National Fuel Gas Company (NYSE:NFG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tim Silverstein: Yes. I will start with the first question on the potential bias higher or lower. I would say, we have been in pretty active dialogue with our contractors. So, we think this is reasonable what we – based on what we know today. I think I wouldn’t say it’s biased one way or another at this point. It could go up a little bit. It could go down a little bit. But I think we will know a lot more as we get into the meat of the construction season this summer, to better understand exactly how the contractors will respond. As it relates to longer term run rate on capital and what that means from a free cash flow perspective, I think I had mentioned previously that we were in the $125 million to $150 million area.

Long-term run rate from a capital perspective, I would bump that up by about $25 million more in the $150 million to $175 million area as a result of this. So, certainly, from an immediate perspective that has a drag on cash flows in the near-term. But I think you need to take a step back and look at a couple of factors. One is it will drive longer term rate base growth. So, you will have not only earnings, but additional cash flows in our rate cases going forward, including the one we have on file right now. In addition, much of this capital is eligible for the repairs deduction that we – that I have talked about the last couple of quarters. And that has an immediate benefit to free cash flow in the form of lower cash taxes. So, I think when you take that all together, while capital might be up $20 million to $25 million, the growth in earnings and the savings from a free cash – from a cash tax perspective will offset a good chunk of that.

John Abbott: That is very helpful. And the next question, I think it goes to you, Justin here. So, the plan is out, so for 2025, you are going to start moderating activity, and when you sort of think about the 2024 trajectory, I mean we have a bump up here in the first half of the year and a decline in the second half of the year. As we start to think about activity in 2025, granted, it’s kind of early, how do you think about on an annual basis, the trajectory of production and of CapEx? Is it going to be ratable, front-end loaded? How do you think about those factors as we sort of look to 2025 and beyond?

Justin Loweth: Sure. Yes, happy to address that. So, as you may recall, in fiscal ‘23, Seneca’s total capital was approximately $583 million. The midpoint of our guidance here in fiscal ‘24 is $550 million. I noted we did come in slightly below our internal estimates in Q1 and we are spending a lot of time as a team looking at our activity over the rest of the year, and of course into ‘25, and looking for ways to continue to moderate. I noted we are dropping a rig, which we will do here later this – into the spring. And we will stay at that activity level at least for a couple of quarters, at least that’s our current expectation. And so for fiscal ‘24, Q1 was our biggest capital quarter. And I would expect a pronounced decline in capital even into Q2 and on into Q3 and Q4, generally somewhat flat and at a lower level.

As we look out to ‘25, you should expect that overall level of capital to continue to go down. I have spoken about on a combined basis, Seneca and NFG Midstream, if you start at that ‘23, as we look to ‘24, at the midpoint, we are already dropping somewhere between kind of $30 million and $40 million. We are going to keep working on that as we moderate activity right now over the coming months. And then as we look to fiscal ‘25, we are targeting to be somewhere between $50 million to $150 million, and I would bias that towards $75 million to $100 million already should be achieved when we get into fiscal ‘25. So, we are on a downward trend. Obviously, we will keep looking hard at gas prices and in our hedge book and everything else.

And then from a production perspective, we have got quite a bit of nice growth expected this year. It’s on the back of some of the wells we brought on recently and some of the activity we have underway. Definitely would expect that growth to moderate into ‘25 from ‘24 and a continued moderation beyond there. Somewhere between flat and 5% per annum growth is probably good round numbers to think about. But we are definitely in a process now of high grading to the EDA that will drive capital efficiency. That leads to a lot of the lower capital spend while dampening our overall growth that we have had from a production perspective over the last few years.

John Abbott: Thank you. Very, very helpful.

Operator: We currently have no further questions. So, I would like to hand the call back to Natalie Fischer for closing remarks. Thank you.

Natalie Fischer: Thank you, Bruno. We would like thank everyone for taking the time to be with us today. A replay of this call will be available this afternoon on both our website and by telephone and will run through the close of business on Thursday, February 15th. To access the replay online, please visit our Investor Relations website at investor.nationalfuelgas.com. And to access by telephone, call 1-866-813-9403 and provide access code 385109. This concludes our conference call for today. Thank you and have a great day.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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