Conferencia de resultados del 3T de 2026 de CNX Resources (CNX): Producción de mantenimiento y estrategia en Utica

CNX Resources (NYSE: CNX) aprovechó su llamada de resultados del tercer trimestre de 2026 para hacer hincapié en la disciplina de producción, la recompra de acciones y la transición a largo plazo hacia el desarrollo de Utica en el centro de Pensilvania. La directiva no ofreció previsiones formales para 2027, pero señaló que la empresa prevé mantenerse actualmente en un modo de producción de mantenimiento.

Puntos clave

• La planificación actual de CNX para 2027 asume una producción de mantenimiento. La directiva afirmó que la empresa cuenta con una sólida cobertura al entrar en 2027 y que ajustaría su actividad si las condiciones del mercado se deterioran.
• La directiva señaló que el almacenamiento se sitúa cerca del promedio de cinco años y podría aproximarse a los 4 T al comienzo del invierno. Una producción incremental requeriría un fortalecimiento de los precios a plazo.
• Aproximadamente dos tercios de la cartera de CNX están expuestos a los precios de la cuenca local. La empresa recortó algunos volúmenes cuando los precios locales del gas cayeron por debajo de 1 dólar, aunque los recortes totales del tercer trimestre se describieron como "menos de un B".
• La recompra de acciones sigue siendo el punto de referencia para evaluar las operaciones de M&A y otras opciones de asignación de capital. La directiva considera las recompras como una vía para incrementar la producción y el flujo de caja libre por acción sin aumentar la producción agregada.
• CNX prevé otros cuatro o cinco años de desarrollo en Marcellus, en el suroeste de Pensilvania, antes de cambiar predominantemente hacia Utica y Marcellus, en el centro de Pensilvania, hacia finales de la década.
• Se prevé que el aumento de los precios del diésel y del acero afecte a menos del 1 % del programa de capital de la empresa, respaldado por flotas de fracturación eléctrica y una menor dependencia del transporte de agua en camiones.

Rendimiento operativo y del negocio

CNX afirmó que Marcellus, en el suroeste de Pensilvania, sigue siendo el área de desarrollo a corto plazo más rentable debido a que la infraestructura ya está instalada y muchos proyectos implican volver a ubicaciones existentes.

Se prevé que la combinación de desarrollo incorpore gradualmente más pozos profundos de Utica. Hacia finales de la década, se espera que el programa se oriente principalmente hacia Utica en el centro de Pensilvania, complementado por Marcellus en el centro de Pensilvania. Utica en el suroeste de Pensilvania y otros horizontes podrían desarrollarse más adelante.

La directiva identificó los días de perforación en Utica como la principal oportunidad restante para reducir costes. También señaló que la combinación de desarrollo para 2027 debería parecerse a grandes rasgos al programa actual, combinando la actividad en la zona profunda de Utica con el inventario restante del suroeste de Pensilvania, aunque no se facilitó un recuento preciso de pozos.

Previsiones de la directiva

CNX no facilitó previsiones formales para 2027. Basándose en las condiciones actuales, la directiva indicó que la empresa se mantiene en una mentalidad de producción de mantenimiento, ya que su posición de cobertura le ofrece una mayor protección que a la de muchos de sus competidores.

La empresa consideraría aumentar los volúmenes si la curva de precios futuros del gas natural a más largo plazo sube lo suficiente como para justificar una oferta incremental. Si los precios se debilitan aún más, la directiva afirmó que realizaría los ajustes necesarios.

CNX está participando en conversaciones sobre ventas directas de gas a clientes potenciales para proyectos previstos durante los próximos cinco años. Sin embargo, la directiva señaló que los contratos a largo plazo deben ofrecer una prima suficiente para justificar los compromisos de entrega fija, y no facilitó un calendario para alcanzar un acuerdo.

Riesgos y puntos a seguir

• Los precios del gas en la cuenca local han caído periódicamente por debajo de 1 dólar y se han situado entre 0,50 y 0,60 dólares aproximadamente, lo que genera un incentivo para recortar la producción no cubierta.
• Con cerca de dos tercios de los volúmenes expuestos a la cuenca, el clima local, la demanda y las condiciones económicas del transporte pueden afectar a los diferenciales realizados.
• Los costes del diésel y del acero están aumentando, aunque la directiva prevé actualmente un impacto limitado en el gasto total de capital.
• La demanda de gas a largo plazo en los Apalaches sigue siendo incierta, especialmente en cuanto a la magnitud y el calendario de la demanda procedente de proyectos vinculados a la IA y de otro tipo.
• La rentabilidad económica de los contratos directos con clientes depende de recibir una prima adecuada por las obligaciones de entrega a largo plazo.
• La eficiencia del capital sigue siendo sensible a la inflación y al volumen de infraestructura requerido en un año determinado.

Puntos destacados del turno de preguntas y respuestas de analistas

Asignación de capital: La directiva señaló que CNX se mantiene abierta a operaciones de M&A que incrementen el flujo de caja libre por acción a largo plazo. Sin embargo, la recompra de acciones sigue fijando la tasa de rentabilidad mínima exigida para posibles transacciones. La empresa no facilitó detalles sobre el uso futuro de la línea de crédito revolvente ni sobre las tácticas de recompra a corto plazo.

Demanda de gas natural: CNX se muestra optimista sobre la demanda a largo plazo en los Apalaches, pero rehusó cuantificar la oportunidad. La directiva afirmó que el crecimiento de la producción se mantendrá vinculado a las señales de precios de la curva de oferta y no solo a las previsiones de demanda.

Diferenciales del gas: La directiva atribuyó el complejo entorno en la cuenca durante el trimestre al clima y a la flojedad de los precios. Algunos volúmenes se mantuvieron en la cuenca debido a que el transporte hacia MichCon y otros mercados resulta antieconómico.

Transición en la dirección: Alan Shepard declaró que CNX estaba satisfecha con el nombramiento del candidato interno Ravi Srivastava como director financiero. No ofreció detalles adicionales sobre la salida de Everett más allá de las notificaciones presentadas por la empresa en el formulario 8-K.

Consolidación en los Apalaches: CNX declinó hacer comentarios sobre la transacción anunciada por otro operador. La directiva reiteró que las adquisiciones son solo una opción de asignación de capital y deben competir con la recompra de acciones en términos de creación de valor por acción.

Transcripción completa de la llamada de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the CNX Resources Third Quarter 2026 Q&A Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis. Please go ahead.

Tyler Lewis

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to CNX's Third Quarter Q&A Conference Call. Today, we will be answering questions related to our third quarter results. This morning, we posted to our Investor Relations website an updated slide presentation and detailed third quarter earnings release data such as quarterly E&P data, financial statements and non-GAAP reconciliations, which can be found in a document titled 3Q 2026 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 Alan Shepard, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Ravi Srivastava, 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 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.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Gabriel Daoud with Truist.

Preguntas y respuestas

Gabe Daoud

I was hoping we could maybe just start with the macro backdrop. And you noted in the prepared remarks, you'll certainly remain flexible and responsive to the current environment. So curious maybe how that would kind of translate into your thoughts on '27, just given where gas prices are?

Alan Shepard

Yes. Hey, Gabe, thanks for the question. Where we sit right now, so we're pretty much on the 5-year average for storage levels. We'll be close to 4 Ts going into winter. Right now, we're not giving forward guidance, but right now, it looks like we'll be in maintenance production mode, right? Like unless we see something that sort of incentivizes producers to bring on more gas, we'll be staying steady state. And obviously, if it sort of degrades from here, we'll make adjustments as necessary.

Gabe Daoud

Okay. Thanks, Alan. Okay. So maintenance for now, like not below maintenance given prices on the screen currently. You feel good with still maintenance.

Alan Shepard

Yes. We're pretty hedged going into '27. So we're in a little bit different shape than most folks. So right now, we'd still be in the maintenance mode mindset.

Gabe Daoud

Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then my follow-up would be another, I guess, high-level question, a big merger in basin this week was announced, as I'm sure you're all aware. Would love to hear your thoughts maybe on the transaction and just M&A in Appalachia more generally.

Alan Shepard

Yes. I want to comment on other folks' M&A. Obviously, it's a commodity industry and you see consolidation in those sorts of industries. We'll see what the sort of the combined company does in terms of production levels and things like that, but not much color to provide from our side on it.

Gabe Daoud

Okay. And just CNX's appetite for M&A at this stage?

Alan Shepard

Yes. So it's one of the lanes of capital allocation, right, as we always talk about, we're open to things that are accretive to the long-term free cash flow per share value. But it's just one of the things we review. And right now, share repurchases are sort of the bar we test all of that against, and they continue to be extremely attractive as you saw this quarter.

Operator

And the next question comes from Leo Mariani with ROTH.

Leo Mariani

I wanted to see if you could comment on inflation. Are you starting to see that creep in, in areas of the business? And do you expect that to maybe get a little worse next year?

Alan Shepard

I'll turn that over to Nav.

Navneet Behl

Yes, on the inflation side, the cost increase we are seeing are on two things. One is diesel and other is steel. But our overall impact to our program is less than 1% of our capital. So not much impact moving forward for us.

Alan Shepard

Yes. Leo, if you think about it, we've driven most of the diesel out of our system through sort of our emission reduction initiatives over the years. We run electric frac fleets. We have intensive sort of in-water transportation, right? We don't run a lot of water trucks and things like that. So as Nat mentioned, our exposure to those 2 categories are pretty limited moving into '27, but there are certainly increases there as everyone is.

Leo Mariani

Okay. Appreciate that. And then just a question on sort of the Utica here. I know you haven't had some recent wells. But as you look out a handful of years, certainly my understanding that you guys are going to continue to kind of do more in the Utica. As you think about that, are you contemplating any kind of new midstream build-out you think might be necessary to kind of get some of that deeper Utica in Central Pennsylvania online several years down the road?

Alan Shepard

Yes. As we sort of move through that CPA field, right, we're going to develop that as efficiently as possible, right? We've had a lot of time to sort of plan out the runway there. You're not going to see any major spikes in sort of infrastructure build. Year-to-year, you'll see some oscillation, but really, call it, in the $25 million plus or minus range on infrastructure.

Operator

The next question comes from Phil Jungwirth.

Phillip Jungwirth

Previously, you talked about 40,000 to 50,000 Southwest PA Marcellus acres remaining to be developed. I guess just wondering how you expect the transition activity in coming years. Is the focus going to be predominantly in this area through the decade? Or are we going to see a more gradual pivot, which would actually extend years of inventory in the core?

Alan Shepard

Yes. Obviously, the developing what's remaining in the Southwest PA area on the Marcellus front is the most sort of economic thing to do, right? The infrastructure is all there and they're mostly return trips and things like that. As we talked about before, the way to think about it is we sort of exit the Southwest PA Marcellus as we kind of exit the decade, right?

So there's another 4 to 5 years sort of develop the rest of that. And then the program shifts over to CPA Utica predominantly with CPA Marcellus as we call that area. And then ultimately, you would return back to Southwest PA for Southwest PA Utica and other horizons later on down the road.

Phillip Jungwirth

Okay. Great. And then can you remind us on maintenance CapEx for CNX and maybe a little bit more theoretical because there's still the potential to drive down costs. But if you did shift to predominantly deep Utica position in Central PA, how do you expect total spend to trend relative to this year's more Southwest PA focused program?

Alan Shepard

Yes. So the way we think about it sort of a capital efficiency metric, so all in with the capital infrastructure and the D&C, you're calling that $0.85 to $0.90 range is where we want to be sort of moving forward. Obviously, that's subject to things like inflation and amount of infrastructure in any given year. But the avenue where there's still opportunity to sort of squeeze cost out of the system is really on the drilling days on the Utica side, right? So that's really where our focus is. And every time we go back to a new pad there, that's where we're being intentful.

Operator

And the next question comes from Michael Scialla with Stephens.

Michael Scialla

You had some management change during the quarter. Just wanted to see if you could add any color on Everett's departure and Ravi assuming the role of CFO.

Alan Shepard

Yes. Excited to have Ravi. Great to have an in-house candidate with his sort of background and skill set to sort of step in the role. I'm not going to add anything additional on sort of the Everett departure outside what was in the 8-Ks.

Michael Scialla

Okay. Fair enough. I guess thinking long term, been some pretty robust natural gas demand forecast out there. I guess I want to see your thoughts on do you agree with those? And if they play out, how would CNX respond? Would you do anything different than the way the company has been operating in the last really 6 years with aggressively buying back shares?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I would say we're extremely bullish on sort of long-term demand in basin. In terms of giving you a precise number, whether that's 2 Bs or 20 Bs, time will tell, right? I mean there's still a lot of uncertainty on the ultimate end users in terms of AI and things like that. But what's clear is natural gas, every drop here in Appalachia is going to get developed.

From a pricing perspective, what that means is we're still going to be constrained by the supply curve. This is the way we sort of think about it. So when we see the longer-term strip increasing in pricing to sort of bring a call on what we have, that's when we'll bring incremental volumes to the market until then sort of maintenance of production the way we think about it.

Operator

And the next question comes from Betty Jiang with Barclays.

Wei Jiang

First on the gas differential, like 3Q differential is a bit wider than where we were -- where we were expecting. So just wondering if there's anything in particular that impacted this? And could you remind us what's your in-basin exposure?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I mean our in-basin exposure is 2/3, 2/3 of the whole portfolio, right? Been challenging up here in basin with sort of the weather and the softness. Any given day, our team is out there optimizing. We have different sales points, but a lot of the volumes ended up just staying here because it wasn't economic to sort of send to MichCon or other places.

Wei Jiang

Got it. And then just you guys don't subscribe to the curtailment strategy, right? Was there any curtailment impact?

Alan Shepard

Yes. No, great question, Betty. So there's been some periods over the last couple of months where gas has dropped sub-$1 because we hedge, there's not a lot we need to do in terms of shut-ins, but there's been some couple of stretches where we have curtailed volumes. It's been less than a B though, probably for the whole quarter. So we haven't sort of spiked that out. But we definitely are sensitive as other folks when you get down to $0.50, $0.60 gas in basin, there's no reason for anybody to sort of reach that level if you're unhedged.

Wei Jiang

Right. No, that makes sense. And then another question on capital allocation. It's the second quarter in a row now that you lean on the balance sheet a bit for a pretty outsized buyback. Is that a level that -- something that you will consider -- continue to do? And is there a limit on how much willingness you're willing to maybe draw on the balance sheet on the revolver?

Alan Shepard

Yes. We generally don't try to give too much color on the short-term tactics from the buyback program because that's not sort of in our interest. But I think if you can look back at the history of what we've done, we sort of stepped on the gas when see the sort of sector trade-off and we laid off when the sector is a little more bid to it.

But longer term, we still view every share we repurchase as a sort of great opportunity to create long-term per share value, particularly when we think about the question about long-term gas demand, right? Like instead of growing production, you can grow production per share by repurchasing shares, right? That's another way to do it. So...

Operator

And we have another question from Michael Scialla with Stephens.

Michael Scialla

I just wanted to ask about a lot of companies talking about having conversations and some agreements on direct sales to customers. Are you having any of those kind of conversations with potential customers? And if so, what sort of time frame should we be thinking about? Are these like towards the end of the decade? Or could they be sooner than that?

Alan Shepard

Yes. We're certainly in the mix with everybody else here in the basin on some of these discussions. I mean the challenge has been what's the incentive to like to sell off the long-term contracts if you're not getting sort of enough of a premium to lock into that fixed delivery. So that's been the challenge. No particular time line as folks come to market and look for gas for these projects that are coming online over the next 5 years, we'll participate and we'll update if there's something meaningful to update on it.

Michael Scialla

Got you. And then you mentioned a little bit about deep Utica. Should we be thinking for '27, similar kind of program as this year, turning in line 7 or so wells? Or could that -- could you flex that up at all? Or do you have plans to do that?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I think the mix sort of looks like this year. I don't want to give you the precise numbers off the top of my head, but the mix is we're blending in deep Utica with the remaining sort of Southwest PA that we've talked about. And any given year, I wouldn't get too engaged in sort of any false precision on the signal there. Like I said, we're super bullish on that horizon, and it's sort of going to be core to the next couple of decades.

Operator

And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing comments.

Tyler Lewis

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

Operator

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