Excelerate Energy, Inc.

hello and welcome to the accelerate energy first quarter 2022 earnings conference call my name is lauren and i'll be coordinating your call today there will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the presentation if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad i'll now hand you over to host craig hicks vice president investor relations to begin craig please go ahead thanks good morning and welcome to accelerate energy's first quarter earnings conference call on the call today

We have Accelerate's President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Kobos, Chief Financial Officer Dana Armstrong, and Chief Commercial Officer Daniel Bustos. Yesterday afternoon, we released our first quarter earnings press release and posted a presentation on the investor relations page of our website. I would like to remind everyone that during the call today, we will be making forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those expressed and implied in these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise them. During the call, we'll also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. We provided a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures at the back of the presentation posted on our website. With that, it's my pleasure to pass the call over to our CEO, Stephen Kobos.

Thanks, Craig. Welcome, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Accelerate Energy. I want to thank you all for joining us this morning for our first earnings call as a public company. Before we jump into the results for the quarter, I want to highlight a key aspect of Accelerate's business that remains core to our go-forward strategy. Since 2003, Accelerate has established a strong and proven reputation for providing flexible LNG solutions to markets and diverse environments around the globe. Although our business model today is much different than it was when we started out as a pure play FSRU business, one thing has remained constant over the years, and that has been our desire to open and expand new markets by providing flexible access to LNG. We believe having access to LNG is essential to assisting countries in their decarbonization efforts, while at the same time promoting economic growth and improving quality of life. Simply put, we are committed to changing the way the world accesses cleaner energy. It's an exciting time in our company's history, and frankly, it's an exciting time to be in the LNG industry. Thanks to the talented team at Accelerate, we've successfully executed our strategy and established substantial momentum in recent years. We've built a solid base business by focusing on operational excellence and providing our customers with the critical LNG regasification services that they need and expect from us. Our ability to deliver on our promises has gone a long way toward creating deeper inroads into our core markets that we believe offer us a real competitive advantage when vying for new opportunities. Looking ahead, we expect to build on our momentum by executing on the robust commercial opportunities that are now in front of us. As a premier LNG infrastructure provider, we are viewed around the world partner of choice for many countries looking to LNG as a means to create dependable energy systems. With that, let's turn to our results for the quarter. Our financial performance during the first quarter was solid and in line with our expectations. We delivered $13 million of net income and $71 million of adjusted EBITDA. Our bottom line results during the quarter were driven primarily by the performance of our regasification business, as well as natural gas sales in Brazil and New England. The long-term take-or-pay nature of our regasification contracts is the reason why our business model has proven to be so resilient over the years. We're pleased to have delivered these results during what is arguably the most dynamic shift in the energy market since the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. In addition to operating our day-to-day business, we were also successful in advancing our portfolio of commercial opportunities during the quarter. On the gas sales front, we once again delivered regasified LNG into New England via our Northeast Gateway deepwater port in Boston Harbor. Our gas sales at Northeast Gateway were completed at the end of February. Additionally, we continue to execute our gas sales business in Brazil by completing our first full quarter of natural gas sales at the Bahia Regasification Terminal. In February, We received approval from the Government of Bangladesh to begin commercial negotiations for the expansion of our EFIT terminal, Mohiskali LNG, the extension of our regasification agreement by five years to 2038, and an LNG supply agreement to sell up to 1.5 million tons per annum. In March, we were awarded a seasonal regasification charter for the exemplar at the Bahia Blanca Gasport Terminal in southern Argentina. The exemplar arrived to Bahia Blanca on May 15th, and she is currently providing regasification services during the winter in Argentina. Earlier this month, the Bangladesh government issued the approval and principle for the Pira LNG project. We are currently negotiating the integrated which includes an LNG supply agreement to sell 3 to 4 million tons per annum to the country. And just last week, we reached an agreement with the government of Finland for FSRU exemplar to provide up to 5 billion cubic meters per year of regasification capacity through a new regasification terminal in southern Finland. This important project illustrates the growing demand for flexible access to LNG as countries accelerate their efforts to enhance their energy security. Now I'd like to share with you some perspectives on the current state of the global LNG market. Over the first half of this year, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the global LNG market. The energy crisis in Europe and the war in Ukraine have greatly increased the appeal of having flexible access to LNG as a means of promoting energy reliability and enhancing energy security. The potential for further disruptions of Russian pipeline gas to the region resulted in LNG cargoes that ordinarily would have been destined for the Asia Pacific region being diverted to Europe. The increase in LNG volumes being imported to Europe have also driven spot LNG prices to record highs as countries who have historically been dependent on Russian gas are now competing for limited LNG supply. We expect the sequence of events to lead to a new wave of liquefaction projects taking FID, which will be additional to the more than 100 million tons per annum of new supply already announced through 2027. Europe is now faced with the challenge of replacing approximately 150 billion cubic meters per year of Russian gas in order to stabilize energy systems and enhance its collective energy security. We expect the increased use of FSRUs and integrated EFIT-style terminals across the region prove to be critical factors in Europe's ability to accomplish this goal. As a result, we expect European countries to accelerate their efforts to secure FSRUs and LNG infrastructure. We also expect the interest in Europe in energy security to have a spillover effect and increase the pace of decision-making for LNG consumers around the world. It's clear that customers who value flexible access to LNG understand the importance of moving quickly in today's market. As a reminder, we own approximately 20% of the global FSRU fleet. Most of our vessels are equipped with open and closed-loop capabilities, which make them ideal candidates for deployment in both warm and cold water environments. we have the largest FSRU fleet employed for regasification, with send-out capacity ranging from 600 to 1,200 million standard cubic feet per day. Our fleet is capable of providing a meaningful portion of the critical regasification capacity that Europe needs now and in the future, and we're confident that we can benefit from these market tailwinds. We are currently developing a portfolio of integrated growth projects in a variety of locations across our global footprint. In both existing and new markets for Accelerate, we are in active discussions with counterparties looking for FSRUs and LNG solutions to supplement their energy needs. We estimate that our projects in advanced development represent over $1 billion of capital investment opportunities, and we have additional projects in early stage development identified in Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East. Each quarter, as part of our earnings materials, we will provide incremental material updates on our projects as they are available. We'll also provide updates on our projects as they transition from advanced development to in execution. This quarter, you'll see that we've updated our project list to show that we expect the recently announced Finland project to commence service in the fourth quarter of 2022, and we've shifted the timing of the Filipinas project to the second half of 2024. Because we operate in an integrated business model, we have the flexibility to adjust the sequencing of our projects in response to changing market dynamics. And to accommodate the number of projects currently in our pipeline, we are assessing a range of options for increasing our tonnage and optimizing the deployment of our vessels. This approach assures that we are allocating our assets and resources to projects that maximize value for our shareholders. As we announced just last week, Accelerate executed a binding agreement with Finland's state-owned transmission operator, GasGrip, for long-term regasification services utilizing the FSRU exemplar. We believe this 10-year agreement will allow us to deliver enough regasified LNG capacity to replace completely both Finland's and Estonia's pipeline gas imports from Russia. This FSRU project will serve as a security of supply tool for the government of Finland and for the government of Estonia. We expect to place our FSRU exemplar in service in the fourth quarter of this year. The terminal will be located in southern Finland near the Baltic connector pipeline. In January, we received approval from the Albanian government to proceed with the second phase of the feasibility study for the Vlora LNG terminal and power plant project. In the same month, we were notified that our offer to procure two power barges on an emergency basis was accepted by the Albanian government. We have since executed the definitive commercial agreement for two years of service and expect the power barges to come online in the second half of this year. Under our previously announced MOU with Algas, Albania's natural gas transmission system operator, and with SNAM, one of the largest energy infrastructure owners and operators in the world, we're continuing to explore solutions to connect to the Flora LNG terminal with other European natural gas infrastructure. Flexible LNG projects like the Flora terminal have the potential to enhance energy security for Albania, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, and other countries in Europe's southern gas corridor. We expect the Flora LNG terminal and power plant project to come online in the second half of 2023. We've spoken before about our growth opportunities in Bangladesh. We continue to advance our proposed MLNG expansion project, which would increase natural gas deliveries to the country through our existing EFIT terminal in the southeastern part of Bangladesh. We are also advancing our PyRA project, which would support Bangladesh's growing economy by providing natural gas volumes to new and existing LNG customers in the southern and western parts of Bangladesh. By receiving an approval in principle, the PIRA project has reached a significant milestone in the Bangladesh approval process. We are negotiating the integrated deal with our counterparties and have high confidence that the project will proceed to execution as planned. We expect PIRA to be a game changer for Accelerate, as it would represent our largest deployment of capital in a project to date, and significantly increase the scale of our operations from a global perspective. Currently, the southern and western regions of Bangladesh receive approximately 100 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas. We expect the PIRA project to increase this amount by providing 500 million standard cubic feet per day of regas capacity at initial in-surface. And through its 200 kilometer 1 billion cubic feet per day onshore pipeline, we expect the PIRO project to be capable of providing natural gas to six existing combined cycle power plants in the region. In addition to these existing power plants, we are actively exploring opportunities for new power projects along the pipeline route. We expect to complete geophysical surveys and pipeline route selection for the project and to begin our front-end engineering and design study in the next six months. The PIRA project is targeting an in-service date in 2025. In addition to the LNG supply deal for the MLNG expansion project, we're negotiating a separate LNG supply deal for PIRA that would allow us to sell three to four million tons per annum of LNG to the country. On a combined basis, These two supply deals would allow us to sell approximately 1% of current global LNG supply annually to Bangladesh over the next 15 to 25 years. Before I turn the call over to Dana, who will walk through our financial results in more detail, I want to provide you with a summary of our investment thesis. Our primary objective remains to provide superior returns to our shareholders as an integrated LNG infrastructure company committed to addressing the lack of access to cleaner energy around the world. We expect to accomplish this goal by developing a high-quality portfolio of growth projects that provide attractive rates of return and enhancing our existing customer relationships and asset base while integrating further downstream into both our existing markets and new markets. In closing, we believe that Accelerate Energy is a compelling investment opportunity in the downstream LNG value chain. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Dana Armstrong.