This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk08: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the NFV second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded, and all phone participants are in a listen-only mode, but later you will have the opportunity to ask questions. To get us started today with opening remarks and introductions, I am pleased to turn the floor to Managing Director of Strategy and Investor Relations, Mr. Chance Pipitone. Please go ahead, sir.
spk09: Perfect. Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call, where we will discuss our second quarter 2023 results, recent developments, operational highlights, and future here at New Fortress Energy. As Jim mentioned, the call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the investors section of our website under the subheading events and presentations. In the same location, you will find a press release regarding our second quarter 2023 results and the corresponding presentation that we will walk through on today's call. As we proceed through the discussion, we will be referring to that presentation. In that same presentation, you will also find a series of important disclosures related to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. We encourage participants to review these important disclosures in addition to the description of risk factors contained within our SEC filings. Now let's dive into the call. My name is, again, Chance Pipitone, and joining me today at New Fortress Energy are Wes Edens, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Junta, our CFO, Andrew Deedy, our Managing Director of New Business, and other managers of our senior leadership team. Wes, over to you. Great.
spk11: Thanks, Chance, and welcome, everybody. Lots to talk about today. So let's start with page number three of the numbers and go from there. Quarter results for the quarter were solid. You know, the EBITDA for the quarter, $246 million. It's down from the first quarter. Virtually 100% of that is just a function of the geography of timing of some cargo sales. The core earnings are basically flat quarter over quarter. Compared to the first half of last year, we're up significantly. So $541 million last year in the first half, $686 million in this year. Perhaps more importantly, the guidance that we see now for the rest of the year, $1.6 billion for 2023 and $2.4 billion in 2024. A little bit of reduction of guidance for this year just as a function of a few of the projects delivering late but still very, very solid earnings for the rest of the year, and our future is incredibly bright. If you flip to page number four, this is a very, very interesting page in the beginning of the presentation. So to say the least, these are very exciting times for the company. After many years of hard work and many billions invested, we now have five major infrastructure projects all delivering essentially at the same time. Having $3.2 billion invested in projects that turn into productive revenue-producing assets is life-changing for the company, and there's a couple of material points here. One, it greatly increases our revenue potential as a company. Obviously, you're converting construction projects into revenue-producing assets, and that's obviously a huge, huge change. Two is it changes the nature of our company from one that is a mix today of about 50% of our revenues coming from merchant sales to customer volumes to one that's virtually all customer sales going forward. That greatly improves both the quality and reliability and transparency of our earnings going forward. You're going to see that manifest itself both the second half of this year and then going on into the future. Three, it opens up a number of new markets to us, huge markets with tremendous potential. I'll click through the major ones now. Puerto Rico, which is already a market for us but is now much, much larger with the acquisition of the PREPA fleet, Panera, the temporary projects we've done there. Brandon McElmurtry will talk about that in detail, but as we will explain, this is a massive, massive opportunity for the company. Number two, Brazil. Two large terminals coming online that greatly increase our capacity as a company, increasing total capacity of throughput by nearly 35%. Huge addressable market, our first entry into it, both of them coming online in the next few weeks. Three, Ireland. We won our first power auction last quarter, and we believe we're finally very close to being the first and only LNG terminal in the country. All these together are increasing our capacity to grow materially, and most importantly, without material amounts of additional capex. This is truly the apex of our capital spend, and we now need to just operate and grow revenues with very little additional capital spent. It's an amazing moment for us as a company. In the next 30 to 60 days, it will be transformational to us It is all made possible through the hard work and dedication of literally thousands of people that have made this happen. Just a little context to appreciate how big $3.2 billion in infrastructure actually is. A few years ago, in another line of work, we built an arena in Milwaukee for our Bucs. Amazing arena. I'm a little biased, but my view is it's the best in the league. That was a total of $525 million in capex. It took us about two and a half years to build. What we're doing here at NFE is equivalent of building and delivering six of these arenas at the same time in countries throughout the world. which if it sounds hard, it's because it's plenty hard. It's hard to identify markets. It's hard to get a commercial foothold and get in business, and it's very hard to fund, and then, of course, it's hard to execute. That said, nothing that we're doing here is unproven or dangerous or experimental. In some form, it's all been done before, and in many cases, many, many times around the world, which is what makes it doing it at the same time both reasonable and feasible if you're organized and dedicated, which we are. These are big construction projects, so there's things to talk about every day, and we do, but are all on track, and once they're done, will truly transform the company. They'll produce significant, reliable cash flows going forward, require very little capex, and so thus the cash flow, much of it will go straight to the bottom line and deleverage and reduce debt of the company, and it's now a very straight shot for us to become an investment-grade company in the not-so-distant future. New markets with major avenues to grow, essential infrastructure at exactly the right time. So page number five. These are a list of the projects. So there's FLNG-1, which Chris Gintz will talk about, the liquefier, which is in the process of being deployed as we speak. It's materially complete. Puerto Rico Power, half of which is operational. The other half will be operational in the next few weeks that Brandon will talk about. Bacarena and Satacan Arena are two terminals in Brazil that Andrew Didi will talk about, and La Paz Power Plant, the 135-megawatt plant that is being commissioned as we go right now. $3.2 billion of infrastructure being converted from construction to revenue producing, which has a significant impact on the company. Page six is perhaps my favorite page of the entire presentation because it shows the history of the company. What you see here on this page is the number of terminals in yellow going from one in 2016 to three in 2020 to five here in 2023 and seven in 2024. The capacity that each one of those has is then listed below. Just as a point of reference, we showed 20 TBTUs. One million tons of LNG is 50. So this was, we started our business in Montego Bay with basically 40% of one ton of capacity. We have grown that materially as these different markets have come online to 620 TBTUs of capacity today, 920 next year. As you'd expect, LNG volumes then through these terminals then follow. So eight TBTUs in 2017, 74 in 2021, 136 this year, 185 and substantial growth beyond that going forward. And then lastly, of course, you'd expect that to convert to EBITDA. When you look at the bottom line, it's truly a remarkable progression of EBITDA. From losing money as we're developing assets, obviously, to a place where we're essentially breaking even in 2020, to one which has gone from $33 million in 2020, $605 million in 2021, About $1.1 billion in 2022, $1.6 billion this year, $2.4 billion to follow. So truly a remarkable, remarkable path. With that, let me turn it over to Chris to talk about our LNG-1.
spk02: Great. Thanks, Wes. Good morning, everybody. Please turn to slide number eight. Let me provide some added details on the completion of FAST LNG number one. As Wes mentioned, thanks to the incredible effort by our team in Corpus Christi and in Mexico, we continue to make major progress, and we're nearing our goal of COD by the end of this quarter. At this point, each of the rigs have achieved mechanical completion, and we're in the process of commissioning various systems while the remaining rigs are still in the Kiewit shipyard. As a reminder, FLNG is comprised of three specific rigs with the names Pioneer 1, 2, and 3. Pioneer 1 is the gas processing module. This is connected to the subsea riser, and it dehydrates and prepares the gas for liquefaction. This unit is expected to mobilize and be installed around August the 23rd. Pioneer 2 is the liquefaction module that includes the chart cold box and Baker Hughes compressor, which together change the vapor into LNG. This unit is expected to mobilize and be installed around August the 28th. Pioneer 3 houses the accommodations, power, and electrical control hub, and this is the unit that has already been mobilized and installed offshore. From a marine construction standpoint, all activities have been completed, including the installation of the hot tap assembly on the Cerro de Tejas pipeline, a three-kilometer pipeline lateral to our FLNG asset, and the anchor mooring installation for our storage vessel. In addition, our floating storage vessel, the Penguin, has completed all of its make-ready activities and currently in transit to Altamira, where it will clear in and hook up to its installed moorings later this month. The next step is to sail units P1 and P2 over the next couple of weeks to their location offshore and then we expect to introduce first gas in September and sell our first cargo in October of 2023. As we've discussed before, the NFE timeline is organized with much greater focus on speed to market that prosecutes the various stages in parallel path as opposed to traditional projects that follow a much more linear model. When looking at additional FLNG units, given that we've already done all the engineering and design, we believe future modules will be completed in around 18 months. This is what allows us to deploy FLNG 2 and 3 modules in the second half of next year. While the cost of our FLNG-1 will come in just shy of around $900 a ton, the future cost of modules and on-store installation for balance of plant is expected to be roughly $650 a ton. If you turn to slide number nine, this is really intended to evidence the value of the strategy that we've employed. Our decision to build the units while we're still completing engineering did lead to inefficiencies. However, the resulting benefits far outweigh the challenges we incurred on FLNG-1. Moving down the slide, there are really two primary reasons why we feel that adding FLNG into our supply portfolio poses outsized value. First, the value of LNG now means that you'll effectively own the FLNG asset for free well ahead of when any competitive supply could come online. The graph on the left side of this page demonstrates what I'm alluding to here. We believe that no other LNG project with available capacity will come online before 2027. And if you assume three years at 70 TBTUs per year, that's 210 TBTUs available for sale. The difference between a traditional LNG supply agreement of 115% of Henry Hub plus 250 versus the forward curve is on average around $7 over the next three years. If you multiply that by our 210 TBTUs, you get approximately $1.5 billion in proceeds in the time between our COD and when a competing project is online. The second point of having our own LNG supply is that it provides greater operational flexibility to serve our customers. Remember, when you have long-term SPAs, you're locked into loading schedules over a year in advance, which provides very little latitude when you're running a global downstream regas business. Further, you risk curtailments in the wake of operational issues by the supplier that could lead to knock-on impacts in our supply chain. As a result, having our own FLNG supply that can serve as a complement to our core portfolio of off-tick agreements is the best way to be prepared to satisfy all of our customer needs. With that, I'll hand the call off to Andrew to talk about capacity and customers.
spk13: Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. I'm on page 11, and I've got three slides here that are going to dig in a little bit more on what Wes went through on slide 6 around capacity in our terminals. So slide 11 shows how we calculate the capacity of an LNG terminal NFV. We're going to take the example of Montego Bay, which is our first terminal, so Q4 2016 COD. MoBay is 8,000 cubic meters of landed storage, so onshore storage. And then we have an LNG vessel there. In the picture, you can see both the bullet tanks in the left part of the picture and then the ship coming alongside. MoBay is serving Jamaica Public Service, JPS, on a long-term contract for gas supply to the Bogue power plant. And it's also our main small-scale hub in Jamaica, so we serve over 20 industrial and hospitality customers from the Montego Bay Terminal, mostly through truck loading. On the right side is how we calculate capacity. So what we do is we take our 8,000 cubic meters of storage and we assume two reloads a week. That's not really conservative, nor is it too aggressive. That's right at about kind of a comfortable pace for our refilling. And then we take that 16,000 cubic meters a week times 52 weeks of the year, We get to 832,000 cubic meters a year. We convert by multiplying by 24 into TBTUs, and we have a capacity of 24 TBTUs. So I'll flip then to page 12, which basically takes that rubric and shows it across the portfolio on the left side. So these are all of our operating terminals, which total about 385 TBTUs. And then what we're showing are the four expansions that we expect to bring online before year-end 2024. So Puerto Rico upsize, Barcarina in Brazil, Santa Catarina in Brazil, and Nicaragua, all of which then get us to a total number of 920 TBTUs, or using the rule of thumb of 50 TBTUs equals one ton, about 18 million tons of regas capacity in our portfolio. So that's a greater than 100% increase between now and year-end 2024. And the utilization numbers on the right show how our LNG volumes track through those terminals. So by the end of 24, we'll have a portfolio of about 3.6 MTPA of LNG supply, going through a regas portfolio of about 18 MTPA of regas. So that's just about a 20% utilization rate there in the yellow box on the right side. Page 13 walks through a little bit of how we see growth coming from these increases in capacity. So two main ways in which NFE will grow from here. The first is increased utilization in our current terminals. And the second is to enter new markets and continue to grow as we have in the past. There's a few reasons why we think increasing utilization and organic growth is extremely advantageous for NFE. First, you know, call out that the current terminal utilization is relatively modest. So at about 20%, we have a lot of room for growth, both operationally and commercially. This organic growth has highly accretive margins. So in our case, Not only have we paid for the infrastructure so this growth doesn't have any incremental capex, but it also has very, very low incremental opex because typically we are already paying for the FSRU and the onshore terminal operations. So the margins on any new customers or new volumes that we push to the terminal are accretive to what we currently have. And then third is the embedded position we have in these growth markets. Brandon is going to go through the example of Puerto Rico, which is really a crown jewel in our portfolio at the moment. and the sort of development position and the growth that we see over the next few years. That's going to continue to happen in the rest of our portfolio as we grow, with Puerto Rico being a great example for how we see that happening. On the right side, we'll continue to also develop new terminal infrastructure. So in addition to the opportunities we have in Brazil and Ireland, we're also looking at opportunities in the Caribbean and Central America, where we've traditionally been, and then also South Africa and Vietnam, which both represent high-growth, high-population markets that are exciting for LNG. We typically target a return on invested capital of over 20% on these terminals, so they're relatively capital-light relative to their opportunity commercially. And then we want to call it the portfolio value we see in continuing to grow terminal capacity. So as Wes walked through, you know, one terminal going to seven, LNG capacity of 20, TPTUs going to 920. This unlocks, you know, tremendous opportunities here. for organic growth across the portfolio and across time, and then that increasing scale and diversity of cash flows makes NFE a much better business as we go. I'll turn it over to Brandon now.
spk12: Thanks, Andrew, and good morning. Thank you all for joining. As Wes mentioned at the beginning of the call, we've been investing in Puerto Rico since 2017, so I'll refer to you to slide 15. And just a little bit of context, Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth with 3.5 million people with amazing culture and history. It imports over 20 million barrels of HFO and diesel a year to generate power, which is highly unusual compared to the U.S. mainland. In addition, it has a stated goal of being 100 percent renewable by 2050. The power generation that exists today is old, inefficient, unreliable, and heavily carbonized, and most importantly, it's not positioned to integrate renewable resources. It's the perfect energy transition opportunity to move to natural gas and away from distillates in support of increased integration renewables over time. NFE's involvement in Puerto Rico started in 2017. In September 2017, Hurricane Maria, Category 5 hurricane, struck the island and severely damaged the electrical grid. Like others, NFE responded to the call to rebuild and opened its LNG terminal in 2020 next to the San Juan Power Plant in the north of the island, in record time for a facility of that type across the world. The terminal supported 300 megawatts of the island's most efficient and low-emission dispatchable power and significantly has generated millions of dollars of savings to date by displacing diesel fuel with natural gas. Most importantly, the terminal positioned NFE to quickly respond to the needs of the island to accelerate both the reconstruction of the power grid and the deployment of renewables. I move to page 16. In 2021, PREPA privatization got underway. PREPA is the largest publicly owned utility in the U.S. with 1.5 customers, $4.5 billion operating budget, 20,000 miles of T&D, and 5 gigawatts of generation across 17 sites. It serves a peak power demand of around 4 gigawatts, two-thirds fueled by distillates, and about a third on gas. Historically, there has been significant underinvestment there that has led to the least reliable and most expensive electrical system in the U.S. To put it in context, someone in Puerto Rico is 630 times more likely to lose power than someone in the mainlands. The government has decided that PREPA needed to be privatized to better use reconstruction funds and accelerate the energy transition. In 2017, the government of Puerto Rico launched a privatization process that In 2021, the government privatized the transmission and distribution system with a private owner. The same year, NFE decided to compete for privatization. In 2022, it won the privatization mandate for generation, and in July of 2023 of this year, it took over the generation system under the name Hanera, which is an NFE company. Today, NFE manages over 83% of the generation system. which is about 5 gigawatts, 700 people, $3 billion operating budget, including fuel, and billions of dollars of reconstruction funds to rebuild the generation system. Our mandate is simple, improve reliability and lower cost. I move to page 17. The U.S. government is very focused on creating a clean and resilient power grid in Puerto Rico. The federal government and all of its agencies, in coordination with the Commonwealth, are investing $20 billion to rebuild the power grid that will lead to a zero-carbon reliable efficient system, which we expect to be a model for the mainland and the world. The system still requires dispatchable power that can serve the peak demand, which would include power fueled by gas, hydrogen, and energy storage. The result we expect to be a model for how other systems are done. On page 18, I focus on the current event that we're working on in Puerto Rico. In late 2022, in the wake of Hurricane Fiona, FEMA called for 350 megawatts of emergency power to stabilize the grid. FEMA launched a process to acquire and bring in 350 megawatts of fast power to the island immediately. In that process, NFE was selected to provide all of the power generation units, and gas for up to two years to provide grid-stabilizing power. NFE responded to this call by deploying assets and expertise. It installed seven units at Palo Seco in 60 days, turning on in the beginning of July, and is in the process of completing the installation of an additional 200 megawatts at San Juan, where our existing terminal is, and we expect that to be completed in the next several weeks. To give you context for such a fast deployment, NFE brought its experience across the entire portfolio and the developments that we have done to date. Our team installed turbines, emissions controls, substations, and other high-voltage electric gear, a lot of balance of plant, and most importantly, fueling infrastructure to support this power in a clean and sustainable way. NFE used all the skills and installed the 350 megawatts in record time. This is the fastest project ever accomplished by FEMA of this type in the world. I move to page 18. There are several ways that NFE can help Puerto Rico and the U.S. government reach their goals. Number one, provide the island with short-term power to fill immediate need for megawatts, which is capacity now. The best example would be the 350 megawatts that is currently being installed and the additional megawatts that are contemplated to increase this installation over the next several months. Number two, supply any conversions of existing diesel and oil power plants to transition away from expensive and carbon-intensive distillate fuels and better position the power system to support renewables. A great example of this would be continuing to support diesel and HFO where possible, which is about 2.5 gigawatts of additional installed plant today that is capable of being converted. Number three, participate in any long-term power solution. The island will be transitioning to renewables over the next several decades, but still must maintain the installed plant to supply over 3.7 gigawatts of peak demand, which requires dispatchable power. Seventy-five percent of the island's mainland is in the San Juan metro area where our terminal is, which perfectly positions us to expand and accelerate that goal. The goals are to facilitate the U.S. government's commitment to invest over $20 billion to rebuild the power grid that will lead to a zero carbon reliable efficient system, which again will be a model for how this area and others around the world, similar situation, will do it. The end state we expect in Puerto Rico will be renewable power supported by affordable dispatchable power that will be fueled by gas, hydrogen, and supported by energy storage. Through NFE and Hanera, we want to accelerate that transition with high-quality infrastructure that best supports the integration and operation of renewables. Puerto Rico is a great transition example for us and one that we believe we could model in other areas. We believe it can be replicated around the world as others seek to accelerate the same energy transition. And with that, I turn it over to Chris. Thanks, Brandon.
spk02: Please turn to slide number 21, financial performance for the first quarter, excuse me, the second quarter of 2023. During Q2, we had $561 million in revenue and $246 million of adjusted EBITDA, which combined with Q1 had us at $686 million of adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2023. Segment operating margin was $239 million for terminals and $54 million for the ship segment. You can find more detail in the appendix. The net income for the quarter was $120 million, which is 58 cents per share on a diluted basis. This quarter, we sold 25 TBTUs in total volumes, which equates to an average EBITDA margin of around $10 per MMBTU. As Wes mentioned, the primary driver of the change in EBITDA during Q2 as opposed to Q1 is the cargo sales, which accounts for about $195 million, or 95% of the decreased quarter-over-quarter. On a go-forward basis, from an earnings perspective, we are replacing most of the cargo sale earnings with volumes being sold to downstream customers through our regas terminals on a long-term basis. Perhaps the best example of this is the migration of cash flows derived from downstream contracted sales through our terminals, which will be around 60% of 2023 adjusted EBITDA to over 85% of 2024 adjusted EBITDA. And just to point out, the average contracted term is around 12 years, with over 80% of these sales being to investment-grade counterparties. This is the long-term, predictable, net spread business that we've been building toward. And finally, a quick comment here on the balance sheet. Since the end of June, we've closed on another $500 million of financing, which includes an incremental $100 million in the turbine financing, bringing us to $200 million in total, and $400 million term loan that will be taken out with an asset-level financing against FLNG1. And just to note, historically, the company has funded our growth by choosing to finance our development projects on balance sheet, and then once the assets are operational, We can back-lever them on a discrete, standalone asset basis. This is a trend we will continue to execute. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Chance.
spk09: Yes, thank you, Chris. Let's turn it back to the operator. I'd love to open up the lines for questions.
spk08: Absolutely. Thank you, gentlemen. And to our phone audience joining today, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. Pressing star and one will place your line into a queue, and we ask that if you're joining today on a speakerphone that you return to your handset prior to pressing star and one to be certain that your signal does reach our equipment. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one. We'll hear first from Chris Robertson at Deutsche Bank.
spk03: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the time to take our questions today. Just wanted to circle back on the CapEx guidance for 24 here. especially with regards to FLNG 2 and 3 as those are currently under construction. Maybe this is a question for Chris. Can you walk through the latest CapEx guidance around those units and talk about the financing of those two next year? I'm just trying to get to why has CapEx guidance come down so much in 24 compared to the last update when these two units are still under construction. Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, so great question, Chris. I mean, fundamentally, we've invested over 35% of the cost of FLNG 2 and 3 already using equity. So the view is that we should be able to borrow debt against the assets to fund the remaining CapEx plans. And then we also have, from a terminal CapEx standpoint, we've almost completed all the spend for Bacarena, Santa Catarina, and Nicaragua. That's all less than $100 million remaining. and then you have on a go-forward basis only around $50 million a year for a – we have about $50 million a year for maintenance capex on the terminals. Just circling back to the top of your question, we've funded $1.3 billion already against FLNG number one, so there's very modest costs remaining this year to complete that asset.
spk03: Okay, got it. Yeah. And so on FOMG 2 and 3, you said you've already invested over 35% in those two? That's right.
spk11: That's right. Yeah, maybe just to amplify a little bit. I mean, one of the aspects of the business, when you're constructing or financing assets on balance sheet, when they are constructed and producing cash flows, you can then go pursue financing on an asset basis. So we've done with power plants, other assets in the past. And so one of the significant aspects of the business and the reason why the CapEx goes down so precipitously is that now that you are going from the construction phase to the operating phase, the financeability at attractive levels of those assets increases markedly. And so if you look at the total CapEx that we've invested across the spectrum in the FLNG assets, It's the $1.3 billion in FLNG 1. It's the additional half a billion or so in FLNGs 2 and 3. That complex in its entirety is then very financeable in terms of the incremental capital we need to complete 2 and 3. And thus, the capex that needs to go into it is so low. So it appears to be a precipitous drop in capex. It actually is a precipitous drop in capex. And when I say it's the apex, it truly is the apex of all this stuff. And as it converts now into income-producing assets, Very, very easy, very straightforward to finance. When you look at the LNG liquefier complexes, generally speaking, they are financed at approximately 80% loan-to-value. So if you look at Venture Global or Chenier or any of these other complexes that are out there, they're highly debt financed on that side while they're in construction. Those are supported by long-term contracts, which is that's the plus and minus for it. In our case, we have lots of downstream customers now that support these assets and the asset is essentially completed. So it makes the financeability of this extremely straightforward.
spk03: Got it. I guess final follow-up to this line of questioning is around, has there been any cost savings, I guess, as the projects have come onshore rather than, you know, the offshore original proposal?
spk11: Yeah, no, massive cost savings, right? You know, the first of anything, you get the pioneer premium of, you know, mud in your face and arrows in the back. So the first asset, as Chris said, is $1.3 billion for a 1.4 million ton liquefier for just under $1,000 a ton. For numbers two and three and onshore and utilizing existing infrastructure, those costs go down, you know, for a significant amount.
spk02: Yeah, so on modules alone, we think the cost for – is down about $125 to $150 million each. So that's $250 million across those two. And then onshore work, as you can imagine, is definitely cheaper to complete than the offshore stuff. We won't have any rig modifications or improvements to do here. And the site, as we talked about on the last call, is miraculous. I mean, this site has already had its geotech. It's had full berthing, tanks, everything you would need to really plug and play.
spk03: All right. Thanks. I'll turn it over.
spk08: Next, we'll hear from Mike Patterson at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk01: Thank you for taking the call. My question is regarding your preferred shares on Golar, LNG, the 8.75s. Some time ago, these were delisted. They're currently not marginable. They can't be solicited. They traded on the pink sheets, and I'll give you an example. They traded about a 16% yield. Yesterday, it was showing on the market about 14. A trade went through at 11.5, and it just seems like quite a disservice to the shareholders of these preferreds to do that. Do you have any plans or what's your comments on these preferreds?
spk02: Yeah. Hey, Mike, this is Chris. Why don't you shoot me a note offline and we can talk through this? We have put out this information publicly before, and I'm happy to talk you through it. The financials are available, and we can go through it offline.
spk01: Well, with all due respect, for about three months I've tried to call in, email, and I never do get a return response on this. And so can you address how come that they're not listed, and would you consider listing these shares?
spk02: Yeah, Mike, so the shares are not listed. They were delisted when we took private the GMLP equity in 2021. We provide everything required for compliance with those shares, and we will continue to do so.
spk01: So you're just fine with them trading at 45 cents on the dollar, and it's doing this to the shareholder? And like I say, I take it offline, but I can't ever get a call answered, responded to at all. But it sounds like you're just not going to do anything regarding them, right?
spk02: Mike, we're happy to look at what you're describing, but we stay in compliance with those shares, and we provide all the information that's required on a quarterly basis.
spk08: Our next question will come today from Cameron Lockridge at Bank of America.
spk10: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question here. Congrats on getting everything in Puerto Rico set up, and it sounds like FLNG1 is moving well, so congrats on that. I really just wanted to ask, I wanted to circle back on the CapEx piece and unpack that a little bit. I understand there's some nuance with regards to maybe the financing of the CapEx for 23 and 24, but really I just want to unpack the difference in messaging around last quarter's CapEx guidance and this quarter's. There's about a billion dollar difference between what you were expecting last year, or sorry, last quarter, and what you're expecting now for 23 and 24. So just help us walk through that delta there, if you don't mind.
spk02: Yeah, I think fundamentally, it's kind of what Wes and I were describing to the first question that Chris had. I mean, we believe that we're able to debt finance the balance of FLNG 2 and 3 construction using the invested capital that we've already put in place from 1 and 2 and 3. So I think it's just fundamentally a difference in the presentation quarter over quarter that this is showing that we are able to use the debt capacity that the units can withhold.
spk11: From a capital structure standpoint, we look at page number four. So you've got a total of $7 billion in balance sheet and infrastructure in the company right now. Of that, about $6 billion has been funded over the last handful of years. massive amounts of infrastructure invested on balance sheet. As I said, the big difference really from a financing standpoint is that once assets go from construction projects to revenue producing, the financeability of them changes materially. And so that's really why we now don't believe that we'll have material amounts of equity CapEx at all to invest going forward. We've already made the investment. They're now all turning into revenue producing assets. And with that, the financeability then goes up substantially. And to give a little bit of context to just the quality of the business, $7 billion of infrastructure, which that's the core of the company, and producing 1.6, in our forecast, $2.4 billion in EBITDA next year, that's roughly a 30-plus percent infrastructure yield. To my knowledge, it's the best infrastructure yield on anything, any company I'm aware of in the world. And so we've got, when you, and obviously, When you produce those kinds of revenues and long-term revenues and customer-facing revenues, the financeability of those projects goes up a limit. And that's essentially what you're seeing play out, you know, in front of your eyes right now. That's why it's so transformational.
spk10: Got it. Got it. So, in other words, the $2.9 billion that was originally slated to be equity CapEx is now going to be $1.9 billion of equity CapEx and call it? a billion of debt capex. Is that fair? That's exactly right. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. And then moving on to Puerto Rico, or really just 2024 guidance generally, can you give us some context? Obviously a lot coming online, especially in Puerto Rico, big back half ramp here. What should we be expecting as far as Puerto Rico's contribution to that $2.4 billion gap? And, you know, also Park Arena as well, what are we expecting there?
spk11: I mean, I'll let Brandon talk about Puerto Rico specifically. You know, we don't provide specific guidance on a terminal or country basis. You know, we produce with, you know, Andrew walked through kind of what the volumetric capabilities are in each of these markets. But for a whole variety of reasons, we don't think it's appropriate to show margin for market by market. That's not really a great idea for our counterparty's constituents. There's lots of different, you know, factors that apply to that. So I understand that that would be, you know, simpler and easier to model, and we appreciate that. But there's a host of other... competing factors that make it not really possible. So you can see the volumes go through. Puerto Rico in particular, and again I'll let Brandon talk about this, but in the short term, the very short term, the short term power will actually be turned on. So Palo Seco plant is up and running. It's probably the most reliable power plant on the island right now, I think 99 plus percent. So it's actually performing like gangbusters. The San Juan project is in the last handful of weeks from being COD and up and running as well. And then there's a whole host of other projects to follow. Maybe, Brandon, if you can talk about that a little bit.
spk12: Great. Thanks, Wes. Yeah, really appreciate the question. And, you know, as Wes said, you know, I think the way we think about it is, you know, we've got this amazing asset, which is, you know, the terminal in the north. We built it, anchored around the 300 megawatt power plant that's adjacent to it. But as Andrew referenced earlier, there's amazing embedded capacity in the terminal for expansion and to support other projects. I think the best example is the 350 megawatts that we're currently installing on a two-year arrangement. And then, as you can imagine, as the Puerto Rico assets that are installed today on island that are using HFO and distillates, as those retire and are replaced, then the terminal is there to support incremental power that develops over time. So the way to think about the Puerto Rico strategy evolving is it has a short-term, intermediate-term, and then long-term aspect. And over time, what you should expect is the incremental installed megawatts that are being fueled by some type of natural gas, you know, hydrogen blend increases over time. So it hits your 3,700 megawatts. peak demand, even as your renewables and others come online. And again, 70% of the population lives in the San Juan metro area. The NFE terminal is the principal critical piece of infrastructure that sits in that region. So all of that transition will pass in some way, shape, or form through that asset. And so you should expect the contribution to grow over time.
spk11: Yeah, I mean, as Brandon said, it is without doubt in our opinion, the largest energy transformation event in the world. And it happens to be a commonwealth of the United States, and so they've got the capital available to do the right things. I mean, right now, the island has got tremendous resources. It's an amazing place, but for the electricity and energy system. And so it's 630 times more likely for the power to shut off than it would be if you lived in Miami or New York or Chicago. Obviously, that's not the right answer. And we're very, very happy to be in the thick of it. We think that there's significant commercial opportunities as a result. But more importantly, there's just significant opportunities to do the right thing for Puerto Rico. I mean, I feel like it's got the potential to be Hawaii, except people don't pay taxes, right? So it's got tremendous commercial opportunities as an island and as a commonwealth. We feel very blessed to be there. And we really are in the thick of what is, without a doubt, the biggest energy transformation you know, any market that we're aware of in the world. So there's a lot more to, uh, to come in the, in the next handful of months and years.
spk10: Got it. Thank you guys. Uh, and I'll turn it back.
spk08: Sam Burwell at Jeffries. You have our next question.
spk00: Hey, good morning guys. Um, I mean, the CapEx has been fairly belabored at this point, but maybe ask, uh, From a balance sheet perspective, it seems like you're adding on a lot of debt, and I respect the fact that it's secured against these assets, but there's a material amount of interest expense that's going to come with this. So what are you comfortable with adding to the balance sheet in terms of debt? How much interest expense are you comfortable layering on? I mean, the EBITDA guidance has been lowered, so there's probably going to be free cash flow in the back half of the year if CapEx is pretty light. But how soon can we expect... genuine free cash flow generation so that you guys can start paying down the revolver?
spk11: Immediately. I mean, you know, if you look at the balance sheet, it's actually an incredibly unleveraged balance sheet. So all of the assets that we have basically invested in, so the Brazilian assets, you know, the liquifier, all the liquifier stuff that we're working on, that's all unleveraged. So you actually are talking about billions and billions of dollars of assets that are unleveraged on the balance sheet. And now that you are now putting them into revenue-producing generation, you'll now start to put leverage against them. And I think by, I mean, you say that there's a lot of debt and interest expense. I'm not aware of an asset-based infrastructure company as low-leveraged as what we are on Earth. So I actually think it's exactly the opposite of what you described. I think that the big use of capital during the building period has been the unleveraged use of equity capital, the fund construction. We've done that on balance sheet. Right now, as these turn on, and literally the time frame for them turning on is the next two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. So it's an incredibly short period of time. you then will start to produce material amounts of cash flow. And with such little amounts of capital needed to go into CapEx, you should expect immediately for there to be deleveraging and cash flow to go to it. So from a timing standpoint, we're halfway through roughly the third quarter right now. The fourth quarter and thereafter, we expect virtually all this stuff to be up and running. And so you'll see immediate impacts on cash flow and deleveraging to the bottom line.
spk00: Okay, fair enough. I mean, the follow-up would be just on the CapEx that was deployed in 2Q. It looks like that was about $900 million. So what comprised that number?
spk02: Yeah, it's predominantly FLNG 1, 2, and 3. That's the bulk of it.
spk11: Some capital in Puerto Rico. It's all these projects. We list all the projects. We show you what the capital is. It's $3.2 billion in capital that's out the door. So it's actually, I mean, it is ironic. I think it's It's literally the opposite of your question. It is the most, like, unleveraged balance sheet that I'm aware of for an infrastructure company, and now that they're actually revenue-producing, we're going to go put debt against them. The debt, actually, we can do so at very, very competitive levels, right? We've financed our Bacarena power plant. We've financed our power plant that we installed in Puerto Rico. I mean, it's actually quite straightforward to produce revenue-producing assets. It's hard to finance construction projects. That's why we've done it on balance sheets. And I think when you think about it, we've actually, from a standing start as a company, we've managed to build and invest $7 billion into infrastructure assets. That's what our balance sheet is. That is a foundational, you know, fortress-like balance sheet to actually start with. And now you're going to put modest amounts of debt against it and bring all the cash flow to the bottom line. It's going to be, you know, I've used the word many times, it is transformational in terms of the financial picture of the company going forward, and it's going to happen right now.
spk08: Our next question today comes from the line of Martin Malloy at Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning. I was wondering if you could broadly talk about the Brazil terminals and commercial opportunities to put additional volumes through those terminals and maybe the timing of potential announcements around that.
spk13: Hey, thanks for the question. So we, you know, Barcarina is mechanically complete. We will COD in Q4 of this year, and we'll immediately start up our contract with Norris Hydro. We see some material expansion opportunities right at the port, which will actually be very accretive to the EBITDA and operating margin of the terminal. There's four other customers a little bit smaller than Norris Hydro but still meaningful for us that connect to our pipeline. We hope to find agreements with those guys over the next few months. Beyond that, we would obviously hope to expand our volumes of Norris Hydro over time. That's still the biggest alumina refinery in the world. We're obviously providing volumes for their alumina refining process, so calcination and to fire their boilers. But there's a lot more growth we can do with them, both on the sort of process side as well as on the power side. So definitely more to do there. And then, you know, we're 20% complete on our 600 megawatt combined cycle power plant. We have another parcel of land there, which effectively could accommodate another over 600 megawatts. There's some exciting power auctions coming up in Brazil of kind of various flavors, some that are more capacity-based, some that are more energy-based, but that are all kind of interesting for that site. And so we see a ton of avenue for growth there. There's also sort of regional growth. There's a few power auctions coming up in Brazil that for kind of regional capitals to bring gas in the form of gas power projects. We think Barcarina is sort of the sole import point in that northern region of Brazil. It's really the interesting place to import gas and then distribute it throughout the region. So a lot happening in Barcarina, and always, you know, that accelerates when we actually turn on So the Celsius is in the yard being converted into an FSRU now. We expect that to arrive at Barcarina and commission the terminal in Q4, so very excited for that. With Santa Catarina, we've had great progress on the physical construction side, so we're mechanically complete today, which is very exciting. It's an amazing terminal that, unlike Barcarina, connects into an existing pipeline system. And so we built the terminal as well as about a 33-kilometer pipeline system connect into the TBG pipeline system in South Brazil. So that's very exciting. And then that gives us kind of a number of opportunities that we're actually pursuing basically between now and the end of the year to sell gas to customers on the pipeline, to sell services to some of the pipeline companies, so who are looking for pipeline balancing and other sort of capacity services that we can provide. And then there's also a power story in the south as well. So power plants today that can't access enough gas or can't access gas at all. And then over time, the terminal to act as a main endpoint for gas into the sort of already gas-using region of south Brazil. So a lot more to come there, and that's really where we're accelerating our commercial activity around kind of mechanical completion, signing up contracts over the next few months, and getting that asset on line Q1 of 24. So, you know, a lot more to come in Brazil. That's really just the start. And, you know, let's spend more time on that in future calls.
spk11: Yeah, I mean, you know, the other thing which we don't probably do enough about is talk about the real impact that we have on the environment with the projects that we have. I mean, the Bacarena plant, which is, again, next to Norse Hydro, the biggest aluminum smelter in the world. Norse Hydro, I believe, is the largest buyer of oil in South America. And essentially what you're going to do is turn off the oil and turn on the gas. And by doing so, they will save billions of dollars in fuel costs, and they will save thousands and thousands of tons of CO2. We look across the portfolio, and something we have talked about doing, and I'll make an effort to get this out and on there. We have saved our customers billions and billions of dollars. I mean, the impact of a country like Jamaica switching into natural gas versus diesel these last number of years, the impact of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the country of Mexico, delivered diesel into these countries is roughly 2x what the price of delivered gas is. So it's billions and billions of dollars to these countries, and in many cases, their cost of fuel is their number one cost as a country. So, A, we've saved tremendous amounts of money by investing this critical infrastructure in getting into the countries. B, we've made them much, much more environmentally friendly. And, of course, we all want zero carbon. That's what everyone in the world wants. We want that as well, and that's a big part of our hydrogen initiatives and others. But this is a major, major stepping stone to doing so. You know, last thing, and I just want to get back to the whole question on the finance, the infrastructure. The average infrastructure company, so a data center company, a company with toll roads, a company with ports, is leveraged probably to the tune of six or seven or eight or even nine times leverage. Our assets are turning on now. Our leverage by the end of next year is roughly two times. It's a massively different complex, and the notion that it's somehow like highly leveraged is just so far from the actual reality of what an infrastructure company looks like. At $7 billion in infrastructure, we're an infrastructure company, and our average term of our contracts is 10 years. Again, the way I think about the valuation of this, and I'll just do it in simple terms, if I owned $7 billion in coffee shops, my forward sales of my coffee shops would be zero because no one's bought any coffee tomorrow. I have $7 billion in infrastructure where the next 10 years I'm expected to collect $10, $12, $15, $20 billion and growing beyond that. So it is essential infrastructure. It's very long-term customer cash flows. The vast majority of it is to investment-grade customers, and our leverage is very low. That's the economic proposition of the company. I just want to reinforce that because I think we've talked around that. I just want to make sure you hear from me kind of directly how I think of it. So anyhow, thanks.
spk07: Thank you. Just as a follow-up, I did want to ask about the hydrogen strategy, and maybe if you could give us a flavor for the level of interest from industrial customers in terms of the offtake potential for these projects. I know your first project is surrounded by industrial customers, and also I know Entergy's got a power plant they've talked about using hydrogen down there.
spk04: Hey, Martin, it's Ken Nicholson here. Good morning. I'll take that question. We actually included a few slides in the appendix of the materials. I think hydrogen broadly is something we're going to be talking more and more about as we make our way through the remainder of 2023 because there's a lot going on. Beaumont is doing great. You mentioned it. Yes, huge market, one of the biggest markets for hydrogen demand, so it's a great place for us to start our first facility. I would say the commercial conversations are going extremely well. Our deal with our technology provider is set for 100 megawatts of equivalent hydrogen production. Under that deal, we have an option to expand to 200 megawatts. I would say it is extremely likely that we will be exercising that option to expand. There's plenty of land available for the expansion and there's a heck of a lot of demand. The demand is coming from refineries and clean fuel producers, petrochemical companies, and other consumers of hydrogen. The site that we are... building on in Beaumont is on a nexus of multiple pipeline systems, including several hydrogen pipes. And so we have low cost distribution to the entire Beaumont, Port Arthur market. So going very well. I mean, that's the step one in Beaumont. At the same time, we're progressing a number of new facilities focused on the Northeastern U.S., Pacific Northwest, and an additional site on the Gulf Coast, not that far from Beaumont. Look, I think good progress being made. This really should be the largest pure play green hydrogen business and a first mover in what's an incredibly dynamic sector.
spk07: Great. Thank you. I'll turn it back.
spk08: And we'll hear from Ryan Levine at Citi.
spk06: Thanks for taking my question and squeezing me in. Just one clarifying question. What's driving your SG&A assumptions in your forecast time period, and what are the drivers, if any, variants to that?
spk11: I mean, the SG&A assumptions are all being driven by kind of an organic, grounds-up look at the businesses. When you start a business, run from scratch, and you build up the capabilities we've got, you bring in a lot of people, you bring in a lot of systems, a lot of process, and then over time you have a real chance to go back and reset it and kind of validate how you're organized, how you do things, what the costs are, et cetera. And we feel like there are significant potential for savings in our processes just as we mature as a company. I think actually the move into Puerto Rico for Hanera, And the associated people that are down there is also another big factor for us. What we've got now, a big operating company is essentially a power company. So many of our activities in terms of back office and whatnot, we think we can rationalize and centralize there. We just feel like there's a tremendous amount of potential in terms of normalizing that. And as you move out of this phase of this significant infrastructure spend, and again, you know, $6 billion or $7 billion in infrastructure spend in a handful of years, obviously there's a tremendous amount of building activity that goes on. That now goes down, you know, precipitously. And with that come down a lot of costs and one-off costs and everything else. And so you really can rationalize it. And I think that you'll see certainly next year for us a much more lean and refined SG&A process that actually generates, you know, the same kind of results at much, much lower costs.
spk06: Is there a certain region within the company that has the biggest opportunity to streamline or cut some of those costs?
spk11: It's really on the operations side. You think about it, you've got people who operate power plants and people who operate terminals and people who operate logistics stuff. And as you get more scale in each of these sectors, there should be a lot of cost efficiencies that come into it, and that's exactly what we think is going to happen. So just the, you know, probably the biggest single cost that I think is inefficient, but it's just the nature of how you grew the business, is on the shipping side, because you need a lot of ships to provide all the logistics that we've got. As we build out these new terminals in Brazil, as we actually modify and improve our terminal in Puerto Rico, you take out massive cost savings just by simply being more efficient in how you use those ships. I wish that it was easier to do from a standing start, but just the reality of it, in my experience, is that you need to build it up and be operationally efficient, and then you need to really optimize. That's the phase that we're going through, and I think you're going to see, over the next couple of quarters, you know, really, really significant changes in SG&A and significant changes of the shipping side as we get more efficient of those two areas.
spk06: Thanks for taking my question. You bet.
spk08: And that is our final question from our audience today. Mr. Pipitone, I will turn it back to you, sir, for any additional or closing remarks that you have.
spk09: Perfect. Thank you, Jim, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We remain available, as always, to answer questions. If you would please contact the investor relations team at ir.newfortressenergy.com. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your day. Great. Thanks, everyone.
spk08: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference, and we do thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer