NET Power Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the NetPower, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone requires operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Bryce Mendez, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to NetPower's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call today, we have our Chief Executive Officer, Danny Rice, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Mark Horsman, and our Chief Financial Officer, Lee Schumann. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release for the first quarter, ended March 31st, 2026. along with an updated investor presentation. Both are available on our investor relations website at ir.netpower.com. During today's call, our remarks will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those stated or implied by forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, which are discussed in our SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to Danny Rice, NetPower's Chief Executive Officer.

Danny Rice Thank you, Bryce, and good morning, everyone. I'm here today with Mark Horstman, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Lee Schumann, who recently joined us as our new Chief Financial Officer. Lee brings a strong track record in energy project finance, and we're glad to have him on board for this pivotal period in our company's history. Let me tee things up for Mark and Lee with some comments on the macro, and then we'll open the line for questions. Demand for power continues to grow, and I think everyone at this point understands the primary source of new power generation for the foreseeable future will come from natural gas powered equipment. The availability, the reliability, and scalability is unmatched. The thing that's different with AI versus other forms of load is the cost of power is very inconsequential to AI economics. That's mostly because the cost of power is only 10% of the total cost of AI. The lion's share of the cost are the GPUs, the networking costs, and data center shell. AI has become a race and will be decided by speed and scale, governed by availability of power, not the cost of power. Power projects, they've evolved quickly from waiting on the grid to now pursuing behind-the-meter power now. Generation mixes have evolved from large-frame turbines to hundreds of reciprocating engines strung together to get the same gross power output. Heat rate, overnight cost, and geography, they've all become far less important. In this market, speed, scale, and community acceptance matter most of all. Fortunately, the U.S. energy industry, particularly the one that revolves around natural gas, is ready to meet this demand. We are part of that ecosystem with a very specific mission to transform natural gas into the lowest cost form of clean, firm power. Clean power is moving down the list in terms of importance, but that's not to say if clean, reliable power was available in the same timeline in scale as the unabated options, there's a good chance it should be selected. So that's where we find ourselves today. We've put ourselves in an excellent position to deliver a clean, firm solution that can deliver first power this decade at a compelling price point with a pathway to under $100 a megawatt hour. This can be achieved in West Texas, where there's abundant low-cost gas and power generation and sufficient storage capacity are captured CO2 by pairing it with enhanced solar recovery. This proven application can underwrite the development of over 10 gigawatts of clean firm power generation for less than $100 a megawatt hour. Trying to do this elsewhere would be 20 to 30% higher cost of power, but the greatest cost would be longer timelines, greater risks, and less scale. What it will come down to for us is if we can deliver at speed and scale to attract demand today, and is the market willing to accept EOR as a viable pathway for carbon capture? The importance of energy availability is no more pronounced than it is today. As I just mentioned, we need as much natural gas for power generation as we can. Fortunately, we're in a great spot there. But separately, the global energy shock caused by the Iran war has cast a spotlight on the importance of energy security for natural gas and oil. The U.S., as the largest producer of both commodities, is mostly insulated from this supply shock so far. However, the situation has become an important lesson to people that the oil ecosystem isn't contained to just gasoline for cars. It's jet fuel. It's plastics. It's fertilizer. all irreplaceable at the scale and cost the world needs. So if modern civilization and quality of life is indispensable, then so too is oil, which sort of leads me back to the mousetrap that we're designing. We're designing a circular energy ecosystem that leverages the two most important energy sources we have on this planet, utilizing low-cost, reliable natural gas to produce reliable, low-cost power at massive scale, and using technology, to capture nearly all of its produced CO2 and then using this CO2 to help produce oil that wouldn't otherwise be recoverable. What stays behind in the reservoir forever is our captured CO2. We think that's the right solution for what the U.S. needs for the foreseeable future, more natural gas power generation, more domestic oil production, lower emissions overall. On the life cycle emissions point, our third party validated life cycle emissions analysis calculation or LCA, is estimated at roughly 210 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour, which compares extremely favorably versus an unabated combined cycle of around 440 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour in coal at north of 900 grams per kilowatt hour. So if improving the environment is important to you, this product checks that box. We'll continue our public push and campaign to move the buyer ecosystem toward our vision of clean firm power. The good news is we expect to have answers to this in the coming months. As Mark will talk about in a second, we've done everything we can from an engineering and technology standpoint to design a de-risk clean firm power solution. Before we move forward with committing any substantial amounts of capital to securing additional equipment, we need to ensure the customer demand is not just there, but is committed to our projects. So we're going through this process right now with our strategic advisor to help determine which prospective customers are aligned with our timeline and our vision. I can tell you, not everyone wants to be associated with oil production, and that's okay. But if no one wants to be associated with EOR, even in spite of the environmental and social benefits that come from this ecosystem we're creating, it's better that we learn that before we commit any additional capital to it. The projects we're advancing help make the world a better, cleaner, and safer place. But market acceptance, we think, will come down to three things. First, are we doing it fast enough? Speed really matters in this market. Second, are we doing it big enough? Scale also really matters in this market. And third, is it clean enough? And more poignantly, are customers aligned with our energy ecosystem of using natural gas to create clean from power and using the CO2 to produce more oil to help support the quality of life of modern society? To us, it's a no-brainer. But again, we're not the customer. We're only the creator of these solutions. So in the background, we're advancing detailed engineering and project financing, understanding they come together at the finish line with the commercial offtake. We're progressing all three simultaneously. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mark to update you on the great progress we've made bringing the solution to the doorstep of FID and commercialization. Mark?