CNX Resources Corp Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good day and welcome to the CNX Resources First Quarter 2025 Q&A Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thanks and good morning to everybody. Welcome to CNX's first quarter Q&A conference call. Today, we will be answering questions related to our first quarter results. This morning, we posted to our Investor Relations website an updated slide presentation and detailed first quarter earnings release data such as quarterly E&P data, financial statements, and non-GAAP reconciliations. Which can be found in a document titled 1Q 2025 Earnings Results and Supplemental Information of CNX Resources. Also, we posted to our Investor Relations website our prepared remarks for the quarter which we hope everyone had a chance to read before the call. As the call today will be used exclusively for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Nick DeIuliis, our President and CEO, Alan Shepard, our Chief Financial Officer, and Navneet Behl, our Chief Operating Officer. Please note that the company's remarks made during this call, including answers to questions, include forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and our actual results may differ materially as a result of many factors. A discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to those factors in CNX's business is contained in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the release issued today. With that, thank you for joining us this morning. And operator, can you please open the call up for Q&A at this time?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question will come from Zachary Parham with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I guess first I just wanted to ask on activity levels. You all had a significant amount of turn in lines in 1Q compared to 2019. Can you talk about the rest of the turn in lines during the year? When do those come in line? And maybe comment on what the production trajectory should look like through the back half of the year and maybe into 2026?

Yeah. Hey. This is Alan. A lot of those tools came in line toward the later part of the first quarter. As we've mentioned on the last call, the bulk of our completions activity was scheduled for the first half of the year. So you'll see a few more TILs in Q2, and probably a lull in Q3, and then some additional TILs coming in Q4.

Thanks. And then I just wanted to follow up. On the 4Q call, you talked about having the flexibility to add some activity to the program in the second half of the year. Given the volatility we've seen in gas prices, how are you thinking about flexing that activity? And maybe talk about the timeline on when you would have to make a decision on whether or not to add some activity.

Yeah. Right now, there's no planned changes to the activity set. We're kind of watching it through this part of the shoulder season here and seeing where end of summer storage is targeting and go off that as our cue. Thanks.

Our next question will come from Leo Mariani with ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Hey, just a couple of quick questions here on some of the numbers. Looks like you guys actually paid some cash taxes in the first quarter. A little unexpected. I generally thought you guys weren't going to be paying much on the cash tax side. Just curious if that was kind of a one-off. And then just on the buyback, kind of a very robust number here in the first quarter. You know, $125 million is a pretty big number. You know, I guess, is it fair to think that kind of around this $30 level, you guys think it's a pretty compelling investment here in the buyback?

Yeah. On the cash taxes front, we're still a de minimis cash taxpayer. If you're seeing noise trying to reconcile deferred tax to things, that's basically from the hedge book. We don't become a material tax cash payer until about $3 billion in cumulative free cash flow, which is the current projections, called sometime 2027-2028 as we've talked about previously. There is a little bit of state tax starting to hit, but again, that's all very de minimis. In terms of your latter question, yeah, I think, you know, we always see value in kind of the repurchases when we do them as part of our process.

Okay. Appreciate that. And I just wanted to ask if you guys have got any kind of further intel in terms of how the Trump administration might be looking at changes in 45Q here?

No. We don't have anything outside of what's in the public domain.

K. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Gabriel Daoud with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe just following up on Zachary's question earlier. Could you maybe just give us a sense of what volume trajectory looks like? Imagine just given a heavy first half, you're declining into the second half and probably into 2026. So what's the production level that you guys would like to hold flat into 2026? Is it 1.4 Bcf a day on the gas side? And if that's the case, what's the CapEx level needed to hold that flat into 2026?

Yeah. I think if you take out the TIL comments I made earlier, you can kind of infer from, you know, if you want to do quarterly production. Again, we don't get too tied up in looking at quarterly production and even annual production levels. We have kind of a range we've been in the last few years, and I would expect going forward to be in that sort of range plus the volumes associated with Apex. But again, we're solving for free cash flow per share as opposed to any particular production level target.

Understood. Thanks for that. And then I guess just as a follow-up, some M&A in your backyard recently, maybe just any kind of updated thoughts on the transaction that just changed hands recently in Westmoreland and generally your views on future opportunities in the area? Thanks, guys.

Yeah. No. I think it kind of reinforces what we've been saying for the last decade, which is that particular area of the basin is some of the best rock that's going to be moving forward. So you know, from our perspective, we have a significant acreage position up there. And we're excited to have a new neighbor that's kind of validated our thesis on the area.

Gotcha. Thanks, guys.

Our next question will come from Noah Hungness with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. For my first question here, I was hoping to ask you on Slide six. Looks like your NYMEX and NGL pricing has kind of declined as you guys mark to market, with strip moving down and then also the natural gas differentials seem to have widened a bit. But your free cash flow guidance for the year is unchanged. Could you kind of walk us through some of the potential improvements in the base that's kind of driving that free cash flow resiliency?

Yeah. So just a reminder, we're 85% hedged. When you see the open volumes pricing change, you're really talking about just, call it, three quarters of exposed pricing at this point on 15% of volume. So there's not a huge amount of wiggle room associated with open pricing left for the full year. And then, you know, the free cash flow guidance we give, it is a point number, but it's really sort of a range around a number. So I wouldn't get overly specific in trying to reanalyze it. We'll be in that range, and we're reaffirming that range.

Got it. And then we've seen some power gen and data center announcements in that, kind of in that Southwest Central PA area. And I was just hoping to get your guys' latest view on how you see in-basin demand developing and if you think we'll continue to see announcements over the next six to twelve months?

Yeah. In my opinion, I think you're going to see a lot of announcements and we'll see how many of those translate into actual construction. Overall bullish for all the operators in the basin, very similar to any sort of utility coming in as I'm sure everyone will be able to benefit from the increase in basin demand and shrinking of differentials associated with that. So we'll see which ones actually develop. But generally, a great backwind to have for everyone.

Sounds good, guys. Thanks.

Our next question will come from Jacob Roberts with TPH. Go ahead.

Good morning. I was hoping to hear some thoughts about the Apex turn in lines that happened during the quarter, just how those are performing relative to the base business and the outlook there?

Hey. Go ahead. Hi. This is Navneet. Yeah. The eight wells that we brought online from Apex are performing better than we expected. So we are pretty optimistic about the long-term production on these wells.

Great. Thanks. And my second question, I think you guys have spoken to there not necessarily being a correlation between attribute sales in the Buchanan power facility. Just hoping to clarify if that facility is showing up on the PJM deactivation list will have any impact on that segment or if there are any other types of deactivations we might need to be thinking about?

That won't have any impact on our EA sales. We use multiple facilities across PJM to create those credits.

Thanks. Appreciate the time.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you again for joining us this morning. Please feel free to reach out if anyone has any additional questions. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking with everyone again next quarter.

Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.