National Fuel Gas Company (NYSE:NFG) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Trafford Lamar: Perfect. Appreciate the color on that. And then our second question now similar to John’s question earlier. What about at this price environment, potential bolt-on opportunities for Seneca? How do you look at that? And then kind of, I guess, what’s kind of the bid spread been going around given the recent fall in natural gas? We are seeing more opportunities come available.

Justin Loweth: Yes. So we haven’t seen a lot of new stuff come available. It’s always tricky in a rapidly increasing or declining market in trying to find needle in the middle on what value makes sense. We remain very interested in opportunities that kind of fit us nicely. And so when I talk about that proximate or contiguous with our existing acreage, ideally have some element of takeaway capacity. We love it if it has a gathering midstream angle. So we’re continuing to look at opportunities that offer us those kind of — some or all of those attributes. And really, we’ll kind of watch to see as the prices evolve. I’m hopeful that there’ll be more — that will come available, but there’s definitely bid asked or why just given how much volatility we’ve seen on the way up, and it will probably be hard for people to accept a lower price given what they could have done if they just executed, say, three months ago.

Trafford Lamar: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Okay. Congrats on a great quarter.

Operator: Our next question today comes from Umang Choudhary from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Umang Choudhary: My first question was, I really appreciate your comments around the scoping plans, and to the extent you can share any insights and color regarding — on the discussions which you’re having with the regulators or the policymakers about managing the need to decarbonize as well also maintaining reliability of service be appreciated. And then just to bolt-on to that question, how are you thinking about your business mix longer term as to grow EPS and dividend while managing this potentially — which could potentially be a regulator on the road?

David Bauer: Yes. So on the — our engagement with regulators, the New York Public Service Commission, has got a series of proceedings on the future of not just the gas business, but also the — all of the utility business in the state. And we’ve been active participants with that and have made a number of filings that we’ve gone back and forth on with the state. It’s still really early innings on this, but the discussion so far has been constructive. In terms of the long-term business mix, I’d like to see a balance between regulated and nonregulated. And at times, we may be higher on the nonregulated side than regulated. But I think over time, we’ll be able to achieve that balance and the utility will be an important part of that.

Umang Choudhary: Got you. That’s really helpful. And then I guess just to follow up on that previous discussion. It sounds like a lot of your rig and your completion crews are under contract here, and to your point, you are hedged out in the near term. So I was wondering if there’s any price levels at which you will look back at your activity levels for the CRM. Like maybe it’s beneficial to push the completions out by a quarter or two quarters because the pricing is a little bit more favorable down the road. Because we agree with you, the long-term outlook is much more favorable with LNG coming online in 2025 and beyond.