing of substantial completion of Trains 5 through 7 at Stage 3, the timing of certain cargoes around year-end, contributions from optimization activities during the balance of the year and the impact that Henry Hub volatility can have on lifting margin. As we move through the year and the potential impact of these variables on our financial forecast reduces, we expect to tighten the guidance ranges, also consistent with precedent.

The year-over-year decline in the 2026 DCF guidance range is primarily due to the discrete tax benefit that we received in 2025 related to the reversal of the previously paid corporate alternative minimum tax in 2024. However, our 2026 DCF range reflects nominal cash taxes as we expect to benefit again from 100% bonus depreciation related to the remaining Stage 3 trains coming online this year. In addition, greater interest costs will be incurred in DCF and no longer capitalized as the Stage 3 trains reach substantial completion. Our distribution per unit guidance at CQP for 2026 is wider than it had been last year as the wider range provides the flexibility to potentially reinvest some of CQP's distributable cash flow towards limited notices to proceed for the SPL expansion project later this year to strategically lock in long lead time items ahead of an expected FID in 2027.

Turning now to Slide 13. We are proud to announce the completion of our 2020 Vision capital allocation plan. We introduced the plan in the fall of 2022 with the goal of deploying over $20 billion of available cash across our capital allocation pillars of shareholder returns, accretive growth and balance sheet management to reach over $20 per share of run rate DCF by the end of 2026. And under that program, we have now surpassed those objectives almost a year ahead of schedule. Under the plan, we repaid approximately $5.5 billion of long-term indebtedness, which has led to 22 distinct credit rating upgrades, bringing our issuer rating at CEI from high yield when we started the plan to solidly investment grade today.

We deployed approximately $6.5 billion towards equity funding our growth CapEx. While most of this spend was for Stage 3, the initial trains of which have come online ahead of schedule, we also funded CapEx related to mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 project as well as development and engineering related to the SPL and CCL expansion projects and CapEx related to our Gregory power plant adjacent to Corpus.

Most significantly, we deployed almost $9 billion towards shareholder returns in the form of share buybacks and dividends. Under the plan, we repurchased approximately 40 million shares or over 15% of our shares outstanding for over $7 billion. We also increased our quarterly dividend by approximately 68% since our inaugural dividend in 2021, representing approximately $1.5 billion of dividends declared under the plan. Given our accelerated progress under our $4 billion share repurchase authorization with only $1.2 billion remaining as of year-end, and aided by the fact that our LNG platform is over 95% contracted through 2030, our Board of Directors has approved an upsize of our share repurchase authorization to enable over $10 billion from 2026 through 2030. This $9 billion upsize to our authorization is a major extension of our comprehensive capital allocation strategy and a clear mark of confidence in our business model's contracted cash flow visibility and our capital investment discipline that has been developed to withstand the cyclicality of commodity markets.

We now have the financial strength to not only opportunistically deploy approximately $10 billion into share repurchases or approximately 20% of our market cap over the next five years, but simultaneously grow our dividend by 10% per annum the rest of this decade and budget for FIDs at the Cheniere standard at both sites. Clearly, the all of the above capital allocation strategy for Cheniere remains firmly intact.

These initial phases of the SPL and CCL expansion projects are expected to bring our total liquefaction capacity up to approximately 75 million tonnes per year, developed to maximize brownfield economics and supported by decades of take-or-pay contracted cash flows from creditworthy counterparties, we believe these two projects are among the most attractive energy infrastructure investment opportunities in North America with a risk-adjusted return profile unmatched in this industry. Accordingly, we are resetting our target run rate DCF per share to reach approximately $30 by the end of this decade after the full deployment of the repurchase authorization, approximately 175 million shares outstanding and the completion of the first phases of our brownfield expansions at both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi. Even before accounting for the growth, we are now in a position to reach $25 of DCF per share by simply following through with our upsized share repurchase authorization.

As we have done since our first export cargo 10 years ago, we will continue to leverage our many advantages to create sustainable and growing long-term value for our shareholders while supplying our global customer base with our secure, reliable and affordable LNG through cycles and for decades to come.

That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and your interest in Cheniere. Operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

Thanks for all the detail today in the slides. And Anatol, I wanted to turn to Slide 9, if I could. And really the big uptick you see in '26 through '30 demand across Asia there. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more on how this backdrop might be influencing the tone of commercial conversations at this point as you look to lock in more supply agreements.

Sure, Jeremy, thank you. Look, we've always been of the view that moderate prices are good for this industry. And as we've said over the last few years, one of the things that we expect to change as this wave of supply moves through the market is that the world will recalibrate its outlook on 2040 and that 700 million tonne outlook. But even with the 700 million tonne outlook, we do expect that the world will need more supply, and we think that our reliable, stable, very secure product is something that will be, if you will, the baseload of that growth.

So, obviously, long-term contract economics have been much lower than spot prices over the last few years, and we think that, that continues to be appealing. Even in the fourth quarter, the world signed over 17 million tonnes of long-term contracts, and we're proud to be part of that wave, and we'll continue to find these core opportunities to work with customers that value our reliability and security of supply. So we're very constructive on what global LNG demand, primarily driven by Asia is going to look like over the coming decades.

Got it. That's helpful. And then just wondering, we've seen some weather activity here, winter storm fern. And just wondering if that had any impact on Cheniere here.

Jeremy, it's Jack. So I'll start and see if Zach wants to chime in. First and foremost, I was really pleased with the way our operating teams were able to position ourselves and take care of the facilities to make sure that there was no harm to either our employees or to any of the equipment. They once again have far exceeded my expectations on their emergency preparedness at the facilities.

There wasn't anything major one way or the other. We saw prices blow out. We saw force majeures predominantly in the Haynesville on some of the gas producers. We were able to manage around that. We were able to put gas back in the system to help support some of the local areas. And at the end of the day, it was a slight positive for us, but nothing material.

Yes. That's right, Jeremy. I'd say a slight positive to overall optimization for the first month of the year and baked into the guidance we just gave you for this year, but only for January. And just to be clear on how we think about optimization and guidance, if it's not like officially locked in, it's not in the guidance. So as things accrue into February and for the rest of the quarter, we'll give a clearer update on the May call. But yes, we got a ways to go to catch up to the amount of optimization EBITDA that was generated in '25 for '26, and that's part of the upside to the current guidance that we just provided.

Got it. That's helpful. We await details on further optimization across the year, benefiting the guide.

And the next question will come from Spiro Dounis with Citi.

First question just on commercial progress, a bit of a two-part question. So as you noted, you've got about 10 million tonnes per annum signed up now to support that next set of growth projects. But curious, does the next SPA that you sign from here start to underwrite the expansions beyond Phase 1 of Sabine and Corpus? And maybe if you could, where would you say market LNG contracted margins are right now, especially in light of some competing projects being rationalized?

Yes. Thanks, Spiro. So I would say, at this point, the first train of our super brownfield expansions is spoken for, and we have some modest amount of work to do on the second one. So I would say at this point, obviously, it depends on the economics and depends on the volume of the SPAs, but I think some single-digit millions of tonnes still need to be contracted to get us into the right position for Train 2 of the expansions, namely the large-scale train at Corpus that we filed for.

In terms of market margins, you're absolutely right. It's a very competitive market. We had over 60 million tonnes of FIDs in the U.S. last year. A number of those tonnes are still not contracted. So that is competition that we see in the market as well as those a few projects that are still trying to get to the finish line. But as you also know, we do our utmost to not compete in that commoditized market of the 20-year CPed product and everything that you will see from us going forward is a relatively bespoke product that receives the premium that we think we deserve for our reliability.

And Spiro, this is Jack. I would say I know in my conversations, in fact, on my -- in my keynote address, having 10 years of export capability here at Cheniere, over 5,000 cargoes this year will be delivered from Cheniere and never missing a foundation customer cargo means a lot to the JERAs and the CPCs and the Polands and you can go on and on. Those people that are building the infrastructure the gas infrastructure now are willing to pay us a premium to ensure that they get the LNG that they need.

And Spiro, I'll just end on some of the numbers. The deals that Anatol and the team have been able to strike over the last year or so, comfortably within our range, solidifying the run rate guidance, if not better, that we've previously given. And the fact that we are well over 95% contracted now, not just through 2030, but 2035 is why we were able to make the announcements we did today. The cash flow visibility is just -- is basically unparalleled. And we are already fully contracted for, let's say, the first phase of Sabine. So if someone doesn't have that in their model, that $10 billion of buyback better be finished a lot sooner. So we are in a good place right now to execute across all fronts and increase shareholder returns and get this thing to 75 million tonnes.

All right. message received. Second question, Jack, you noted in your prepared remarks that you'd already started to benefit on the nitrogen and inner gas side even in the fourth quarter. But I know last call, you sort of indicated that there was a long-term plan in place to deal with that excess nitrogen. So have you once again kind of beaten that estimate? Would you say you've dealt with that issue? Is there still more to go there?

No, there's still more to go there. So it's a combination of issues. their Spiro. So the nitrogen is just an inert gas. It just takes up space. So we just have to evacuate it as fast and as much as possible. But what was causing us a hiccup or a speed bump during the third quarter was a variability in feed gas with heavy C12s to be exact for those of you that are chemists. But -- and the process engineers and the operating folks put their heads together with some suppliers in and really some oil companies, and we figured out different operating modes to work in, and that's starting to pay some dividends. So we've been able to adjust our operating modes. We've been able to buy and inject certain solvents that are really starting to show some big benefits for us.

And I'll credit the whole team here that maybe we're at the lower end of production last year in our range, but still got to the high end of our financial guidance as we proactively sold the open capacity. Stage 3 progressed really well and came online with four trains and the optimization came through. But this year, the guidance we give and the production guidance that stayed intact since last call bakes in a healthy amount of planned maintenance for these resiliency efforts. And if that doesn't take as long, that will have to be an update to both production and financial guidance.

And I would say some of Spiro, some of the capital that you're seeing that Zach talked about that we're deploying is for the longer term to make sure that the front end of our facilities can handle any variability in any gas coming from anywhere.

And the next question will come from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

Great to see the continued commercial success in your second CPC SPA. Maybe putting a finer point on the economics of the commercialization process at this point. Can you provide any quantitative color on your outlook for the production fees based on your recent success and ongoing commercialization efforts, -- what would you say is the range at this point?

And more broadly, going back to Anatol's comments and the earlier question about elasticity, what evidence of demand elasticity have you seen already in your commercial discussions for long-term contracts, taking into account the significant incremental liquefaction capacity set to enter the market through the end of the decade and beyond?

Yes, Theresa, I'll start and others will pitch in. But as Zach and I have said for many quarters now, we're very comfortable with the $2.50 to $3 range, and we are really doing things, I would say, comfortably above the midpoint of that range. But as we've said to you and others, at this point, I can't tell you that if we needed to get to 20 million tonnes of additional contracted volumes, we would be able to maintain that.

So, to your question and Spiro's question, it isn't a situation where the "market economics" are "at that level". In fact, we would say that they're below that level. It is kind of -- as Jack already mentioned and I mentioned, it is the counterparties that value our reliability and our flawless performance and our ability to continue to deliver that day in and day out. We think that, that is very valuable and those counterparties that share that view, we are partnering with and delivering those volumes.

As we've also mentioned to you, in terms of price elasticity, even in the rearview mirror, the LNG market has had periods where in the aggregate, it has consumed about 600 million tonnes. So as you look at where price elastic markets can land, the numbers are comfortably above what we have operating and under construction today, well over 1,200 million tonnes of re-gas capacity, and that is growing to 1,400 just with what's under construction, right? You have markets like Vietnam, which a silly number, but it grew over 200%, obviously, from a very small base, but that is a market that in and of itself will probably be well north of 10 million tonnes by the time we get into next decade.

So you're going to see Asia grow from, we think, from the kind of 270 million tonne market where it's been stuck for the last few years because of the high prices to well over 400 million tonnes and will continue to grow once that not only affordable supply, but also the fact that it is ratably affordable over years continues to stimulate investment. So again, very sanguine. And at the end of the day, as long as we keep contracting at those economics and underwriting our disciplined expansion plans, we hope the market remains constructive and continues to grow. But as you understand, we are quite immune from those dynamics.

That's very helpful. Switching gears a bit. As gas to power demand reaches new highs across the U.S., partly driven by growing data center electricity needs, there are concerns that rising LNG exports could exacerbate domestic affordability pressures. What is your view on this? Do you see these dynamics affecting Cheniere's ability to permit and/or commercialize incremental capacity? And how did the domestic affordability issues reconcile with LNG's importance as a strategic trade and geopolitical lever for the U.S.

So I'm going to start because -- and then I'm kind of pushing Anatol back because he's jumping at the microphone right now. But Theresa, so we -- it takes us 18 months to 2 years to get a permit and our pipeline plans have to be filed with FERC and made public. And then it's another three to four years for construction. And in all cases, we buy FT Firm Transportation. As you know, we have it to all five basins. We process 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. and we provide a stability in cash flow to the producers and the midstream companies that they've never existed before in their lifetime. So that has allowed them to grow fairly significantly. So when that first cargo left the shore of Sabine Pass and headed to Brazil in February of 2016, natural gas production in the U.S. was -- I think it was 67, 68 Bcf a day. Today, it's over 110 Bcf a day. And that, in part, is because they see what's coming and they see the amount of exports.

Having been for most of my career on the gas to power side, gas to power doesn't like buying firm transportation. They don't like paying for gas forward because they want to price it into the real-time market. And they're not real supportive. They'd rather have interruptible supply at the cheapest price possible. And that -- it helps take some of the product up, but it's not going to be helpful longer term for production. So I think you're starting to see the whole price paradigm on exports shift in Washington as we continue to explain to the legislators and regulators how the markets really work.

And then I'll turn it over to Anatol.

Yes. To not take up too much time, three quick points. One is we don't think we compete for molecules with those incremental demand centers, right? By definition, they will try to build in places that have trapped resource and can't have the infrastructure to access the markets where we see points of liquidity. And that is, as Jack already mentioned, a quasi religion for us as we supply our customers. Two, we think that the market will be very disappointed, let's say, by the rate at which gas demand into power grows, even the EIA says that '26 and '27 won't see the same level as '24 saw in terms of gas for power generation. And three, as you know, for our product and for our customers, NYMEX is a pass-through, and we don't expect tremendous competition in the Southwest Louisiana pool that is NYMEX for those molecules.

So we're very optimistic that the domestic resource is there to meet all needs, and we are very careful about how we approach the expansions and our current infrastructure is more than sufficient to avail us of the molecules that we need.

And we'll go to Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America.

In 2025, I believe there was really significant EPC CapEx escalation and LNG greenfield costs. Can you talk about what you see as the drivers of that and whether that has begun to moderate? And as a follow-up, CapEx escalation is impacting brownfield projects like yours as materially?

Jean Ann, as you know, we FID trains 8 and 9, and we're able to do it within our financial parameters that Zach has laid out for the company and for all of you in the past. We do see some escalation. We're working through it with our partners, Bechtel. We've been able to manage it by doing some limited notices to proceed on some longer lead time items. I would say at this point, it's the lead time that worries me more than the inflation, and it's just the way that we've been able to manage our projects.

We also have went back and basically went back to our ConocoPhillips optimized plan to get economies of scale to get our dollars per tonne down. And we've asked both for the SPL expansion as well as the CCL expansion to just give us exactly the same train you gave us the last time. So for SPL 7, I just want another SPL 6, identical. And for CCL 4, I just want CCL 3 again, identical. And I think that's going to help us on all fronts.

And I'll just add, when it comes to the math, the math is pretty transparent as we file quarterly what our CapEx is and our PP&E is. But basically, we have the lowest cost per tonne, the best or the highest SPAs, the lowest leverage and the least amount of equity partners. So I think we're pretty well placed for the FIDs of Train 7 and Train 4. And what we said before, we're permitting a lot more than that, but we see a path to hold to the standard by being as super brownfield as possible right now.

And moving on to Michael Blum with Wells Fargo.

I guess it's here. In terms of your December FERC filing to increase CCL Stage 3 and mid-scale 8 and 9 by 5 million tonnes, can you just talk about the timing to achieve that expansion? And how do we think about the use case for that incremental capacity at those two facilities?

Those types of filings are the fact that we continue to debottleneck and engineer the site in a way that there might be more opportunity than, say, the 60-plus million tonnes from the existing assets that we plan to try to take advantage of over time. And that's what that increment would be is to kind of accommodate peak production at certain times of the year at that site. And as it kind of folds into this whole story that we're not just going to FID likely a train at each site, but we're going to FID a train at each site and some other debottlenecking projects. And that's how we get to 75 million tonnes.

So this is just part of the overall plan that there's going to be ideally a first phase of a Train 4 at Corpus but some other stuff that's going to make the economics so crystal clear that they're accretive and within our parameters.

Okay. Got it. That makes sense. And then in terms of the new CPC contract you announced this morning, when do you expect it to kick in during 2026?

It starts midyear. And to your previous question, some of the transactions and how we negotiate them kind of going forward to Zach's answer includes some of that flexibility that we can take advantage of as we debottleneck. So that's why we're a little cagey with the 1.2 million tonnes. That is the number through the vast majority of the term, but it includes some flexibility starting middle of this year.

And the next question comes from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen.

You mentioned the ramp-up in Corpus Stage 3 is going very well. And it seems like those trains can kind of come online perhaps earlier than what you have contemplated in your volume guidance. So just wondering how you think about the upside to that volume guidance that you gave.

Still early on in the year, and I think everyone could take comfort in the guidance that we gave did not update substantial completion dates of Trains 5 through 7. But mind you, we just had earlier this month, first LNG at Train 5 of Stage 3.

But to put some math on it, if all 3 trains were a month early, that's comfortably over $50 million of incremental EBITDA at current margins over the year. So that could be upside. But today, in February, too soon to tell, and we'll give updates as these trains come online over the coming year, but things are progressing really well. And yes, we're already 4 for 4, and it's looking like 5 for 5 of being early.

Yes. And my follow-up is just thinking about the additional expansions that you have at Sabine and Corpus beyond these very brownfield trains. I think, Anatol, you mentioned that you have kind of 20 million tonnes worth of SBA opportunities at the higher margin guidance that you've kind of embedded in your economics. Do those support these higher cost kind of trains beyond the initial brownfield opportunities because it sounds like the trains after the initial ones at Sabine Pass and Corpus are probably going to be a bit more expensive.

Yes, Jason, sorry, if I misspoke, it's kind of the other way around. I was saying that if we had to do 20, we would not be able to today maintain the $2.50 to $3 standard, right? The market for the U.S. product is sub $250 today. It is our performance and our reliability and our commercial engagement that gives us the ability to capture these premium contracts, but we are in an enviable position standing on the shoulders of the teams at Cheniere that have continued to deliver this performance over, as Jack said, a decade plus a couple of days that we are able to capture these additional volumes that should allow us to maintain those brownfield -- super brownfield economics and meet our investment parameters.

Beyond that, it's -- I'll let the guys chime in, but it's kind of a step function change in CapEx per tonne and that market -- the market economics today, we don't see supporting meeting our investment parameters.

Jack's whiteboard got us to 75 million tonnes, and we'll go from there.

And our last question will come from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs.

A quick one on -- just going back to the macro for you, Anatol. I want to go back to Slide 9, where you guys are showing this pretty strong growth rate for China through 2030. I was just wondering if you could underline that a little bit more with what price you think you need to underwrite that growth. And you have the sub comment around coal to kind of gas switching in there. Just what your general framework for that in terms of magnitude could be?

Yes. I'll give you our guess, obviously, subject to a lot of hedging, but we think somewhere in the $8 to $9 delivered range. The great thing about the Chinese market is it is massively fragmented and distributed. It is going to be approaching 300 million tonnes of re-gas capacity, a TCF of storage. It's going to blow through 200 gigawatts of installed generation capacity mostly along the coast. So at the right price, it has the capacity to consume a very substantial amount of volume.

But as you saw in '25 for a host of reasons, it behaves as a quintessential invisible hand and redirects cargoes to where they are most profitable. dozens and dozens of companies, multiple business models, obviously, competing fuels, et cetera. But we think at that high single-digit level number backdrop of $60, $65 Brent, you're going to see China come roaring back like it did in '18, '19.

Super interesting. Last quick one for me. I think this is for Zach, but maybe Jack as well. I'd just be curious to hear your latest thoughts on the dividend in terms of where that could grow over time, particularly now that you're framing up this $30 per share number and how that maybe plays back in the form of the buybacks.

Sure. So everything we even announced today is just following through with what we've said in the past. And one of the things we've said in the past is that we're committed to growing the dividend by basically 10% a year through the decade. And eventually, over time, we'll get to something over 20% of a payout ratio. Clearly, our shareholder return policy is just different than everyone else in midstream. We pay out about 60%, which is probably above on average the rest, but -- of that 60% is buybacks, whereas it's basically all dividend for the others.

This flexibility allows us to not only basically self-generate the cash flow to fund the equity for Stage 3, Midscale 8 and 9 and the first phases at both projects, but this flexibility to be opportunistic like we were in the last couple of quarters and earlier this year on the buyback. So I think we're going to keep it this way. It really enhances the financial flexibility of the company. but that 10% compounding gets very powerful later on this decade.

And that does conclude the question-and-answer session. I'll now turn the conference back over to you.

I just want to say thank you all for the last 10 years of support. It seems like just yesterday, but it also feels like we're just getting started. So stay tuned.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. We do thank you for your participation, and have an excellent day.

Good day, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2025 Cheniere Energy Earnings Call and Webcast. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Randy Bhatia, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cheniere's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. The slide presentation and access to the webcast for today's call are available at cheniere.com. Joining me this morning are Jack Fusco, Cheniere's President and CEO; Anatol Feygin, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Zach Davis, Executive Vice President and CFO. .

Before we begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. Slide 2 of our presentation contains a discussion of those forward-looking statements and associated risks. In addition, we may include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as consolidated adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in the appendix to the slide presentation.

As part of our discussion of Cheniere's results, today's call may also include selected financial information and results for Cheniere Energy Partners LP, or CQP. We do not intend to cover CQP's results separately from those of Cheniere Energy, Inc. The call agenda is shown on Slide 3. Jack will begin with operating and financial highlights, Anatol will then provide an update on the LNG market, and Zach will review our financial results, 2025 guidance and initial outlook for 2026. After prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A.

I will now turn the call over to Jack Fusco, Cheniere's President and CEO.

Thank you, Randy. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review our results from the third quarter of 2025. I think we can all agree that this year has been one of the more challenging with geopolitical unrest, rising cost and unsufficient supply chains, tariffs and now a government shutdown. My focus has been to lead Cheniere by putting our heads down, driving our growth strategy forward, continuing to deliver on operational excellence, executing on construction management and implementing our capital allocation program.

The third quarter of 2025 was once again marked by many key successes across our entire business. We made significant progress on the expansion of Corpus Christi Stage 3. We progressed our development plans for engineering and commercialization of our expansion at Sabine Pass, all while continuing to achieve operational milestones, solidifying our reputation as a reliable supplier and partner to our global consumer portfolio. The third quarter also gave us an opportunity to invest meaningfully back into ourselves with our share repurchase program for the benefit of all Cheniere stakeholders.

In the LNG market, events and data points on both the supply side and demand side of the equation continue to fuel noise and volatility. But Cheniere's disciplined approach in our highly contracted business profile enable us to reliably deliver visible, predictable results in line with our previously issued forecast. We're very pleased to announce this morning that substantial completion of the third Train of Corpus Christi Stage 3 has been achieved. An acceleration of our forecasted time line from only a few months ago. I have more to say on Stage 3 in a few minutes, including on our recently improved time line on Train 4.

Please turn now to Slide 5, where I'll highlight our key results and accomplishments for the third quarter of 2025. In the third quarter, we generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.6 billion distributable cash flow of approximately $1.6 billion and net income of approximately $1 billion. Today, we are reconfirming our full year 2025 guidance range of $6.6 billion to $7 billion in consolidated adjusted EBITDA, and we are raising our distributable cash flow guidance range from $4.4 billion to $4.8 billion to $4.8 billion to $5.2 billion. Jack will provide more detail later on this call on our financial results, but the guidance increase related to our DCF outlook is being driven by a discrete IRS rule change related to the corporate alternative minimum tax.

Our guidance continues to be supported by the high degree of visibility and certainty, our highly contracted platform affords and we remain on track to deliver financial results within these ranges. During the third quarter, we produced and export 163 cargoes of LNG from our facilities, which included the 3,000 LNG cargo produced at Sabine Pass. I'd like to recognize and congratulate our production and shipping teams at Sabine Pass on this milestone achievement, an incredible accomplishment less than 10 years since the first cargo was produced and exported from our facility. Across both facilities, we achieved production levels this year that are within our financial forecast, while successfully navigating some operational challenges, primarily driven by external factors such as variability and natural gas quality.

Structural shifts in the basin mix of domestic gas production attributed to new gas transportation infrastructure have made slight but noticeable changes in the composition of some feed guests we receive at our terminals. This requires our operating steps to make real-time adjustments to our liquefaction processes like solvent injections or defrost to clean heat exchangers or adjusting our operating modes and maintenance activities to adapt to those changes. I'm extremely proud of the teams at both facilities for working safely and collaboratively to address these variables, develop long-term solutions to address feed gas composition in order to maximize sustainable reliable production and enable us to deliver LNG volumes and financial results within our guided ranges.

Looking ahead, the preliminary production forecast for 2026 has recently been completed, and aided by the startup of the remaining trains at Corpus Christi Stage 3. We expect 2026 to be another record year for LNG production. Our production forecast for 2026 accounts for the impact of strategically planned maintenance including certain downtimes designed to deploy engineering solutions at both facilities to bolster long-term production reliability and build additional resilience to those external forces, which can create production variability.

With that said, with 3 mid-scale trains now commercially operable and together with the remaining 4 Stage 3 trains and no prolonged major maintenance planned, we're looking forward to 2026 being our first year of producing over 50 million tons. During the third quarter, we continue to make excellent progress on our comprehensive capital allocation plan, deploying approximately $1.8 billion across the pillars of our program. We funded approximately $600 million in growth CapEx, primarily across Corpus Christi Stage 3 and mid-scale trains 8 and 9. We paid approximately $110 million in dividends, and we repaid approximately $50 million in long-term debt. The balance of the capital deployed was under our share repurchase plan which was able to take further advantage of the value present in the shares during the quarter and bought back approximately 4.4 million shares for just over $1 billion. The second highest quarterly amount we have deployed repurchasing shares to date.

Please turn to Slide 6, where I'll update you on the progress of Corpus Christi Stage 3. I'm very proud of the progress we have made and continue to make executing in all phases of this project as total project completion on Stage 3 reached over 90% last month. Execution remains on accelerated schedule. And as I mentioned earlier, we reached substantial completion on Train 3 ahead of our previous forecast. Together with Bechtel, we are achieving construction commissioning milestones with the benefit of lessons learned on the first train of the project. In fact, we reached a single-day LNG production record last week of approximately 7.5 TBtu of LNG with Train 3 now operating. Similar to the commissioning time line improvement we saw on Train 2, Train 3 went from first LNG to substantial completion in just 38 days.

This is in contrast to the 77 days on the first train and evidence of the acceleration resulting from experience and knowledge transfer across trains and of course, our long-term partnership with Bechtel. Train 4 is benefiting as well. And those that follow us closely, have surely seen the regulatory approvals we've been receiving relating to the start-up of that train. On our previous call, my expectation was that we would have Train 4 in commissioning by the end of the year. However, we're bringing forward our time line by over a month with Train 4 now expected to produce first LNG very soon and is on track for substantial completion by the end of this year.

We continue to forecast substantial completion of trains 5 through 7 next year. Current key activities across those trains include the last few percentage points of concrete and structural steel and the installation of above-ground piping. As for the cadence of substantial completion for Train 5, 6 and 7 next year, we expect those to occur in the spring, summer and fall, respectively, after Train 4 becomes commercially operable this winter. On the mid-scale trains 8, 9, a debottlenecking project, full notice to proceed was issued to Bechtel in June, and it has hit the ground running quite literally. As the first ground pile was installed during the quarter. The bulk of the activity thus far has been on engineering and procurement as well as mobilization and site preparation. We're extremely excited about this project economics and time line benefiting from all the work that's been done on Stage 3, and I look forward to updating you all on the safe execution and achievement of the milestones as we move into construction.

In the highly competitive market that we are in, continued demonstration of construction execution and timely delivery on customer commitments is a meaningful differentiator and significant competitive advantage especially as we seek to further expand our footprint with more accretive brownfield growth at both sites that never compromises on our contracted return targets for investments. I'm extremely proud of these elements that have come to exemplify the Cheniere standard, which we are all committed to upholding across all aspects of our business for the benefit of all Cheniere's shareholders.

With that, I'll now hand it over to Anatol to discuss the LNG market. Thank you all again for your continued support at Cheniere.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 8. Global LNG demand in the third quarter of '25 was once again underpinned by European imports amid continued softness in Asia, resulting in price differentials that incentivize the flow of U.S. cargoes to Europe throughout the quarter. Unlike earlier in the year, when geopolitical events drove volatility in global gas prices, both the JKM and TTF benchmarks remained largely range-bound during the third quarter as compared to both the second quarter of '25 and the third quarter of '24. Despite an increase in LNG supply as new liquefaction capacity comes online and in light of the relative moderation of Middle East intentions that caused gas prices to increase late in the second quarter, global benchmarks remained relatively flat in the third. .

Monthly price settlements during the quarter averaged 1,250 for JKM and 1,127 for TTF, both relatively unchanged year-on-year. This is a clear indication that the market remains somewhat tight throughout the first half of '25 and into the third quarter amid lower Russian gas deliveries year-on-year and much higher European underground storage injection requirements. This dynamic persisted into the third quarter despite an increase in global LNG supply and more moderate Asian LNG demand which were unable to offset structural decreases in Russian pipe gas and meaningfully higher European injections as compared to '24. Ultimately, these dynamics provide a floor for global gas prices in the third quarter maintaining price levels throughout the quarter, which contributed to muted price-sensitive Asian demand aside from a temporary uptick in August, driven by early restocking.

In the near to medium term, we broadly expect spot LNG prices to moderate as global balances begin to loosen in the upcoming period as additional liquefaction capacity comes online. As we've discussed previously, we expect the market tightness of the past few years to moderate with global prices becoming less sensitive to episodic price disruptions and volatility that stems from a delicately balanced market with minimal spare LNG capacity. We expect a significant portion of expected increases in liquefaction capacity to come from the U.S. highlighting the importance of U.S. LNG in maintaining global gas balances, and we expect this incremental supply will translate to a more stable pricing environment and start to catalyze demand from price-sensitive markets.

Let's turn to the next page to address the regional dynamics in some detail. Europe's LNG imports continued to increase year-on-year in the third quarter, maintaining its call on U.S. cargoes away from Asia, despite a period of stronger competition in August driven by early restocking in that market. With regards to pipe gas volumes, residual Russian pipe volumes slowing into Europe were 3.4 bcm or a 43% decrease year-on-year during the quarter as other sources of pipe volumes from Norway, North Africa and Azerbaijan were marginally higher in aggregate. Meanwhile, the continent entered the third quarter with a 20 bcm deficit in gas storage versus last year, driving stronger storage injections.

As of the third quarter, storage injections have reduced that deficit to 13 bcm or the equivalent of about 130 LNG cargoes, leaving European balances moderately tighter than we have seen in recent years especially in light of a cooler than usual autumn, weaker hydropower output and a potentially cooler winter forecast. Conversely, LNG imports into Asia remained subdued, declining 4% year-on-year during the third quarter and 6% 2025 year-to-date. Softer gas demand across key markets in Asia, including China and India as well as other regions resulted in aggregate LNG declines in the first half of '25, reversing the growth seen in 2024. This moderation in gas demand continued to filter into the LNG market in the third quarter despite the beginning of a demand rebound in China, which can be seen in the lower middle chart.

Overall gas demand in China increased by 4.6 bcm from January through August, with much of that increased demand realized in recent months. While that pace of gas demand growth in China remains more measured overall, Industrial demand has improved and gas-fired power generation has increased through August, gaining support from an 8 gigawatt increase in gas generation capacity in the first half of the year. Against that backdrop, Chinese domestic gas production increased nearly 10 bcm and Russian piped imports increased 6.3 bcm in the corresponding period from January to August. This dynamic of increased domestic production and increased pipe gas volumes, reduced the call and LNG imports in China, which declined 11% year-on-year or 2 million tons in the third quarter and 19% year-on-year or 11 million tons year-to-date.

As compared to '24 when persistent heat waves in South and Southeast Asia drove a surge in LNG imports, gas demand in the region has moderated year-to-date. Milder weather this summer, along with stronger hydroelectric power generation and lower electricity demand overall drove gas power generation demand to decline by 19% in India in the first 8 months of the year. India led the South and Southeast Asian regions declines in LNG imports with a demand decline of 2 million tons year-to-date and 0.7 million tons of this decline occurring in the third quarter. As the European call on LNG to replenish gas inventories ahead of winter remains strong and prices remain at current levels, we expect LNG demand growth in Asia to remain moderate in the near term. However, as discussed, we expect these dynamics to reverse in the medium term as new supply enters the market over the coming quarters with significant implications for market balances moving forward.

Within this context, we expect continued long-term LNG and natural gas adoption throughout Asia as demonstrated by forecast infrastructure growth in the region. Considering the region as a whole, gas-fired power generation capacity is expected to reach approximately 830 gigawatts by 2040. That's an increase of over 70% from 2024. With regas capacity expected to reach over 1,000 million tons by 2040, a more than 50% increase from 2024.

Let's turn to the next page to further address our outlook on LNG market balances. With a significant amount of liquefaction capacity forecast to come online over the next few years across the globe, the LNG market is entering a period of significant supply growth. This long expected supply cycle is beginning to tangibly come to fruition as our CCL Stage 3 project has started to come online alongside other North American LNG projects, both along the Gulf Coast and in Canada. And new capacity from Qatar is expected to enter the market later in the decade.

We expect the global LNG market will add an average of 35 million tons of liquefaction capacity annually from 2025 through 2030. This significant supply growth represents an annual CAGR of approximately 7% from 2025 through 2030. Despite incremental supply of approximately 30 million to 40 million tonnes per annum expected in '26, we continue to believe that latent price-sensitive LNG demand, particularly in Asia, will stand ready to absorb this additional supply efficiently. We expect to return to stronger growth in Asian LNG demand as the availability and affordability of LNG increases, catalyzing price-sensitive demand. The multiyear period of elevated prices we have experienced represents a clear signal that the market requires additional LNG supply, and we ultimately view a moderation in global LNG prices as favorable necessary, perhaps for meaningful long-term adoption of natural gas as a primary energy source and for investment in gas and LNG infrastructure across both developed and developing regions.

The forward curve currently indicates '26 Asian spot LNG prices in the $11 range, which is supported by generally strong consensus from key market researchers that anchors around $10 to $11 price levels. With forecasted prices set to moderate later in the decade, aided by new supply, we expect '26 to represent the beginning of a pivot to more normalized spot LNG prices in the region. Even at the lower end of this price outlook, we expect U.S. LNG exports to continue unabated and do not expect any meaningful curtailments of U.S. LNG volumes. Ultimately, we view LNG supply additions as a moderating force on the global LNG market, and we expect this increased supply to invigorate demand as LNG becomes increasingly available and affordable, especially in price-sensitive and developing economies. In developed markets, this period of increased supply would represent a welcome change for consumers following the current multiyear period of elevated prices following the energy crisis in Europe.

In the context of this period of shifting market dynamics and increased LNG supply, our highly contracted business model insulates us from near to midterm market volatility while providing our customers destination flexible volumes that enable them to navigate an evolving global LNG market as well as their own demand and consumption needs. At Cheniere, we'll continue to maintain our disciplined approach to sanctioning new liquefaction capacity under long-term contracts and with high visibility into future cash flows as we enter this new period in the global LNG market.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Zach to review our financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Anatol, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to review our third quarter 2025 results and key financial accomplishments, our financial guidance ranges for 2025 and our preliminary outlook for 2026 LNG volumes.

Turn to Slide 12. For the third quarter of 2025, we generated net income of approximately $1.05 billion, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.6 billion and distributable cash flow of approximately $1.6 billion. Compared to the third quarter of 2024, our 2025 results reflect higher total volumes of LNG produced across our platform, primarily as a result of the substantial completion of mid-scale trains 1 and 2 at CCL Stage 3 and higher total margins as a result of increased cargoes that CMI was able to sell in the spot market opportunistically earlier this year. As Jack mentioned, we navigated some operational volatility this quarter, primarily related to feed gas composition variability across both facilities. However, these impacts were partially offset by the ongoing acceleration in the commissioning and start-up of the CCL Stage 3 project.

Looking forward, we expect to continue deploying solutions to build resiliency against production variability and bolster our operation reliability year-over-year as well as bringing the remainder of the Stage 3 trains online safely and ahead of schedule. We have generated approximately $4.9 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and approximately $3.8 billion of distributable cash flow in the first 9 months of 2025 supporting our confidence in our guidance ranges, for the full year, which I'll address on the next slide.

During the third quarter, we recognized in income 584 TBtu of physical LNG which included 581 TBtu from our projects and 3 TBtu sourced from third parties. Approximately 93% of our LNG volumes recognized were sold in relation to term SPA or IPM agreements. During the quarter, we also produced and sold approximately 7 TBtu of LNG attributable to the commissioning of trains 2 and 3 of the Stage 3 project. The net margin of which an adherence to GAAP is not recognized in income nor our EBITDA or DCF, but rather as an offset to our overall CapEx spend on the project. Our strong financial results year-to-date enabled our team to deploy another approximately $1.8 billion under our comprehensive all-of-the-above capital allocation plan. We've now deployed approximately $18 billion of our initial target of $20 billion through 2026 as we continue to invest in our accretive brownfield growth, reduce our share count and enhance our shareholder returns while retaining the financial strength and flexibility to self-fund future accretive growth across our platform with a solidly investment-grade balance sheet.

We are now on track to surpass the $20 billion deployment target comfortably before the end of 2026. We've already made a dent on our $25 billion target through 2030 with over $3 billion now deployed into our capital allocation pillars in just the last 2 quarters. During the third quarter, we repurchased 4.4 million shares for approximately $1 billion. Bringing our shares outstanding to approximately $217 million as of quarter end. And as you can see from the 10-Q cover, our plan has continued to be active and opportunistic early in the fourth quarter amidst continued volatility bringing our share count down into the 215 million range. Our buyback activity in the third quarter and beyond highlights the power of the plan and its ability to be opportunistic during periods of share price volatility. Especially following the incorporation of mid-scale 8 to 9 and our increased run rate forecast into the valuation framework that governs our repurchases.

Thanks to our liquidity and balance sheet position, contracted cash flow visibility and our uncompromising discipline to grow if and only if an investment meets our standards, our buyback consistently stands at the ready to demonstrate our conviction in the long-term value of this company especially through any volatility or dislocations. We have now deployed approximately $1.7 billion on the buyback this year through Q3, leaving approximately $2.2 billion on our current authorization. Meaning, we are on track to seek our fourth share repurchase authorization from the Board in the next year. We continue to make methodical yet opportunistic progress towards our initial target of 200 million shares outstanding and allow our shareholders to continue growing their ownership of Sabine and Corpus over time.

For the third quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.555 per common share or $2.22 annualized which is an increase of over 10% from the prior quarter. With this increase, we have grown our quarterly dividend by almost 70% since initiation approximately 4 years ago at $1.32 annualized. We remain committed to our guidance of growing our dividend by approximately 10% annually through the end of this decade, targeting a payout ratio of approximately 20% over time, enabling the financial flexibility essential to our long-term capital allocation plan and our disciplined approach to self-funded and accretive growth.

Moving to the balance sheet. During the third quarter, we repaid approximately $52 million of the outstanding principal of the SBL 2037 notes based on the fixed amortization schedule, representing the first amortization payment on these notes. In July, we repaid $1 billion of senior secured notes due 2026 at SBL with the net proceeds from the issuance of $1 billion of unsecured notes due 2035 at CQP along with cash on hand. We expect to repay the remaining $500 million of principal on the 2026 notes with cash on hand over the next few quarters, reducing our interest expense while further desubordinating our balance sheet and strengthening our investment-grade ratings. This all positions the CQP complex to efficiently finance the first phase of the SBL expansion project and maintain its robust distribution policy through construction.

During the third quarter, we funded over $300 million of CapEx on Stage 3, bringing total spend to approximately $5.5 billion unlevered. We also deployed approximately $200 million in the third quarter towards the mid-scale trains 8 and 9 and debottlenecking project. We maintained substantial liquidity with approximately $1.4 billion in consolidated cash and billions of dollars of undrawn revolver and term loan liquidity throughout the Cheniere complex. We are well positioned to fund our disciplined growth objectives while retaining the significant financial flexibility fundamental to our capital allocation framework.

Turning now to Slide 13, where I will discuss our 2025 guidance and initial volume forecast for 2026. Today, we are reconfirming our 2025 guidance ranges of $6.6 billion to $7 billion of consolidated adjusted EBITDA and $3.25 to $3.35 per common unit of distributions from CQP. We are raising our full year 2025 DCF guidance range from $4.4 billion to $4.8 billion to $4.8 billion to $5.2 billion. The $400 million increase to our DCF guidance range is primarily attributable to an improved cash tax outlook in 2025 due to the IRS revising rules in September related to the corporate alternative minimum tax. The rule change entitles us to a refund of previously paid KMT. This is in addition to $200 million DCF benefit in 2025 guided to on the August call, from the previous implementation of 100% bonus depreciation going forward starting this year.

As always, precisely where we land within the full year guidance ranges will be influenced by the timing of certain cargoes around year-end the ramp-up of Train 3 and the timing of Train 4 of Stage 3 as well as contributions from optimization activities during the balance of the year. With the lessons learned from the substantial completion of Trains 1 through 3 and progress Jack highlighted in navigating production variables, we are confident we can deliver financial results within our reconfirmed EBITDA and upwardly revised DCF ranges.

Looking ahead to 2026, we have completed the initial production forecast for both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi, and we expect to produce approximately 51 million to 53 million tons of LNG in total across our 2 sites next year, up approximately 5 million tons year-over-year, inclusive of forecast Stage 3 volumes from Trains 4 through 7 and planned maintenance across both sites next year. While we expect the substantial completion of Trains 5 through 7 to occur across 2026, variability in this forecast is driven by the specific commissioning, ramp up and substantial completion timing as well as some general allowance for production variability year-to-year. Planned maintenance downtime to continue to bolster our resiliency long term across our platform in 2026 is a smaller scale compared to the major turnaround we executed this year, supporting 2026 to be a record production year again for us.

And as always, year-end timing can drive some degree of variability in our full year results. Of the 51 million to 53 million tons of production, we forecast approximately 50 million to 52 million tons of volume after commissioning and in-transit timing year-to-year supporting 2026 EBITDA. After accounting for approximately 47 million tons of long-term contracts in place, up from approximately 43 million tons in 2025 we expect to have approximately 3 million to 5 million tons of spot volume available for CMI to sell into the market or 150 to 250 TBtu. Our team has been opportunistically selling and are hedging these open volumes, and we currently forecast approximately 1.5 million to 3.5 million tons or approximately 75 to 175 TBtu of unsold open capacity in 2026.

We will continue to work this down opportunistically in coming quarters especially as we have greater clarity on completion and ramp-up timing of the remaining stage 3 trains. Therefore, we currently forecast that $1 change in market margins would impact EBITDA by approximately $0.1 million to $0.2 billion for the full year, highlighting the cash flow visibility of the contracted platform. Consistent with previous years, we intend to provide 2026 financial guidance on our February call. We are proud of the team's efforts in enabling the achievement of substantial completion of Trains 1 to 3, and advancing Train 4 schedule since our last earnings call. With the expected substantial completion of Train 5 to 7 in 2026 and several million tons of additional contracts starting in 2026. Our platform will continue to be comfortably over 90% contracted with investment-grade counterparties, generating long-term take-or-pay style cash flows, which provides us significant insulation from volatility in a rapidly evolving global LNG market.

Our achievements thus far in 2025 reinforce our conviction engineer as the premier contracted infrastructure platform with decades of cash flow visibility. We will continue to remain disciplined and focused on enhancing the long-term value proposition we offer to both our shareholders and customers alike for the decades to come. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and your interest in Cheniere. Operator, we are ready to open the line for questions.

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

Just want to start off, I guess, Zach, here with the buybacks, quite the pace this past quarter here and granted is opportunistic in nature, but just wanted to see any thoughts you might be able to share with regards to the pace of the trajectory going forward, given what you've been able to accomplish so far?

Sure. Thanks, Jeremy. Yes, it was our second $1 billion quarter that we've had since we've initiated buybacks a few years back. And I think there's 3 dynamics to it. It's first liquidity and as you could see in just the cash balances, we started this year with over $3 billion and the fact that all of our revolvers are open, and we still have the Corpus term loan for CapEx of over $3 billion. We had more than enough liquidity. Then it gets into valuation. And honestly, if you look at these valuations forget about where it is today even where it was in Q3. We're basically buying back the stock at an EV to EBITDA that's significantly lower than the CapEx to EBITDA of every other FID project that's occurred this year. And then on top of that is just performance.

So as you can tell, the buyback is there, alive and ready to support the stock and our conviction of the long-term value of this company and those decades of contracted cash flows. So going forward, expect more of the same. This buyback program of $4 billion was supposed to go through '27. Basically, we're on target to need to go back to the Board and has to earn upside next year. So expect that. And we'll keep on tracking along, especially if we are valued at levels that we think are clearly below where the -- just the -- without any more growth, we can value the company and earn a really good return for our shareholders.

Got it. That's helpful. And Anatol, pivoting to the LNG market and picking up some of the commentary you put out there with regards to inflection point. I was just wondering if you might be able to comment a bit more on lower prices incentivizing demand, what type of demand within Asia, could you see there? How deep are those pockets? And the pricing range provided on Slide 10 on the right is a pretty wide range. Any thoughts, I guess, on how things could shape up versus the active forward curve versus some of the consultants?

Yes. Thanks, Jeremy. Look, we have gone through a multiyear period now with one of the largest disruptions to global gas supply and we've added order of magnitude 30 million tons to the LNG market, and now we're going to embark on more than half a decade of adding that much volume on an annual basis. So '26, we do think is a transition year weather dependent. And obviously, it depends a lot on how some of those early price signals and demand elasticity play out. But the drivers for that gas demand, which we are very constructive on over the medium to longer term, right, we do think that not only does the LNG market get to that 700 million-ton level by 2040, but also the gas market overall will have a robust growth period but it will be choppy. It will be things like power generation in China. You have over 150 gigawatts installed now. You have no issues with regas capacity that's -- that now has, I believe, 32 facilities up and running and will be 250 million tonnes of import capacity, just what's operating under construction.

That generation fleet is grossly underutilized, and that could be a very substantial driver in and of itself. And as we've already said, the aggregate installed capacity is going to grow to 800 gigawatts in that theater. So that is a driver, but you'll also see industrial demand. You'll also see residential commercial demand. But the pace at which it absorbs this incremental supply will at times not match the supply timing. So that's the reason why we expect this volatility. And as Jack says, we'll continue to cheat and continue to contract the 95% plus of our capacity and let our investment-grade counterparties manage vast majority of that volatility.

We'll take our next question from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

With the EU moving forward to ban imports of Russian natural gas by Jan 1, 2026, do you think we could see upside to your marketing activities next year with 75 to 175 TBtu of unsold volumes as block lean further into U.S. LNG during the winter ahead?

Yes. Thank you, Theresa. This is Jack. As you know, we have tried to be very constructive and supportive of the EU and their energy needs. We've delivered over 60%. I think it's close to 66% of all of our cargoes over the last 3 years have went to Europe. I would expect that there's going to be other opportunities for us in Europe just based on our relationship with our counterparties there, 24 million tons of our contracts are with EU counterparties. And our relationship there is very, very strong.

But Anatol, do you have anything to add?

Yes. Thanks. Well, Theresa, just not to be too precise, but 6 months for the short-term contracts, so that's April of next year, long term as of January of '27, which is one of the reasons why we think this winter, again, is a bit of a transition period. As Jack said, we stand at the ready to support our customers, obviously, have destinational flexible volumes. As you point out, Russian LNG has supplied about 11 million tonnes year-to-date into the EU. So that volume will be most likely impeded. We don't think it disappears. We think it is a little bit less sort of utilization of the Arctic facilities, but ultimately, unfortunately, they will likely find a market, as you all know. So it is a little bit of the question mark over this coming winter. But again, it's order of magnitude 10 million, 11 million tons against the backdrop of 30 million and 40 million-ton growth years.

Got it. And with the previous comments from Anatol about medium- to long-term demand elasticity in mind and tying it into your views on project commercialization given the onslaught of competing liquefaction project FIDs we've seen so far this year. How is to your thinking about your own incremental capacity expansion from here beyond what has already been sanctioned?

Yes, Theresa, thank you. And we're going to stick with our Cheniere standards. So we're going to make sure that if we're going to invest additional capital into growth that it meets all of our financial hurdles those hurdles are very robust. I'll let Zach go through at least the 5 or 10 of them that he wants to, but we make sure that we are fully contracted that it meets our hurdle rates and that we're providing our energy to investment-grade counterparties over the long term. But Zach, do you have anything to add?

Sure. I'll just say we're going to stay to our lane and stick to brownfield LNG development and construction and operations and remain as disciplined as possible in a pretty undisciplined environment right now. So the plan, as we've said many times, is we're going to permit the heck out of the site. We're permitting 20-plus million tons at both Sabine and Corpus as we speak. That doesn't mean that's the intention of what will FID in the near term. What we have line of sight to FID in the near term is, first, Sabine, a first phase expansion that would be a train and some incremental debottlenecking equipment. And that project alone would need an incremental birth, tank or pipeline, and that should be as economic as possible.

And with that said, we have a good amount of contracts already on the books signed with CMI that could be assigned to either projects that basically cover us off for contracting for a first phase project at Sabine. And then it's digital for the fourth large-scale train at Corpus that's slightly behind in terms of the permitting schedule as we just FID midscale 8 and 9. So we'll stick to the standard basically unlevered 10% returns. And not at these $5 margins that we see on the curve today and into next year but comfortably under $3. We're going to stick to the 6x to 7x CapEx to EBITDA at the same type of margin level. We're going to be 90% contracted to really lock that in and then be in a position where we can fund it 50-50 and be credit accretive. That's how we've done every project to date and have no intention of slowing that down.

We'll move to our next question from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to start on some of the comments on the feed gas this quarter. Jack, I appreciate your walk-through on everything the team has done to kind of fix that. I guess if you can just talk us through what that looks like going forward. Are there investments you guys can make at the plans or investments upstream? Is it something more of this process and it takes some time? Maybe just walk us through that one more time, if you don't mind.

Yes, John. Thank you. So first off, there's a lot of variability, right? Our biggest variability has always been weather. So we first had fog and a lot of fog gets have been passed. We built the third birth and we managed fog. Then it was hot and humid. And we've upgraded fans, and we've added windshield. So the team constantly surprises me and is able to make small capital investments to get through some of these variabilities. This -- lately, it's been the variability in the feed gas composition mostly from the Permian. So as some of the larger pipes have come across and have tied in Permian gas into Louisiana for lack of a better word. We've seen an increase in nitrogen and yes, there are things we can do to help minimize the nitrogen. But nitrogen is an inert gas, and it takes up space. And there's different ways to combat that.

So at Sabine, we've seen the increase in nitrogen. We've changed processes to run it in what we call wet mode, which chills it and pushes it through our system a little more forgiving is what I'll say. And then secondly, minute quantities of substances in the gas stream when you're focusing billions and billions of cubic feet to 1 specific area. So 5 billion cubic feet a day to Sabine Pass or 3 billion cubic feet over to Corpus Christi minute quantities end up being very, very big. So we've seen some heavies. Those are C12 that -- or C12 pluses that are starting to freeze in our system before the liquefaction of the LNG. And that's where we've started to use different solvents to clean the heat exchangers, we've been defrosting a little bit more. But the team continues to figure out ways around it. And we have a long-term plan that we're going to implement next year to help us be much more resilient to small shifts in composition within the gas stream.

And I'll just add that as we gave preliminary and it's definitely preliminary production guidance for next year, we baked a lot of that in, in terms of -- there's some planned maintenance incrementally, in particular, at Corpus in the next year at least, that once we get through some of that, we could be in a position to potentially do better than, let's say, 1.5 million tons per train. But that's not something we're baking in, in October a year ahead before we've done much of that work. So some of those things are baked into the -- this initial forecast and clearly, we'll give financial guidance to the Street on the February call and have a better picture of where production is coming out.

That's clear. I appreciate that color. Just a quick one for me, Zach, following up on your comments a couple of minutes ago. Can you just remind us, at this point, kind of gating items for being Train 7 specifically? And I understand there's a few more moving pieces, but like loosely speaking, what's your bogey for potential FID timing?

Sure. So we're deep in that FERC process and don't expect to receive that permit until later next year. And then and only then would we even be in a position to break ground and start officially reach FID. With that said, we could definitely start LNTPs to an extent with Bechtel next year to start locking in certain costs, if it all meets the hurdles again. So we're still working that through with Bechtel and development and ensuring that we can get to that, let's say, 7x CapEx to EBITDA or better level. And as we get closer to that, we're going to lock in some long lead items, spend some money down there, and you'll see still a tempered CQP distribution out as we retain some of that variable distribution to make sure the balance sheet is good to go for that project as well as to fund some of this CapEx before we even FID.

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

I wanted to start, Jack, maybe with some of your opening comments just around the trade outlook and some of the uncertainty there. I would love just to get your updated thoughts around trade relations, maybe how that's impacted your SPA and commercialization efforts, the President in Asia this week. So just curious if you're optimistic that maybe we could see some more announcements come through on the LNG side.

Spiro, thank you. And I am, I mean, it is nice to have a presence that's so enthusiastic about our product and what our product can do for the world. So at times, we need to manage that a little bit, but it's good to have somebody that's out there out in the forefront. I do expect to see more opportunities for us in Asia. Asia, as you know, is where we see a majority of the growth happening this next decade or 2. And I see some opportunities there, which is why I have a trip to Asia. So -- but thank you, Spiro.

Yes. Now you'd appreciate the color there, Jack. Second one, maybe for you, Zach, on 2026 volumes. So first flush, it did look a little conservative to us, but it sounds like you're baking in some of that feed gas issue. So that could be it but also just wanted to get your sense for what you've assumed around the cadence for Trains 5 through 7, reaching substantial completion next year. Just especially you seem to have cut that time in half between first LNG and substantial completion. And there I'd say is there even a chance that we could see Train 8 speak into 2026?

Do not put Train 8 into 2026 -- that out there. The only, I think, 20-something percent complete with none of the construction as of this call. So the team is pretty incredible, but I'd rather than do it safely and get it right. So we are optimistic on Trains 5 through 7 to come online next year. And again, as we talk about the guidance range, we assumed a Train 5 in the spring, a Train 6 in the summer and a Train 7 in the fall we'll be more precise as we get closer to those dates, as we're right now very focused on the fact that Train 4 is getting closer to first LNG, and we'll see if that's end of year this year, substantial completion or early next.

So again, we're optimistic if there's any acceleration on those trains that could help the production forecast as well. In addition to that, as you'll start to see even from Train 1 to Train 2 to Train 3 the time between first LNG and substantial completion keeps on shortening. That would also produce more P&L volumes supporting EBITDA next year as we continue to take advantage of the lessons learned, train to train to train. So more to come with that in February, but we'll leave it on the seasonal pattern for now for the next 4 trains to come online.

We'll take our next question from Brandon Bingham with Scotiabank.

Would just love to hear your thoughts as it's become more commonplace over the past couple of years to have market participants enter the LNG space from non-LNG arenas. Could you just discuss some of the impacts or even just the dynamics in contracting from having these non-LNG operators enter the market?

Well, I'll take a stab at it, I guess, this is Anatol. So this market a decade ago when we started, if you wanted to buy a U.S. Gulf cargo, you could only call 1 counterparty, and that was Cheniere. Now as this market surpasses 100 million tons on its way to 250 million tons you have a very, very different landscape, of course, and we've spoken about the kind of lack of discipline from our perspective, it seems like projects are getting over the FID finish line with a very broad array of counterparties and at times actually no counterparties at all.

So it will be a very interesting and challenging dynamic as we go through the period of late this decade and first half of next. And again, that's why we are going to be sticking to that 95% plus contracted portfolio into the hands of credible experienced counterparties as well as our own. So expect things to be very challenging for a number of participants. And as we sometimes call them LNG tourists being among them.

That's very helpful. And then maybe just a quick follow-up to one of Spiro's questions here on the 2026 outlook. Maybe asking it in a different way. Is that range that you gave on total volumes? Does that include like is the high end potentially baking in an acceleration of Trains 5 through 7 or would an acceleration of Trains 5 through 7 similar to like a Train 4 time line sort of a setup, push you above the range?

Time will tell, but put it this way. Just on Trains 4 through 7 coming online, if they were each 1 month early or 1 month late, that's like 0.5 million tonnes alone. So that alone is a 1 million-ton swing. And then if you just think about year-to-year operational reliability, variability, ambient temperatures, that's easy, 1 million tonnes at this point because just to remind folks, we're now in over 50 million-ton operating company. So yes, there's a little bit in there. But if there's even more acceleration than that, or it's a bit colder or are there operational liability is higher year-over-year. We could be at the high end or something else. So we'll see. But that's not really our style. We'll stick to 51 to 53 for now.

We'll take our next question from Jean Ann Salisbury, with Bank of America.

Well, the debottlenecking for CCL3 occur kind of gradually from now until 2028 or would you expect most of it to occur concurrently when Trains 8 and 9 start up?

Jean, this is Jack. The debottlenecking started the day we took commercial operations of Train 1 and has been ongoing. And the team has done a great job with maximizing the production of those first 3 soon to be 4 trains very, very quickly, and I would expect us to continue to refine that as we go.

I would say that to get to the high, high end, we acknowledge that even Trains 8 and 9 at mid-scale would have some debottlenecking equipments. So that will come over time. But based on how things are working and some of the work that we continue to do, as Jack mentioned, yes, we're hopeful we can start doing better than $1.5 million in the near future.

Great. And then as has been referenced a lot on this call, there's been so much contracting year-to-date so many projects going forward. So I guess my question for Anatol is in terms of global project FIDs, do you think we're near the end of this wave or in the middle?

In, yes, a lot of FID, not as much contracting, I would say. But yes, so the world overall has had a very robust year. You remember the discussions of 4, 5 years ago is long-term contracting going away, and our view was always that it's not, but it is cyclical. So this year, I believe, over 80% of the contracts executed have been 20 years or longer, and there's still some more to be done globally but with the world at 70 million tons U.S. is about 61 million tonnes year-to-date, I think this period is in its [ Denman ], shall we say.

We'll Take our last question from Manav Gupta with UBS.

We actually went through your revised Sabine Pass filings in June. And just like if you look at the earlier February filing of 2024, you seem to have found a number of extra MTPAs in a very short period of time. And I'm just trying to understand how are your engineering teams able to accomplish this so quickly? And if you could help us understand how this additional capacity was realized or could be realized as you bring this project on?

Sure. I think credit to our engineers and our operating folks that are always finding ways to debottleneck the facilities and get more out of them. I believe what you're speaking to is the FERC filing for the Sabine expansion. And clearly, as I mentioned before, as we intend to permit as much as possible at the 2 sites we're going to explore with Bechtel every which way to get the most out of Sabine Pass to ideally get that cost per ton as low as possible. I obviously working on the cost side, but specifically on the MTPA side as well. So I think there's just more ingenuity and pushing for the art of the possible right now for the permitting process, and then we'll see what we actually FID as none of that matters if it doesn't meet the standard.

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

This is Jack. I just want to say thank you for all of your support and for your questions and always keeping us on our toes.

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