Tc Energy Corp (TNCAF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by.

This is the conference operator. Welcome to the TC Energy Second Quarter 2026 results conference call.

As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference call is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference, you may reach an operator by pressing star then 0. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Gavin Wiley, Vice President in Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'd like to welcome you to TC Energy's second quarter 2026 conference call. Joining me are Francois Poirier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sean O'Donnell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, along with other members of our senior leadership team. Francois and Sean will begin today with some comments on our operational and financial highlights. A copy of the slide presentation is available on our website under the Investors section. All of the remarks will take questions from the investment community. We ask that you please limit yourself to two questions, and if you're a member of the media, please contact our media team. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information, please see the reports filed by TC Energy with Canadian securities regulators and with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. Finally, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP measures that may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. A reconciliation is contained in the appendix of this presentation. With that, I'll now turn the call to Francois.

Thanks, Gavin, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin today with an update on the strong momentum we continue to see across our businesses. We're capitalizing on the competitive advantages afforded by our incumbent footprint and some of the highest growth markets in North America, and converting strong demand into high return or a consistent focus on safety and execution excellence is the foundation that delivers reliable service, it wins new business, and it ultimately drives higher financial performance that continues to create long-term shareholder value. Through the first half of 2026, we've made meaningful progress on our development pipeline. We placed approximately $2 billion of assets into service, largely on time and on budget or better, and we expect to place approximately $3.5 billion at the end of the year. Including approximately $700 million of new natural gas pipeline projects we announced this quarter, we've now sanctioned $3 billion of growth projects at a weighted average, Unlevered After-Tax I approximately stage pending approval bucket now stands at approximately $7 billion. This portfolio reflects multiple projects in advanced stages of commercial discussions with large anchor customers and now includes our Crossroads project where we have executed precedent agreements subject to board approval with multiple anchor customers and are in advanced discussions with several other. We continue to evaluate opportunities to expand the project scope. Looking further out, $20 billion of additional projects in advanced align with our targeted five to seven times build multiple range. Further supporting while maintaining our disciplined approach to project execution, risk-adjusted returns. Expanding capital backlog is anchored by fundamental demand growth, driven by the next wave of LNG, connectivity between low-cost supply, each aligning to a strategic pillar of approximately 51 BCF per day, and that's a 40% increase over 2025 levels, and represents an 11 BCF a day increase. Power demand accounts for more than half of this increase, and now represents approximately 16 BCF per day of incremental growth for 2035. Nearly 70% of this demand growth is concentrated in the U.S. heartland, Alberta, and Mexico, regions where TC Energy has a strong incumbent position and significant. Additionally, customers are increasingly prioritizing supply, and by 2035, primarily Appalachia and the WCSB. So why are we growing our backlog and capturing growth? In the majority of premium markets we serve, we are the incumbent, often the largest provider, and that allows us to develop cost-competitive expansions, converting this strong fundamental backdrop into our growing capital backlog. Our extensive footprint and our integrated storage capability and long-standing customer relationships, today's project announcements are a clear example of these advantages in action, reflecting growing demand from natural gas-fired power generation and data center development. The two U.S. projects on our Columbia system were sanctioned at a weighted average build multiple of approximately 5.8 times, demonstrating the quality of our opportunity set. And in Canada, we continue to serve growing customer demand through a multi-year growth program with the latest expansion project on our NGPL system. We continue to see high-quality, low-risk, and highly executable opportunity. Fundamentals in Canada are strengthening, and customer demand continues to validate our strategy. Our outlook calls for over 8 BCF per day of additional Canadian natural gas demand through 2035, driven by Next Wave LNG, including Coastal Gas Link Phase II, industrial growth, and devolving power and data center load. Our extensive natural gas franchise is uniquely positioned to capture this growth, with the NGTL system serving as the primary conduit connecting Western Canadian supply to expanding markets within Alberta and across North America. The market signals we're seeing today reinforce this view. Our recent 2029 Greater Edmonton Area offering closed fully subscribed, and our 2030 to 2032 intra-Alberta offerings saw record amounts of participation by data center developers. Given this strong customer interest, we are exploring opportunities to expand this offering to better meet customer demand. With additional receipt and export offerings currently in market, we will look to convert visible demand into incremental projects across our Canadian assets. Our focus is straightforward, understand customer demand, invest where the market is growing at competitive returns, and continue to deliver low-risk, repeatable performance.

On to Bruce Power.

We are seeing similar momentum in Ontario Power Market to grow significantly over the coming decades. Against this backdrop, Bruce Power continued execution excellence is strengthening its ability to competitively serve. as a testament to this, Bruce Power returned Unit 3 to service following its major component replacement more than seven months ahead of the ISO schedule and approximately 15% below the cost of Unit 6. The result was driven by a strong focus on innovation and a repeatable stage-filled approach, capturing learnings from each refurbishment to improve productivity, reduce risk, and enhance execution certainty. Disciplined upfront planning and design maturity continue to improve cost, schedule, and execution certainty across the program. New technologies and automation have already provided meaningful productivity gains, including our Unit 4 recently achieving the most efficient can-do defuel on record. The Bruce Power story continues to resonate strongly, And I'd encourage anyone looking for a deeper dive to review the Bruce Power Investor Teaching. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sean to walk through the numbers.

Also touch on how our strong asset project delivery excellence and commercial optimization are each contributing to the upper end of our 2026 EBITDA outlook range. Overall, TC delivered a 12% year-over-year growth in comparable EBITDA, marking another solid quarter of contributions by each of our business units. Our natural gas pipeline business has performed extremely well, with daily average flows up 3% across our three-country network, as compared to this same quarter last year, driven by strong customer utilization and high levels of operational availability. In power and energy solutions, Bruce Power achieved 99% availability in an exceptionally strong quarter, following the return of Unit 3 in June from its major component replacement outage that Francelot mentioned. On the right-hand side, you'll see that each business increased its comparable EBITDA contribution compared to the same quarter last year. In Canada Gas, EBITDA increased by 38 million, or 4%, primarily due to higher flow-through depreciation on the NGTL and Canadian mainline systems, along with higher incentive earnings on the NGTL system. In the U.S., EBITDA increased by $129 million, or 12%, due to additional contract sales and higher earnings from A&R and Columbia Gas. In our Mexico business, EBITDA increased by $90 million, or 28%, driven by higher earnings related to the May 25 in-service date of Southeast Gateway, as well as higher earnings from Cerda Teos. Finally, in Power and Energy Solutions, EBITDA increased by $60 million, or 20%, due to higher contributions from Bruce Power, reflecting the early return of Unit 3, strong availability, and an annual price increase. Overall, it was a great quarter, supported by high system availability and performance cross-off pipeline assets, and a particularly strong contribution from Bruce Power. Turning to our Comparable EBITDA outlook, we are now targeting the upper end of our 2026 range of $11.6 to $11.8 billion, reflecting the strong operational performance our teams have delivered year-to-date and our high degree of confidence in our execution plans for the balance of the year. Looking ahead to 2028, we continue to target Comparable EBITDA of $12.6 to $13.1 billion, representing an approximate 6% annualized midpoint growth from our 2025 results. On the right-hand side of the page, we've highlighted several of the key financial tailwinds that are contributing to both our 2026 and 2028 outlooks, including many of the same drivers that we've benefited from in 2025. The key drivers include continued strong asset availability, expected rate case schedules, disciplined project execution, and continued commercial and technical innovation and optimizations across the forefront. As Francois highlighted, the depth of our project backlog continues to grow, which is extending the visibility of our development pipeline well beyond 2030. We've introduced a new feature to our net capital expenditure outlook this quarter, so we'll walk through the key data points for you to understand where the project backlog stands. First, as Francois mentioned, we've sanctioned approximately $3 billion of growth projects year-to-date, including – second, we've grown our pending approval bucket in gray to approximately $7 billion, up from $6 billion last quarter. And finally, our $20-plus billion backlog of projects and origination, we've added the gray hash bars to our annual capital outlook to provide greater visibility into potential timing of these projects. and a new pie chart to the right to highlight the demand drivers that are influencing the current composition of this segment of our project backlog. It's worth highlighting on the pie chart that nearly two-thirds of our origination backlog is associated with power generation. That's consistent with our year-over-year increased natural gas demand outlook that Francois mentioned earlier. As a general statement on FID timing, I'd say that we're looking to advance opportunities as early as possible, but expect that the sustained growth in our investment pace is occurring in 2029, 2030, and beyond. While some of the FID timelines on our origination pipeline will remain dynamic, our approach to underwriting will be underpinned by any annual increase in our pacing of capital allocation and our commitment to maintain this year's report on sustainability. The report provides a comprehensive overview of our sustainability performance and progress of support. A few highlights I'd like to draw your attention to. EC has reduced methane emissions intensity by 24% since 2019, while increasing throughput by 20% and growing our comparable EBITDA in our natural gas business by 57% over the same time frame. Our report provides details on the planned pathways to further advance our methane intensity target of a 40% to 55% reduction by 2035 from 2019 levels. In a manner that supports asset competitiveness and strong financial performance. And finally, to evidence the effectiveness of our early and deep engagement with Indigenous communities and their meaningful community and economic participation in our projects, I'm pleased to share that we've invested $5.4 billion with Indigenous and Native American businesses from 2021 through 2025. I encourage you to visit the report on our website to learn more. With that, I'll pass the call back to Francois.

Thanks, John. We continue to see the benefits of our discipline strategy and clear set of strategic priorities. Across the business, we've delivered strong performance with second quarter comparable EBITDA increasing 12% year-over-year. And today, we now expect to be at the upper end of our 2026 comparable EBITDA outlook range. Additionally, the quarter's achievements, from the return of Bruce Power Unit 3 more than seven months ahead of schedule to the sanctioning of approximately $3 billion of growth projects year-to-date, further reinforces our confidence in the outlook for the business. To leave you with confidence is driven not only by the scale of the opportunities we see ahead, but by our ability to consistently execute. With safety, operational, and project execution excellence, we will continue to find innovative commercial solutions to meet evolving customer needs, increase the return on our existing assets, secure new capital projects, and consistently deliver solid financial performance. Operator, we're now ready to take questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star than 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. Please limit yourself to two questions, and if you have additional questions, please re-enter the question queue. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing any keys. And to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. And our first question for today will come from Teresa Chin with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Would you elaborate on what you're seeing in terms of demand from your customers in Alberta in particular, whether it be data center related or just looking at the numerous large-scale WCS crude egress projects that are currently under development supporting robust outlook for oil sands production chain growth and incremental demand for natural gas as well, or from a demand-pull perspective on LNG exports, how are these dynamics impacting your ability to negotiate creative tolling structures with Canadian producers, given already constrained gas takeaway capacity?

This is Francois, just Santa Tina. A dynamic in Alberta is similar to the dynamic across our footprint. And as you saw, we've had 51 BCF a day of growth across the continent by 2035. But a growing portion of that gas demand is coming from power generation. And lots of that opportunity is certainly in Alberta, but also in the U.S. heartland. And, of course, we have strong incumbency in both those regions. So over to you, Tina.

Yeah, thanks, Francois. Teresa, specific to your question about Canada, we are seeing growth across multiple sectors. Frank Law mentioned in his opening remarks about 8 to 10 BCF of incremental demand. For us to address that demand, we have approximately half a dozen service offerings in the market, totaling about 1 BCF per day of capacity, spanning both receipt and delivery size of NGTL, and covering intra-Alberta and export points. So these offerings serve as a really helpful marker on the demand signal and directly inform our conversations on, you know, our next phase of growth for NGTL. Near-term demand targeted through the 2029 Greater Edmonton Area offering, we saw a very strong market uptake on that, and we have 2030 to 2032 phased expansion that's going to unlock over one BCF of intrabasin and egress opportunities. So we're seeing strong in just the offerings with demand across both egress and intrabasin, and we're using this market data to inform our discussions on the next phase of growth across Canada.

Thank you. And maybe turning to the heartland in the U.S., congratulations on the precedent agreements on crossroads, and we look forward to FID in the fourth quarter. Would you be able to share any color at this point related to the ultimate size and perhaps relevant economics on the project and maybe subsequent expansion opportunities within the same corridor given the outsized interest you're seeing currently?

Hi, Teresa. This is Tina again. And we are – as we mentioned, we are really pleased to have signed a precedent agreement with a large – with large anchor customers for our crossroads expansion. Expect to sanction that in the fourth quarter of this year. We're seeing significant market activity taking place across the Midwest region, which is supportive of broader investment visas for us. We're seeing about five to six BCF of demand growth across the Midwest, representing about a 2 BCF year-over-year growth expectation out through 2035. We're the largest operator across several Midwest states, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and our footprint provides really strong delivery presence into those key demand centers. And from a competitive standpoint, encumbency and integration really matter in this market. So with our Columbia, NR, Crossroads, Northern Border, Great Lakes systems together give us a highly advantaged footprint. From the perspective of the Crossroads expansion, we would progress that through the next phase of discussions and sanctioning, and that will fall within our five to seven times build multiples.

Thank you very much for that detailed response.

The next question will come from Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Just on the backlog changes, so you increased the pending project backlog by about a billion dollars this quarter, and then the potential backlog by five billion. I guess can we assume that the increase to the pending project backlog is basically the Crossroads project, and then the five billion increase to the origination backlog, I mean that's quite significant. Again, any more detail you can provide in terms of the type of projects being added? I think, Sean, you mentioned, you know, two-thirds is PowerGen. But any more clarity in terms of the split between, you know, U.S., NGTL, Bruce Power, and Mexico that you can share?

Yeah, Pernice and Sean, I'll take that. Thank you for the good question. You know, we've got a lot of growth capital showing up and a lot of slides, so let me break it down for you a little bit. But on your pending approval question, the way to think about that on page 7, you know, we show about $700 million that's been sanctioned. So $700 million moved from pending into sanctioned. And then when you go back to $13 million, you've seen that our pending has moved up. And, yes, that is round numbers largely. And I would tell you it's, you know, going to be slightly north of a billion, but round numbers, you're exactly right. To the second part of your question on the potential project inventory, what we're calling origination in our newest chart on page 13. Yeah, look, we felt it's important to include actually on the slide this quarter because it is growing, as you noted, $20 billion this year on origination in years, as you can see on the hatch bar chart, and then a large portion of that is falling outside of, you know, 20, 30 and beyond. The largely powers, we said two-thirds, and then geographically, the rule of thumb I would give you on that $20 billion is about two-thirds of that is U.S. within that customer segment bar charts. And then the Francois comments earlier, we have quite a bit of activity across NGTL in both the producer and the demand side. So about a third of that capital is right now penciled for the Canadian markets.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then maybe switching gears, you know, you've talked about using AI to optimize your pipeline network, which I think is actually one of the more compelling AI use cases that we've seen so far in midstream. Can you give us an update, I guess, on that initiative at large and the results that you've seen so far? How much of the system is currently covered by the pilot that you're doing? What are the benefits that you're realizing today? And then how should we think about, you know, potentially scaling that pilot across the rest of your – Bernice, Francois, I'll take that one.

I appreciate the question. Something we're really excited about ourselves. Look, we have proof of concept initiatives going across the organization. I would say on fairly small segments of pipe, you know, 100 kilometers here, 100 kilometers there type of thing. no, you cannot linearly extrapolate because we've picked some of the lowest hanging fruit areas where we thought there would be a greater potential. Maybe a little bit of color of the capital to implement the AI solutions in their regions. So they have to present business. They have to commit to outcomes, and then they get an allocation of capital. That's a good, strong, fundamental way with accountabilities to deliver outcomes to figure out what the potential is. We're really at the very front end of that process. It takes time to have people sort of understand that's how we want to do things. And so we only have $100 million of AI-related increments levodah, and we're on track. We expect to be able to, in more detail, by our November time frame, all the way out to, let's say, 2030. but we need to let this process where the teams provide the business cases and compete for capital inform that for us. So it's still a little bit early to provide that kind of detail, but stay tuned. Our intention when we do provide that detail is to do it with lots of supporting proof points and information. Very interesting.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Aaron McNeil with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Taking my questions. You've launched several NGTL and Alberta area open seasons ahead of establishing a long-term framework for future growth investments. When customers are bidding in these projects today, are they effectively underwriting projects based on a tentative new regulatory and return construct, or is the ultimate return framework for those investments still to be determined?

We're taking the gauge at a much more deep fashion, the level of broken down specifically into different regions and service areas. As Tina mentioned, we're seeing more demand, and we're actually looking to potentially upsize some of the intra-Alberta offerings that we're undertaking. We are in parallel with that having discussions with our customers about an investment framework and still in the early stages of those discussions, but we hope to have that by the end of the year.

Okay, great. You touched on the free cash flow inflection at Bruce Power in the update a few weeks ago, but based on your internal forecasting, what level of annual growth capital do you believe TC Energy could fund organically in 2029 and 2030 while sort of maintaining your targeted leverage metrics? And how should investors think about the funding plan if all those opportunities in your pipeline come to fruition?

I'll take that question, a good one. And thank you for pulling forward the Bruce teaching. That's an important hinge here to understand the growth capital in Gasco. I would – let me describe the framework that we're using, a three-part framework, and we can drill into it a little bit. Funding growth capital, three-part framework. First one is, look, the commitment to the 4.75 leverage or better, that's a firm commitment, right? And our organic deleveraging plan over the last couple and the next couple of years are going to set us up very well for that 29-30 kind of ramp on growth capital that you're seeing. And it brings us really to the timing of that funding need. Could be 29, could be 30, but I think you're also getting a sense for what kind of the 30s are going to look like. And let me now hinge back to that Bruce slide. The critical years for the Bruce MCR program are 2031 and 2032, when the final two units complete their MCR program. So, and what Bruce unlocks for us, right, that 2031, 2032 is an incredibly powerful addition from Bruce. So, we've got this two- or three-year window. You know, it's between 2029 and call it 2030 or 2030, we'll be solving for it to support Tina and Greg. And the hierarchy of funding sources, as we look at that three-year window, 29 to 31, before Bruce really kicks in, is, you know, obviously it's just compounding the EBITDA gains that we're delivering quarter over quarter for you. That, in parallel, was driving the best projects into our sanction buckets, the best build multiples, obviously create the best amount of cash flow. And look, if we have such growth in that 29, 30, 31 window that there is a funding gap, we've got a couple of levers that we can pull, right, obviously from a, you know, whether it be capital rotation or any other kind of capital market. But what we have two or three years to solve for, how tall does that growth capital go, how many years before the Bruce cash flow kicks in, and then ultimately what is the lowest cost of capital the year before on a dollar per share basis. That's the framework, and I think, you know, like I said, over the next year or two, as we really see what 29 and 30 are going to look like, that's the amount of time we have to solve for that shared funding solution.

I'll turn it back. The next question will come from Jeremy Tonette with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Just wanted to come back to Canada, Canadian growth opportunities, if I could. It seems like there's a lot of opportunities, as you outlined here, but just wondering if you could walk us through how it competes for capital. A lot of attractive opportunities in the U.S. economics seem a bit better than what has been achieved in Canada historically. I'm just wondering the scope, the potential for improvements on either ROE, equity layer, or otherwise, so that would attract your capital into Canada versus the U.S. as far as future growth projects are concerned.

Thanks, Jeremy. Look, we're in the middle of these conversations with our shippers. We're doing a lot of listening. Any discussions we have in the U.S. in terms of protections around capital, cost of debt, billing determinants, etc. We're working with our customers through ancillary service. Any cost savings that we're able to materialize can be shared to create a win-win. What's important here is to keep our focus on delivering to our customers what they need, which is growth intrabasin and growth to. And I do want and prefer to see some balance in our capital allocation from a geographic basis. It's not simply where does the highest IRR project discreetly come from. You want some portfolio diversification for economic diversification from economies, from regulatory regimes, environments. So we do keep that balance in mind in addition to the specific return of specific projects. So all those things go into the discussion, and we're doing a lot of listening right now. Understood.

Appreciate the thoughts. And as continuing on the lines of geographic diversification, I was wondering if we could go south to borders and any thoughts you could share with regards to the strategy in Mexico going forward as far as the amount of exposure you want to have in the country, growth opportunities there, and whether any type of Mexican modernization in the future still make sense.

I'll take that one. Look, I think part of really not dissimilar to what we're seeing in the U.S. at this point. Major trunk lines all built. We're seeing CFE in the last two years bring more generation online than they arguably have in over a decade. There's 10 gigawatts of gas-fired gen. I think five are commissioned already, one more pending this year. Three gigawatts on our system. So as we've been talking about pipeline capacity, but you're certainly seeing the market and other kind of investors exactly what we have, but certainly kind of growing into the portfolio. I'll kind of leave it at that because it's operating exactly as design and exactly as we've kind of included in guidance in our outline.

The next question will come from Rob Hope with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

So it's good to see another increase in the pending approval backlog as well as the increase the origination that you noted in the prepared remarks, you also did comment that the timing of FIDs is dynamic. Can you speak to how these projects are marching towards FID decisions, you know, just given the fact that, you know, we are seeing a number of kind of changing dynamics out there in the market and potentially some upsides in these projects. So, how are these projects kind of working through the funnel, and does the target still love to have $8 billion of projects sanctioned this year?

I'll maybe take the back out. We typically sanction, and we're halfway through the year, and we're already at the bottom end of that range. When you throw in the potential and our expectation of sanctioning crossroads in the fourth quarter, which will be a sizable project, plus some of the other irons, and in Canada, you know, there's a billion dollars of sanctioned capital for 2026, which would be a great outcome and achieve our stretch goals. The first part of your question, do you want to add?

Yeah, I'll take that first part. I think your question was related to what's required to get to sanctioning. And you think of the projects in origination. We talked already about Canada and some of the demand growth we're seeing there. In the U.S., we have under origination, as we talked about before, about $14 billion of capital, 10 to 11 BCF of capacity, centered around power generation, data center demand, coal to gas conversions, et cetera. And we go through a rigorous process to sanction our projects, detailed conversations with our customers, ensuring we drive the highest value for our shareholders. The crossroads expansion is next up, I believe, for sanctioning. We did talk today about our Central Virginia Capacity Project and our Clark Project, which are important projects for us on our Columbia Gas and our Columbia Gulf systems. We are looking forward to developing more of those across the next couple of quarters and go through our process with discipline before we announce the projects.

Sorry about that, Rob. In answering the second part of the question, I lost the thread on the first part, so Tina helped me out there.

Not a problem. And then just maybe as a follow-up, like we're seeing across the industry, everyone's growth expectations tilt higher. Can you maybe just provide kind of your views on, you know, supply chain, contractor availability, and, you know, just the status of the market? Could we be entering into, you know, a bit more of a constrained supply chain?

I'll take that. We are actively monitoring all of our supply chain resources, be it actual equipment, contractor selection, human resources internally and externally. We take a very strategic approach to the supply chain process. To date, for our pipeline projects, we have all of our pipeline equipment secured for everything that's been sanctioned to date. We are negotiating with many of our suppliers to ensure that all of our equipment is available in time for our projects to be in service based on the announcements that we've put out. We take a very proactive approach to our contractor market as well in developing strategic alliances that allow us to keep some of our very top-tier contractors working from project to project. So we're very confident in our ability to execute our projects in light of the supply chain challenges, and we do not see any issues related to our in-service dates and having supply chain situations that would impact those dates.

The next question will come from John Mackey with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hey, team. Thank you for the time.

Sean, you touched on this earlier, but I just wanted to focus on the strong 2Q results on the 26 guidance commentary. I know it's early, but any tailwinds you can talk about when framing up the 2028 guide that you have out there? Hey, John.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Look, the ingredients on the tailwinds are fundamentally the same kind of year in and year out. It's a little bit hard to capture how much operating leverage we are getting. You know, every piece of equipment across 94,000 kilometers, probably 650 days of storage. You know, when teams have availability that high and you've got the fundamental demand growth and a little bit of volatility in the market, this footprint is just, you know, candidly it delivers and over delivers, you know, in different ways in different years. So that's what I would tell you is the biggest tailwind. The other element that we're starting to see is, you know, we touched on commercial optimization and innovation. We enjoy our 20-year take-or-pay contracts, but what we're also seeing kind of on the innovation front is customer demand and opportunities are shifting very rapidly. So when a customer sees a money-making opportunity that they need to time shift or shape-shift some of that 20-year take-or-pay static contract, we've got a capacity to move regions in support of customer value capture opportunities and kind of take our fair share. And you're seeing a little bit of that even in 2026, coupled with some weather in the first quarter. So those are really two big ones that are kind of driving EBITDA. And then as we get to 28, you know, a couple of the other ones, beyond the standard rate cases that we talked about that we generally had a pretty good track record on the last few years, the big one is just the continued price projects. I mean, at these five to seven bill multiples, that's a very powerful lever, right? and obviously how much EBITDA per dollar invested we're driving, and so far still good, right, on our 26th campaign, which is going to start showing up in 28 and potentially driving to the higher end. That's kind of the high level on top of what Francois described as some of the technology and AI innovation that certainly is showing green shoots as well for us.

Understood. Thanks for that. So we've spent a ton of time talking about candidates so far, but I want to ask one more. Now that you guys are seeing, let's say, a different type of customer coming in on the data center side, is there an opportunity for TC to invest outside of the NGTL regulatory framework, I guess meaning specifically an ability to kind of capture potentially higher return type projects?

Yes, the answer is yes. To the extent there's an opportunity to short laterals that can be developed by our unregulated arm, In a faster timeline, they develop their project on the pace that they've dictated for their strategy. Those types of situations can present themselves. The other thing that's interesting is we're seeing, with many of the regions in North America, policies, classes of customers, we're seeing a trend and take-or-pay contracts for power that are starting to migrate.

We have a very unique, as we start looking at, we have the power, we've been in the market for over 30 years, we have gas storage, we have unregulated gas, we have regulated gas. So when you think of a couple of weeks ago at Stampede, haven't seen so many tech companies sponsoring the events, and we saw the first large data center announcement, that's the benefit of our footprint. And I think as we start to see more people coming, we have the lowest-priced gas across North America. This will give us some of those opportunities to work across the verticals and figure out ways, to Francois' point, how we're going to optimize the system and get our risk-return levels where we compete with capital and against the gas business.

Thanks so much, Collar.

I appreciate it.

The next question will come from Maurice Choi with RBC. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Hank. Good morning, everyone. I wonder if you could just take us back to the high level where you've laid out that power generation and supply access and led to this revised 51 BCF a day. When you look back at your original 40 BCF a day estimate about two years ago, what has surprised you the most? And would there have been any initiatives you felt you would have proceeded to right now?

Thanks for the question, Royce. This is Tina. We have increased our demand forecast from last year to this year. I think it was 46 BCF last year, 51 BCF per day this year over the next 10 years. And that's primarily driven by LNG feed gas. We're seeing an increase there of about 28 BCF per day. And power generation 16 BCF per day. And the industrial sector 4 BCF per day have increased. The upside to our last forecast is primarily driven by the power generation sector. We now expect North American gas-fired generation to rise from prior outlooks of 54 BCF per day to 60 BCF per day by 2035. And there are a number of factors playing into that demand growth, including accelerated data center demand of about 15 BCF, broader base electrification and coal conversions. And so, a key element of that demand growth picture is that the demand is not uniform. What's important here is that demand favors the U.S. heartland, western Canada, and Mexico, where we have incumbent positions of about 60 percent of the incremental demand growth that's set to occur in states and provinces where we operate. And similarly, on the supply side, by 2035, about 60% of gas supply is expected to come from TC-connected basins, notably a combined incremental 18 BCF out of Appalachia and WCSB. So all this directly translates into the depth of our origination activities and our backlog.

Hey, Maurice and Sean, I'll tack on to the front part of that question. You know, would we have done anything differently two years ago than today? And the answer to that is no, like when you just break up Tina's point about all of that was LNG. Were we going to get into the LNG business, seeing that growth? Were we going to serve the LNG business? You know, I think power is sometimes the question. And, you know, for us, you know, and hopefully explain today when we show our $20 billion backlog, when we're building it five to seven times in a core business with teams that are the best in the business doing that, That has been and remains the best value creation opportunity that we think we offer shareholders. So, you know, kind of stay in the course and stay in the way that makes sense.

That does make sense. Maybe I can finish off with a question just to broad theme of data centers. There's obviously been a lot of headlines about stakeholder pushbacks in various parts of the U.S., just at a very high level. Have you seen any impact on how your customers approach signing pipeline deals?

I'll take that one, Maurice. I think it's fair to say that, as I mentioned before, with some of the policies from PUCs and government stories to make sure there isn't cross-subsidization of rates. The market, as they go along, obviously energy provision is a very important gating item for them to implement their strategies. When we look at the U.S. heartland, for example, 15 states that actually have explored putting a pause on data center development, in two of those states, those were rejected, and in the third, it's under consideration, but doesn't seem to be carrying lots of momentum. So I would say the issue you mentioned is region-specific, and as we look at our footprint, We haven't seen it slow down the growth of our development pipeline. You know, the comment earlier that was referred to about sanctioning projects is dynamic. It's because our customers, the utilities, have to themselves be dynamic to compete for load and make sure that their questions as they go through, oftentimes that might impact the timing of sanctioning as opposed to whether or not a project will be sanctioned. So lots in the play.

Thank you very much.

And we'll come from Robert Cattellier with CIBC. Please go ahead.

I wanted to follow up on Bruce here a bit. I noticed in the press release you had that additional funding for the impact assessment and the pre-development work, which I think is not only appropriate but necessary. My question here is, is that enough to get you to FID, and maybe you can now refresh us on timelines for the technology decision and the ultimate FID?

Directly, Robert. Greg. First, I actually wanted to give a shout-out while I have the mic. We had great performance of our teams, both at Bruce and our power team, from an operational perspective. You would have seen the announcement at Unit 3. But I also wanted to add, because this will lead into the Bruce conversation, we continue to see Unit 6 post-refurbishment running at less than 1%, which is world-class and world-leading. So this is the type of performance that really gives us comfort and the value of our Bruce management team. The next tranche of funding of $300 million is going to cover us effectively until we get closer to the end of the decade. You mentioned a couple of the pieces of work that we're doing. This is early engineering, bringing that project forward and across the line.

I think on unit 6, you mean 1% offline time, correct? Sorry, I just missed that. Yeah, I think you said it's operating at 1%. I think you mean that as the outage time? Yes, the forced outage rate. Yeah. If you could go back, sorry, I just want to go back to the question that Teresa started us off with about egress options in Canada. I think it's safe to say policy is encouraging for oil sands production growth, although, you know, that has yet to fully materialize. What do you think is possible? Should we, as a nation, be successful in growing oil sands production and what that would mean for egress requirements for natural gas? You know, presumably oil sands production is going to lead to more unsafe drilling and associated gas. And, you know, it seems like that could be a bottleneck in the whole flywheel. So what do you think is going to be required longer term for egress coming out of Canada to accommodate the oil sands?

I wouldn't necessarily point to egress via LMG only as the associated gas. As we saw with the AdSino data centers in the province, there's lots of in-country load growth potential. And, of course, we have, coming out of NGTL, we call our U.S. pipes the catcher's mitt, border into the Midwest and then into Ontario and points east. So I would foresee expanding all of our systems in all directions and be able to accommodate the incremental associated gas to the state that's necessary for increased old sands production. Case in point, our mainline settlement was approved recently by the regulator. That will add about 350, and it can be paid a day of capacity for a $200 million capital investment, which is extremely efficient. and that's just one, you know, proof point or example of how we're going to be able to move gas through the whole system to absorb incremental production. Of course, we would love to see more LNG export off the west coast. We're encouraged with developments on LNG Canada phase two. You know, from the sidelines, reading what's happening on the CILISMS project is also encouraging. And I would hope to see more to come, the next wave of LNG export beyond those projects in the 2030s.

LNG, I think it's going to have to be all of the above. Thanks.

The next question will come from Ben Pham with BMO. Please go ahead.

I wanted to go back to the $20 billion-plus projects in origination. I'm wondering how do you think that pie chart will evolve in the coming years in terms of the size of the opportunity and in the mix of the demand drivers?

In terms of what will that pie chart look like, right? As we verbally were kind of seeing a $15 billion number just earlier this year, And, you know, we felt compelled to show you now that the 20-plus, just given how much capital formation we're starting to see in the early 2030s. The fundamentals, particularly in Tina's business on the pipeline side, are certainly suggestive of this new normal of what we're seeing on a run rate. I'd say it's probably a little bit early to kind of call what exactly that number is on a sustained basis or a plateaued basis. but I do think the breakdown that we're showing you, portfolio in the post-2030s, so give us another quarter or two, but we're going to attempt to kind of refine this for you as best we can as the dynamic element that we mentioned, you know, kind of firms up here over the next 6 to 12 months.

I got it. And, Sean, you also mentioned looking at the Bruce Power inflection, that bridge in the late decade, looking at sources of capital to bridge that. I'm curious maybe to ask, then, are you able to rank order your sources of capital today? same with hybrids partnerships even common equity and then to that point how do you think about the balancing of pre-funding this rising capex versus waiting and and assessing and at a future point in time yeah this is this is my favorite thing to work on then funding growth capital look at the hierarchy that we described look at the end of the day is ultimately we have

The dollar-per-share cap that we measure absolutely everything against, and the benefit of what we're seeing kind of in the market right now, set EBITDA outside, that's obviously our top priority in terms of the hierarchy, is you start to look at capital rotation or investment grades or hybrids or anything else, all of those capital markets are, and I'll throw private credit in there, they're incredibly constructive, right? We're an all-time market that we're in, and increasingly you're seeing even private credit in the 5%, 6% kind of percent range inside of our hybrids, certainly well inside of our common. So it's just that we have a lot of options and a lot of levers in a couple of years to kind of figure that out. So that's exactly – we're going to take our time and watch that $20 billion pie chart develop and kind of a year ahead. Rush, no forcing function to have us do anything sooner than absolutely necessary to support the growth capital, particularly 29 and 30. So I think 2028 will really be the year where you start to see us, you know, kind of put things in motion depending on what 29 and 30 and then Bruce and 31 look like, what that balancing capital solve might look like. Okay, Todd.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question and answer session. If there are any further questions, please contact Investor Relations at TC Energy. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gavin Wiley for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Operator, thank you very much, and thank you for everyone for participating this morning with your great questions. We may not have gotten through all the questions, so please do reach out to the investor relations We're always happy to help. Again, thank you for your interest in DC Energy, and we look forward to our next update in early November.

Close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for your participation, and have a pleasant day.