New Era Energy & Digital, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New Era Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After this speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Due to the device, today's conference will be recorded. I would like to hand the conference to our first speaker today, Lincoln Tan, Investor Relations for New Era. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon. My name is Lincoln Tan, Investor Relations for New Era. Thank you for joining New Era's second quarter business update call. Joining me today are Charlie Nelson, Chairman and CEO, Ted Warner, President and CFO, Jose Rodriguez, COO, and Evan Pierce, Chief Development Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded and will be available on the investor relations section of our website. Please note that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views and expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to slide two of the accompanying presentation and our FTC filing, including our Form 10-Q filed on Friday for more information. So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Charlie Nelson.

Thanks, Lincoln, and thanks, everyone, for making the time. I want to start with the headline because I think it's a simple one this quarter. Our focus has been on the parts of this project where the outcome sits with us rather than with the counterparty. That means permitting, land, and site works. This quarter, we delivered on them. We now have our construction permits in hand, and we believe that that meaningfully reduces the development risk at the site. We expect to begin site grading in the coming weeks. Our phase two power partner has also filed a standard air permit supporting approximately 550 megawatts. This takes TCDC Phases 1 and 2 together to roughly 757 megawatts of gross capacity. On the commercial side, in-tenant negotiations and the joint venture with Stream continue to advance, along with Phase 1 power arrangements. The one I would highlight today is power. In early July, we were given the opportunity to step in and negotiate a PPA in our own NIC, and we are currently finalizing that PPA after a period of negotiation. On the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with $84.8 million of cash, And we have $270 million undrawn in the Macquarie facility. This more than covers our expected DCDC Phase 1 equity contribution. And Ted can cover this more in detail later. And then there's the team, which I want to spend a minute on because I think it's the one thing that's changed the most about this company in the last quarter. So when you look at this page, what I'd ask you to notice isn't the number of names, it's where they've come from. First, we have Jose Rodriguez, our Chief Operating Officer, who has run data center engineering and critical environment operations at Microsoft, AWS, and TikTok. And earlier in his career, he led engineering teams across gas-provided nuclear power at GE and TVA. He's built and operated the kind of facility that we're building. Then we have Evan Pierce, who joined as Chief Development Officer in June. 20 years in Hyperscale data centers and energy infrastructure, most recently running site and energy development for the Americas and EdgeConnex. He also comes from AWS and TikTok as well. He's helped us plan and deliver more than 5 gigawatts of capacity. We've got Michael Johnson, who joined at the same time as Evan, and he joined as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. He's got 30 years of legal and commercial work under his belt, and it's in this asset class. Most recently, he was at Corweave, and before that, Switch, covering leasing, power land acquisition, and construction contracting. Ted Warner, you know. Ted took on the expanded role of President and Chief Financial Officer in June and recently joined our board. We've got Darren Revell. who's our Chief Accounting Officer, and Andy Casazza as our Chief Corporate Officer. And finally, Will Gray, who founded this business, as you know, and took it from an idea to a listed company and is now the President of the Permian, where his relationships with landowners, operators, and the local community here are invaluable. Beyond our C-Suite hires, we've also expanded capability across management, and that includes the addition of James Shepherd, our VP of Site Selection, and Morgan O'Connor, our VP of Construction. James joins us from HDR, a global engineering forum in the data center space, and Morgan joins us from AWS, where she is the senior manager of construction. A project like TCDC is won or lost on execution, and you need people who have done it before. Six months ago, we were a company with a very good site. Today, we're a company with a very good site, a team that's built this before. And I'll say plainly, it's a privilege to lead them. Turning to the next page, I want to address the Texas backdrop entirely. Governor Abbott has recently issued a directive calling for stronger oversight of data center development in Texas. More transparency on power and water requirements, on infrastructure costs, on ownership, and on community impact. The principle behind this is that large-scale development should bring additional energy to Texas rather than push costs and burden onto Texans. We put out a release this week supporting it. I'd like to make the point plainly. We're not supporting this because we've been asked to. TCDC and our entire business was designed this way from the start. On power, our strategy is built around dedicated generation, including behind the meter. We are not competing for constrained grid capacity. We're supplementing Texas power, not drawing it away from anyone. On water, the design prioritizes closed-loop liquid cooling and reclaimed water, and we're evaluating independent and wastewater solutions to keep produced water in productive use. In the Permian, that matters. On community, we've got jobs, training, local programs, and community impact programs. And Evan can cover this more in detail. And on transparency, we're committed to engaging openly as the state's process move forward. We think clearer and higher standards are good for the industry and, frankly, good for us because we're already building to them. And finally, one related point, Phases 1 and 2 are islanded and behind the meter, so they are not dependent on ERCOT, BASA, or processes. The broader point here is that behind-the-meter designs answer the concerns behind the governor's directive structurally rather than through mitigation. That was a design choice made long before this directive and is increasingly what large customers are looking at. And with that, I'll hand it over to Jose to take you through the power positions across phase one and two.