Venture Global Q3 2026 Earnings Results & Report

Venture Global EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.96
• Consensus EPS: $0.50
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.46
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.16
• EPS Beat Rate: 5 of last 7 quarters

Venture Global Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $4.76 billion
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: +42.90%

Venture Global (NYSE:VG) is a U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) company that develops, constructs and operates facilities to produce and export LNG. Its activities include sourcing natural gas, processing it into LNG and delivering the fuel to customers in international markets, often through long-term supply agreements.

Founded in 2013, the company is based in Arlington, Virginia, and focuses its LNG projects on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Its facilities include Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines LNG, while it is also developing additional export capacity, including the proposed CP2 project.

Venture Global is led by co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mike Sabel. Its business serves global energy customers seeking natural gas supplies for power generation, industry and other uses.

Venture Global Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Venture Global posted a record $2.6 billion in Q3 adjusted EBITDA and raised 2026 EBITDA guidance to $10.0–$10.3 billion from $8.7–$9.1 billion, citing its market outlook and strong operating performance.
• Positive Sentiment: Plaquemines Phase 1 began commercial operations on October 31, within its original contract window, and has since loaded six customer cargoes. Management also moved CP2’s target for first LNG forward to July 2027 and expects its ramp-up to benefit from lessons learned at Plaquemines.
• Positive Sentiment: The company contracted more than 99% of its expected 2026 cargoes and signed 1.5 MTPA of new or increased offtake agreements during Q3, including agreements with ConocoPhillips and China Gas. Management said it expects further long-term deals while also considering midterm contracts to improve pricing.
• Neutral Sentiment: Venture Global is pursuing an AI power-and-data-center business, targeting initial capacity in late 2028 or early 2029 and 5 GW by the end of 2031. Management cited equipment arrangements and potential returns, but said customer contracts are not yet signed and development will depend on securing investment-grade commitments.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management described global LNG demand as strong and expects winter prices to remain volatile, potentially moving higher if Middle East supply remains limited. It also noted that market prices will remain a major driver of 2027 results, leaving earnings exposed to market conditions.

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Venture Global Inc. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your questions, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Ben Nolan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ben, please go ahead.

[Ben Nolan, SVP of Investor Relations at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Venture Global Inc.'s Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I am joined this morning by Mike Sabel, Venture Global's CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder, Jack Thayer, our CFO, and other members of Venture Global's senior management team. Before I begin, I would like to remind all listeners that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may contain forward-looking statements, and the actual results could differ materially from what is described in these statements. I encourage you to refer to the disclaimers in our earnings presentation, which is available on the Investor section of our website. Additionally, we may include references to certain non-GAAP metrics, such as consolidated adjusted EBITDA, which we may refer to as simply EBITDA during this call.

[Ben Nolan, SVP of Investor Relations at Venture Global Inc]

A reconciliation of these metrics to the most relevant GAAP measures can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation posted on our website. Finally, the guidance in this presentation is only effective as of today. In general, we will not update guidance until the following quarter and will not update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. I will now turn the call over to Mike Sabel.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to share our third quarter 2026 results. I will begin the call with an overview of our key accomplishments in the quarter and an update on the business. I will then make some remarks on the LNG industry before turning the call over to Jack, who will provide a more detailed review of our financial results, as well as updated guidance for 2026. Following all prepared remarks, we will open the call to Q&A. Beginning on page five, you can see several highlights for the quarter, including the company's largest-ever quarterly EBITDA of $2.6 billion and significant growth year-over-year in volumes, revenue, income from operations, net income, and EBITDA.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We are increasing our 2026 EBITDA guidance to $10 billion-$10.3 billion from $8.7 billion-$9.1 billion based on current market outlook for the remainder of the year. Jack will discuss these numbers in greater detail. We are also raising the low end of the expected cargo range by nine cargoes for 2026. Turning to page six, our operational and financial performance was very strong in the third quarter, and the capstone of that operational execution occurred on October 31, as we commenced commercial operations at Plaquemines Phase 1. The team delivered COD within the original window period of our Phase 1 contracts and has now loaded six SPA cargoes to customers since COD.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Although this milestone occurred after the end of the third quarter, we wanted to highlight this significant achievement and recognize our team, who successfully and efficiently completed complex and challenging rectification and commissioning work while sustaining our industry-leading safety record. Plaquemines Phase 1 commenced commercial operations just 53 months after FID, making it the fastest greenfield project of its size to progress from FID to COD and surpassing the record previously set by Calcasieu Pass. Commercial momentum continued in the third quarter as we executed 1.5 MTPA of new or increased LNG offtake agreements. We are pleased to add ConocoPhillips as a new customer with a 1 million ton per annum agreement, along with a new offtake agreement with China Gas for 0.5 MTPA. Additionally, just last week, one of our existing high-credit-quality customers increased their contracted volume by 0.5 MTPA.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Demand for long-term contracts remains robust, and we expect to add more high-credit-quality 20-year SPAs before the end of this year. As we announced last month, we have entered into definitive reservation agreements with GE Vernova, GE Grid Solutions, and Baker Hughes for up to 16 power islands and associated grid equipment, enabling us to develop an island mode data center solution as a natural extension of our LNG business. Building upon our LNG and power expertise to create the first industrial AI utility offering, we believe our existing ability to deliver near-term power, turnkey in-house engineering, procurement, and construction, and manage significant volatility in power loads without relying on the public grid can provide a differentiated and actionable solution for compute providers. Importantly, the agreement framework preserves Venture Global's flexibility on the timing and scope of future developments.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Also, any potential AI utility development would be separate from and complementary to Venture Global's existing LNG operations and would not impact the company's LNG sales agreements or other existing commercial commitments. The production and delivery of low-cost, clean American LNG for the next several decades remains our key strategic objective. Moving to page seven, we have now contracted almost all of our 2026 cargoes, with over 99% of the portfolio contracted from the 91% previously reported on our second quarter earnings call in August. The 124 cargoes produced in the third quarter were at the high end of our expected production range, and we are raising the low end of the cargo range for the full year by nine cargoes. During the quarter, we were completing Phase 1 commissioning and rectification activities at Plaquemines, which did modestly impact production during the quarter.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Moving into the fourth quarter, as anticipated, we have already seen an improvement in production. We will provide further 2027 production and pricing guidance on our fourth quarter call early next year, and we are maintaining our 2027 outlook for 575 to 625 total cargoes next year, which includes 10 to 20 cargoes from CP2 during the third quarter, as we now expect production there to begin mid-2027. Taking a closer look at CP2 on page eight, construction continues to progress, and we are moving forward the target of first LNG to July 2027. That would be approximately 24 months after CP2 phase one FID, and meaningfully sooner than our previous industry record of 29 months from FID to first production.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

With each phase of our projects, our team has improved efficiency and speed to first production, which has consistently proven beneficial during this period of historically tight global LNG. For reference, Plaquemines produced 234 cargoes in its first year of operations. Building on lessons learned at that facility, we believe CP2 can ramp production even more quickly. On page nine, we discuss our bolt-on expansions at CP2 and Plaquemines. For the CP2 phase three, we are working with our legacy banks and expect to have financing in place soon, positioning us to make a final investment decision on the 10 MTPA expansion in early 2027. For the Plaquemines expansion, as previously disclosed, we are targeting FID of the first phase around mid-2027.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

To facilitate the expansion, we expect to build a new pipeline from North Louisiana called Cloud Connector to provide gas to support our Plaquemines LNG expansion, adjacent AI Utility site, and enable enhanced production from the original two phases of Plaquemines. On page 11, you will find our insights on the state of the LNG market. Current prices are a reflection of both increased global natural gas demand and fewer cargoes coming out of the Middle East. Gas storage levels, especially in Europe, have grown at a slower-than-normal pace since summer, as Europe consumed large quantities of natural gas to support power demand. Since July, monthly LNG imports into Western Europe have surged by 45%. Yet, even with increased LNG imports, inventory builds have lagged typical levels, as EU gas storage is at its lowest early November level since 2013, pointing to stronger underlying demand growth.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Europe has been using gas as a balancing fuel to offset variability from other sources of electricity. Severe droughts led to lower river levels and limited the cooling capacity of nuclear power plants, contributing to a 7% year-over-year decline in electricity generation from EU nuclear facilities. Looking ahead to the winter, wind power represents approximately 20% of Europe's electricity generation, and forecasts for the next several months call for volatile wind conditions, with periods of low wind alternating with high-output storm periods. This outlook underpins potentially significant natural gas demand during the heating season. In Asia, many markets looking to manage geopolitical risk have increased coal consumption as an alternative to buying spot LNG. The switching has pressured coal inventories and contributed to sharply higher coal prices. As highlighted by recent Indonesian coal force majeure events, coal is providing less relief.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

As a result, LNG markets in Asia and throughout the world are becoming increasingly inelastic. These examples illustrate several drivers of near-term demand. If LNG volumes coming from the Middle East remain limited, we expect LNG prices to remain volatile this winter and potentially move higher from currently elevated levels. Notably, Plaquemines production this past year offset roughly one-third of the global supply impact stemming from disruptions in the Middle East, helping stabilize prices for consumers globally during this period of volatility. As CP2 targets starting production in July, Venture Global's LNG projects will continue to offset potential broader supply disruptions, support global demand, and act as a reliable stabilizing force in the market. While LNG prices remain high, energy buyers have taken an all-of-the-above approach encompassing fuel switching, demand management, and utilization of storage.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We have not seen permanent demand destruction or a shift away from LNG as a strategically significant energy feedstock. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than continued demand for new long-term contracts and the robust growth of new LNG import project development activity. As shown on page 12, we count more than 30 incremental projects that have been announced and are in various stages of development since the beginning of the year. While not all of these projects may materialize, demand for power and LNG is unquestionably growing. At least in the case of Venture Global, I think it is fair to characterize demand for long-term contracts as stronger than it has ever been, particularly from Asian buyers.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We believe this strong contract appetite reflects continued growth in global energy consumption throughout the world and the value proposition of buying long-term, fixed-margin Henry Hub-linked LNG at prices that make electricity affordable and available in all market cycles. Turning to page 14. As announced earlier in October, we entered a power frame agreement with GE Vernova and Baker Hughes for up to 16 power island units. Each island has gas turbines, heat recovery steam generators, and steam turbine generators, which gives us about 720 MW of combined cycle capacity per island. We have also entered a second frame agreement with GE Grid Solutions for associated gas-insulated switch systems, power transformer, and equipment necessary to manage the load volatility inherent to compute.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

These new frame agreements provide for incremental power supply optionality above and beyond the remaining equipment available under our long-term Baker Hughes master agreement, which governs the supply of key power and liquefaction equipment that has successfully underpinned our growth for over a decade. Under these contracts, we plan to order one power plant before the end of this year and a second one early next year. As we secure offtake contracts with investment-grade customers, we have the option to build out further power and data center infrastructure. We intend to develop this business with the same disciplined approach we have always taken. This means advancing incremental capacity alongside investment-grade customer commitments and maintaining a clear focus on attractive risk-adjusted returns.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We expect the first 250 MW to come online in late 2028, are targeting 5 GW by the end of 2031, and have the potential to reach 10 GW by 2034 across our two sites in Cameron Parish and Plaquemines Parish. On page 15, if you look at the AI ecosystem on the left, there are five necessary contributing layers of energy, infrastructure, chips, models, and application. Our AI utility offering is focused on two of the most difficult layers to deliver, infrastructure and energy. We believe our ability to provide both on an integrated basis can offer a differentiated turnkey solution at scale. We view this as additive to our current LNG business and as a natural extension of what we have done since Venture Global's founding, successfully and quickly building and operating power equipment and infrastructure at a massive scale.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We already have approximately 15,000 acres of land and access to roughly 13 BCF per day of pipeline capacity, making us one of the largest gas buyers in the country. We have over 4 GW of island mode power currently operating or in development on our own private grid and a 1,000-person in-house execution and EPC team. We built ports and fabrication yards, developed supply chain and quality control teams, and executed thousands of scopes across $70 billion of industrial assets. Compared with our LNG projects, power for compute is a relatively simpler and narrower scope. Data centers place heightened demand on power systems as their load is not steady. Power demand can rise or fall sharply, which creates a real reliability challenge for most power providers, necessitating utility grid connectivity to manage this volatility.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Venture Global's design is built to meet this volatility challenge, as our industrial energy grid already reliably absorbs significant load swings in island mode in our liquefaction facility operations today. For potential customers, that adds up to a dramatically better and more reliable product, one that offers speed and scale. We believe initial compute capacity could be available in late 2028 or early 2029 and could scale to 5 GW by the end of 2031. Also, our island mode solution solves for the challenge of connecting to the public power and water grid, bypassing interconnectivity hurdles. Venture Global's AI utility would have no added cost to local consumers. Our solution is designed for reliability, with a target of greater than 99.9% uptime, supported by multiple layers of redundancy.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We can achieve all this with no impact on the local community, as we don't rely on the local electric grids or water utilities. Further, we are well capitalized and do not expect to need any outside equity to fund our current build plans. Operationally, this is a natural fit with our existing construction program, which should be ramping down from large-scale greenfield operations at CP2 and focused on the smaller brownfield scopes at CP2 and Plaquemines as construction begins to support our AI utility offering. Customer interest to date supports our view that this is a low-risk, high-value, differentiated market offering. We are working hard to secure commercial agreements and are excited about the opportunity to deploy our unique combination of experience, skills, infrastructure, equipment, and capital in this rapidly growing market that needs partners capable of delivering this one-of-one turnkey offering.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jack Thayer, who will review the quarterly performance, provide an overview of our project performance, and discuss our updated financial guidance.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you, Mike, and good morning to those of you on the line. I will be starting on slide 17. I will be referring to the Venture Global Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. The 10-Q is available on our website, and some of the key results are summarized on page 17 of the presentation. During this call, I will highlight results we believe are salient to this audience, and I encourage you to review the entirety of our financial statements in detail. Beginning with revenue, our top line was $4.8 billion for the third quarter of 2026, a $1.4 billion or 43% increase from $3.3 billion during the equivalent period in 2025.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

This increase was driven by $827 million from higher sales volumes, with 466 TBTU in the third quarter of 2026 compared with 373 TBtu in the third quarter of 2025, and $580 million from higher net LNG sales prices, with $10.16 per MMBtu earned in Q3 2026 compared with $8.92 per MMBtu earned in Q3 2025. Our income from operations was $2.3 billion in the third quarter of 2026, a $1 billion or 74% increase from $1.3 billion in the third quarter of 2025. The improvement was primarily driven by higher sales volumes and prices. Operating and maintenance costs increased $58 million year-over-year, primarily due to increased commissioning work at Plaquemines and expenses related to the ramp-up of operations and readiness at CP2. G&A expenses increased slightly year-over-year, attributable to higher headcount.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Our development costs were lower than in the same period last year because, similar to last quarter, we were able to capitalize more costs associated with our pipeline and bolt-on expansions. Our net income attributable to common stockholders, which we refer to as net income, was $2.5 billion for the third quarter of 2026, a $2.1 billion or 493% increase from $429 million in Q3 2025. The most impactful driver of higher net income was increased volume and prices. In the quarter, we also recognized a $1.4 billion non-cash gain on interest rate swaps, which was slightly offset by higher income tax expense. Shifting to consolidated adjusted EBITDA, we earned $2.6 billion during the third quarter of 2026, a $1.1 billion or 69% increase from $1.5 billion in Q3 2025.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

This increase was driven primarily by higher sales volumes as well as higher LNG sales prices, net of the cost of feed gas. Similar to last quarter, our EBITDA margin was once again 54%, as higher volumes and better pricing were not accompanied by commensurate increases in costs. in September, we secured a new $3 billion revolving credit facility for general corporate purposes, including to fund early project costs at the CP2 and Plaquemines bolt-on expansions. Through September, we also utilized project distributions to repay $1.8 billion of CP2 phase one equity bridge drawn capacity. We expect to repay the remaining $0.2 billion balance of the $3 billion facility in Q4 2026. Bolstering our liquidity, we also finished the quarter with $5.1 billion of cash and restricted cash.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

As you can see on page 18, we are providing a consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $10 billion-$10.3 billion for 2026, which is up from $8.7 billion-$9.1 billion when we reported in August. This range contemplates a current market liquefaction fee of $21-$22 per MMBtu for cargoes remaining to be sold in 2026. On average, if the fixed liquefaction fees over the remainder of 2026 increase or decrease by $1 per MMBtu, we expect our consolidated adjusted EBITDA range to adjust accordingly by $20 million-$30 million, reflecting an LNG portfolio where 99% of our expected 2026 cargoes are now contracted. We plan on providing 2027 EBITDA guidance on our next quarterly earnings call.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

It is worth reminding you all that there will be an impact to contracted phase one margins from the start of our long-term contracts at Plaquemines. We also expect continued basis impact on the gas used at that facility, and there are likely to be some costs associated with ramping up the startup of CP2 and the development of our AI utility business. Given the positive market backdrop and our progress on CP2 construction, we are optimistic about another year of strong results. I will now turn the call back over to Mike.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you, Jack. At this point, we would like to open up the call for Q&A.

[Operator]

We will now begin our question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from the line of Praneeth Satish of Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Good morning.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thanks. Good morning. Maybe can you walk us through how quickly CP2 ramps after first LNG? I guess looking at your full year 2027 guidance, it implies a big step up in the fourth quarter of 2027. Just trying to figure out how much of that is seasonality versus the CP1 debottleneck versus the CP2 ramp. Just anything on the slope of production at CP2 would be helpful.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Sure. No, the best guide is to look at the ramp-up for Plaquemines, which in the script we just read here, we reminded that we produced 234 cargoes in the first 12 months for Plaquemines. We studied, as we do very carefully, the opportunities to improve on that, and we think there are opportunities for improving the ramp-up for CP2 relative to Plaquemines. But that ramp-up for Plaquemines we view as a really good baseline opportunity. Given the massive scale of CP2, we think the opportunity there is significant.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Mike, we also will see some improvement at Calcasieu Pass in the fourth quarter as we benefit from debottlenecking that we're doing there during the summer.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

During the summer, yeah.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe switching gears to the power side. Obviously, a big opportunity for you guys, but can you just help us understand how you're thinking about financing for the first set of power islands, and really it's on the debt side. I guess we've seen financing costs widen for some of the data center projects where they don't yet have customers fully committed. Do you think that is a risk to the pace of your build-out and maybe points to something of a more measured build-out as you wait on customers? Or do you think the economics are still strong even with an increase in financing costs?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

No, the margins are still fantastic, even with higher financing costs, assuming that we're able to contract on a triple net lease basis in line with where others are contracting in the market. When you look at the timing of the first compute that we think is possible to bring on, matching with the delivery schedules of the equipment, is late 2028, early 2029. It's out a couple of years. We're looking to build in 250 MW compute building increments, then ramping up after over the course of 2029 and into 2030. There's a reasonably gentle ramp-up in what that cost would look like that spreads into really mostly into 2029 and 2030, which matches up nicely with the big ramp-up in cash generation by the LNG business.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We think that timing is going to turn out to be well-suited for the buildup in cash that we expect as we more than double the production capacity, bringing online CP2 and the first bolt-on for CP2 and the first bolt-on of Plaquemines. The first power plants, we will begin to place some orders for those, as we have guided to, shortly. The payments for the power plants are spread out over a few years as those get built. We believe we purchased some at a great price. We have not disclosed individual prices of the power plants, but we believe we purchased them at a great price that makes them very attractive economically. The first power plants we can deploy into the bolt-on expansion area for LNG. We think we have really nice kind of optionality on how we take advantage of the value from those power plants.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Again, we think the market, particularly for, we know the market for power plants that deliver in the next few years is extremely attractive, just given the demand of hyperscalers and utilities, not just in the U.S. but globally, chasing power generation equipment.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of John Mackay of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Morning, John.

[John Mackay, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Hey. Morning, Mike and team. Thanks for the time. Maybe picking up on that last question a little bit, but just thinking about the remaining LNG build-out. Can you just remind us the capital you need to fund the remaining 85 MTPA? Then any kind of guidance you can give us on the cash generation you'd expect to make over that period? Just trying to think of completing the LNG build-out as you kind of make this shift into the data center side. Thank you.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Sure. The next financing is going to be for the bolt-on for CP2 Phase 3, which is adding 12 LNG trains and approximately 10 million tons of additional production capacity. The financings are going to look generally similar to what we've done, which will be a combination of bank construction debt at the project level and other debt facilities at the project level. A little bit of contributed equity from cash equity from the parent. We do not expect to raise any parent-level equity or debt, like has been the case for the previous transactions. The bolt-on for Plaquemines, we're guiding to the first half of next year. The first phase of that is adding eight trains, so it's a little bit fewer trains in the next phase for the bolt-on at Plaquemines.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

That number of trains matches up nicely with how it integrates with the balancing plant for phases one and two at Plaquemines. That financing sequence we expect to have done by the middle of next year, before we begin to shift over to the financings for the build-out of the AI compute opportunity. Again, provided we're signing customer contracts to match up with that growth. The cumulative EBITDA from today for 2027, 2028, and 2029 is significant. My view is that it's going to, in aggregate, be in excess of $30 billion, depending on your price assumption on the sale of cargoes in the future. We have significant retained earnings accumulation that supports the LNG buildup, plus any incremental equity to support financing for contracted data center buildings, and also amortization of debt and a nice cash cushion.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Today, if you took note from a few minutes ago, Jack showed that we have today $5.3 billion of cash. While we've been growing our business significantly in the last year, adding $18 billion of assets and increase in production capacity, we've also been able to manage the cash balance attractively.

[John Mackay, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate that. Maybe just thinking about the LNG build-out, but pulling the macro in a little bit, can you just share some of your thoughts on what the contracting environment looks like right now? We've seen a new buyer come into the U.S. contract market that's a little different from what we've seen before. Any kind of thoughts you can share on the general contracting environment and what your appetite to sign new long-term deals is right now? Thanks.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Yeah, no, it's an extremely attractive 20-year market, or active 20-year market for us right now. Probably as good as we've seen since the beginning. We're expecting to sign more 20-year deals this year and next year. The market has shifted to, for the moment at least, to more buyers coming from Asia than Europe, which is a pivot from the last couple years. One that we expected, but has arrived now. We feel good that we'll be able to layer into the portfolio the additional 20-year SPAs that we want. We also think that we'll see increasing appetite for midterm deals as well, five-year to 10-year deals. We'll probably look to add some of those next year as well.

[John Mackay, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

That's clear. Appreciate the time. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Spiro Dounis of Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Good morning.

[Spiro Dounis, Analyst at Citi]

Thanks, Operator. Hey, morning, Mike. Want to just follow up actually on that last question with respect to contracting activity. Mike, maybe level set us on what's still needed to commercialize the next expansions at Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines. The slides point to about 30 MTPA still available. So wanted to get your sense on how you're thinking about what that looks like post-FID and how much you would be willing to contract out.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We are in a good position to finance today what we need to, or we already have what we need to do the FID for the CP2 bolt-on. It is a brownfield expansion. We expect to be able to turn that incremental 10 million ton or 10 trains that are inside the wall for the phase three fairly quickly. It creates extra opportunities for how we finance that project. We expect and plan to have more this year, some of which will be assigned to that bolt-on expansion and others that will shift over to the Plaquemines bolt-on. For the Plaquemines bolt-on, we could finance that one ahead of additional 20-year deals. But given the cadence of our activity, we expect to have two or three more, or more to support the timing of the FID for Plaquemines. We expect to have all that contracted on a multi-year basis.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

A 5 to 20-year basis is probably the likely range. We have a heavily weighted portfolio today, heavily weighted to 20-year deals. So our overall portfolio length is really long, and we would like to add more midterm deals so we can add more price and still end up with a very long term. So of that remaining 30 million tons, out of the I cannot remember what page number that is, Ben, but out of the 85 we have coming online in the next few years, those will be done on a blend of five-year deals, 10-year deals, 20-year deals, two-year deals, that we have a few years to blend those contracts in. We are not going to rush out and do them all in the next few months and quarters. We will spread them out to leg into kind of a blended term.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

If we did half of that on a midterm basis, we are still going to have a contract length that is 13, 14, 15 years in term, which is still a long-life portfolio.

[Spiro Dounis, Analyst at Citi]

Got it. Appreciate the color on that. Switching gears back over to the power side, and just to focus on the power returns, I guess, and not sure how much you could say right now, but can you talk about the relative returns on power and how that compares to LNG and where some of those trade-offs might be? And similarly, is there an easy way to think about the unit economics and CapEx on each of these 250 MW units?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

So, the returns, if we just did power and did not also build the data centers, might be a little bit higher, but we would not be deploying that much capital. The returns on a combined basis of power plus data center buildings is higher than the returns on the LNG side, provided that we are contracting in line with where others are contracting in the market. It is not an either/or, though. We are going to continue building the LNG, and we are going to build out our grids in order to support data center demand. So, we think it is a very attractive addition, again, if we are able to execute the triple net lease contracts. And we think that it will provide a really nice kind of a blend of contracts that are also long-term but do not have the same commodity price exposure.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

As we layer those contracts in, it will blend out that volatility, we think, be very attractive for shareholders.

[Spiro Dounis, Analyst at Citi]

Great. I'll leave it there. Thank you, guys.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Manav Gupta of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Good morning.

[Manav Gupta, Analyst at UBS]

Morning. Hey, Mike and team, I'm trying to understand as I look at slide 24, what is, in your opinion, the optimal mix of contracted versus uncontracted capacity as you are trying to enter a new year? Let's say, where would you like to be somewhere in December 2027 and then again December 2028? As you enter those years, what would be the right mix of contracted versus uncontracted capacity?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Not all the volume, obviously, in these charts exists today. A lot of it's in construction with CP2 and in development with the bolt-ons. We don't have to do it all this quarter and next quarter, and we think that wouldn't be smart to do. We have time to blend in the contracts. We have over 50 million tons of contracts today, almost all on a 20-year basis. We have room in our portfolio to capture more price by doing shorter than 20-year deals. We expect the vast majority of this to all be contracted in the next couple of years, but we'd like to do more midterm deals to blend down the 20-year term and hopefully achieve a higher price. In the market today, as I'm sure you know, as you go shorter in contracted term, the prices are higher.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We have room to add a decent amount of midterm deals and still have a very long portfolio of contract term. It's difficult to give an exact blend today of where we're going to be a year from now and two years from now, because we don't know the market price to be able to do it. Obviously, we're always reacting to the market price. We think that the fundamentals that are true in most commodity markets will continue to be the case here, which is replacement cost drives the market price over time. We think that construction costs are going to continue to inflate. We think that interest rates are more likely to stay the same or go higher than go lower in the next couple of years, and that signals higher replacement costs.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

And so, we think over a multi-year period supports increasing price opportunity that we want to blend into over time.

[Manav Gupta, Analyst at UBS]

Perfect, sir. My quick follow-up is on the power side. A lot of companies are trying this. I am trying to understand from Venture Global's perspective, what are the strategic advantages that your company has? Why would you feel that the AI data centers would like to partner with you? What advantages can you bring to the table versus some of the multiple solutions that are out there? Thank you.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Sure. Well, one of the big challenges that exists in the compute market today is really the scarcity of electricity being available to power the buildings and the compute. A big part of that is the ability or the difficulty in connecting to utility grids as they have in the past. That is political and regulatory. The other component of it is the ability to manage the scale and variability of the compute loads as the compute utilization goes up and down, sometimes in milliseconds. So, the market and response, as we have all seen over this year, is to start to build power plants separate from the utility grids and contribute that power to the grids.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

The data centers largely remain connected to the grids in parallel to connecting with the incremental power, which means that they continue to use throughput capacity in the transmission lines and the grids of the utilities, which we think will remain to be a large impediment to the growth of the market. In our case, we have developed over many years and built and now operate multi-gigawatt grids that manage the variable load of our LNG facilities and have demonstrated to be very reliable in managing that variability and providing high-quality power for, in our case, LNG production. So for us, we can expand our existing grids to provide significantly increased power generation combined with data center buildings to support the compute demand, all in island mode. So we are not connecting and reliant on the utility grids.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We have no impact on the community's grids or available power generation or prices, and we are not reliant on the water utilities either. So in an environment where we think that is one of the primary challenges to growth, we think we solve entirely. We also have built out, as you know, our own execution team that engineers, procures, builds, commissions, and operates these complex electrical grids. So we think it is including gas supply. So we think it enables us to be a turnkey solution on two of the layers of the AI ecosystem, energy, and infrastructure, and provide very, very high-quality product for the hyperscaler customers.

[Manav Gupta, Analyst at UBS]

Thank you so much.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Jean Ann Salisbury of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Good morning.

[Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst at Bank of America]

Hi, good morning. I know it's early, but do the midterm election results affect how you see the power frame opportunity in the geographic areas that you're targeting, which from slide 14 looks like it's basically all Louisiana? Could you actually see Louisiana potentially gain market share in data centers from this?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Yes. We think Louisiana has a significant advantage in the market. For the moment, it seems like they might be the only store open on Sunday here for data centers. Combined with our offering, which is island mode, we think that it creates a significant scarcity value at scale for how we can execute this. It appears that the other states are going to take a while to decide what they want the new rules to be for expanding powered data centers and compute. Louisiana, particularly with what we've already executed and how large an investor we are today in Louisiana, is open for business, and we think Louisiana has a great opportunity to significantly add to their existing gas businesses in the state and become a major supplier of compute in the U.S.

[Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst at Bank of America]

That makes sense. Thank you. A follow-up on slide 14. Thank you for the split of your outlook for the power frame business into Cameron Parish versus Plaquemines Parish. Currently, there's some pretty severe gas constraints going into Plaquemines Parish, which I guess would just get worse if you added power and Plaquemines bolt-on. Do you think that you need to see pipelines come in to fix those constraints before you'll be able to really get customers to sign up there?

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Jean Ann, this is Jack. Importantly, there are two pipes that are coming online in 2028 that will address some of that constraint that we've been seeing in our basis projections. I would add that the Cloud Connector pipe that Mike announced in his prepared remarks is really an avenue for us to secure significant gas. That pipeline will ultimately go up to Perryville. You've seen increasingly improved connectivity heading west to east as projects have been announced that look to develop not just the Permian assets and the gas associated with them coming over, but also the development of the Western Haynesville and the Shelby Trough, and that gas coming over as well. I'd also note that production within Haynesville has been incredibly high volumes in what has been a low-price environment.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

That's always viewed as the most price-sensitive market, but we see developers and upstream producers earning attractive returns in a low-price environment, and we expect them to continue to maintain their production and, in fact, grow their production as new demand comes online.

[Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst at Bank of America]

That makes sense. Thank you.

[Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Chris Robertson of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Good morning.

[Chris Robertson, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, Mike. First question on the Power Island AI side. I think the power offering is pretty clear, but can you talk more about the additional infrastructure offering that you guys will be providing, including some buildings and other design elements? Can you talk about, was this engineering work already done in-house, or are you still developing plans around that?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Sure. No, the infrastructure offering is really just the data center buildings in combination with the integrated power. That's the bulk of it. Obviously, it includes cooling systems as well. There's an envelope inside the building where we hand off to the customers of the compute. When we sign these, we're signing triple net leases on the powered buildings. The envelope inside is going to depend on who the customers end up being. We're building, our target is to build incrementally 250 MW compute buildings. We have room to have multiple customers between buildings, if that's how it turns out. It's possible there would be different designs within the buildings.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We manage, as we build on the LNG infrastructure side, teams of multiple subcontractors, and it will be similar for the data center buildings where we tap into specialist contracting firms that provide different aspects of the construction and engineering for specialized systems. That is exactly the same way we do it at a larger scale on the LNG side. But the power systems we are very familiar with, which are the gas-insulated switch buildings, the E-houses, the transformers, and the power generation itself is nearly identical. We will be adding layers of batteries and aeroderivatives, but we, in our LNG facilities, have networks of battery systems and aeroderivatives as well, designed to manage variable load. So, it is very, very similar.

[Chris Robertson, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Got it.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Very, very similar.

[Chris Robertson, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

That is clear. Maybe one for Jack, or Mike, you could probably answer this as well. But 2027 will be the first full year of commercial operation at both CP as well as Plaquemines in terms of the base production. Can you talk about maybe expectations around what percentage of full-year EBITDA or revenues for 2027 will be derived from the contract agreements versus any spot or commissioning volumes?

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Chris, in terms of 2027, the split will be given that phase 2 will come online the middle of next year for Plaquemines in COD format, and those contracts will start. We would still anticipate that the prevailing market prices will be the major driver of our earnings and EBITDA during 2027. That forward curve looks attractive at current prices. As we play through the winter here, we anticipate that bow waving into 2027, as Europe in particular addresses a storage shortfall.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

I would pause and think about the data we talked about earlier on the call, which is the ramp-up for the first 12 months of Plaquemines was 234 cargoes, and how hard we have worked looking for opportunities to make improvements in that ramp-up schedule. Obviously, the guidance we just gave to vectoring towards a July 1st LNG date. It is a pretty significant move, moving the first LNG date from the winter into the summer there, to the middle of the year.

[Chris Robertson, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Thank you, Mike. I will turn it over.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Elvira Scotto of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Jack Thayer, CFO at Venture Global Inc]

Morning.

[Elvira Scotto, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Hey. Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You talked a little bit about this already, but with the new AI data center initiative, obviously, given your expertise in power, this seems to make a lot of sense. But how should we think about capital allocation? How are you deploying human and other resources to LNG versus power? What are the latest thoughts on that sort of getting to investment grade in light of this new business, and then just capital return to shareholders?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Wow, those are a lot of great questions. First of all, in terms of resource timing, we're actually getting ready to come off peak at CP2 already, which, when you think about our guidance on when we're going to get to first LNG, would be expected. In the bolt-on at CP2, a lot of that activity happens at the factory. The incremental 12 LNG trains, the first bolt-on train is going to be the 91st train that we commission and turn on. That's being built over in Italy, and they'll roll over and slide onto foundations, the power plant we ordered a long time ago. It's a similar power plant. We have very little pipe rack for the phase 3.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

When you compare, then the Plaquemines bolt-on looks like it's going to just trail by about six months, and that's eight trains in the first phase of that. It's a very manageable execution that kind of just staples on to the remaining activity. The big ramp-up for the data centers, again, if and when we sign off-take contracts, happens really more, some in 2028, but really more 2029 and 2030. It gives us a great scope to apply this amazing team, this giant team that we've built, that has, we think, an amazing set of skills and capacity. From an execution allocation perspective, this blends in really nicely with kind of the tapering of the most intense LNG construction and commissioning activity. That lag in timing also plays very nicely into the deployment of capital.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Again, if we are able to sign triple net leases, that capital requirement pushes out into 2029 and 2030. The 250 MW buildings, the rest of the industry builds those today is kind of in the $5 billion-$7 billion range, not including the chips. We are going to do this, if we are able to do this with investment-grade counterparties. The incremental capital requirements for those are manageable relative to our size, particularly out in 2028, 2029, 2030, as we are significantly ramping up production and cash flows. We load, give or take, 43 cargoes a month now, and 24 months from now, that will pass 90 a month. We have a very significant buildup of cash.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We think it is a really nice way to deploy a lot of extra capital that we think actually will improve our path to investment grade as we increase contracted long-term sales of the triple net leases, and hopefully significantly increase our cash generation and earnings. We have, in coming years, cumulatively tens of billions of dollars of cash generation. We have plenty of room to manage to investment grade at project levels and at the parent level, pay down debt, and buy back stock if we think the stock price remains attractive and too low from our perspective.

[Elvira Scotto, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you. Just in terms of, I know you announced this recently, but presumably you have been working on this for a while, but can you give us a sense of just the appetite from hyperscalers? Have you already started having discussions with some counterparties? What is the sort of typical lead time from customer commitment to revenue commencement?

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We have been working on this for seven to eight months now, and only announced it recently as we executed, I think three weeks ago now, the expansion of the frame agreement with GE. We really needed to have that in place to have the most serious conversations with potential customers, because the scarcity in the market has been the ability to actually acquire the near-term power generation equipment and the switchgear and transformers. That needs to be in place for not just us, but any counterparty to close out deals with customers on specific schedules. On the prediction and timing, we have never signed a triple net lease before, so we are not experts on predicting the timing of those. We have done, give or take, $140 billion of long-term contracts with LNG customers. So we are able to give you better predictions on that side.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

We want to remain very conservative on comments on timing. We know we can execute it. We now know we have secured the supply chain to match up with our execution capacity. We have room to do it. We have permitted for 10 years similar infrastructure in our locations. We are in a great state to do it. We have the capital capacity to do it, but we have not signed the deals yet. That is what we are working on.

[Elvira Scotto, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Thank you.

[Operator]

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder, for closing remarks.

[Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder at Venture Global Inc]

Great. Thanks for everyone's time this morning. We are extremely pleased with the progress that we made this quarter. We're hard at work safely executing our current construction and growth projects, and look forward to speaking to many of you in coming days and weeks, and are excited for our next quarterly call already. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Ben Nolan, SVP of Investor Relations
• Mike Sabel, CEO, Executive Co-Chairman, and Founder
• Jack Thayer, CFO

Analysts

• Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo
• John Mackay, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Spiro Dounis, Analyst at Citi
• Manav Gupta, Analyst at UBS
• Jean Ann Salisbury, Analyst at Bank of America
• Chris Robertson, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Elvira Scotto, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets