Excelerate Energy Stock

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Theresa Chen, and I'm the Midstream and Refining Analyst here at Barclays. It is my pleasure to introduce our next company, Excelerate Energy. Joining me from Excelerate is CEO, Steven Kobos. Welcome, Steven.

Thanks, Theresa. It's good to be here and look forward to our webcast discussion.

Absolutely. It's always good to have you at our conference, and we are at a point of the cycle and the broader macro backdrop where your infrastructure assets are more critical than ever. Maybe starting with the macro side of things and your view on the broader LNG and regasification backdrop. Looking beyond the recent geopolitical volatility in the Middle East, how do you view near- and long-term demand for LNG import infrastructure? How do you see Excelerate's regasification portfolio positioned to benefit from those trends?

Sure. Well, just right off the bat, I would say what I always say, we are bullish on the asset class. The asset class is tight. I mean, speaking of these floating regasification import terminals, a little over 50 in the world. We own or control of 12 of them. Amazing tightness in the market for those now. We look for that to be persistent into the 2030s. But there's been so much investment, so much capital deployed on liquefaction, and there are a lot of people at this conference who do a remarkably good job at that. That liquefaction, it costs maybe 10x per million tonnes for liquefaction than what it costs per million tonnes of regasification.

The reason we are bullish over the intermediate and long-term is there's all the supply that's coming online, 50% increase through the end of the decade. FID is more than 200 million tonnes. This wave or the supply shock, whatever you want to call it, it's great. It's going to lead to affordability, but it doesn't do anything unless there's a home for it. We are the ones who create the homes for this coming wave through our investment in the downstream part of the LNG value chain, and there is a significant -- and will be a significant need for that. So we're excited to be part of it.

Finding home for all those incremental molecules does precipitate an incredible amount of investment need. Outlining this investment need and the path forward. You have provided some building blocks to continued growth in earnings across your asset base in the low double-digit range for dividend growth through 2028, underlined by earnings growth clearly. What are the primary drivers that give you confidence in this outlook?

The confidence just comes from sequencing. We do have a lot of stair steps, a lot of milestones that have driven this. Obviously, '26, we've had a full year of our Jamaica platform online. We've had a half year. We've put the Acadia, our new building, into Jordan. That's about $20 million of incremental uplift from that. We've just announced the last quarter the contracting for Express at 35% uplifts over its last charter into Colombia will be off of Cartagena, very excited about that. We've got the Iraq project start-up in Q2. I have promised Prime Minister Al-Zaidi, he gets a Q2 startup, and we are standing behind that and executing on that.

Then we also have announced last quarter, Theresa, the acquisition of the Methane Patricia Camila and that conversion, it's a fantastic asset. We think it's going to be best-in-class FSRU, but that will come online early 2028. That kind of sequence cadence, this growth is what has given us the confidence, the visibility, did increase the dividend 13%.

We've announced multiyear, as you say, commitments on our dividend growth. That's still below 1% yield. But we've got a lot of growth, and we've got leverage. That yield is still below 1%, more to do. Our leverage is still 1.9 very low, but that balance sheet gives us the ability to fund that growth and have that visibility. It's very exciting.

That's very clear. And turning back to Iraq, which remains the site of an important component of growth within your story. Your promise to the Iraqi Prime Minister, gas is going to flow second quarter 2027. Can you tell us about what underwrites this confidence in achieving that in-service date? And where do you see the most important execution milestones from here?

Sure. It's kind of an alpha and omega started with this company in 2000, 2008, opening up Kuwait's LNG. It's strange, 20 years have gone by, and we're just a few miles north of there now. We have paused a little bit in the spring for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to see the new government in Iraq formed. I want to see that Prime Minister Al-Zaidi's government have the same commitment as their prior government before the elections in Iraq. That's why I was there in Baghdad in June and met with him in Washington in July. It's critical. It's clear that it's critical.

Baghdad has not had reliable electricity since 2003. It gets very hot. Our COO was there 2 weeks ago in Baghdad. It's is 117 degrees. It's too damn hot. We're going to do something about that. I was obviously pleased not just that the project enjoys the support of the Iraqi government, but obviously, Prime Minister Al-Zaidi got a warm reception in the White House, and strong USG support, too. Those were things I wanted to see.

We've been in Iraq since the project was announced. We've been -- we've removed like 150 million tonnes of material from the site, old crawler, barely crawler cranes, all kinds of things. We have been in our positioning material overland from Oman to Dubai and by barge to Iraq. That's all ongoing. We have just good visibility about bringing it online.

But I'll just diverge and repeat what I said on the earnings call, like people forget what's going on intra-basin. Kuwait that receives about 6 million tonnes of LNG per annum. They're only down 10%, 15% year-on-year since '25. They've had over 45 shipments come in. Those have all been intra-basin deliveries, Kuwait, Das Island, et cetera. We expect for Iraq to enjoy that same intra-basin advantage and look forward to bringing that online.

Okay. To your point, there is good empirical evidence that intra-basin flows continue and remain resilient. And to your earlier comments about Iraq not having reliable supply power and how this project will help to address that. You have a minimum offtake commitment of 250 MMcf per day. How should we think about the potential for volumes to move above that level over time?

Look the reason -- one of the many reasons why I like Iraq, like the fundamentals of that project. I personally think that like Kuwait that's been importing LNG for 20 years, when you get past a deficit and they have a severe deficit, there's still a spark spread there like the Kuwaiti space. You bring in more affordable LNG for power, you export the more valuable fuel oil. There's a very definite reason why Kuwait still imports LNG 20 years later. Frankly, why I think it will make sense for Iraq always to do so regardless of how they do with their deficit.

It is an integrated project. It's a minimum take. Ratably, it looks like the rest of our capacity deals because of that minimum take. That's 250 million scf. I believe their maximum is 500 TBD really how that maximum will look seasonally. I mean, certainly in summer, I expect them to take as much as they can. We'll see how that looks annually. But it's not linear, but you could expect that there could be, say, another 30% to 40% of headroom or uplift if they elected to take a maximum volume.

Fair enough. And turning to the Methane Patricia Camila. On that conversion, can you provide an update on the project's progress to date? And what are the major milestones here between now and the targeted early 2028 in-service date?

Was it clear how much I was geeking out about that ship. I mean -- I don't mean in a bad way, but our ops team had been stalking that candidate as we thought the best conversion candidate in the world. I mean 170,000 cubic meters TFDE, most importantly, it was a BG and then a Shell asset, and they knew what to build. It's got installed reliquefaction, which if we were adding it after the fact, that would be a $30 million kicker. A fantastic ship. I don't really love the orange and black color scheme, but you can't have everything that you want in life. But other than that, a fantastic ship. It's going to be best-in-class.

She's not really going to have competition to speak of when she hits the water in 2028 because other people do not adopt our philosophy. I think we're going to have a best-in-class asset and kind of the TAM to choose from '28. We've bought and ordered the regasification module out of Scandinavia. That's a big, huge single lift at the shipyard. I think we talked early on before we settled on the PatCam that we were talking about $200 million all-in. I can tell you, tell everyone on the webcast, we're looking probably $230 million to $250 million all-in on the PatCam as a converted ship.

But again, she's going to be best-in-class, and we look for her earnings profile to be unchanged even at that slightly higher ticket for it. So excited about that. We're doing all the things we need to do. It's a complex project. We're going to deliver it safely and on time, but we look for that to be competing in early '28.

Very good. And within this $230 million to $250 million range, can you help us think through the expected cadence of spend, including any major milestone payments? And is there any other color on the potential economics at this juncture?

Okay. That's all in with the vessel. Obviously, I think everybody knows the price tag, we think was fantastic on a ship, $79 million for what we're getting. I think we have a 10% down payment due here in a month or so, so call it $8 million. We've got the balance when we take delivery in January, so $71 million there. There's a sequence of modeling. I don't have the exact modeling, but we've ordered the regasification kit. I don't have the stage payments in front of me, Theresa. But our ever helpful IR lead, Craig Hicks, will help everyone with their model on that point. As I said, the final payments will be at sail-away in '28. We're pretty excited about it.

There will be $70 million at the outset, $8 million later. But again, that $230 million number is inclusive of the $79 million. We think we're getting a lot of bang for the buck. Look forward to it. We've always said 5 to 7 build multiple lower if integrated, higher, if not, but we'll see. She's going to be well suited for an integrated project if we can. That reliq is a game changer that can impact your economics on your fuel that you're selling rather than burning the LNG by, call it, $10 million a year. It really makes a difference in what the profitability of that asset can be.

Understood. And under this more efficient engineering framework with the reliq on the vessel, as you work to commercialize the PatCam, what types of counterparties contract structures and/or geographies are generating the most interest at this juncture? If you could wave a magic wand, Steven, what would the ideal commercial outcome look like for this asset?

Well, it's no secret. We like the movement to integrated projects. We think our balance sheet -- we talked about our low leverage, 1.9. Our balance sheet, it allows us to go have sensible discussions and buy the LNG we need for an integrated deal. We think that is a commercial advantage for us. We like the balance that we have that has given us that balance sheet as we continue to grow through that cadence milestones we talked about through '28. But we're not going to be hide bound. If you got a really good offtaker and they want to go for a more conventional capacity or capital leasing type framework, we will evaluate that.

I can tell you that I've been around the company one way or another for 19 years. When we were negotiating with Columbia, we had one deal team in Houston and another in a different hemisphere negotiating simultaneously, and we ended up liking the Columbia deal better. I don't remember that ever happening in the past. That's a function about what the supply-demand tension and the asset class looks like right now. Ultimately, it's about making good choices with what's in front of you. While we have a bias, we'll continue to evaluate what makes the most sense for us.

Fair enough. And then on the Shenandoah, can you provide an update on the conversion opportunity here? And with the PatCam underway, how are you thinking about the likelihood of moving forward with multiple conversion candidates at the same time?

What's interesting isn't it because we do have this tight asset class. It's not changing with any kind of speed whatsoever. We've been very measured, but we still bet on ourselves and those bets have been paying off massively over the past few years, first with the Sequoia into Brazil and then with Acadia. We'll continue to make those bets. By the way, yes, we geeked out about the PatCam. It's not a knock on Shenandoah, very capable ship. She's providing useful work. She's making good money for us on the Atlantic Basin deliveries and other tasks.

I think David Liner, our COO, on the earnings call hinted, don't be surprised if we do a conversion for a floating storage unit instead of an FSRU. We're very definitely pursuing some opportunities where that would make sense. Putting some popcorn out for you guys. So nobody is going to be surprised if you hear one of those announcements. But she's a capable ship.

By now, some of you guys live and work in Boston. You look out your window and you see the Shenandoah from time to time at Everett. She is making those milk runs. If we do deploy her somewhere else, we'll have to find another asset that is capable of limboing under those Boston bridge. So we'll still have to infill for her. But yes, we're going to do more. The question is -- and we can walk and chew gum and we can execute multiple projects, Theresa, but we should very quickly and almost immediately be thinking about what is it that we want to deliver to the market in 2029.

Okay. And speaking of that relatively tight market with a finite amount of assets, the Express recontracting provided a 35% step-up in EBITDA versus the prior contract. From your commercial discussions, how would you characterize the current supply-demand balance for FSRUs more broadly? And what kind of trends are you seeing across the opportunity set today?

Well, I didn't realize, I touched on that too soon, didn't I? It's changing. Really, everything that's being under construction or under conversion right now is dedicated for a project. The PatCam is going to be out there and be a free agent and be the best ship on the water in 2028. So I don't -- and given the time to market on these, you're very quickly running out of time to impact supply-demand balance before '29, 2030. Sometimes the yards are even offering 2030 already for new buildings.

By the way, the discussions about conversions, it's not knock on new buildings. I like new buildings. You can easily take a 50-year useful life, you make a few tweaks to those designs. Just from market cycle, there's a lot to be said to having an asset like that. We may place another order for a new building. If you're a shipyard and you're listening to this webcast, I would encourage you to sharpen your pencil if you would like us to get off high center and do that. It's useful to use these talks.

Absolutely, calling all shipyards out there. So maybe turning to the Caribbean. How is the Jamaica acquisition strengthened Excelerate's ability to pursue additional LNG and power infrastructure opportunities across the region in your opinion?

It's a bit of a game changer because it turned us -- it handed us the platform, an integrated LNG terminal, 2 import terminals, power plant. But from the very beginning, I've said I view that FSRU in Kingston as a tank farm and the ability to load full cargoes in Texas or Louisiana, float them over and then break bulk from them. Our team that live in Miami and like it's the American Airlines model, like that FSRU is the Miami Airport, you take passengers in bulk and you break them into smaller parcel size and put them on smaller planes and deliver them around the Caribbean.

We've done some of our first small-scale deliveries from Jamaica to other points within the Caribbean. We're busy proving our bona fides, our capabilities, our reliability in doing so. But those are just the first, which we then hope to turn into longer-term facilities. But again, with the hint on FSUs, we're going to deploy more capital around the Caribbean and take advantage of that platform. This could be FSUs, it could be small-scale assets. It could be other smaller import terminals around the Caribbean. But there's more CapEx to deploy around the Caribbean. I'm still excited about that as a platform, Theresa.

Okay. And as you kind of prove yourself in the region and pave the way for incremental opportunities, my next question was going to be about where you see the most attractive options for capital deployment across the Caribbean and Latin America, and you kind of answered that. But well, I wanted to ask you about the size and scale of the opportunity set and the cadence of investment, if you will.

Yes, it's significant. I mean an FSU is going to be taking an older LNG carrier and modifying it. Then presumably, you're going to be feeding that to other infra onshore. Those are smaller bits, in a smaller Montego Bay can be in the $30 million to $50 million range. I mean there are good-sized opportunities to deploy CapEx across the region, and it's not just in adding the small-scale vessels for the break bulk. There will be other opportunities for pull-through demand. We're looking at those.

Pretty excited about Colombia. It's a great robust market. I don't know how many times we go to countries where people say, but that's an energy place. But everybody's energy markets are complex. There are always parts of it or there are always commodities that you need and Colombia does need the gas now, and we look forward to being an important part of that for some time.

Okay. Very clear. So beyond the Caribbean, beyond Iraq, where do you see the largest opportunities for incremental growth across the EM markets? What characteristics make the country particularly attractive? And to your earlier point of warming to the integrated deals if they make economic sense, from an LNG to power and FSRU deployment perspective, where do you see the immediate and most visible areas of growth?

Well, there's a reason I'm flying to Gastech in Bangkok, and it's not because I like sleeping on airplanes. I mean there is still a lot to be done there. But going to Cartagena, similarly, we've got 5 of our assets kind of stuck in LatAm, Atlantic Basin, not stuck, I mean, deployed. We have an amazing geographic diversity around the world. We like it. We think that's important. We think it's a differentiator. Done a lot talking about Caribbean because it's almost a set piece opportunity with a lot of interconnection within it.

But in general, we love all our children equally around the world. We want to be reliable partners for sovereigns, for NOCs, for whoever is relying upon us to keep the lights on. We're going to keep doing that everywhere and try to maintain that global diversity of mix.

What are you looking for? We like markets that need nat gas. I really think have always encouraged our team to think about the market, not just the project, like how sticky is the market. Ideally, you let these markets that maybe have had a decline curve in domestic gas. They've got installed infra, makes it easier to scale quickly. Those are sort of -- they're not unicorns, but when you see those, you really like them.

But you've never really seen us pursue an isolated gas-to-power project on some lonely coastline somewhere, it's usually been places that have connectivity throughout their country or regionally and a deficit, more expensive liquid fuels you can replace, things that will mean that you are critical and that there's an economic reason for them to preserve the relationship. So we're looking for all of that. Again, we won't -- and I love bird in the hand.

Fair enough. So last question for me. With this ample opportunity set ahead of you in terms of organic growth across multiple regions, how are you prioritizing capital allocation more broadly across growth projects, balance sheet management and sustained returns to shareholders?

I think we are fortunate in that we've not had to choose one over the others. The priority is always going to be good growth projects, first and foremost. But I think we've shown -- we've got so much capacity. We've -- as I've mentioned, 1.9x leverage. I think it's $452 million of cash on hand, undrawn $500 million revolver. We've got the capacity. We were looking at the same stair steps that we started our conversation with. That gave us the confidence to increase the dividend by 13% this year. We've communicated low double-digit increases through '28 to the Street. Feel great about that.

We've also, from time to time, done opportunistic share repurchases. I think what we've shown is we've got the capacity to use -- pull all 3 levers. But the growth is what drives these great cash flows give us this balance sheet, which allow us to pull the other levers as well. So at this point, it's an all of the above strategy, which I think we've proved, but with a bias as always to growth. I mean, given the TAM that we have, it has to be.

Yes. We look forward to the execution. Thank you very much, Steven, as always.

Yes. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Excelerate Energy Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference call over to Craig Hicks, Vice President, Investor Relations and Strategy. Craig, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Excelerate Energy's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Steven Kobos, President and CEO, and Dana Armstrong, Chief Financial Officer. Also joining the call are Oliver Simpson, Chief Commercial Officer, and David Liner, Chief Operating Officer.

Our second quarter earnings press release and presentation were published yesterday afternoon and are available on our website at ir.excelerateenergy.com. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. We undertake no obligation to update these statements. We'll also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found at the end of the presentation.

With that, it is my pleasure to pass the call over to Steven Kobos.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This was a strong quarter for Excelerate, both financially and operationally. We delivered $120.1 million of adjusted EBITDA and advanced a number of commercial opportunities that support our growth outlook for the years ahead.

Before I get into the quarter, let me start with what drives this business. We connect global LNG supply to the markets that need it most, and we own and operate an energy infrastructure portfolio that turns imported LNG into reliable, affordable energy. The backdrop for that work has never been stronger.

An unprecedented wave of new LNG supply will come online by the end of this decade. That creates a significant opportunity for the downstream infrastructure required to connect that supply with the countries and customers who depend on it. That is precisely what we provide.

As the operator of the largest portfolio of floating regasification terminals in the world, Excelerate is well positioned to take advantage of these macro tailwinds. What sets us apart is how we create value from that portfolio. We redeploy and optimize the assets we already own to drive incremental growth, and we invest selectively where we can add stable contracted cash flow.

This quarter is a good example of that discipline at work. So let's get into the updates on the progress we have made. The Excelerate Acadia, our newest floating regas terminal, is an example of how we create value from the infrastructure within our portfolio. The Acadia was delivered in April on budget and ahead of schedule.

While it was originally planned for deployment to Iraq this summer, after the onset of the Middle East conflict, we moved quickly to find an interim deployment for the asset. In May, we signed a nine-month charter with Jordan's National Electric Power Company, NEPCO, to deploy the Acadia to the country's existing LNG import terminal in Aqaba.

Operations began in July, and the deployment is expected to contribute approximately $20 million of EBITDA this year. We matched one of our floating regasification assets with an immediate customer need and generated meaningful earnings uplift while preserving the asset's strategic positioning for future opportunities. That is the advantage of operating a portfolio of this scale. When a market needs reliable regasification, we can respond.

We are also creating incremental value over a much longer horizon. In June, we signed a seven-year charter with a subsidiary of Frontera Energy Corporation to redeploy the FSRU Express to a new LNG import terminal under development in Colombia's Caribbean coast. The agreement has an initial term of 7 years and includes multiple extension options.

Following completion of its current charter and planned dry dock later this year, the Express is expected to begin service in Colombia in early '27. The new agreement is expected to increase the Express' annual EBITDA contribution by about 35% compared to its current contract. Importantly, it also adds meaningful long-term contracted EBITDA to our backlog.

Let me now turn to Iraq. In October 2025, we executed a definitive agreement with a subsidiary of Iraq's Ministry of Electricity to develop the country's first LNG import terminal. It is an integrated project that includes a five-year agreement for regasification services and LNG supply. It has extension options and a minimum contracted offtake of 250 million standard cubic feet per day.

Despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we have continued to advance the project while adapting our execution plans as conditions evolve. We continue to monitor developments across the region closely, and safety and security considerations remain at the forefront of project planning and execution.

Engineering and procurement activities are nearing completion. Site clearance and dredging activities have continued in preparation for construction, and materials required for the terminal have been staged globally and are now being mobilized based on construction priorities. Based on our current project schedule, we now expect terminal operations to commence early in the second quarter of 2027.

We remain closely aligned with our counterparties on the value of this project to Iraq's energy system, and we appreciate the support of the new Iraqi government and share its commitment to advancing infrastructure that strengthens the country's long-term energy security. When the terminal comes online, it will bring reliable, large-scale gas import capacity to a country that needs it. It will do so under a take-or-pay contracted structure consistent with the rest of our portfolio.

Next, let's turn to our FSRU conversion project. To position ourselves for new regasification opportunities as the LNG supply wave comes online, we are converting an LNG carrier into a floating regasification terminal to support our future earnings growth. In July, we entered into a definitive agreement to purchase our second LNG carrier, the Methane Patricia Camila, for approximately $79 million.

It will serve as the dedicated vessel for our first FSRU conversion project. As you know, earlier in the process, we evaluated the Shenandoah as the potential conversion candidate, and it remains a viable option for future conversion opportunities. However, ultimately, we selected the Methane Patricia Camila for this project because its 170,000 cubic meter storage capacity, TFDE power generation, and installed reliquefaction provide a strong technical foundation for a high-capability FSRU.

We believe these characteristics will enhance the performance of the asset, expand the range of opportunities it can serve, and increase the earnings potential over its operating life. We are also making good progress with the key milestones required to advance the project. Since executing the LNG carrier purchase agreement, we have ordered the regasification plant and continue to advance the shipyard scope toward definitive agreements.

We continue to expect the converted FSRU to be available for commercial deployment in early 2028. By advancing the conversion today, we are positioning Excelerate to meet future customer demand at a time when available FSRU capacity is expected to remain limited.

Let me close the business update with Jamaica because it is an important example of where this company is headed over time. A little over 1 year ago, we acquired our integrated LNG and power platform in Jamaica. What makes Jamaica valuable is not only the contribution it provides today, it is the combination of LNG import infrastructure, downstream customer relationships, and commercial opportunities that create multiple avenues for growth.

Across Jamaica, we continue to identify opportunities to optimize the existing platform and increase utilization through additional LNG sales and expanded infrastructure services. Beyond Jamaica, we have already begun to leverage our existing infrastructure and LNG supply position to support customers on other islands and coastlines throughout the Caribbean.

Today, our platform enables us to serve a broad range of customer needs through infrastructure solutions that range from truck-delivered LNG to larger integrated downstream projects. More importantly, Jamaica demonstrates how a single LNG infrastructure platform can create a scalable and repeatable model that can be expanded across the Caribbean over time.

We are seeing increased momentum on the commercial front, and we look forward to providing updates on the progress we are making later this year. In summary, here are the key takeaways. Across our portfolio, we continue to create value from the assets we operate today while advancing future growth opportunities, whether it's the Acadia in Jordan, the redeployment of the Express, the integrated Iraq LNG import terminal, or our FSRU conversion.

Each of these initiatives reflects the same approach to capital allocation. Together, they form a sequenced pathway to growth through 2028 with each milestone building on the earnings power, contracted cash flow, and infrastructure platform we have in place today. We have a strong foundation and the financial strength to execute our strategy. Finally, I want to recognize our employees around the world. Their commitment and hard work are behind every milestone we discuss today.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Dana.

Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. Excelerate delivered solid financial results in the second quarter. We reported net income of $50 million, roughly flat compared to the first quarter of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $120 million, down slightly versus the prior quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 12% from the prior year second quarter, primarily due to a full quarter contribution from the Jamaica platform.

For the second quarter, maintenance CapEx spend was $14 million, and committed growth capital spend was $241 million, inclusive of the final payment for the Acadia, which was paid in April. Behind these results is a strong balance sheet that supports near-term execution and our growth objectives. As of June 30, 2026, total debt, including finance leases, was $1.2 billion.

We ended the quarter with $342 million of cash and cash equivalents, and the full $500 million of capacity under our revolving credit facility was available. Net debt was $898 million, and trailing net leverage was 1.9x. With leverage well below our target range and substantial available liquidity, we have plenty of financial capacity to fund our growth pipeline while continuing to return capital to shareholders.

Our capital allocation framework remains disciplined. First, we invest in accretive growth opportunities across our infrastructure platform. Second, we return capital to shareholders through a growing dividend. Finally, when market conditions warrant, we pursue opportunistic share repurchases.

Consistent with that framework, our Board recently approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.09 per share of Class A common stock, representing roughly a 13% increase over the prior quarter. This increase is consistent with our previously announced target of a low double-digit annual dividend growth rate through 2028 and reflects our confidence in the company's ability to fund growth while returning capital to shareholders.

The dividend is payable on September 3, 2026, to Class A common stockholders of record as of the close of business on August 19, 2026. We also continue to execute on our share repurchase program. During the second quarter, we repurchased roughly 693,000 Class A shares for approximately $24 million at a weighted average price of $33.93 per share.

With that framework in mind, let me turn to our updated financial outlook for the remainder of the year. Based on our results and clear visibility into the second half of the year, we are adjusting our full year 2026 guidance. We are raising and narrowing our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA is now expected to range between $490 million and $515 million.

This increase reflects the strength of our contracted base business, ongoing asset optimization, and strong operational execution. Additionally, we have raised and narrowed our committed growth capital guidance to a range of $380 million to $400 million. The increase in committed growth capital was driven primarily by certain Iraq-related project costs being pulled forward to 2026 from 2027.

The total estimated cost and return profile of the Iraq project remains in line with the previously communicated range. The updated committed growth capital range also reflects continued execution of our first FSRU conversion projects, including certain payments related to the recently ordered regasification plant and other long-lead equipment. In addition, the range includes a 10% down payment associated with the acquisition of the Methane Patricia Camila, which is due in the third quarter of 2026.

We are lowering our full year maintenance CapEx guidance to a range of $85 million to $95 million. This reflects the expected deferral of the FSRU Exquisite dry dock into 2027. We are pleased with our performance for the first half of the year and remain focused on executing against our priorities for the remainder of 2026.

With that, we'll open up the call for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

I wanted to go back to Steven's earlier comments about the strength of global LNG trade and regasification in particular. With the Express' strong recontracting results, how should we think about the read-throughs to the rest of your portfolio? Does this outcome change your expectations around pricing, contract duration, or the renewal terms upcoming? And what are you seeing in customer demand trends today?

Theresa, thanks very much. Good to have you on the call and look forward to seeing you at Barclays in September. Great question. It should come as no surprise that we are bullish on the asset class. We have been bullish on the asset class. We remain bullish on the asset class. It is going to be -- remain tight through the foreseeable future.

I think this is the fifth asset in the existing fleet that we have recontracted on more favorable terms over the past 4.5 years. So we look for that to continue, frankly, to continue into the 2030s, the tightness in the market. The coming wave is just going to need homes, and there are insufficient number of homes. So that's our bullishness or expectation in general. What else was buried in your question, Theresa? Since I said you only got 2 questions, I want to stretch it out for you.

No worries. The general sentiment, we completely understand, and we'll wait to see what you get on pricing, contract duration, and the like for the rest of your fleet as you recontract the assets. Maybe looking at near as well as medium-term EBITDA, I want to delve into your outlook a little bit more.

With your newly increased guidance, can you walk us through the assumptions embedded in the outlook today? What factors could push results towards the high or low end? And then looking beyond 2026, taking into account the currently fluid situation in the Middle East, what gives you confidence in starting the Iraq terminal operations in the second quarter of next year?

Theresa, it's Dana. I'll take the first part of that question. So in terms of the guidance, I mean, obviously, our base business is relatively predictable, as you know, just looking at the range and what could drive us up or down. I mean, there's a few things. The biggest, I guess, variable item is the Atlantic Basin deal.

So as you know, we deliver 2 cargoes per year. And the last couple of years, we've done a partial cargo in the fourth quarter, which spread into the first quarter of the following year. So that's our baseline assumption. But that could change depending on many items, the weather being 1 of them. So if that pulls up into Q4, that could drive closer to the higher end of range.

However, it pushes back into the first quarter of next year, that could drive us to the lower end of the range, but we're highly confident that we'll be within that range regardless of what happens there. And then the other factor is just cost. We always have some level of variability in our costs. So from a vessel OpEx and a business development perspective, if we shift priorities or activities change, that could create some variability, but really usually not very material. So again, we feel very confident we'll be in that range. But it's just the standard seasonality of things that we see going -- swinging one way or the other.

Theresa, I want to get back to your first question just because we do see upward pressure continuing on day rates. The reality is we're out there looking and hunting for integrated projects that are going to provide an even better return. So I don't, by my comments, want to lead anyone to think we're just looking for a standard TCP. And beyond that, you're also looking for near-term growth. If we weren't clear on the call, Iraq is starting up in Q2.

And Theresa, maybe I can add a little bit to that, too. You were asking about what gives us confidence that we can come online in second quarter. I'd say this project is coming online. The fundamentals of the project are even more compelling now than they were prior to the conflict. And we've used this time in second quarter to make sure we understood exactly what the security situation is on the ground before we start up in earnest again.

We've had people on the ground the entire time. So we've had people in Iraq continuously since the end of last year. We have great relationships with the local government, with U.S. government, with security forces in the region. And that all gives us good comfort that we can restart in earnest and get online in the second quarter of next year. So we're confident we're going to deliver, and you're going to see a lot more movement here as we get into third quarter, and we're really going out full speed.

Your next question comes from the line of Olivia Foster with Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask about the FSRU conversion candidate acquisition. First, can you walk us through how commercial conversations for the conversion candidate are progressing? Remind us what total conversion CapEx could be and project milestones to watch for an early 2028 in-service? And finally, could you walk us through the rationale for buying the new donor vessel and maybe the technical specs that make this asset more attractive for the 2028 early in-service versus the existing Shenandoah LNG carrier?

Olivia, thank you for being here, and we really want to welcome Goldman Sachs to our analyst coverage universe. It's a pleasure to have you on board, and we look forward to many future conversations. David is chomping at the bit to answer this, but I'm going to take the last part of it because it goes back to the point I was making with Theresa. We are always going to be opportunistic.

We have an opportunity on this vessel, and we think it's fantastic. And we think it's quite simply among the best conversion candidates in the world. It already has reliquefaction on it. That means it's going to have great boil-off gas management. It's got 170,000 cubic meter storage area. We like that. And we also like that it already has the TFDE power generation on board, simplifies things, reduces execution risk on the conversion, et cetera.

If you start looking at those characteristics together, you're going to figure out it's a far better candidate for an integrated deal where we will be selling molecules through it. I mean, it's ideal for that. And that is something that we are seeking to prioritize as we move forward. So we have the opportunity. It was -- we like the price, we like the vessel, and we like what we can do with it.

So I'm giving you a little bit of a heads-up as to what our preferred intended use for that asset will be. But I'm poaching on David's curb because he probably wants to geek out on the capabilities and the rest of your questions.

Yes. I could geek out for a while on the Pat-Cam. We're just thrilled the commercial team was able to secure that asset for us. As Steven said, in terms of size, it's going to be just really an efficient terminal to operate because with 170,000 cubic meters, that's the standard parcel in the industry. That means you can get vessels in, discharge full cargo, and get out quickly. So it's efficient.

Steven talked about the fuel-efficient TFDE propulsion system, which we're going to use for power generation. It's got basically as fuel efficient of a power generation plant as you can get for an FSRU. And then Steven talked about boil-off rate. She'll be the most efficient conversion in the industry in terms of boil-off rate when she goes into service. So that's why we're so excited about this pivot over to the Pat-Cam.

One other thing I'll say is just the pedigree of that vessel. So she's had charters, owners, and operators that are just world-class. And so we know it's going to be a good asset, and it's been maintained in a good condition. We've also put boots on the ground ourselves to confirm that that's the case as well as numerous third-party inspections that gives us comfort that we're going to have a great asset when she comes to us.

One of the -- you also asked about milestones. We take control of that asset in January of next year. We're working towards definitive agreement with the Seatrium shipyard. So be on the lookout for that. We've already secured all of the regas equipment for that conversion or we've ordered it all. So that's going to be on the way too. So there's a number of milestones that are coming down the way.

You also asked about CapEx. We've previously communicated around $200 million. With our pivot to the Pat-Cam, that's going to be -- that's on the low side. It's actually going to increase from that. But because of the capabilities that she's going to have and why she's such an ideal candidate for an integrated project, we're -- we expect the same level of returns as we've previously communicated.

That is clear. I appreciate all the detail. For my follow-up, I wanted to ask a follow-up based on your comments, Steven, to Theresa's first question really about the commercial preferences you are seeing from customers regarding integrated terminal offerings versus stand-alone FSRU charters.

As you work through commercial discussions with customers, how would you describe demand for the full-service terminal plus maybe LNG supply and last mile solutions versus stand-alone FSRU charters? And then from a contractual standpoint, can you remind us how the margin profile and even your stickiness with customers varies on integrated terminals versus vessel-only charters?

Olivia, I will say we want to own and be as involved as possible throughout in terms of stickiness. We want to be embedded within a deal. In terms of the preference, it's just going to be horses for courses, different places depending upon their background, what the rest of their portfolio looks like, if it's their first foray into LNG, it's all going to vary.

I think what you are hearing though is, from our standpoint, it's going to be a tight market for the foreseeable future. You're having this LNG wave come online. We're not concerned about deploying any of these assets. We want to be as picky as we need to be on where we deploy them. So -- and there'll be times like we're not going to be hidebound to 1 form or another. If there's a great opportunity and we like the offtaker on our more traditional just capital leasing model, we'll do that.

We're not going to turn it down, but we're not going to chase every one of those nor have we ever chased every one of those. We have always been picky. We've always cared about the market fundamentals in a particular market. But what you can -- what you should be defining from this as we are starting to move to that integration -- we think that's going to be required to succeed moving forward. We think that's the future of regas, and we want to be somewhat picky and make sure that we are using our precious assets to pursue what we view as the future of regas.

And Olivia, to answer your question about the returns, we've said previously and it holds is that the more we can integrate, the higher the returns will be. So we generally guide to unlevered after-tax returns of the low double digits to the mid-teens and TCPs being closer to that lower end, more integrated projects closer to the mid-teens or sometimes higher. So the level of integration obviously drives higher returns.

Your next question comes from the line of Elias Jossen with JPMorgan.

It's been over 1 year now since you've closed on the Jamaica platform. I know the team is highly integrated with the local government and looking to provide durable energy infrastructure solutions there. Can you just talk a little bit about sort of the learnings that you've had from owning that platform and when we may start to see those chunkier growth opportunities start to materialize this decade? And just remind us what the cadence looks like for putting those new assets in service?

Eli, I'm going to hand that over to Oliver because I know he wants to brag on it. But if it's not clear, we're already making deliveries to other islands and other Caribbean coastal areas. We haven't talked about them because we don't want to talk about individual things that aren't sufficiently material, but we are advancing. So we're pretty excited about the Caribbean. Oliver?

Yes. Thanks, Eli. Yes. So obviously, as you say, it's been about 1 year. I think the integration has gone extremely well. The full team, the full assets are fully integrated, and we're sort of at full running cycle now on those assets. I think what we've seen and sort of as we look at it, I'd say there's 3 things I'd point out.

One, as Steven has pointed out, we've been making small incremental sales on the spot just optimizing the assets that are there. And in fact, in this last quarter, we made our first sales with the final destination outside of Jamaica. So using the Jamaica assets to reach some of those other Caribbean islands. Obviously, the key part now is to turn those into longer-term discussions and longer-term contracts.

I think as part of that, we announced the Colombia TCP this quarter. It's a TCP, but I think it's also pointing to Steven's previous answer about being picky about our customers and where we place our assets, that's a perfect proof point of that. Putting an asset in Colombia on the Caribbean coast for us, it's an extension of our Caribbean portfolio, and we believe we'll be able to use that asset to further leverage our position across the Caribbean.

So it's going to give us another asset in proximity to Jamaica and proximity to the Caribbean that we can look at using to reach new customers. In terms of the longer-term deals that we're looking at, I'd say -- what I would say is there's a number of active discussions going on. I'm sort of really pleased at how those discussions are going. I think there will be -- when we can tell you, we'll come out, but I fully expect that through the course of this year, we'll be looking to provide more news on that.

And then finally, on the sort of overall picture, I mean, we provided the guidance last year. I think we gave the overall CapEx range -- sorry, the overall EBITDA range with CapEx on our Caribbean outlook. I think that holds. I think we haven't provided any specific cadence on the timing of that, but we still feel that that's a range that we're comfortable standing behind and working towards.

Understood. And then I know that you guys have probably had a lot of conversations regarding LNG supply from the Middle East. Maybe specifically from Qatar, what kind of conversations are you having with them? What kind of updates should we expect as we head into year-end? And then maybe just separately, if we just think about kind of the Express through the straight import moves and just broadly how that kind of fit into the dry dock before the charter in Colombia, just, I guess, broader kind of what you're seeing on the ground in the Middle East.

Sure. I'll take that one, Eli. Obviously, we have a lot of focus in that region as we do all over the globe. We've spent a lot of time on it. In terms of -- I'll take -- we've already spoken about our supply deal into Bangladesh and the impacts of that, which are within the guidance that we've provided today. So no new update there.

What we will -- what I would probably point out though that I don't think many people in the U.S. taking a 20,000-foot view realize this whole conflict has underscored the need for the Iraqi terminal. In Kuwait, Excelerate opened Kuwait up to LNG nearly 20 years ago. And all through this year, their cargoes into the Kuwait LNG terminal from 2025 are only down 15%. And there have been -- 39 of the 40 cargoes that have been delivered have been from Qatar.

So I think some people are surprised to know that intra-basin deliveries of LNG are proceeding. And frankly, I think there's an intense interest for new terminals like Iraq who will logically be a great destination for further intra-basin deliveries. If that -- we've gotten the green light to build out 2 years ago, I'm comfortable it would have remained up and running all this year just as the Kuwaiti terminal has. So just a little inside baseball there. You shouldn't be thinking about solely about cargoes going out. You should think also about what's the most intra-basin delivery.

Express, look, we've got some assets within the Gulf. We've got plenty of assets outside the Gulf. Express is the plan A. We are planning for plan A. But I think you will have realized by now with our pivot with Jordan with the Acadia, we always have a plan B. Actually, we usually have a plan B and C. So we're focused on plan A. That's Express to Colombia. But don't worry, we're going to execute Colombia. And if we have to pivot to a plan B or C, we will.

Your next question comes from the line of Bobby Brooks with Northland Capital Markets.

I wanted to follow up a little on Jeremy's question. It was touched -- Oliver touched on it a bit, but just wanted to hear a bit more on how the Express being redeployed in Colombia, like how might that look in playing a role for your broader plans for growth in the Caribbean?

Bobby, let me try and give a little more color on that. So as I said, obviously, that is a [indiscernible] TCP in Colombia. But I think through that and through our discussions with our new partners there, Frontera, we believe there will be opportunities to use that asset in conjunction with our broader assets in the Caribbean.

We've talked about Jamaica being a tank farm from which we can reach other places in the Caribbean. I think it's -- you can kind of apply the same logic there. So obviously, the location of the asset is close to 1 of the largest ports in Colombia and in the broader Caribbean. So again, a lot of traffic and a lot of opportunities to take from there. So those are all details that we're figuring out.

I mean, we're fully focused on getting that terminal up and running, getting the asset there. That's the clear focus. But it's also a long-term charter, long-term relationship. And as we've seen elsewhere in the past, we always want to try and -- we pick our customers and our projects wisely. We want to use those as a stepping stone to then go and try and leverage off that and do more.

Got it. Very helpful. And then I think I've got a good grasp on the benefits and cost differences between an FSRU conversion and a new build and how the end projects they serve would be different. But what I wanted to ask on is what might be the signals you'd want to see, whether internal or external that would push you back to getting in the queue of a shipbuilder for a new build?

Bobby, man, I'm always wanting to drive by the new car dealership and take a look at what's on the lot. And you're probably getting the point that the Acadia is a beast. I mean, just love that ship, love everything about it. What I can tell you is we're always going to be looking.

Now you've heard us all geek out about the Patricia Camila. That's going to be a fantastic ship, love the timing, love the whole package. But as we move forward into the 2030s, there will definitely continue to be a place for these best-in-class assets. So we're not on the verge of pulling a trigger anytime soon. If any of the shipyards are listening, they need to sweeten up things before we do that. But we very definitely -- I expect that we will be back with a new build at some point.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Scialla with Stephens.

I wanted to see if you could give us a sense of the EBITDA uplift you anticipate in 2028 from the conversion.

Mike, we've guided before that we generally use a CapEx EBITDA multiple. And so if you just take the CapEx and apply that multiple, we generally say 5x to 7x, right? So Iraq is around 5x. That's an integrated project. That would be an ideal situation to have something like that, but it could potentially be a TCP. So it's going to be most likely somewhere in that 5x to 7x range.

Yes. Appreciate it. And with all the growth materializing here, I want to see what your latest thoughts were on potentially securing more supply agreements?

We will. I mean, we very definitely will, Mike. But I can tell you there's strong interest in wanting to fill the positions we already have. We're being very deliberate about it, and we'll bring you color on that as soon as we can.

I think what I would add on that, Mike, is also, as we've talked about the overall commodity risk for us, it's about matching the supply to what our customers need. So there's lining up those conversations in parallel with what we see in the downstream projects. So they are parallel discussions, but they're certainly happening, and it's certainly on our radar as we talk to the conversion or other projects that we see as integrated, we will need to bring in more supply to support those efforts.

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Robertson with Deutsche Bank.

Maybe just a question here just on the Middle East instability. So I have to imagine both exporters of LNG and importers right now care a lot about pricing and price volatility as well as security of supply and supply chain resiliency and all these types of factors. So I mean, given the state of the world today, have your conversations with any potential customers changed at all in terms of how these potential integrated opportunities will look? Will they include maybe more robust storage capacity designs or any changes to the design in any way so that people can have greater inventories or anything like that? So I just wanted to get a sense of how topics were trending.

It's fascinating, Chris. I was on the USS Nimitz in Kingston a couple of months ago when she was making one of her last port calls in her 50-year career. And it was a nice port call because the entire Jamaican government was on board. And I was quite simply bragging and reminding them that their nat gas prices have been stable over the course of 2026 because they have reliable long-term Henry Hub index pricing from Excelerate. And wasn't that a good thing to have that degree of financial security? It is.

I do think the lesson from this is just be careful about how you source, how you contract, and we can provide whatever product a customer wants to give them the physical and the economic security. And again, that's why we're never trying to kill it on the molecule. We want to be boring. We want to be perhaps the most boring company that touches nat gas in your universe because we want to buy on the same index, sell on the same index. As Oliver says, we want to match it up.

So I actually think that any time people are looking at spikes, they realize they need to give a little bit more thought to how they're sourcing it. And I think -- I don't think, I know that people are more receptive and more interested in the integrated product that we want to offer them because we do want to offer it on that boring infra type profile, and we are seeing more interest in that.

A bit of a left field type question here, but the company has always been very much part of the LNG value chain here. Are there any other American petroleum gases that are stripped out of the nat gas stream that are interesting from a potential infrastructure perspective that you guys could maybe move into at a smaller scale at some point? Or is the plan just to stick kind of in that LNG value chain?

Yes. For now, Chris, we are -- there's just such an enormous TAM in the downstream portion of the LNG value chain that I think we're better off focusing on that. I mean, obviously, we'll be building last mile delivery systems that once you have that, I suppose you could ultimately be trucking or delivering other types of product. But for now, we're laser-focused on LNG downstream infra, regas. I've said before publicly like we're entering the era of regas and LNG, and that is our obsession.

Your next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One. [Operator Instructions]

You think I know the routine by now, but clearly, I don't. Just wondering if you could maybe -- I always love to hear your views on the commercial environment out there. You kind of touched on a few items. But I'm just kind of curious, there's some pretty well-publicized stories about another FSRU possible in Bangladesh. I think in Colombia, they've been talking about, I want to say, 5 or so different possible import facilities.

So I'm just kind of curious if maybe you could kind of speak to some of these other opportunities, ability to get bigger in some of your existing locations? And any other hints on other regions, India, Vietnam, anything, any color around those developments would be great.

Wade, I'm going to hand that to Oliver. I will note that you put 10 questions into your question now.

So yes, look, I think I'm not -- I don't want to sort of respond specifically to other projects for other companies. I don't think that's the right place for me to do that. But I think what I'd say is I mean, addressing our project in Colombia, obviously, we have a firm contract there. We have a timeline. We have a clear line of sight to that project, and we're very confident in our ability to deliver on that. So I think that's where our focus is.

Again, I'd go back to the comments about picking up projects. We are quite deliberate about where, who, and how. And I think that translates into that. So looking more broadly, I mean, you'll have seen we've talked today about the conversion candidate coming online in 2028 or the conversion project no longer just a candidate. That's driven by our view that the supply of FSRUs on both sides on the supply side of FSRUs -- we just don't see that there's many FSRUs coming online in that timeline.

And we see -- on the demand side, we see robust demand from projects across them that would fit for that asset. So now I think we're having multiple discussions for that asset, and it's a case of, okay, what's the right fit. And as Steven alluded to, obviously, there's a preference for finding the right integrated project that, that could go into.

So I mean, I think for me, that's all to say that we continue to see robust demand for these. We've got extreme confidence in our operating capabilities and our track record. And I think you've seen that through the people who have chosen to work with us that they value that. We talk about overall energy security. But at the end of the day, on these projects, deliverability is the critical point because you can go in different directions, but I think there's a value to having people who've got the experience and have delivered on these. So yes, we're extremely confident on that pipeline. And I think progressing on that conversion is a reflection of that.

Appreciate that, Oliver. I guess maybe just to dovetail on that question, maybe just kind of came to mind as you were talking. Is there an opportunity out here inorganically to pick up an FSRU? Or is that a little bit more challenging from a returns perspective? Are you better off doing conversions, new builds, whatnot?

Wade, you can give anyone Oliver's mobile phone number if you've got someone who wants to unload one, feel free. I mean, we can deploy as many as we can lay our hands on.

Yes. I'd add to that, I think it's again, over the different transactions you've seen over the last couple of years, we've shown our sort of commercial flexibility. We're nimble. It's about finding the right project that's ultimately accretive for us and the right fit for us. So if there is something like that, we'd happily look at it.

I think we also see that the path that we have on the conversion makes a lot of sense. And as Steven alluded to, too, we can keep looking at new builds, too. So we're not sort of technology -- we'll look at the different technologies. They each have different values, but we'll look through them. And I think it's the same thing on the sort of commercial assets and what they have, we're happy to look at different solutions.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Steven Kobos for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us this morning. It should be clear, I've never been more proud of this company, of our employees around the globe that are delivering all these milestones that we've been talking about as well as this executive team around this table. Top to bottom, we are doing great things all around the world, and thank you for taking an interest in those efforts.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to Excelerate Energy's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Craig Hicks, Vice President, Investor Relations and Strategy. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Excelerate Energy's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Steven Kobos, President and CEO; and Dana Armstrong, Chief Financial Officer. Also joining the call are Oliver Simpson, Chief Commercial Officer; and David Liner, Chief Operating Officer.

Our first quarter earnings press release and presentation were published yesterday afternoon and are available on our website at ir.excelerateenergy.com. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. We undertake no obligation to update these statements. We'll also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found at the end of the presentation.

With that, it is my pleasure to pass the call over to Steven Kobos.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before I get into the quarter, I want to take a moment to acknowledge something that goes beyond the financials. We have employees, seafarers and partners operating in and around the Arabian Gulf. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and with their families during what is a difficult and uncertain time. The safety of our people is always our top priority, and I want them to know that they have our full support.

Against that backdrop, I am proud of how Excelerate performed this quarter. We delivered $122 million of adjusted EBITDA and achieved a 99.8% reliability rate across our asset portfolio. Those results reflect the strength of our contracted asset portfolio and the dedication of the teams who operate them every day.

This strong performance is a direct result of how we built this business. Excelerate is a global LNG and power infrastructure company. We own and operate assets that deliver reliable downstream LNG and power solutions to countries who depend on us for their energy security. That responsibility is central to how we operate, how we invest and how we manage risk.

Our operations span 4 continents, and that geographic reach translates directly into revenue and earnings diversification. It is a core reason we are able to perform across market cycles and limit the financial impact of regional disruptions. As the global energy landscape grows more complex, the ability to deliver energy safely and without interruption matters even more.

That brings me to the macro environment, which provides an important context for today's discussion. As we've highlighted previously, the global LNG market is moving into a period of meaningful and sustained supply growth. Despite recent geopolitical events, approximately 200 million tons of new LNG supply will still come online between now and the end of the decade.

The conflict in the Middle East is accelerating the push for greater geographic diversification of supply. This will result in even more LNG volumes reaching the market. Those volumes will only intensify the need for more regasification capacity. In recent weeks, we've heard commentary around pricing dynamics, potential project delays and market hesitation in certain regions.

While those near-term dynamics are real, they should be evaluated separately from the structural need for regasification as new supply enters the market. The fact is long-term contracted LNG pricing has been and remains affordable. That is why many of the countries and markets we are targeting continue to turn to LNG as a fuel source.

In this environment, Excelerate's role is clear. We provide the downstream infrastructure that connects new supply to the customers who need it most, and we do it under contract with assets we own and operate. That's the structural backdrop. Now let me walk you through how it is showing up in our operations.

I'll start with the Middle East. Since the conflict began, our focus has been on the elements of the business within our direct control. We optimized our asset portfolio to protect earnings, maintain operational continuity and demonstrate the rigor our customers and investors expect. Our terminal services operations performed as we expected, and we saw limited financial impact during the quarter, in large part due to the quality of our contracts and the nature of the services we provide.

The two FSRUs operating in the UAE, the Explorer and the Express are fully operational and our crews are safe. We are proud to support Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the broader UAE as a component of their energy infrastructure for more than a decade.

Turning to our LNG supply agreements. In March, as a result of the conflict, we received a Force Majeure notice from QatarEnergy related to our supply agreement. We subsequently issued a corresponding FM notice to Petrobangla, our customer in Bangladesh. These agreements are structured on a back-to-back basis with delivery obligations aligned to supply commitments and supported by contractual FM protections. This structure is allowing us to manage the current disruption in an orderly way.

Based on our current assessment, we expect the financial impact to be approximately $1 million per month while the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Our commitment to the region extends beyond the UAE. Let me update you on the Iraq terminal.

The fundamentals supporting this project have not changed. Iraq faces chronic power shortages and limited domestic gas processing capacity. These structural deficits are not going away. The need for scalable gas import infrastructure is as real today as it was when we signed the contract in Q4 '25. Current conditions have only heightened that need. Our customer shares the same view, and we are committed to working with them on the best path forward.

What has changed is the near-term path to startup. The conflict in the Middle East has created logistical constraints that have delayed jetty reinforcement and construction of the fixed terminal infrastructure. As a result, we no longer expect the terminal to commence operations in Q3 '26 as we previously disclosed.

Project startup is now expected in '27. This is a shift in timing, not a cancellation. The contract is structured as a 60-month agreement that begins once operations commence. We are taking a measured safety-first approach with construction resuming as conditions allow. Once underway, we expect approximately 6 months before operations begin. We are managing this project for the long term and remain confident in the opportunity.

With the Iraq project now delayed, we have been evaluating opportunities to optimize the Excelerate Acadia, our newbuild FSRU in the near term. In early April, the Acadia was delivered successfully from Hyundai Heavy Industries. This week, we executed a 9-month time charter party agreement with Jordan's National Electric Power Company or NEPCO to deploy the Acadia to the country's existing LNG import terminal in Aqaba. The Acadia is expected to commence operations in Jordan by mid-'26, and the deal will generate roughly $20 million of adjusted EBITDA this year.

The interim deployment enhances Jordan's energy security by providing additional regasification capacity and generates incremental earnings. It does this while we continue to advance the Iraq integrated import terminal. It also underscores the continued demand for our assets and the commercial resilience of our business, even amid broader regional disruption.

Now let me turn to Jamaica, where our integrated platform continues to deliver. A year ago this month, we added the integrated LNG power platform in Jamaica to our asset portfolio. Jamaica is a core component of our business and one of the strongest proof points of Excelerate's strategy. In the first quarter, the Jamaica platform delivered reliability of 99%. That consistency underpins the contracted cash flows that have contributed meaningfully to our overall growth.

Beyond operations, we are making commercial progress on the island. Gas volumes are growing through new customer agreements and incremental sales to existing customers. We are pleased to be a partner with the Jamaican government and look forward to advancing new opportunities in Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean. The financials this quarter reflect the operating momentum I've described.

Next, Dana will take you through the numbers, our capital priorities and the updated outlook. Dana?

Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. Excelerate delivered solid financial results for the first quarter. We reported net income of $50 million, a sequential increase of $11 million or up 28% as compared to the fourth quarter of 2025.

Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $122 million, up roughly $10 million or up about 9% versus the prior quarter. The net income and adjusted EBITDA increases were driven primarily by vessel optimization and higher LNG gas and power margins. Adjusted EBITDA increased compared to the first quarter of last year due to an increase in LNG gas and power margins, mostly driven by the impact from the Jamaica acquisition.

For the first quarter, maintenance CapEx was $8 million and committed growth capital was $17 million. Now let's turn to our balance sheet.

As of March 31, 2026, total debt, including finance leases, was $1.3 billion with $540 million of cash and cash equivalents on hand. The full $500 million of capacity under our revolver was available as of quarter end. Net debt was $714 million and trailing net leverage was 1.5x.

From a capital allocation perspective, our priorities are unchanged. We are focused on investing in accretive growth while delivering consistent shareholder returns through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases.

Last week, the Board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share or $0.32 per share annualized payable on June 4, 2026. In December 2025, our Board authorized a $75 million share repurchase program, providing added flexibility to return capital while continuing to invest in our growth priorities.

During the first quarter, we repurchased roughly 148,000 shares or just over $5 million of our Class A common stock at a weighted average price of $34.07 per share.

With that capital framework in mind, let me walk through our updated financial outlook for the year. We have revised our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA and committed growth capital guidance to reflect the delayed start-up of the integrated Iraq LNG import terminal. As Steven described, this is a timing shift driven by the Middle East conflict.

We continue to view Iraq as an attractive opportunity and construction will resume as soon as conditions allow. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year is now expected to range between $480 million and $510 million. Consistent with that shift, we now expect 2026 committed growth capital to range between $270 million and $300 million, reflecting the deferral of certain Iraq-related construction activity into 2027.

To be clear, this revised committed growth capital guidance does not yet include costs associated with our FSRU conversion. Negotiations for the conversion work are ongoing. We have signed a letter of intent with the Seatrium Shipyard in Singapore, and we'll provide additional updates once final contracts with the shipyard are executed.

Our 2026 maintenance CapEx guidance is unchanged at $100 million to $110 million. With respect to dry dock timing, we continue to refine schedules through close coordination with our customers to identify the most efficient and least disruptive maintenance windows. Our current plan assumes that the Express will proceed with its scheduled dry dock at the end of its current contract in the third quarter of this year.

Once that work is completed, we expect the Express will redeploy to Pakistan to substitute for the Exquisite, which is now anticipated to enter dry dock in the fourth quarter of this year. This updated outlook reflects careful planning, solid underlying fundamentals and a continued focus on building durable contracted earnings.

Looking beyond 2026, the growth path through 2028 remains intact. On our February call, we outlined a framework for sequenced earnings growth through 2028, supported by a defined set of executable initiatives. While the Iraq start-up has shifted due to external factors, we maintain visibility to growth through actions within our control.

First, the Express is expected to be redelivered at the expiration of its current contract. We have high confidence in redeploying that vessel at improved economics, which we expect to support incremental EBITDA in 2027.

Second, our planned FSRU conversion provides an additional source of earnings growth in 2028, following completion of the conversion and commercial deployment of that vessel. This represents the next major capital deployment after Iraq and supports continued earnings expansion.

Third, as Steven discussed, we are focused on driving additional growth through a range of scalable LNG solutions, including in Jamaica and the Caribbean and throughout the rest of the world. Together, these initiatives provide a sequenced pathway to extend growth through 2028 and beyond.

With that, let's open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Elias Jossen with JPMorgan.

Just wanted to start on the supply portfolio and think about how you guys are approaching diversification going forward. Obviously, the Qatar situation is ongoing and developing, and I think you laid it out well in your opening remarks. But how should we think about your overall strategy to ensure supply in the longer term? And what options do you have there?

It's Steven. Let me jump into that. First, we like to give customers what our customers want to receive. So, some of those don't want to make it too simple. It's going to be reactive in terms of what our customers want to have their portfolio deliveries look like. Now remember, of course, we're talking about the component of LNG that we control. That's largely the integrated projects, the Iraq's when it comes online and of course, the 1 million tonnes into Bangladesh and some of the Caribbean growth.

The vast majority of our earnings and our revenue, as you know, are simply the capacity payments of our infrastructure through which that unfolds. But I feel like we have good diversification already. We have from different continents, we haven't gotten into it in complete detail, but we have 4 contracts coming from divergent locations. So, I think we've done a good job so far in building up geographic diversity. Kudos to Oliver's team for that.

And I think we will continue to do that, but being sensible to geographical time lines as well. So, we are taking it into account already, and we will continue to take it into account. So, I think what I want to emphasize, Eli, is what we've always said. We're pretty boring about this. We like to buy and sell on the same index. You don't see us taking commodity risks. We're determined to be that sort of boring infra provider that integrates molecules.

Yes. That's helpful color. And then maybe thinking about sort of the increased capital allocation and optionality there. Obviously, you have a really strong growth platform in Jamaica, and this is a temporary sort of situation. So, as the cash and overall flexibility builds, what should we think about as kind of the key growth priorities this year and heading into next year? And what else might we see sanctioned on the growth front?

I have a little bit of color since you mentioned Jamaica, Eli just had a very grateful for U.S. Embassy in Kingston, just hosted Excelerate for a big reception there last week for all of the Jamaica business leaders and for the Jamaican government. And then we had our Board of Directors visit our facilities there. Very proud of that platform, looking for great things from it.

I would say that our view on what we've outlined for CapEx requirements in the Caribbean that we're expecting, remains intact from what we've guided you all to before. It's somewhat opportunistic. We're already seeing increased sales of gas, new customers, increased gas sales in Jamaica, but we also want, obviously, to be expanding throughout the Caribbean, adding more spokes to that hub, and we're eager to be doing that. We are doing some of that. If they're too small, we probably won't bring it to anyone's attention. When they're larger ones, we'll announce them as they write them.

And our next question comes from the line of Chris Robertson with Deutsche Bank.

Yes. Maybe to start with just following up on the conversion project here. I know Dana mentioned kind of the time line and CapEx devoted to it and some discussions there. But just thinking about it in terms of any commercial discussions or plans regarding more integrated type project, given the current volatility in the Mid East, how are you thinking about where to potentially look for a subsequent integrated project or to deploy that asset? I know it's maybe a couple of years off here, but just has anything changed in your mind about how you're strategically thinking about positioning the asset given the current situation?

Yes. Let me, this is Steven, Chris. Thanks for the question. I would say first point is, no, our strategic priorities haven't changed. The markets we like before the conflict, we still like. This is a near-term supply disruption. It is not demand destruction. So the first thing I would say is we're not pivoting from where we were out there with hunting license before the war. We continue to be in the same markets.

Second thing I would say is that you will have seen with the announcement of the Iraq project and with the Jordan Charter yesterday and today, that was the first anybody heard about it. We have a number of opportunities we're pursuing in the pipeline, but you should expect moving forward, that will probably be the cadence. You will hear about them when we are announcing them. That's just the best way to commercially approach these things. So we're looking on every continent, I assure you, we're looking throughout the Caribbean, and we continue to be focused on those markets that we've highlighted before, such as South Asia and East Asia.

And our next question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy.

So on the Jamaica and Eli's question, I think you had mentioned, Steven, that you're already seeing some organic upside on the island. And there was kind of a bifurcation that maybe wasn't laid out explicitly as well about the growth opportunity in Jamaica with some incredibly low-hanging fruit with capacity utilization upside that really doesn't involve a lot of CapEx and could at least be notable in terms of EBITDA driver, combined with a larger CapEx opportunity that is accretive that could hit by decade end. Could you elaborate on the cadence of this and opportunity set, what might come even before we see tens of millions of dollars of investment?

Craig, I'm going to pass that to Oliver. I would, I don't know if I ever said very low-hanging fruit. And that sounds like the mango is actually on the ground instead of just being; look, we are seeing some early, and that's the point, Craig. If it's de minimis CapEx, it's just going to show up in performance over time, likely later in '26 on some of these. But let me hand it to Oliver. I don't think we're going to change our view on cadence of how the Caribbean unfolds.

Yes. Thanks, Craig. And yes, I think the bifurcation you speak to is correct, right? There's opportunities using the platform that we have today and some that we've been able to capitalize on already and continuing to look at those. I think when you think of the timing of those, it's really around, as this LNG wave comes on in the U.S., I'd expect to see a good correlation to the LNG coming on to some of these opportunities as the affordability of that long-term supply is able to displace the fuels in some of these markets in the region.

I think some of the higher, sort of higher CapEx is also, I mean, obviously, we continue to look at that. We continue to be confident that those opportunities are the most affordable and most, sort of economical solutions for the markets we're looking at. And likely, those are shifting probably towards the later end of the scale. But we feel confident that over the period, you've got those, you've got some good opportunities in the near term and that will build, move us into some of those higher CapEx opportunities on the back end of that range.

And maybe I could also follow up on Craig's question. I think you were talking about the FSRU conversion opportunity there. But you've talked about both the opportunity to redeploy Express in 2027 and the potential Shenandoah conversion into 2028. And both those opportunities or asset redeployments potentially supporting entirely new downstream opportunities. And over time, you have mentioned a few of those from Vietnam to Bangladesh and beyond.

So I guess my question is and you said, Steve, you're not going to give any more color until you actually have something commercial to announce. But is it unreasonable to think that the redeployment of these assets into '27 and '28 could combine into tens of millions of dollars of EBITDA run rate upside?

That's not unreasonable at all, Chris. This is Steven. I mean what I would say is, as we've told you, we're going to evaluate there are a lot of things you look to with your counterparty, and we're not going to dictate what the customer should want or want. We want to be a good partner for the long term. We want to be a reliable partner. And it's going to, some deals will continue to be our, I don't even like to say legacy, but just our capacity type business.

Some will be integrated if we can integrate it on a predictable basis where the addition of the molecule has a payment performance that looks like our infra. So, we're going to be both and we're not going to be hidebound and just have one approach to the world. mean we feel strongly that the future of LNG is regas, regas capacity. There aren't enough of it. We are among the only ones focused on it, and it is critical for dealing with this. So, there is opportunity. There's going to continue to be opportunity.

I think what you're seeing with our announcements, and I don't wish to be coy at all, but we've got teams around the world working on that pipeline. Opportunities are staggered. I'm confident that we're going to continue to have sustained growth, as Dana mentioned, sequence growth through '28. It remains intact. And I possibly have never felt better about the market, the future of regas, the future of Excelerate than we do at this moment.

And our next question comes from the line of Bobby Brooks with Northland Capital Markets.

I thought it was pretty impressive how quickly you recontracted the FSRU Acadia on that 9-month deployment in Jordan. And I think it should really remind investors of the flexibilities of these asset class. What I was curious to hear more on was sort of how quickly the conversations went from, 'okay, this Iraqi terminal is going to be delayed. Let's look and see if we can deploy the Acadia somewhere short term to actually getting that Jordan deal signed. '

Bobby, this is Steven. If our regional teams haven't been reaching out to everyone around the world every quarter, and just sharing ideas and talking with them, so they're aware of what the opportunities are, I'd be very disappointed. So, I suspect if you drill into it, the relationship and the contact has been going on for years. We just needed to activate that.

So that's the virtue of having these regional teams, having the experience around the world, not being somebody who's a one-off or a 2-off. You've built the knowledge of each region and what might come up. And you point out something great, Bobby. These are floating assets. They are redeployable. They can be flexible. You can take advantage of this. If you're building a power plant somewhere in some continent and you get a slowdown, it's not like you're going to float that somewhere else. So, we love this asset class. This is partly why our investors should feel comfortable, we believe, in our ability to take advantage of the TAM that's out there in front of us.

Awesome to hear. And it was also exciting to hear the new customer agreements and growing sales to existing customers in Jamaica. Just was hoping to get a little more context of how much of an increase is that and maybe how much more opportunities you see to do more of that? And maybe just how infrastructure expansions in Jamaica would look like versus through the broader Caribbean?

Bobby, this is Oliver. I'll take that one. So, we haven't spoken specifically to the volume increase. And I think as Steven mentioned earlier, you'll sort of see that aggregation come through in sort of plan as we sort of give guidance on this. But we've seen, I think, some of the near-term gains or near-term increases have been in the Jamaican market. I think we've talked about before on the small-scale side through the trucking, it's pretty easy to just deliver incremental volumes through the platform that we have.

So that's something that we continue to look at. We've got the team on the ground, knocking on the doors, chasing those opportunities, and we continue to see the growth there just that will happen just organically over the coming months and years on that. And then sort of more broadly in the region, it's really using the Jamaica platform.

We've got the, the FSRU in Jamaica is a big storage tank in the Caribbean that we can use to then reach the other markets, the spokes that we have, we've spoken about. The nature of how that can be, I mean, that could be through ISO tank deliveries. It could be using the small-scale vessel we have to make deliveries to other sort of small-scale assets that we develop in the Caribbean.

So, I think we're, ultimately, we're agnostic to the technology. It's all about how we get that demand, how we build up that demand. And with our technical solutions, I think we've got a wide array to meet the different needs of the different markets. I think as Steven said that we want to give the customers what they want as an energy solution. And I think that also applies to the technology solutions. It's different for each different island in the Caribbean.

And our next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One.

Just quickly, just a housekeeping item, just so I'm clear on the timing here. I think I heard you say the Express will be in dry dock in the third quarter, then moving to Pakistan in the fourth quarter with the Exquisite going into dry dock. Is that right?

Wade, this is David. Yes, that's correct. We expect, our current plan is for Express to go into dry dock at the end of the third quarter and then have a replacement for Exquisite when she comes out in around fourth quarter.

Got it. Got it. Okay. Great. And just maybe just to dovetail off Bobby's question, I think. Just thinking about the longer-term solution in Jordan, is that a possible, I know you guys don't necessarily like to speak to specific commercial opportunity, but is there an opportunity longer term in Jordan for the Express possibly after the Acadia moves on?

Wade, this is Steven. I would say once people get LNG once, and look, Jordan's had LNG for 10 years. They had 12 cargoes last year, 10 of those came from the U.S. I think they'll reach even more markets from there. And a lot of respect for what they've done. We would certainly love to be part of that. We love people who already have access to LNG because we know that people that have access to LNG inevitably want more LNG.

And our next question comes from the line of Zack Van Everen with TPH.

Maybe just following up on some of the time lines asked on the last question. With the Acadia deal starting midyear and being a 9-month contract, and then I believe you said once activity starts back up in Iraq, it will be about 6 months. If the Iraq project were to start up again in June and completed by the end of this year, could you use the Express or other flexibility to start that project? Or would you have to wait for the Acadia to complete its agreement in Jordan?

Zack, this is Steven. Man, you mentioned this very possibility last earnings cycle. And yes, I took that to heart, I have been thinking about it. I mean you have a keen insight. These are floating assets. We routinely bridge with one asset to another asset. So, I can't speak to what we're going to do here, but we routinely take advantage of the flexibility of having an asset that can float and can be redeployed. So, what I can tell you is we'll be able and we intend to serve Iraq as soon as we can stand it up. But we can't guide not knowing what the conditions are, I don't intend for us to be any more clear than Dana's in my comments that start-up would be in '27.

Got you. No, that's super helpful. And then maybe just a macro question. I know you guys mentioned the 200 million tons coming online between now and 2030. We're in that same ballpark. I'm curious where you guys stand on the global demand side. I know historically and just with your asset base, you do benefit from lower prices just with some of the markets that are more price sensitive. But do you guys have a view on the demand supply mismatch coming into the end of the decade?

I mean, Zack, that's why I'm telling everybody, we're telling everyone the future of LNG is regas. like this is supply disruption. This is not demand destruction. I mean what's TTF right now, $15 or something with 20% of the global LNG offline. This isn't what you saw in '22. This is a disruption of supply. Long-term contracted LNG is affordable. It remains affordable.

I think you're going to see that movement that went to long-term contracted supply continue. There may be some geographic diversification riders that people want on top of that. But we think that the supply and the wave justifies the company we've built with the balance sheet, which can integrate a molecule because we know people are going to want this, and they're going to want it on as easy and as quick a basis as possible. And that's the company that we've built at Excelerate.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Steven Kobos for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today. As I just said, there is and will continue to be an enormous need for the growth of regas capacity around the world. That's why we know that the future of LNG is regas and Excelerate is the global leader.

Thank you. This concludes today's call. We thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Okay. Well, thank you all for joining us today. I have with me Excelerate Energy, Steven Kobos, who's the CEO. And thank you for joining me, Steven.

Pleasure to be here, Emma.

Okay. So as a starting point, I wanted to ask some of the people in the room might not be familiar with your business model. Can you explain kind of where you sit in the LNG value chain and what you provide in terms of your strategy and your operations for your company?

Sure. Well, first of all, thanks to Jefferies for having us today. Thanks for everyone listening in. It's a pleasure to be here. Excelerate Energy is effectively the last mile of the LNG value chain. We are -- we've been in business for, gosh, 23 years, been doing this abroad for -- I think we went to Kuwait and opened up the Kuwaiti market in 2008. So we've been at this for about 18 years, opening up new markets to LNG. What we offer is effectively energy security for folks, whether that's security from an unreliable pipeline neighbor, security from drought, all types of energy security.

But typically, as you know, LNG, everybody here is well familiar with LNG, cryogenic liquid, you have to warm it up, you have to send it into a market as high-pressure gas, and that's what our assets do. We've evolved over time, not just from floating regasification assets, but into downstream LNG to power platforms, providing pull-through demand, et cetera. But over the years, we have opened up many new markets to LNG all over the place, taking lots of LNG now. And I'll tell you, now more than ever, that's what's required. I mean there's lots of LNG coming to market. There's plenty of liquefaction. We're going to see an uptick in 50% of capacity. A lot of that will need homes and people -- we are focused on opening up those markets that will be those homes. But let's just jump into what's on your mind.

Yes. I wanted to start with probably what is extremely topical right now. The current conflict in the Middle East, you are developing a project in Iraq, you have contracts that are coming on with Qatar and you have assets in the UAE. Kind of walk me through the impact of the conflict on your business model. And yes, just how it's been developing for you?

Yes. A lot has gone on in the world since we spoke on Thursday at our earnings call, hasn't it? Yes. Thanks for noticing that, Emma. No, a lot has gone on, and those are the sorts of things you navigate as a global energy company. As I said, we've been in the Persian Gulf since we opened up Kuwait to LNG back in 2008. By the way, something -- one thing many of you don't know, Kuwait still takes 6 million tonnes of LNG a year. So sometimes we're asked, why do you take coal to Newcastle? Why do exporters want to import? It's a dynamic that we'll see elsewhere. It's a dynamic we'll see elsewhere.

When we first opened up Kuwait, the spread on fuel oil and LNG was allowing the KPC to make an extra $20 million every time an LNG cargo came in, and they were able to burn that for power and export more expensive fuel oil. So we do anticipate being in the Persian Gulf for years to come. Taking your questions in order, it's obviously a very serious situation, and we are taking it quite seriously. So the first point is we have many people in the Persian Gulf, both based onshore and at 2 of our existing floating assets. They are all safe. The 2 assets, one in Dubai and in Abu Dhabi are providing service, contributing to energy security of those markets. And we're proud to work both with Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where we've been for many, many years.

So those assets are up and running, and they are continuing to fulfill their obligations. We do have -- we're actually proud of the fact that this year, we just started a 15-year supply contract with Petrobangla. We've sourced those volumes for 15 years from Qatar Energy. Very proud of the relationship we have with Qatar Energy. In other parts of the world, our assets probably regasify about 8 million tonnes of Qatari LNG per annum. So they rely on us. They have confidence in our operations globally, and they know we are a reliable partner. This year, it's -- I see it's -- I want to get it right, Emma, because some folks are listening. And if I don't get it right, my IR friend over there is going to have to issue a correction.

So let's go slowly and make sure we get the numbers right. 0.85 million tonnes per annum, we're sourcing this year and next from Qatar and then the following 13 years, it's 1 million tonnes per annum from them. What I'd like to point out to you is we have not received any FM notice from QE for those volumes. It is, however, just a, let's call it, a cargo a month. We've already spoken to the Street. We've already told our investors. We've already told you that the uplift from those cargoes per month is probably $15 million per annum this year and next and then it goes up to about $18 million per annum after that. If this continues and if QE does issue FM for it, then what I would tell you is I don't see any material impact from that, let's call it, $1 million of EBITDA per month so long as things are constrained.

But I don't see that persisting for very long, and I don't see it as a material amount. Iraq, yes, kind of -- thank you. Really proud of Iraq. We've been working to land that deal for years. We've always seen Iraq as a real prize. We believe that Iraq will take LNG for many, many years just as Kuwait has taken LNG for many, many years. There are lots of reasons for that. There's an intense deficit now. We're all -- Baghdad still does not have reliable power generation many, many years after the conflict there. We are determined to see that Baghdad will have reliable power generation. We are making it our mission to do that. They have an intense deficit.

I will say when we signed the contract -- our contract has a minimum take of 250 million scfs a day of LNG that the Iraqis must take from us a take-or-pay. When we signed that contract in November, they were still getting 800 million scfs a day of Iranian gas by pipeline across the border. That moved to 0 in December. I will tell you, I don't see any chance of those Iranian volumes increasing from 0 on any kind of horizon, meaning that the rather dire situation that Iraq found itself in for nat gas when we signed this contract in November has just gotten even more urgent. What's the impact on that? I'll tell you the impact for 2027 when we hit full year run rate, full year contribution.

We indicated on our earnings call, I mean, we did a gymnastics on talking about the overall growth CapEx for that, which we said was like in -- we said was in $470 million, $500 million, somewhere in that range. We said we still expect to build multiple of 5. So you can do the math. We're thinking that, that will have run rate EBITDA of $104 million or $110 million contribution in '27 when we have a full year of it. What I'll tell you is those calculations are based upon the minimum take of 250 million scfs. And I'm telling -- and I'm making the point that their shortfall, which was already extreme, is exacerbated because they're now an additional 800 million scfs a day short. So overall, just as I feel long term that energy security, and we often think that our brand is energy security.

But energy security is just being reinforced all around the world. I quoted the Indian Energy Minister, Minister Singh Puri, I think on the earnings call, when we were in Delhi, he said, energy security is survival. I mean that's what the stakes are for the sovereigns that we serve. It is survival. That's why we're critical. That's why we're sought after. People know our 99.9% operational reliability that our fleet has had over the past -- each of the past 2 years. Sovereigns demand that, and it's going to be ever more critical. In terms of Iraq, we've already positioned a lot of equipment to Dubai free zones and the like on the correct side of Hormuz. At this point, I don't see an impact to cost or schedule.

Of course, I'm one of those who thinks that alignment of economic interest, someone wanting to get [ Cargo Island ] up and running again, someone wanting to run that country, someone wanting to have an economy will see us to a decent point in the next month or 2. We will come back in earnings, but I don't see a significant -- I don't see any material impact to cost or schedule at this point. TBD, obviously. But what I'd emphasize is the [ base Iraq ] contract is 60 months of uplift. And that 60 months, okay, if the conflict went another month and it shifted by a month or 2, fine. But the 60 months is rock solid, and I think that it's going to be more remunerative as a consequence of this than we thought before. I think I actually answered your question.

No, no, that was...

Your questions. So I hope I did.

Yes. No, definitely, you did. And conflicts, I totally agree, conflicts like this in the Middle East really underscored the importance of your business model to energy security. It's so vital to be able to have an FSRU and bring in cargoes. Now the Iraq deal is different than just having an FSRU and getting a day rate there. And could you talk a little bit about the uplift you get from like an integrated deal there? You touched on the build multiple a little bit, but just walk us through a little bit more about the economics of the project.

Emma, it's really about the evolution of Excelerate as a company. We have thought for a long time that as more and more LNG comes to market, you need to make it easier for your customer to access LNG. I mean when we first were getting going years ago, we were dealing with these very sophisticated NOCs like Kuwait Petroleum in Kuwait, like Repsol in Argentina, like Petrobras, entities that do complex projects, charter hundreds of ships, buy and sell lots of cargo. As this 200 million tonnes of LNG comes online, you need to find other homes with people who aren't used to stacking all of that together.

They want a molecule. They want a spark. You need to make -- if you're going to thrive and survive, you need to be able to offer that. We have the balance sheet to do that. We've been building up our LNG portfolio. We offer it in a very conservative -- we buy in an index, we lay it off in the same index, as you know, approach. But because we have minimal leverage like a 1.6 multiple, I think, right now, we're sitting on lots of cash. We are the type of company that can source LNG. So as the demand profile evolves, it is evolving to a type of market that we have been building our company to serve. And frankly, the historic entrance into floating regasification followed more of a shipping model, shipping companies, not a knock on them, but they typically have far higher leverage and are not the sort of people that can -- or entities that can source LNG.

So we think the downstream LNG value chain, it's going to be moving more like upstream and liquefaction did. It's going to move from a pure tolling arrangement where you bring your own molecule and you go to your infrastructure and you take your own molecule out. I mean it's not that -- if you think about -- that was the model on some of the early liquefaction projects, purely capacity. I think the market spoke and you saw liquefaction move to another model where you have some liquefaction players that are the largest purchaser of nat gas in the United States.

It's an infrastructure player, they source the nat gas, they source vapor, they sell liquid on a long-term basis. What I believe you're seeing is that we have just started to see the shift in the downstream LNG value chain where it's going to follow that same evolution that liquefaction already took. And that's going to narrow the scope of who can compete in that market because it's going to require different balance sheets, different liquidity and the like. And we've been building for that moment for years now. And I believe that inflection point is on us with the LNG wave.

That's really fascinating. I think on the conference call, you said the age of free gas is here, and it really does seem like there's a lot of tailwinds for this business given the LNG macro. I wanted to turn to now talking about the next vessel that you have that is expiring its contract and there's opportunities to recontract it. Could you tell us a little bit about like what you think is the upside there, what you expect going forward from that vessel? It seems like there is an opportunity there, and that's the next kind of big catalyst probably for 2027. So I just want to kind of go through that one next.

Yes. let's talk. I think we've put a lot of building blocks out there for '27 and '28. Like this company is maturing. If you look at our EBITDA now as opposed to IPO, it's obvious that we're maturing as a company. There are a lot of building blocks out there. First, though, run rate EBITDA for a full year of Iraq in '27. As I said, that's probably, call it, $104 million to $110 million. You've got that. Our deal with Petrobangla and sourced from QE, that one, as we said, this year and next year, $15 million contribution. So that's a $15 million building block for 2027.

Express is coming back after many years of service in Abu Dhabi. And I won't point exactly to what that uplift for 2027 should be. We have -- that was on an annual 1-year evergreen locked into fairly low legacy rates. We have recontracted 4 of our assets since the IPO, all at elevated rates, highly confident in this current market that, that will be true for the Express. Still TBD, if that's going to be on an integrated deal with supply, which would obviously have a kicker -- I don't want to say kicker. It would obviously be -- when we generally guide to build multiples of 5 to 7 on projects, that's going to be down. Any time you can integrate it, it's going to be closer to the 5, not the 7.

But look, we like who brought us to the dance and that was legacy capacity business. I don't think that's what's going to be as popular in the future, but some people will want it. And if we think it's the right tenor of contract, right sort of counterparty, we're not hidebound. We are a little bit like McDonald's. We think the customer is right, and we'll sell them what they want to buy. So we'll see, but it should be another positive uplift to '27. The other building block we put out there is we expect our conversion to be on the water in January of '28. That's going to provide further uplift and more beyond that. So I do think pleased where we are for '26, but '27, you can look at these pieces, you can do the math. It's significant uplift, and that is continuing with the building blocks into '28.

That's amazing. I mean I think that there is a lot of kind of -- you can see the stepping stones for the growth going forward, and it's really impressive. What I wanted to kind of talk about next is we have seen news about like Haldia and a JV in India, growth that's out there that's maybe not in that stepping stone to -- that we've laid out so far. So could you walk me through kind of opportunities and conversations you're having about the portfolio going forward? Like Haldia, you had an MOU with Vietnam. Just walk me through how that's kind of shaping up. And on the call, you said that the opportunities going forward are primarily in South Asia. And just how conversations in that region are moving?

Well, first of all, I love all our opportunities. It's like a mother and father with their children. I love all of our opportunities. And there is more to be done in LatAm. We've also -- and when I talked about the further growth, we've laid out our expectations for the Caribbean to on kind of a 5-year expectation on CapEx and EBITDA, where we said by the -- another 4 years, we expect to have deployed another $80 million of CapEx there -- I'm sorry, $200 million of CapEx, $80 million of EBITDA or so. So we like that. It's a smaller market, but smaller markets can -- are just as important.

I would say with the coming wave of LNG, smaller markets are important to everyone because not every project that comes online is going to be 5 million tonnes. Iraq, I think, will grow to 4 million tonnes, but that's atypical. There are going to be lots of million tonne opportunities around the world, 1.5 million, 2 million tonnes. By definition, it has to happen. All that LNG is not going to existing regas capacity. It's not all going to 5 million tonne deals. So that's going to happen. Yes, I was pleased. I got to -- I think it was the only American -- Prime Minister, Modi convened a roundtable of energy CEOs. And there's real conviction.

It's the second time I've heard him say and just ratify double down on he wants to get the Indian energy mix to 15% nat gas by 2030, up from 6%, like no doubt about it. That desire is there from the top. You start looking at the Indian pipeline network, and it's finally starting to connect to each other in a meaningful way around the subcontinent. Things can pivot there. He's well aware of the development of the city gas network and what that's going to mean. So we've been in Pakistan and we've been in Bangladesh for ages. Those were mature gas economies who started facing severe decline curves in their domestic production, which made them need LNG immediately. They didn't need to build up their gas demand, their pipeline infrastructure, et cetera.

That's a particular market. That's why we were in those 2 markets before we move into the middle. Well, I'll tell you about Haldia. I mean it's counterintuitive. A lot of people would say, why aren't you first going to Gujarat? Why aren't you going to some of those locations? We're going where others aren't. And Calcutta's West Bengal still has 100 million people. If you go through their panhandle or as they call it the Chicken Neck between Nepal and Bangladesh and get to the 7 sisters provinces in the East, that's another 40 million. So you're really talking about 140 million people you could serve. We think it's a good location to be. And we'll see what happens. We do -- it's early stages, but it's not something we're competing for. It's a concession that our joint venture has.

We're executing on the land. We're executing on developing that. It's bite size. We think that the right way to enter India first is in a joint venture, first in a minority stake. And the best way to grow India as in so many parts of the world, the best way to do more business in a place is to do some business in a place. So I think as that goes on, it will force us to put more and more personnel on the ground. We'll have a better feel of the further opportunities, and we'll go from there. So it is something that we care about. Vietnam, I have to admit Vietnam is a personal obsession of the CEO, which come on, I'm entitled to have a few of those.

And -- we are -- that's different. India has a particular project. We have a partner. We're developing it. In Vietnam, we just continue to try to be of use to Petrovietnam to show the government that we are a reliable partner to provide expertise. And we know, to use an American basketball term, we're going to keep hanging around the hoop. And then we're going to get a bucket from it. But that's -- yes, maybe it is a personal obsession, but it's -- it has great fundamentals.

Vietnam is changing. I think the regulatory climate is changing over time with General Secretary, To Lam. And I think when it does take off, it will take off. But I'm not signposting anything there. So South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, those are great. But I assure you there are other opportunities in the Middle East. There are other opportunities in LatAm, and we've already spoken to the opportunities in the Caribbean.

That's great. On the 4Q call, you talked a little bit about like smaller scale opportunities, FSUs and ISO tanks and smaller infrastructure than just an FSRU. So could you talk a little bit about what the opportunity is there and how you see your asset portfolio going forward? Is it still FSRU heavy, but it has these kind of like smaller elements worked in? Just walk us through your thoughts on that.

Well, as I said, it's going to depend on the connectivity of the market you're going to. I do think in India, I expect we're going to have some trucking at first just as we do in the Caribbean. It's going to be about building up demand. So we will have smaller assets. We don't -- on our earnings call, Emma, we don't tell somebody, hey, we just bought 10 ISOs in Jamaica or we just bought 4 freightliner trucks. I mean I don't want to be the CEO that's talking about, hey, we just bought some trucks. That's not who we want to be. At the same time, we've got 1 billion cubic feet a day FSRU rolling out.

But what I will tell you is we are determined to be the last mile provider of choice. We are determined to be the downstream LNG infrastructure premier provider. That's not going to be one tool in a toolkit. That is going to be a Swiss Army knife. So the big blade in that Swiss Army knife is the FSRU. But just as we're going with conversions that are anticipating a little lighter send out, that's an adjustment. We can have things that look like our Montego Bay terminal fed by smaller scale to. It's not -- it's still a possibility that Haldia in Calcutta will start off looking more like Montego Bay.

So we do like the way -- but we are thinking about once you have an FSRU, that means you have a tank farm. Once you have a tank farm, you can make deliveries from that tank farm to smaller customers. You can source your LNG affordably under long-term contracts. You can break bulk at your tank farm and then either -- however you choose to get it to your end customer. But we're interested in every part of our Swiss Army knife.

That makes sense. What are your thoughts on FSRU conversions versus new builds? You have the new build with Iraq coming on this year. You have an FSRU conversion, Shenandoah in 2028. How do you think about the split of that going forward?

As my English friends would say, horses for courses, like there will be some where we need that Bcf peaking send out. So this won't be our last new build. No question about that. Plus I love the yards. I love the spec that we've evolved over decades, precisely how we like to build those. And I love the reliability, I love all those things. However, conversions make sense for if you're looking at a different send-out profile, which we are. So that's why we're adding that to the mix, kind of excited about it, been working on it for some time.

We've already ordered a bunch of the long lead time equipment. Last year, as we continue and contract with the yards, we're going to update growth CapEx for you on that. But as I said, we will have more new builds, but we are going to have FSUs. We are going to have conversions. And we'll probably have more trucks, not probably, we're going to have more trucks. So it's going to go all across the downstream value chain.

That makes sense. Could you do an FSU and a conversion at the same time? Or is there constraints?

No, no, no. I mean FSU depending -- I don't want to geek out on the technical side. It's all about where you want to put it, what the MetOcean data is sloshing. Do you take an old Japanese Kawasaki [indiscernible] because you think that the MetOcean requirements and being partially full might require it. But it's not a significant enhancement. Or you may, depending upon the profile, we are -- for Petrobras, they ask us to make about $32 million of upgrades to the experience, our FSRU in Guanabara Bay, one of the 2 FSRUs we chartered to Petrobras.

That's because the profile in Brazil. Brazil is so blessed. I mean they have 80% hydroelectric power. It's amazing. I mean they actually are 90% renewable, but everything is a 2-edged sword. That is fantastic when it rains. But when you face a drought as they faced in 2022, it's very -- it's not like a German's, the dark lull that they speak to, it's not just a few days of cloud and stillness where solar and wind come off. I mean with drought, you see it coming. You -- some of their hydroelectrics, free-flowing river hydro, you see the river levels going down. Then you see the reservoir levels going down. And you can see that your interruption to your reliable power is coming, but it's coming inevitably and in a massive way.

And that's why Brazil has to have all of this nat gas and LNG backstop because they have to have an economy 5 years out of 5, not 4 years out of 5. And as a consequence, we're putting some relic there so if Petrobras wants to float a cargo on our FSRU for a couple of years and not have any economic consequence of that, they can. So that's just another example of just listen to what the customer wants, study the market, see what's unique about that market, proactively offer the solution for the customer to that market. And that's how we think about growing the business.

And we talked about this a little bit, but why do you think there isn't new entrants in this space or new people coming in? It seems like you have a really interesting business model. You're getting a 5x build multiple in a rock. Why are there not new companies coming in and trying to do what you're doing?

No, it's interesting. In the 2030s, they will. I mean the IOCs will turn their attention to it eventually depending upon what success they have with the enormous portfolios that they're building up. I do think that's the case. I mean you also probably will see IOCs turning to power a little bit more just to ensure that they have pull-through demand. So that will come in time. The real issue for Excelerate is we're purpose-built at this moment when the entire LNG industry is shifting, when an increase in a commodity globally is going to increase by 50% over the course of 5 years.

I mean it's an extraordinary circumstance, and we think we are in the driver's seat while this is happening and that we have been building up the tools for it. It is interesting. If you're a sovereign, and we've kept the lights on for sovereigns for many years, you are not inclined to turn responsibility for keeping the lights and the capital on to somebody who really thought this would be fun line of work to get into. So we do operate our own assets. I admit we obsess about operational uptime because we know sovereigns are counting on us. So that 99.9% uptime last year and this year, it's not just what a fun KPI to have. It's because sovereigns count on us.

So track record is a barrier to entry. Having the heft operationally is a barrier to entry. It is a high CapEx business. It helps to have our balance sheet. And as I said, as the industry will move, I believe, inevitably to bundling and more integrated deals where a customer -- yes, there -- the form of their take-or-pay offtake may resemble infra, and we're trying to shape and sculpt it to match our infra contracts as much as humanly possible. But at the end of the day, they want simplicity, and that's going to require low leverage, good balance sheets, all of that.

So I think all of that together matters. But we've -- literally in these fraught markets that are dependent upon it, if you go off service, the lights are going off somewhere. The steel plant isn't open for business that next day. The urea plant is not producing fertilizer for farmers. So it is serious business. We sit here in the United States, and we think, well, if one form of dispatch goes, you just look to another form of dispatch. That's not true in many of our markets. So that's why it is so important to have a track record.

I think that's really interesting. And it's actually the IEA in their 2025 gas outlook, we're talking about how companies with liquefaction are going to need to move further down the value chain. And we're hearing it from you, I think, that it will happen going forward. One of the things I wanted to touch on is like we've laid out the organic growth opportunities. How do you feel about inorganic? Is there an area of the portfolio which you don't have or can't grow as much organically and you would like to expand that?

Not a knock on [indiscernible], Emma, but it's amazing what doing a $1 billion deal last year does for deal flow. I mean it's suddenly people can remember your telephone numbers. I do -- I'm glad for that. I guess they needed proof that we actually will move if we see the right opportunity. It's going to have to be an adjacency. It's going to be something that will help us scale, achieve something that we think makes sense in the context of our overall portfolio. But I mean, we're an all of the above strategy. And I expect our corp dev team to work as hard as everybody else in our shop. So I hope we'll be evaluating those opportunities.

That makes sense. Is -- one of the things that was unique and very interesting about Jamaica was this kind of LNG to power element to it. Is that something you could see yourself expanding into more going forward?

On an intentional basis. And it is interesting because I do think people will focus more on creating anchor pull-through demand. But it is going to vary. If it's a stand-alone project somewhere isolated where it doesn't allow you to build further nat gas deliveries off of that pull-through demand, that's one situation.

If you see it as an important part of building up a nat gas economy, and you can see that that's -- that justifies the investment in the project, but you have a plan on how you're going to build off of that either by pipe or other deliveries, it's all just going to -- what's the true ultimate pull-through that you can generate by making that investment. So I think that's going to be on a very case-by-case basis, but we're excited to have evolved into that part of the downstream LNG value chain for sure.

Really interesting. And as you know, kind of a final kind of question here, I want to -- what is the story you're trying to tell the equity markets out here? What do you think is the Excelerate story? And then just any kind of closing remarks or final thoughts on what you'd like to leave our audience with.

I think -- I don't think. Our brand -- Excelerate's brand is energy security. Unabashedly, I believe we're best-in-class. We are on a mission. We have opened up probably more new markets to LNG than anyone over the past 20 years. I think the world is starting to realize how critical that is. We intend to scale responsibly and in a disciplined manner over these next 5 years of the wave coming to market. But I said Thursday, the future of LNG is regasification, not liquefaction.

At this point, I'm not terribly interested on a couple of more FIDs one way or the other. We know there's going to be an intense increase in supply. We know that, that is going to drive long-term LNG prices ever more affordably for the end customers we wish to serve. And we just wish to be -- we intend to have an unfair share of that market. That's all we want.

Makes sense. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and speaking to the audience about Excelerate.

Thank you, Emma.

Hello, and welcome to the Excelerate Energy Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Alex, and I'll be coordinating today's call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand it over to Craig Hicks to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Excelerate Energy's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Steven Kobos, President and CEO; and Dana Armstrong, Chief Financial Officer. Also joining the call are Oliver Simpson, Chief Commercial Officer; and David Liner, Chief Operating Officer.

Our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings press release and presentation were published yesterday afternoon and are available on our website at ir.excelerateenergy.com.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. We undertake no obligation to update these statements. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found at the back of the presentation.

With that, it is my pleasure to pass the call over to Steven Kobos.

Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Whether you followed Excelerate Energy for many years or you are new to the story, I want to start by grounding us in who we are and what differentiates our business. At Excelerate, we operate a global LNG and power infrastructure platform.

We help countries enhance their energy security by increasing access to global LNG markets. We do this by providing safe and reliable downstream energy infrastructure, particularly in markets where traditional onshore development is impractical or would take too long to deploy.

Our business is built around critical assets, long-term contracts and dependable operating performance. That foundation has allowed us to operate through market cycles and deliver consistent results.

Turning to 2025. It was a strong year of execution for Excelerate Energy. For the full year, we delivered record adjusted EBITDA of $449 million. This is an increase of about $100 million over the prior year. That performance reflects the contribution from the Jamaica acquisition, continued growth in our other LNG, gas and power activities, along with reduced year-over-year operating expenses.

Operationally, we performed exceptionally well. Enterprise-wide reliability exceeded 99.9% for the year, our strongest performance to date. And remember, reliability isn't just an operational measure, it's a financial one.

Consistent, reliable performance generates stable, predictable cash flow. We also ended the year with a strong balance sheet, significant liquidity and low leverage. That financial position allows us to enter 2026 from a position of strength.

Today, we are introducing full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $515 million to $545 million. At the midpoint, this is over an $80 million increase over our full year 2025 results. Our '26 outlook is grounded in assets and contracts that are already operating or moving through execution. This provides a solid and visible foundation for the year ahead.

Looking more broadly, global LNG supply is going to increase materially through the end of the decade. As that supply comes to market, we expect demand for LNG regasification infrastructure to grow, particularly across the global South. Many of these markets are seeking reliable, scalable solutions to enhance energy security and reduce dependence on dirtier fuels.

At the same time, power demand continues to rise. Population growth, industrial development and expanding digital infrastructure, including AI data centers are placing new demands on energy systems. These dynamics reinforce the need for reliable LNG and power infrastructure, and they align well with the capabilities of our asset portfolio.

Turning to Iraq. This remains a strategically important project for Excelerate. For Iraq, the project is mission-critical. It provides a reliable source of nat gas to help with an existing deficit to support growing power generation needs and strengthen the country's energy security by reducing exposure to regional supply disruptions.

Construction of Hull 3407, our newest best-in-class FSRU is progressing well. The vessel has completed sea trials and is advancing through final commissioning activities. These include gas trials and cryogenic testing ahead of delivery in early second quarter.

In parallel, site mobilization and early construction activities for the integrated LNG import terminal at the Port [ of Vlorë ] are underway. Engineering and procurement activities are progressing.

Long lead items have been ordered, and we have executed the lease for the existing Jetty. As the project has advanced into detailed engineering, we refined the structural design of the jetty to ensure it can support safe long-term terminal operations. These refinements required additional scope, including structural reinforcement, which has resulted in higher estimated construction capital. As the project moves forward, we are gaining better visibility and are refining our financial assumptions based on scope and commercial terms.

Total estimated capital cost for the Iraq terminal is now expected to range between $520 million and $550 million, inclusive of the cost of the FSRU. The all-in cost of the vessel remains roughly $370 million with about $220 million remaining to be paid for the vessel in the second quarter of this year. From an economic perspective, while total CapEx estimates have increased, we are now expecting annual terminal operating costs to be considerably lower.

The Iraq project is expected to achieve an EBITDA build multiple of approximately 5x. This is in line with the economics we outlined on our November earnings call at the minimum contracted offtake of 250 million standard cubic feet per day.

Under the contract, deliveries can scale up to 500 million standard cubic feet per day, providing meaningful upside potential. The integrated Iraq terminal remains on track to commence operations in the third quarter of '26. Now I'll turn to Jamaica. In '25, our Jamaica LNG to power platform performed exceptionally well. It delivered safe and reliable energy supply to the country and provided us with stable contracted cash flows. It also demonstrated exceptional resilience during Hurricane Melissa, one of the all-time most powerful hurricanes with minimal operational and financial impacts during the fourth quarter. Hurricane Melissa highlighted the benefits of LNG and floating regasification infrastructure and bolstering the energy security of Jamaica and potentially for other islands throughout the Caribbean.

Following the acquisition, our focus has been on integration, operational excellence and maintaining high levels of reliability. We are proud to announce that full integration of the Jamaica platform was completed successfully in Q4. With the integration complete, we are advancing our strategy to optimize the Jamaica platform while pursuing new infrastructure opportunities across the Caribbean.

With Jamaica integration complete and the Iraq project progressing as planned, our focus now turns to executing the next set of defined initiatives to extend our earnings growth trajectory.

First, we expect the Express FSRU to be redelivered at the expiration of its current contract late in Q3. We have high confidence in redeploying the asset and improved economic terms over the prior contract. This should support incremental EBITDA uplift in 2027. Second, we are moving forward with plans for an FSRU conversion. Under our current planning assumptions, the converted FSRU will be available for commercial deployment in early 2028.

Negotiations of the final contracts related to the conversion are ongoing, which is why this project is not yet included in our committed growth capital guidance. We're going to provide more detail once the necessary commercial agreements are finalized.

Finally, future growth will be driven by a set of scalable LNG regasification solutions that we know how to execute. These include integrated onshore terminals, floating storage units paired with onshore regasification and small-scale and modular configurations. Together, these solutions provide a disciplined and repeatable way to deploy capital and scale our global asset portfolio.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Dana to walk through the financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. As Steven outlined, 2025 was a year of exceptional performance for Excelerate Energy. For the full year, we delivered record adjusted EBITDA of $449 million at the high end of our guidance range and an increase of over $100 million or up about 30% compared to the prior year.

The growth was primarily due to the contribution from the Jamaica acquisition, which we closed in May 2025 and increased LNG gas and power sales opportunities. Inclusive of Jamaica, we reported adjusted net income of $199 million, an increase of $46 million or up over 30% year-over-year.

Adjusted net income increased due to the items noted previously, partially offset by higher interest expense related to our 2030 notes.

Turning to the fourth quarter. We delivered $40 million of adjusted net income and $113 million of adjusted EBITDA, both in line with our expectations. Results decreased sequentially from the third quarter primarily due to a full Atlantic Basin cargo delivery in the third quarter compared to a partial delivery in the fourth quarter, along with increased business development expenses and modestly lower LNG gas and power direct margins in Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa.

For the full year, maintenance CapEx was $57 million and committed growth capital was $106 million, including $10 million of growth capital invested in the Iraq project in the fourth quarter of last year.

Now let's turn to the balance sheet. We ended the year with a strong balance sheet supported by robust cash flow generation and disciplined capital allocation. As of December 31, 2025, total debt, including finance leases, was $1.3 billion with $538 million of cash and cash equivalents on hand. The full $500 million of capacity under our revolving credit facility was available as of December 31. Net debt was $730 million and trailing net leverage was 1.6x.

Last week, the Board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share or $0.32 per share annualized payable on March 26, 2026. As previously communicated, Excelerate is targeting a low double-digit annual dividend growth rate commencing in 2026 and continuing through 2028. We expect the next dividend increase to be approved in the second half of this year.

In December 2025, our Board authorized a $75 million share repurchase program. With this authorization, we have the flexibility to repurchase shares in a disciplined manner, balancing shareholder returns with continued investment in our growth priorities. For the full year 2026, we expect adjusted EBITDA to range between $515 million and $545 million. This outlook reflects continued performance of our contracted FSRU portfolio, a full year of contribution from Jamaica, a partial year contribution from Iraq and incremental uplift from the back-to-back QatarEnergy and Petrobangla LNG supply agreements.

In 2026, we expect maintenance CapEx to range between $100 million to $110 million. The year-over-year increase in maintenance CapEx is driven mostly by the timing of dry docks. The Express and Exquisite FSRUs are both expected to undergo dry docks during 2026.

Under current planning assumptions, the Exquisite is expected to go to dry dock in the second quarter, and our newbuild Hull 3407 will be utilized to substitute for the Exquisite. This will ensure continued operations at the Engro terminal in Pakistan.

The Express is expected to go to dry dock early in the fourth quarter. In addition, the dry dock for our vessel to Explorer, which commenced late last year, concluded in the first quarter of this year. The associated first quarter maintenance CapEx for the Explorer dry dock is included in our maintenance CapEx guidance range for 2026.

Additionally, our maintenance CapEx range includes long lead time equipment for a dry dock that we anticipate to occur in early 2027.

Beyond dry docks, our maintenance CapEx guidance range includes additional strategic spares and other equipment as well as capital spend for expected overhauls and upgrades across the broader asset portfolio. This investment in other non-dry dock-related maintenance capital is part of a deliberate multiyear initiative focused on maintaining high levels of asset reliability, which supports predictable cash generation across the platform.

Turning to committed growth capital. We expect that to range between $370 million and $400 million. This range includes roughly $220 million remaining to be paid for Hull 3407, along with an expected $140 million to $170 million for the integrated terminal project in Iraq and another $10 million of additional growth capital for other committed growth projects. This capital positions us to take advantage of the significant wave of LNG supply coming online over the next few years, ensuring that the proper infrastructure is in place to convert that supply into reliable power and gas for end users.

In summary, we believe our guidance and capital plans appropriately balance growth, returns and financial discipline while preserving flexibility as we execute on our strategic priorities. With that, we'll now open up the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question for today comes from Eli Jossen of JPMorgan.

I wanted to start on the organic growth across the business more broadly. As we look past Iraq in service this summer, can you help frame what we're most likely to see next from a capital sanctioning perspective and whether that's Jamaica expansions, more integrated deals like we've seen in Iraq, LNG conversions?

And then more broadly, can we kind of step back and think about what the EBITDA run rate and growth of this business is headed towards as we look ahead a few years?

Eli, this is Steven. I don't know if we'll need any more questions after that one, man. That covers the gamut. I'll take a stab. In terms of -- let me take a step back first. We've talked about the LNG wave that's coming to market. Your question has to be viewed in the context of what's coming. And what is coming is that the focus of the entire LNG industry is shifting in the time period that you're talking about from liquefaction to regasification.

So you're basically saying where -- with the focus moving to regasification, where are our priorities. And so I've often said it's like asking someone -- a parent which child they love most, like we love all of these. Each one has something unique where they can benefit from this changing dynamic from the wave. I just got back a few weeks ago from India, got to sit with Prime Minister Modi. He was adamant that India is going to move to 15% nat gas consumption by 2030. That's huge.

Now they're only at 6% right now of the energy mix for 1.4 billion people. Love that. going to keep focusing there. There are a lot of opportunities South and Southeast Asia in general. But as you've seen with Iraq, they can come up everywhere. They have different market dynamics. What's interesting about Iraq, they just don't have enough nat gas. They were running a massive shortfall and then Iran quit exporting anything. They went from 0.8 Bcf to 0 last summer. They desperately need that project, our project to come online for us to help satisfy an absurd deficit. So that's a unique one. If you think about the past -- since we're talking macro, if you think about the past 4 years of global energy, what's the main lesson?

In my mind, the main lesson is cross-border pipelines aren't reliable -- for all kinds of reasons. It could be about the neighbor. It could be about the risk of interference, all kinds of reasons. LNG is a gift to the world. It's a blessing. It allows someone to diversify their supply from a neighbor who they may or may not get along with to the world. Everyone is going to move to that. I mean, thank you for the question because you can see why we're so bullish that Excelerate is the right company at the right moment in time to go after this.

What do we expect? I think you've got the building blocks out there for where we have high confidence on EBITDA in 2027. You know we don't guide to it, but we've -- and Dana can speak to that further, but I think the building blocks are there, and it's easy to piece together where we see EBITDA going to in '27.

We're telling you we're going to add additional assets. I will say we've seen with Iraq that an integrated deal rewards infrastructure companies like Excelerate who have taken the time and have planned in advance to be able to offer LNG together with infra and link them together. So that is the preferred method moving forward. But we are not hidebound.

We believe in selling to a customer what a customer wants to buy. We don't want to say we know more than a customer. We know more about a market that they've lived in forever. So we will continue to be eager to sell the infrastructure products and to build them together with LNG or not as a particular market may think best for themselves. I do think this TAM is global.

So don't be surprised if we pop up, I don't know, in LatAm, again, in Middle East or elsewhere, but the focus -- I would say the focus continues to be South and Southeast Asia.

And just to add to the building blocks, Eli. So as Steven said, we don't provide multiyear guidance, but I think Steven summarized it really well that you'll have a full year of a rock in 2027. We've spoken to that being about a 5x multiple, so you can do the math there. We previously spoke to Jamaica, which we expect to grow, as we said previously, between $80 million to $110 million on top of the base business over the next 5 years. We obviously have the Petrobangla QE coming online in '26. That's an incremental $15 million for 2 years then going to $18 million.

And then now with Express, we expect to get on a new contract in 2027, adding uplift to our margins. So I think you can kind of get to a range for the next few years with those building blocks.

That's great color. I really appreciate it. But then maybe just pivoting more specifically to the Iraq LNG project. We're seeing some global instability in the region, which seemingly increases the importance of the project. Can you speak to project expansions -- and then maybe just a bit more color on the CapEx revision we saw. I know you touched on in your opening remarks, but just any other color you can provide.

I think all eyes are on the region. And there's nothing new there, Eli. I mean, all eyes are always on the region. It's one of the reasons why we've known this project was critical. It's just crazy. Iraq, they've got 8 hours to 12 hours of grid electricity in summer. I mean just think about that for a second. I mean imagine if Houston had 8 hours to 12 hours of grid electricity in the summer. It's absurd. It is a massive need. And when you -- Iran was delivering 800 million scf a day of nat gas, and they still were at 8 hours to 12 hours of grid electricity in summer.

In terms of a first year market, I cannot imagine the profile of a first year market. We want that Iranian those deliveries were sometimes 50% of their gas needs. So it's hard to go find any market around the world that has a more critical urgent need for LNG. It's why we're moving so quickly. Like frankly, it's -- I'm thinking -- we're thinking long term, we think this can be far more than 5 years, but we're conservative in how we talk to you all. Contract says 5 years, we're talking about 5 years.

Contract says a minimum take-or-pay of 250 million scf of gas. So that's what we're talking to you all about. But you should really be taking seriously the contractual upside that exists in that project because the fundamentals they're just -- they're robust. They're the strongest I can imagine for LNG demand globally. That's that component. CapEx number, not to minimize the complexity of any project, but I mean, come on, this is steel piles in concrete. So what you saw in general was just some change in scope after we got into the weeds on the geotechnical, geophysical core samples, all that stuff.

But more than that, you saw some horse trading commercially with the Iraqis where we took on some CapEx scope, they gave on some OpEx scope. I don't want to get into the weeds. I think the punchline for that is we're comfortable with the 5x build multiple that Dana and I both mentioned in the remarks. So I think something we're excited about. I think it's something where we can make a difference in the world.

And energy security is what it's all about, and there's no better example for that than Iraq. But energy security is important to everyone. When I was in India, Energy Minister Singh Puri said in his opening remarks at an event he said, we view energy security as being survival. That's what it's about to ensure that you have energy for your economy. It's about survival.

And regasification, reliable access to regasification is about providing countries with survival. I know that sounds a little over the top, but we believe it.

Our next question comes from Theresa Chen of Barclays.

Maybe turning to Jamaica for a second. With the assets fully integrated at this point, can you elaborate on the near-term optimization opportunities and the additional growth options as well? From here, what do you think is realistic over the course of the next 12 months to a couple of years? Which infrastructure opportunities do you think are the most compelling?

Theresa, I'll start off there, and then I'm going to let Oliver weigh in. But thank you. Mic drop moment, integration went flawlessly and was over by Q4. And we managed Hurricane Melissa perfectly. And I forgot there's a quote in the Economist. I don't know if it says it's like the high sustained winds of any hurricane, I don't know, since the old testament or something, that's how I read it. You might look at it and see what it said. But no small thing. And frankly, the Jamaican Prime Minister told me, this has been a proof point of the reliability for thermal power and the sort of floating assets that can avoid harm in terms of resiliency. So I love it.

In general, I don't think we're going to come off of the multiyear guide -- I mean we're not going to come off of, but I don't think we're going to provide a different guidance than the multiyear guidance that we have out there for the Caribbean. If you're connecting bread crumbs, you can start to see we're thinking about deploying the same sort of hub-and-spoke smaller scale models in other parts of the world. But I'll let Oliver take it from there, please.

So the -- from our perspective in Jamaica, obviously, when we bought these assets, we talked about it, we bought a platform in Jamaica in the region. So I think in Jamaica itself, we have opportunities near term using the existing infrastructure, the existing assets to deliver more LNG to customers. And we've had some success there on the small scale, and we're continuing to look at those solutions. I think on the back of Hurricane Melissa, I think the proof point on the island was the infrastructure we had came out to be extremely resilient. And I think that's going to be a great selling point as we look at new customers on the island.

Sor of longer term, a little further out, there are some bigger sort of bigger asset plays, capital plays, both in Jamaica and in the broader Caribbean that we continue to look at. Obviously, that's using the platform in Jamaica as the sort of hub and then those kind of become the spokes. And we've got a number of conversations in the region that are going well and that we expect to progress. Obviously, those will be coming on in '27 and beyond. So I think that is how I would think about it sort of extreme near term is really using the assets in Jamaica.

And then next year and beyond is looking at other assets across the Caribbean.

Happy to know, Steven, that your success in Jamaica is officially a biblical proportion.

Our next question comes from Michael Scialla from Stephens.

I wanted to see if you could help with the cadence of the capital spend this year. It seems like it's going to be first half weighted. Just want to see if you could provide any information on that.

Michael, yes, that would be a good assumption that it's first half weighted because we broke out how much of that was Iraq and we said $140 million to $170 million of that spend is Iraq. So that will be first half weighted as we do expect to go into service in the third quarter.

The maintenance CapEx, we said on the call would be -- it's going to be in the second quarter for the Exquisite and then the fourth quarter for the Express. And then the new build is in the second quarter. So most of that growth capital, a good chunk of that will be in the first half of the year.

Got it. And then, Steven, I wanted to see if you could expand at all on the conversations you had in India. It looks like you signed a JV there. And how should we think about that? Is it a longer-term project kind of beyond this 3-year window where you've got a lot of projects coming together? Or could it fit into the next 3 years?

Mike, I would -- I mean, it could definitely fit within -- I'm sorry, I'm not pointed at my microphone, Mike. I think it could fit within '28 for sure. In terms of how to think about it, though, I think I would think about it that Excelerate does what we say we will do. We've been talking about the markets that we're interested in for some time. Sometimes there are announcements in those markets, sometimes they're not. It is not a question of whether we are looking for the right opportunities. I do think starting off somewhat smaller scale in India is the right move for us. We want to be in India. There's no doubt about it. I had a great roundtable with Prime Minister Modi, energy CEOs, and I was the only American there.

We definitely want to be there. But it's all about getting into the market. That one is called Haldia. It's just south of Calcutta. Pipe is being built out. India is such an enormous market, just the pipe that's going to what they call the 7 sisters provinces north of Haldia, it's 40 million people alone. There are lots of little pockets of demand in India. So what I'd like you to think about, Michael, is that it's our first foray into India, but it won't be our last one.

And sometimes when you don't hear what we're up to in the market, we're still working it. And more to come on Haldia.

Our next question comes from Chris Robertson of Deutsche Bank.

Just a quick question on the Exquisite. I guess what are your expectations around the redeployment at this point? Do you expect that asset will roll with the same counterparty at the improved terms? Or are there some interesting inbound inquiries from other potential counterparties at this point? And are you seeing any inbounds from any particular region or country?

Chris, first of all, I think you're speaking to the Express, and that's our fault for horrible naming conventions where they all sound… no, no, they all sound like they've got the same name, and I do it every single day. In terms of Express, what I would say is past 4 years, we've recontracted 4 of our, what I'll term legacy contract assets, and they've all been at uplift to EBITDA.

Absolutely confident this will be the same. We are in discussions around the world about it. But again, it's kind of running a sense of what's most appealing to us in terms of start time, duration of contract, EBITDA uplift, can you integrate? Can you not? So we'll evaluate all those factors and get back to you when the time is right. But what I'd leave you with is we're going to do what we've done before. And many of you all, many of the investor meetings, many of the analyst calls in the past 4 years have been about when can you get your hands on the evergreen contracts. And the reason you all have those questions is you know we can get better uplift, and we're going to.

Thank you, Steven. Apologies again for the misstatement there. Moving towards -- just if you could provide some commentary about your greater opportunities here. We've talked about regasification infrastructure quite a bit and integrated project as it relates to the LNG supply. But how are you guys thinking at this point now that Jamaica is integrated, you're running power assets there. What are the opportunities looking like on the power side of things in terms of gas turbines, natural gas power plants and how are you thinking about that in terms of an integrated approach?

I think we're thinking about it the same way many people up to IOCs are thinking about it. If it's going to give you an advantage in terms of pull-through demand, contract duration, all kinds of things, then yes, we're going to evaluate it. We're going to continue to evaluate it. And we are in a better position to sell that because we offer that. We operate that. So we do find ourselves in a better position there. Just as when we got our first LNG positions in our portfolio, it allowed us to credibly offer integrated products there as well. So I can't say when, but it's all about pull-through demand in the rest of the world, and we can happy to get into the growth in air conditioning expected in the Global South. That's going to triple by 2050 up to, I don't know, some crazy number of units, I think 5.6 billion units.

Like there's -- when you talk about LNG, you talk about the total addressable market, you talk about the Global South. power is ultimately what's going to drive that. So if it's the right pull-through demand with the right economics, we will absolutely do it.

All right. Great. Glad to hear there's a lot of options out there and potential growth.

Our next question comes from Bobby Brooks of Northland Capital Markets.

I wanted to touch on the maintenance CapEx. You had mentioned that this a part of kind of a multiyear plan sort of enhancing the asset portfolio and ensuring the highest level of -- continuing to ensure the highest level of uptime. I was just curious to hear what some of those vessels might look like or the enhancements? And are those going to be able to uplift kind of current EBITDA generation off the current assets at their contracted rates today? Or is it something that once it's up for recontracting, then you can get a better price?

Bobby, I'm going to hand it to David, but I'd like to have Mike drop when we can. as I said in my remarks, operational reliability, reliability isn't an operational measure, it's a financial one. And that 99.9% uptime, it's not an accident. You don't trip and fall and get to 99.9%.

You plan to do it. We love this asset class, and we're going to do what we need to do to make sure it's reliable for the long haul. But it's not -- you shouldn't view this as run rate. specifics, but we expect this to scale down by '28 for sure. I mean, the program, the longevity programs. But David, any color without giving away the family secrets.

Yes. A fantastic portfolio of assets, whether it's the fleet, the power generation, the terminals, the small scale, all that, we've got to maintain at a level that we can perform similarly as '24, '25, and we're going to do it in '26 at 99.9% reliability.

To do that, we have to -- and we're constantly studying any areas where we may have vulnerability to a single point of failure or some piece of equipment that if it goes down, will have an outsized impact on our reliability.

We're constantly looking at those items, and we have a focused initiative in '26 and '27, where we're replenishing and making sure that for any of those pieces of equipment, we've got 1, 2 or 3 on the beach or on board ready to deploy at a moment's notice. It's usually larger pieces of kit. Sometimes it's smaller pieces of equipment. But yes, we want to make sure we've got a full warehouse to maintain that level of performance going forward.

Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. And I always love a mic drop moment for you, Steven. And then I wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit and a pretty about $4.7 million step-up sequentially in SG&A in the fourth quarter and kind of above the range that you guys have been doing in the past 7. Just wanted to hear a little bit about what drove that. Maybe it was just as simple as one-off onetime bonuses from the record year in '25. And if you could provide any color on how to be thinking about that on a run rate basis going forward, it would be appreciated.

Bobby, it's Dana. So yes, good question. If you look at our Q4 over Q3, there was 2 -- really 2 items that drove that. The first was the Hurricane Melissa impact. We had -- all in, we had an EBITDA impact in Q4 of about $6 million. Of that $6 million, about $2 million of that hit our SG&A. And what rolled into the SG&A was our CSR efforts. So we said we spent over $1 million on CSR to support the island. There were some employee assistance, a much smaller amount. and then some other miscellaneous costs related to the Hurricane Ian, that was about $2 million. So that was definitely an anomaly.

And then also in SG&A, as you know, we report our business development spend in SG&A. And so for the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, that was up about $2 million. About half of that increase was a rock. So those were just costs to get ready for the project that we were not able to capitalize yet and then some other business development growth initiatives.

And the rest of it was just miscellaneous year-end cleanup. So it's certainly not a run rate. It's more of a -- we do see a little bit of lumpiness in the SG&A number, mostly driven by business development.

Our next question comes from Emma Schwartz of Jefferies.

I wanted to ask on the -- so the growth potential of the platform is really impressive. And I wanted to ask on accelerate leaning in further. Could you look to acquire another LNG conversion candidate in 2026? And is there anything preventing you guys from developing multiple FSRUs at the same time? It doesn't seem like leverage is a constraint here. So I just wanted to ask about leaning in further?

I almost called the conversion in the remarks. I almost named it conversion #1 to try to hint at that. But we will -- we're not going to wait until delivery of conversion # 1 in '28 to get started. So I mean, we do understand that we're -- the next 5 years are an incredibly important moment in time. There is an enormous TAM out there, and we're going to be acting to give us -- to continue this growth trajectory. So I'd like to get back to you after we've got a little more color on this first conversion that we've announced, but it's certainly not the end of it.

So look at Express, look at uplift for that, look at the fact that we'll deploy this first conversion in early '28. I'm sure that we'll say consistent things with what we've said before. We look for build multiples of 5 to 7, just like other quality midstream companies. And I doubt that we'll say anything different about conversion number one. And then I hope in the course of this year that we'll be talking about more.

Sounds good. My second question is, I want to ask on the small-scale like solutions. What are the like build multiples or returns for these kind of projects? And is this something that you would develop your -- like internally, the capabilities to deliver? Or is M&A an option to scale up this side of the business?

We never put a blindfold on. We're always looking for the best way to skin a cat. But it's not complex things, but the closer you get downstream, you should look for better returns. I mean that's -- and we don't mind it. It's like I like the fact that we have trucks. I want to have trucks in other markets, too. I mean it's not going to be huge volumes. But by definition, the closer you get of that last mile and get to that last quarter mile and get to that last 100 meters, yes, you should have higher returns associated with small scale. Otherwise, frankly, it wouldn't be worth the candle. It is worth the candle.

Our next question comes from Zack Van Everen of TPH.

Maybe starting on Iraq. Curious if you could swap the Express with the new build just based on the send out of that ship? And what upside opportunity could that provide placing the new build elsewhere?

Zack, I'll take that one. I don't want to. That was a conscious decision to put 3407 into Iraq. That's about staying there in the best regasification project that I'm aware of and staying in there for a long haul and being part of that. And knowing that it can go north of 500, that's a contractual limitation. It's not a limitation on uptake from that pipe that the Iraqis laid that 40-kilometer pipe they laid. It's not a limitation from what we're going to build. And we want to do more over the long haul, and we want to be as sticky as we possibly are, and that's about offering the Iraqis something better than anyone else on earth would. So it is a very conscious decision on our part to do it. It's part of the long-term plan. But you raised a good point. It sounds like you should be in the BD group kicking around optionality because we've had that discussion over the past year. But I can share with you what our landing point is.

Got it. No, that's super helpful context, and I appreciate that. Maybe one more on Iraq. You guys historically have talked about new EBITDA from the FSRU. Could you maybe break out the split of that 5x multiple between the terminal, the ship and the supply deal, just what maybe percent from each of those contributions for the project?

Yes, that's an integrated deal. So that's not something that we're going to talk about on a split basis. We expected to report it. We expect to report all of it in the LNG, gas and power part of our business, and we expect to report on that on a combined basis. So that's not something we intend to split out.

Our next question comes from Wade Suki of Capital One.

Just I think just to dovetail, I think it was off of Emma's question earlier, might push a little bit for a little clarity around that conversion. If I heard you correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it may or may not at least the FSRU conversion may or may not be the Shenandoah, it could be another vessel. Am I reading between the lines here? Or am I just off base if you can.

Yes. That wasn't what I intended to convey with the lines, but we're never going to be hide bound. We could certainly be doing an FSU concurrently. I tried to say that. It just depends about what of our commercial deals get the most traction and look appealing to us quickly. But Shenandoah is top of mind, but we're going to be bringing a multitude of assets to the forefront because that's what this future point in the LNG industry is going to require. It's going to be a lot of -- not everything -- I mean, Iraq can easily scale to 4 million tons a year.

You can figure that out. But there are going to be a lot of 0.5 million to 2.0 million ton deals around the world, and it's going to -- it's not going to be a one size fits all asset that's deployed for it. And we're not going to rule ourselves. We're not going to be hidebound and keep ourselves out of any of those opportunities. So I mean, just don't take anything I'm saying is limiting what we're willing to pursue. I'm trying to convey that from best-in-class FSRUs like 3407 down to trucks, we want to get LNG to people around the world.

Understood. And I guess next question might be on potential new build, kind of where that is in your priority considerations, potential specifications, maybe not something as robust as Hull 3407. Just kind of curious what your thoughts are there as you look at all the opportunities and potential growth avenues for you.

I don't think sincerely doubt way that 3407 is the last new build. There are a lot of reasons for that. I love what -- we've built up specifications over 20 years. We love being able to control that to that degree. But it's all going to be about what we think particular markets that we're pursuing need. I think in general, you can assume that new buildings, we love them when we think there is ultimately a chance for an enhanced send out.

And another thing about new builds, too, like with an integrated deal, you care about boil-off. So you want to make sure you've got great, great tank. That was the other thing I didn't mention with one of the earlier questions like I-3407 into Iraq. I mentioned the sticky nature of it. I didn't mention that it's got fantastic natural boil-off from its tanks. That's our LNG. We care about that. I mean it's going to be adding value for us over the life of that project. So there are a lot of considerations there that factor into it. But as I said, I expect us to use all the tools at our disposal over the coming 5 years.

Understood. And just one last one, if I could, just with clarity just to make sure I heard you correctly. Did I hear you say that the new build could be used temporarily fill in for the Exquisite? Did I hear that correctly in the second quarter? Or did I mishear it?

Yes. No, you've got very good hearing, Wade. You've got very good hearing. Yes. And for 2 reasons. One, we care about our customers. We want to make sure if our customer wants something during a dry dock, we're going to try to move heaven and earth to accommodate them, first point.

Second point is I have high, high confidence in 3407. It's been a pleasure to see it go through sea trials coming up on gas trials. It's always nice to finally flow gas, though. It's nice to regasify before you start up. So you're not messing around with commissioning your regas system at the same time you're bringing a terminal online. So we will both fulfill our customers' desires and needs. And at the same time, it will allow us to commission the regas plant before she arrives and Iraq. So kind of a win-win.

Thank you. At this time, we currently have no further questions. So I'll hand back to CEO, Steven Kobos, for any further remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I would reiterate one thing I said on the call. The focus of the LNG industry moving forward is regasification, not liquefaction. Excelerate is the prime driver of that, and we look forward to continuing our discussion throughout the year. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Hello, and welcome to the Excelerate Energy Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Alex, and I'll be coordinating today's call. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now hand it over to Craig Hicks, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Excelerate Energy's third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Steven Kobos, President and CEO; Dana Armstrong, Chief Financial Officer; and Oliver Simpson, Chief Commercial Officer. Our third quarter earnings press release and presentation were published yesterday afternoon and are available on our website at ir.excelerateenergy.com.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. We undertake no obligation to update these statements. We'll also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found at the end of the presentation.

With that, it is my pleasure to pass the call over to Steven Kobos.

Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss our third quarter 2025 results. But before we turn to the business update, I want to begin by acknowledging the impact of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica. Our thoughts are with those affected, especially our employees, their families and the communities we serve. We've been in close contact with our teams throughout, and we're grateful for their safety and for the care they've shown to one another and to the communities around them.

Also, I want to note for you all that David Liner, our Chief Operating Officer, who's usually with us on these earnings calls, is currently on the ground in Jamaica, helping to coordinate our hurricane response and relief efforts. In the days leading up to landfall, our crisis management team activated contingency plans and conducted drills to ensure personal safety and operational resilience. On October 23, following direction from the harbor master, our FSRU at Old Harbour and our other mobile marina assets safely relocated offshore.

Our teams then moved to ensure that all our critical systems and onshore operations were prepared and secured ahead of the storm. When Hurricane Melissa made landfall on the west side of the island, Montego Bay experienced severe conditions, but our infrastructure held and our teams responded quickly. The FSRU returned to port in Old Harbour on October 30th and regasification operations resumed on October 31st.

The Clarendon CHP plant also restarted operations that same day. As of November 1st, the Montego Bay terminal was fully operational. Deliveries to small-scale customers have resumed. These deliveries were made possible through coordinated efforts to clear access routes and restore supply chains.

I want to take a moment to thank our operations team in Jamaica. Their response was not only fast and effective, but it was also deeply responsible. They did what needed to be done, and they did it with care, discipline and quiet resolve. This isn't just a business when a sovereign and its people count on you for basic needs like reliable energy.

That kind of trust carries weight. It's a relationship built on consistency, accountability and respect, and it's one we take seriously. That's why our response goes beyond restoring operations. We've mobilized relief funding, freshwater and essential supplies to support recovery efforts. We remain committed to standing with Jamaica, not just through this recovery, but in the long-term work of strengthening energy infrastructure across the region. We are proud to stand with the impacted communities as they begin to rebuild.

I want to reassure our stakeholders that we have comprehensive insurance coverage for adverse weather events like this. With that insurance coverage, combined with our take-or-pay business model, we are confident that there will be limited financial impacts resulting from Hurricane Melissa.

Now let's turn to the third quarter. Excelerate delivered another strong quarter, underscoring the strength of our infrastructure platform. I'll begin with a brief overview of our third quarter highlights and the current macro environment. Then I'll provide updates on 2 important developments, those being our recently executed terminal contract in Iraq and the continued growth of our operations in Jamaica. After that, I'll turn the call over to Dana, and she'll walk through the financials in more detail.

Excelerate delivered record quarterly EBITDA of $129 million. This underscores the durability and diversification of our business model. With approximately 90% of our future contracted cash flows under take-or-pay agreements, portfolio of weighted average investment-grade counterparties and minimal commodity exposure, we continue to deliver predictable cash flows through market cycles. On the operational front, we've maintained high levels of asset reliability across our portfolio. Our global footprint and disciplined execution are enabling stable returns while advancing strategic growth opportunities that position us for long-term value creation.

Let's turn for a moment to the LNG macro environment. The global LNG market is entering a new phase of accelerated growth. After a modest supply expansion over the past 3 years, approximately 200 million tonnes of incremental LNG supply is expected to come online between now and the end of the decade. This growth is expected to drive global LNG supply from approximately 430 million tonnes per annum in '25 to greater than 600 MTPA by 2030.

As the ratio of global regas capacity to supply tightens, developing new regas infrastructure will become increasingly important. This imbalance is not theoretical. It's structural. Many emerging markets lack financing, permitting frameworks or time to build large-scale onshore terminals. Even in developed markets, infrastructure timelines often lag commercial opportunities. Excelerate Energy is purpose-built to solve this problem.

We offer a range of scalable regasification solutions from FSRUs to converted LNG carriers to integrated downstream infrastructure, these solutions can be deployed rapidly, adapt to local constraints and unlock demand for gas was previously unavailable or uneconomical. More affordable LNG pricing is expected to drive incremental demand for natural gas, particularly in price-sensitive and infrastructure constrained markets. That demand will require more regasification infrastructure, not less.

As we look ahead, Excelerate is preparing to meet the demand of the next wave of LNG growth. With our newest vessel, Hull 3407 now committed to the Iraq project, we are advancing plans to convert our existing LNG carrier, the Shenandoah into a floating storage and regasification unit. This conversion will expand our fleet's flexibility and allow us to respond more quickly to emerging opportunities.

Engineering work is already underway, and we've initiated procurement of long lead items to compress the construction timeline and accelerate deployment. These steps reflect our continued focus on scalable, capital-efficient infrastructure that can be delivered where and when it's needed most. The recent announcement regarding Iraq is a powerful example of how Excelerate's integrated model creates differentiated value in markets where energy infrastructure is urgently needed.

In October, we executed a definitive agreement with a subsidiary of Iraq's Ministry of Electricity to develop the country's first LNG import terminal at the Port of Khor Al Zubair. This agreement builds on extensive engagement with the government of Iraq over the past several years. We've worked closely with key stakeholders to shape a reliable solution that addresses the country's urgent energy needs and supports its long-term infrastructure goals.

Iraq continues to face chronic power shortages and unreliable gas supply. These challenges have led to persistent load shedding and heavy reliance on imported gas from neighboring countries. Our integrated solution offers a fast-track path to energy security. Excelerate will deliver a turnkey package that includes an FSRU, fixed terminal assets, LNG supply and operational support. This integrated structure is strategically significant.

Unlike a traditional FSRU charter where Excelerate provides regasification capacity alone, an integrated deal allows us to capture a broader portion of the value chain. This approach also creates multiple revenue streams and a more durable commercial framework. Iraq has already made meaningful progress on enabling infrastructure. A 40-kilometer pipeline connecting the jetty to the Tayan Pipeline Network is largely complete.

Under the agreement, we will construct and operate the floating LNG import terminal. It's designed to accommodate up to 500 million standard cubic feet per day of regasification capacity. We also plan to repurpose an existing jetty at Khor Al Zubair port that has been deemed structurally suitable for FSRU operations.

The project includes a 5-year agreement for regasification services and LNG supply. It's got extension options and a minimum contracted offtake of 250 million standard cubic feet a day. Let's call that equivalent to about 200 million tonnes per annum of LNG. We will deploy 3407, our newest FSRU and deliver the topside equipment and berth modifications required to enable operations of the jetty.

So why is Hull 3407 a strategic fit for the project? Well, in addition to its high send out capacity, Hull 3407 offers best-in-class boil-off gas management, delivering strong operational efficiency and reliability. Its advanced design and flexible deployment make it well suited to meet Iraq's large-scale and urgent energy needs. The total project investment is expected to be approximately $450 million, inclusive of the cost of the FSRU.

With the definitive agreement now in place, we're advancing project execution while continuing to derisk the opportunity through a take-or-pay contract structure, credit support, political risk insurance and strong support from the U.S. government. Political risk insurance provides added assurance for long-term stability, while U.S. government support reinforces confidence in the project and strengthens its strategic importance in the region. Together, these measures enhance certainty and create a strong foundation for successful execution.

Now let's turn back to Jamaica. In the third quarter, the reliability of our Jamaica assets remained exceptional. They exceeded 99.8% across the platform. Integration continues to progress extremely well. We have continued to optimize our LNG and power platform by selling incremental gas volumes to existing customers, progressing commercial agreements with new small-scale customers on the island and throughout the Caribbean and improving the efficiency of our integrated operations.

Jamaica also serves as a proof of concept for the scalable solutions we aim to replicate across our global footprint. Now more than ever, we are committed to investing in the critical infrastructure needed to help rebuild and strengthen Jamaica's energy network in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. We will work collaboratively with the government and our customers on the island to enhance the system's durability and ensure long-term reliability.

To sum it up, Excelerate Energy is executing with discipline and delivering results. We're solving real infrastructure challenges in real markets, and we're doing it at scale. As we look ahead, we see significant opportunities to extend our platform into new regions and deepen our presence in existing ones. Our ability to deploy reliable LNG regasification infrastructure when and where it's needed most, position us well to meet rising demand and unlock new growth.

Thank you for your continued support and confidence in Excelerate Energy. With that, I will turn the call over to Dana.

Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. As stated by Steven, we had a great third quarter. We reported adjusted net income of $57 million, which is a sequential increase of $10 million or up 22% as compared to the second quarter of this year. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $129 million, up $22 million or up 21% versus the prior quarter.

Adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter increased from last quarter, primarily due to a full quarter of Jamaica margin and uplift from our second cargo delivery related to our Atlantic Basin supply, which utilized our new LNG carrier, the Excelerate Shenandoah.

In comparison to our guidance range announced in August, we achieved considerable savings in the third quarter related to our Exemplar dry dock, which completed in September with less off-hire days than anticipated, along with lower costs than we had projected. Additionally, our third quarter performance was favorably impacted by lower-than-expected fuel costs for the Shenandoah.

Turning to our balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong and continues to provide the stability and flexibility needed to execute on our long-term strategy and to navigate dynamic market conditions. For the 3 months ended September 30, our total debt, including finance leases, was $1.3 billion, and we had $463 million of cash and cash equivalents on hand.

Additionally, all of the $500 million of capacity under our revolver was available for borrowings. At the end of the third quarter, we had $818 million of net debt and our 12-month trailing net leverage stood at roughly 2x. This strong balance sheet, combined with disciplined capital allocation and robust cash flow, gives us ample liquidity and financial flexibility to fund additional growth projects.

Now I'd like to spend a few minutes on our capital allocation priorities. Our priorities have not changed. We remain focused on investing in accretive growth opportunities and delivering consistent shareholder returns through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases while preserving balance sheet strength to enable long-term strategic flexibility.

This disciplined approach positions Excelerate to create sustainable long-term value while achieving attractive near-term returns. In line with this framework, on October 30th, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share or $0.32 per share on an annualized basis. The dividend is payable on December 4th to Class A common stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 19th.

Now let's turn to an update on our financial guidance. Based on our results to-date, we are increasing our previously communicated adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2025. For the full year, we now expect adjusted EBITDA to range between $435 million and $450 million. This revised guidance range incorporates the minimal financial impact we expect from Hurricane Melissa. Also, as a reminder, we delivered a seasonal cargo under our Atlantic Basin supply deal in the third quarter. Since the next Atlantic Basin delivery is expected to be in the first quarter of 2026, the fourth quarter of 2025 does not include EBITDA related to the Atlantic Basin.

In regard to Hurricane Melissa, as Steven mentioned earlier, thanks to our comprehensive insurance coverage and the swift restoration of operations across our Jamaican assets following the storm, we currently expect only a limited impact on our fourth quarter results. For Excelerate overall, we expect maintenance CapEx to continue to range between $65 million and $75 million. Committed growth CapEx, which is defined as capital allocated and committed to specific infrastructure investments currently in execution, is still expected to range between $95 million and $105 million this year.

Before I close, I want to speak briefly to the commercial deals we now have in place that will drive our financial outlook in the coming years. First, I'll start with the Iraq project and the placement of our new build Hull 3407. As Steven said, we are excited to have secured this opportunity. From a return perspective, the project is expected to have an EBITDA build multiple between 4.5x and 5x, which is consistent with the economics we expect for infrastructure projects that are fully integrated with LNG supply.

Second, our Petrobangla QatarEnergy LNG supply deal begins in January 2026. This 15-year take-or-pay infrastructure-based contract is back-to-back to mitigate commodity risk and is expected to contribute $15 million of incremental EBITDA in 2026 and 2027 and then step up to $18 million of EBITDA in 2028, and thereafter.

Third, our 2026 earnings will benefit from a full year of contribution from the integrated platform in Jamaica. Our assets in Jamaica have continued to exceed our operational expectations and have proven to be a great addition to our portfolio.

As we've previously mentioned, we expect to add $80 million to $110 million of incremental EBITDA over the next 5 years, driven by Jamaica and broader Caribbean growth. We'll provide further detail on our 2026 guidance, including guidance around expected 2026 dry docks on our year-end earnings call in February of next year.

In closing, Excelerate is well positioned to deliver long-term value for our shareholders. We remain focused on disciplined execution and are committed to investing in growth opportunities that will strengthen our long-term earnings potential while also returning capital to our shareholders.

With that, we'll open up the call for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question for today comes from Wade Suki of Capital One.

Just the first one on Iraq, if I could. Just curious on the split between, let's call it, vessel and supply margin. Would it be safe to assume sort of like a 65-35 split between the 2?

Wade, this is Steven. Frankly, I don't think that we are going to be breaking it down at this point. I mean, you should just really look at the integration of it. I think what Dana said, 4.5, 5 turn multiple based upon it. But look, there's some variability there. Minimum take is 250 million scuffs a day weight. I think I said on the call that was 200 million tonnes. Let's call that 2 million tonnes. Let me do the correction there. But it could easily go up to 500 million scuffs part of the year. So implicitly, there's some variability in that component. But at this point, what we want to point to is just that overall build multiple.

Absolutely. No, I appreciate that. Very attractive. I guess maybe just switching gears a little bit to the conversion. It sounds like we've sort of got a definitive move forward, all clear. Can you kind of remind us -- I know you've done some engineering work. I think you might have mentioned on a previous call having spent, I don't know, $30 million or just off the top of my head. Can you sort of remind us how you see that sort of timeline and capital cost to convert that vessel when it goes in the shipyard? Any way to kind of bracket the timeline around CapEx and I guess, dry dock time would be great.

Wade, and as I mentioned, David is down in Jamaica right now. And in fact, I think you all saw our press release on some of our efforts down there. The Shenandoah, which is we're talking about is alongside in Kingston and is going to start offloading humanitarian supplies at noon, and we envision it's going to take about 12 hours to get that all offloaded.

So I just want to give a shout out to the conversion candidate because she's doing good things for Jamaica and the people of Jamaica right now. The 30 million that you spoke to, Wade, I believe that was going to the acquisition cost of the Shenandoah that we spoke about before. That was, of course, kind of all in right after she had been dry docked right before delivery.

In terms of what we've spoken to before, I think we've had a decent range saying, we're kind of thinking about 200 million all-in on a conversion. That varies between what you're starting with is the host ship. This will be the lower end of that. You can imply from that, that there will be more extensive CapEx than if the host vessel had been a TFDE vessel without geeking out too much on the shipping stuff. So I think we're consistent with that.

Ultimately, I don't want to commit to a particular time frame in the yard on it. We're going to give ourselves plenty of time so that we can execute that in a good way. But I can assure you, we've just put away 3407 in a great home and our effort and our focus is on Shenandoah at this point.

But wait, I'll ask your next question, which is what do you think -- what else? What else are you thinking about? We haven't given up on new buildings. We've had a team in Korea talking extensively and workshopping what a new generation could look like for different markets we're thinking about. So I don't want to indicate by virtue of the steps we're taking with Shenandoah that, that is an exclusive path forward.

Understood. And just appreciate your comments and efforts in Jamaica. I hope the rest of the island recovers quickly.

Our next question comes from Chris Robertson of Deutsche Bank.

Just wondering if you guys could walk through what you're thinking on remaining spend on the new building asset currently under construction? And then how you're thinking about when work will commence at the jetty in Iraq, kind of your estimate around equipment and construction costs there just outside of the remaining new build CapEx?

Okay. Chris, this is Steven. I think we're going to divide that question up. I'll let Dana speak first to what's left on delivery on 3407, then I'll let Oliver who was lead for some number of weeks in Baghdad on this project really fired up about it, let him speak to construction. But I'll tell you, we're trying to bring this online as quickly as we can. There is a pressing need for this for the people of Iraq. We need to help solve this load shedding. So the big picture is as soon as possible. But I'll hand it over to Dana.

Yes. on the newbuild, Chris, it's actually pretty simple. We've got $200 million left to pay, and that will be paid at delivery. So the total cost of the shipyard was about $340 million with some of our change orders. So $340 million shipyard costs, roughly about another 10% of ancillary costs for owner-furnished equipment and other items that's going to be over time. And then we -- that's just being paid over time. It's pretty small. But the big payment is $200 million when it's delivered next year.

Yes. And if I think on the Chris, if I take on the sort of Jetty side, on the in-country side in Iraq, as we mentioned, we're looking to get this up and running by summer '26. So really starting from now through next summer, that's how you'll see that CapEx build out. There are certain long lead items that either we've had in stock that we're able to deploy or that we're in the process of procuring. So we'll see that ramp-up on the overall jetty spend between now and next summer.

And just to summarize, the project is expected to cost $450 million, which is inclusive of the $340 million for the Hull 3407, then we should assume around $100 million or so of CapEx related to terminal construction.

Roughly, there's some ancillary costs on the new build. So the new build is roughly $370 million all in. And so the rest of that is the estimate for Iraq.

Yes. And Chris, just one. Sorry, I was going to just add one point of clarity on that. Just obviously, we're using an existing jetty in Khor Al Zubair. So that's why, I mean, generally, the cost of building a full jetty would be higher, but this is using an existing jetty and putting on the topside equipment and getting it ready for LNG operations.

I just wanted to shift focus a bit to your commercial discussions in the Caribbean outside of Jamaica. If you could comment where you're seeing more interest. Are you seeing interest in more small-scale onshore regas and transmission solutions? Are you seeing appetite for floating solutions? Or where are those conversations kind of focused right now?

So I'll take that again, Chris. And I think the answer is a little bit of all of the above. But I'd say I'd point to what just happened in Jamaica in the last week. Obviously, there was this -- Melissa was a Category 5 hurricane that came through, and we took off the FSRU was able to leave the birth, go to a safe place and come back. So I think there's certainly a lot of value in the floating solutions in terms of the critical infrastructure they are and how they can respond to these kind of events. So I would certainly expect conversations going forward to look at this as a big plus.

But really, it's -- every island is unique, different availability of land onshore, different water depths. So with our technical team, we're looking at a wide range of solutions and really using Jamaica as a hub, which for us is that that's that critical commercial advantage we have, we can then develop different technical solutions for these different markets. And I'm seeing -- we're seeing good interest across the Caribbean to use LNG to displace liquid fuels. And so I think that's progressing well.

Our next question comes from [ Brie ] Brooks of Northland Capital Markets.

So just with the growth CapEx guide unchanged for this year, is it then right to assume the majority of the spending for the jetty in Iraq is then going to be coming in the first half of '26?

Yes, Bobby, I think that's a safe bet.

Got it. And then I want to just say my thoughts are with those affected by Hurricane Melissa and Jamaica, and it's great to hear how much you're helping the country get its feet back underneath itself. But -- and at the same time, it's great to hear how quickly your business operations got back up and running and how insulated your financial contributions from your assets are there. So my question is, is it right to think that all of your other assets have similar insurance coverage that would insulate you from natural disasters like this?

Bobby, short answer, yes. I want to brag on the ops group, though, a little bit here because you all will remember when we were talking about some of the incremental maintenance CapEx we spent in Jamaica over the summer. And you may recall that involved putting in black start generators. It also included strengthening sea walls. And frankly, we said we're just wanting to take -- do the things that brought these assets up to an Excelerate standard. And thank God, we did because that -- those moves and planning and execution by the Excelerate operations team over the summer made a tremendous difference here.

So I'm going to salute them. And just as a reminder that the type of uptime that they achieve around the globe is not an accident. So I'll make that point. I would say, in general, Bobby, most of the insurance programs on the floating assets, it's all quite similar on land-based assets. It's going to depend upon the type of the asset, but there's general commonality across the platform.

Got it. That's really helpful color and great to hear that the -- you got to be able to execute those pieces to strengthen the operating base before the hurricane came in. And my last question is just, could you remind us, -- the contracts you have across the globe right now, there's none coming up, none expiring over the next couple of years or when's kind of the next one coming up where you could maybe move an asset to a different location?

Bobby, you're always wanting us to optimize man, and we do too. We have 2 on Evergreen that we're always trying to get our hands on, obviously, Express and Expedient and we're continuing to look at ways to do that. That's going to be a catalyst, obviously. We've managed at this point to have higher contracted rates on most everything that we've been able to redeploy, and we would look for that to be the case if we can get our hands on those. But in general, then you've got Excelsior in Germany in 2028. That's a longer discussion. Excelsior since she's come online is sending maximum gas ashore.

I'm proud, by the way, that as far as I know, she's taken all U.S. LNG since she came online in May. And that's a great asset that the German government has spent a lot of money importing the ports to work with Excelsior. We've spent a lot of money on Excelsior. We think it's a great asset. We'll be having further discussions about it down the road, but I'm really proud of that ship and everything she's doing. I understand she's kind of fully booked for next year. So bottom line is that asset is used. It's providing good value, and it remains cheap insurance but that's kind of a look at what's sort of near term out there.

Our next question comes from Michael Scialla of Stephens.

I'll start off by echoing everybody else's sentiments on commending you on your relief efforts for Jamaica. I wanted to ask, you've talked in the past about scaling the Jamaica model across the Caribbean. It sounds like now you're saying you want to do that across your global footprint. I don't know if I'm reading too much into that. Has anything changed there to have you make that comment at this point?

Mike, this is Steven. I sure hope, I haven't been saying we only want to scale and grow the Caribbean. I mean this is a global company, and we want to do this all over the world.

Anything in particular about Jamaica, though, that I guess, that you're seeing that is transferable to other areas of the globe?

Yes. I mean, Mike, what I love is if you -- when we look back at 2025, we will have come to the market with 2 fully integrated deals. And we love what that does for us. It is -- I mean, you can see on what we're talking about Iraq and the project there, the build multiple that you're going to achieve, what we've always said, the returns that we're looking for are always going to be higher with integrated models.

And look, we're built for this. We have the balance sheet for this. We have the credibility for this. We are not simply a capital leasing company. We're never going to be content to do that. We want to make a difference around the world. We want to be that go-to partner for sovereigns around the world. So yes, we haven't been shy. We want to be an integrated energy company in these markets.

Now we wanted to go through our infrastructure, but we want to be the whole package. And you don't see a whole -- I mean, no offense, you don't see a lot of folks doing this around the world. So I think -- and it's going to be -- anyway, I'll leave it at that, but we're fired up. I think you can hear it in my voice.

Definitely can. I wanted to ask on your gas sales are hard to predict. You haven't really guided on them in the past. You had a lot in the third quarter. Can you talk more about those? Did most of those go to Jamaica? Any of those cargoes go anywhere else? And any thoughts on future cargoes?

Mike, this is Dana. So yes, that was a great quarter for us from an LNG supply perspective. So we had a couple of things going on there. We had our Atlantic Basin supply that delivered in the third quarter, which had great performance. We also had really good performance in Jamaica and a little bit of volumes above our expectations. And then we had 2 cargoes delivered into the APAC region. So all of that combined to those numbers for the quarter.

Our next question comes from Emma Schwartz of Jefferies.

Congrats on the Iraq deal and the strong quarterly results. It really looks strong, what you guys agreed to in Iraq, and that's really tied to the integration. Could you speak a little bit about the repeatability of integrated deals like this? And do you see integrated opportunities for the conversion candidate?

This is Steven. We absolutely do. I mean that's why I kind of digressed talking about the coming LNG wave. I think the point I'd make to the listeners is we're executing on integration before that wave comes. It is coming. It is going to drive greater affordability on LNG. So I see the TAM that we're serving only increasing, and we continue to prove that we are the sort of company that can execute on it.

We're continuing to put the tools in the toolbox that we need to deliver on it. I mean you see with Iraq, everything is coming together, and we've been planning for that for some time to be able to deliver that. So I absolutely believe -- we believe that the TAM is -- it's enormous to begin with. It's increasing. The commodity is going to be ever more affordable. It's going to drive more liquid fuel and other type of switching. And we are after those opportunities around the world, and we're going to continue to do that.

That's great to hear. For my second question, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the dry docking this quarter. What drove the lower cost there? And is that kind of performance sustainable going forward?

Emma, I think it would be unfair to David Liner, our COO, if I put him too much on the spot there. They did deliver a great dry docking. They now part of that was in the Baltic. We're taking it from Finland to Denmark. So logistically, it was fairly close. We were looking at different ways to advance some of the -- or perhaps more of the prep work on board before we went. We're looking at all types of lessons learned there.

But for now, we're always trying to optimize dry docking, but I don't want to say that the lessons from one geographic location may transfer seamlessly to other dry docks. Well, frankly, I hope that we will not hope. We will have more insight for you on that at year-end. But I think it's a little far out from the execution and planning process to be able to commit to any particular timeline for those dry docks right now.

At this time, we currently have no further questions. So I'll hand it back to CEO, Steven Kobos, for any further remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today. Really enjoyed our call. There are obviously a lot of things going on in Jamaica. And I just want to repeat that our thoughts and prayers and well wishes are with the people of Jamaica. But thank you all for joining us. Exciting times for Excelerate, and we look forward to continuing these discussions in the future.

Thank you all for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Theresa Chen, and I am the midstream and refining analyst here at Barclays. It is my pleasure to introduce our next company, Excelerate Energy. From Excelerate, we have Steven Kobos, CEO. Steven, please?

Thanks, Theresa. Pleasure to be here. It's always a lot of fun to be at the Barclays Conference. Heck, you've got every energy company in the United States here, it feels like. And thank you for investors that we've met with. I see a number of you out there and for those of you joining online. It's always a mixed group. Some of you all are quite familiar with Excelerate. Some of you are not. I'm just going to very briefly kind of say who we are and then let Theresa interrogate me. But first of all, if you don't know about us, you should. We are a global company. We have a footprint all around the world from Asia to the Middle East, to South America, to Europe and now to the Caribbean.

We are a critical provider of last-mile LNG infrastructure. We are focused on opening up the TAM. Who is going to take this LNG? It occurs to me that with all these energy companies in the hotel today, it dawned on me, Excelerate is the only company in this hotel today who is agnostic about the cost of LNG. I mean it is impressive the number of FIDs that have been taken to date in 2025 in the United States and that will continue to be taken. I think we all think it will probably be around 100 million tons before the dust settles New Year's Eve. But alone, we don't care if that ultimately results in a lower cost of LNG around the world. In fact, I would say that we welcome it. We welcome it for the simple reason that that's what the world needs.

The world needs for this reliable American energy to be ever more affordable because there is way too much heavy fuel oil and diesel power generation out there. There are people who need reliable, affordable energy. And this wave is just going to open that up for more and more folks. So that's one thing that strikes me about us.

Obviously, we are a global player, as I've said. And frankly, as we're seeing the TAM for downstream demand of LNG expanding exponentially, it's kind of runway out there in that we're one of the few companies obsessed about getting incremental LNG to the market and doing it the right way. What else can I tell you about Excelerate? Great financial condition, sitting on $400 million of cash and an undrawn $500 million revolver. We have dry powder. We are prepared to execute on our growth strategy. And with that, I've exceeded 90 seconds, Theresa. So let's...

All good. All good. Let's talk about that growth strategy. So maybe to kick off, you recently closed your acquisition of an integrated LNG and power platform in Jamaica. Have these assets, in particular, opened up opportunities for Excelerate to leverage that platform to further build downstream and grow in the Caribbean and beyond?

We're excited about that. I mean that was well in excess of $1 billion deal, and we didn't do it lightly. And we do think it's going to be a great springboard for us. And frankly, we are now indisputably an integrated downstream LNG performer. We've added 2 LNG import terminals in addition to our other global footprint. We've added a power plant. I mean, we've added a CHP plant. We've added 12 small-scale regasification facilities. We've added trucks, and we are determined to go down the last mile. Keep talking about it as a platform. And we did on the last earnings call speak more to the Caribbean.

One, we like it. I mean this is, quite frankly, I believe, the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Jamaica. And one of the reasons we put out some of our intentions out there is so that everyone would know that this is a strategic that has acquired this and that we are poised to deploy more capital in the region. One of the things, and I should have mentioned it in the outset is sovereigns count on Excelerate. Like if you want to keep the lights on in your capital around the world, you count on Excelerate.

Our operational uptime last year was 99.9%. I'm extremely proud. I don't let our COO know that or else he get the big head, but it is the level of best-in-class operations that you have to have when you're dealing with sovereigns. What are we going to do in the Caribbean? We're going to start off optimizing. We already have. We have already signed deals for more gas throughput. We've already been buying trucks, ISOs, tanks.

We've already been deploying more of that. We're already at work on the optimization. That's commercially. We focused on integration for 60, 90 days, and great workforce that we've added. We've made some very modest spend to bring things up to our standards, add some black start generators, other things that we would have wanted if we had designed or built these facilities, but great facilities, great people. And beyond that, a great opportunity just to build off of it and further expand.

Got it. That's super helpful as far as giving the qualitative look on what is happening and what you're doing there. Can you help walk us through, frame up how these opportunities translate to incremental earnings across your assets?

Sure. We did provide a look behind the curtain of what we're thinking in the region. And first of all, I've already come to really admire the Jamaican people, and we look forward to making a difference in the region. But we're not pulling ourselves back in. We are not a Caribbean company. We are a global company. So I don't -- we're going to talk about this because I'm excited about this opportunity. Everyone at Excelerate is excited about it. But first and foremost, we are a global company.

We told on our earnings call, Theresa, that we expected in the next 5 years that the platform could generate, say, an incremental $80 million to $110 million of EBITDA and that we would be deploying, say, another $200 million to $400 million of CapEx. So that for a lot of reasons, wanted to put some more clarity on what our vision is for it. And also wanted the people of Jamaica to hear that this is probably the largest foreign direct investment in their nation's history. We want to do more. We want to be a good partner for any sovereign, and we're going to.

The best way to talk about how we're going to do it kind of go through the menu of what you're looking for when you're looking for a hub-and-spoke platform. So firstly, as I said, we're already engaged in incremental sales of nat gas on the island and putting more of these smaller components in. I'll just run through the menu on some of them. If you want to put [ vapors ] and tanks on an industrial or hospitality client for off-grid power, you're talking about $0.5 million to $2 million per pop on those. So just that's kind of the amuse-bouche on your menu.

And then you start going down to the salads or adding some trucks as we've already done and some ISOs that are quite affordable. If you find that you need elsewhere in the Caribbean on one of your spokes, a very small import facility, we have 7,000 cubic meters at the Montego Bay import facility. Let's just say you want 3 tanks, 3,000 cubic meters somewhere, you're probably talking a little over $4 million a pop on each one of those tanks. So you could be talking $15 million, $20 million depending upon what infrastructure is there that you'd be deploying for that. At some point, you'll want another small-scale vessel after you fully optimize the small-scale vessel that came with the deal. I don't know, call that $60 million to $70 million of CapEx if you choose to buy it rather than lease it.

So you work down the menu and then you get to the entree. The entree is likely to be some sort of incremental thermal power generation on the island. And we're agnostic about how we do that. That could be either an expansion of the Clarendon facility where we are. That could be us either with partners or directly doing thermal power elsewhere in the island or it could even be -- we build a pipe from the Old Harbour terminal to Kingston city gate and just allow far more gas to reach to Kingston proper. So you add all those together, we start off with optimization and then intermediate term, that's the sort of capital that we will be deploying. But I assure you, we've not forgotten about the rest of the world. I'm not sure if I'm back in Houston until October. So there's a lot of world out there.

Great. And maybe just one more question on the Caribbean. In touching on your earlier comments, Steven, about that there's still a lot of liquids burned for power generation right now, and you want to help democratize U.S. gas to markets that need it, what do you think is the total addressable market for fuel switching in that region?

Well, I think you put your finger on it, Theresa, it's all about liquid fuels. And there's just -- I mean Caribbean in general on the aggregate basis is more than 90% diesel and heavy fuel oil. It's too expensive. It's too dirty. That's the opportunity. That's the opportunity in so many ways. That's the opportunity to deliver savings to sovereigns. That's the opportunity to take advantage of, my goodness, this proximity to this cornucopia of U.S. LNG. I mean, it's crazy. The Caribbean and Jamaica is a place to break bulk and that seems to be ideally situated for a hub. So we're very excited about that. Frankly, a lot of -- that's why people like working at Excelerate. I mean you are displacing dirtier fuels and you're providing more reliable energy to people across the region. That's helping GDP.

Perfect. And then maybe looking at the legacy business, amid all these growth projects and the inorganic growth, how do you view potential optimization of your legacy terminal services? Are there opportunities for growth in your base business via organic projects or acquiring complementary infrastructure going forward?

I love our business. I mean I wish there were a better word for legacy than just embodied best-in-class, just something that the sovereign is counting on to keep the lights on and which you're reliably delivering. I mean legacy sounds like a throwback jersey of an NFL game or something. This is our bread and butter. This is what we do. What I always tell people is don't sell to the world what you want to sell them, sell to the world what they want to buy. It's going to be different all across this TAM. Some folks are going to want our "legacy business." They're going to want a very reliable floating terminal.

They're going to want that operated by someone who operates their own assets, obsesses about that operation and last year delivered 99.9% uptime. If that's what they want to buy, that's what we want to sell. We've often told the Street when we're thinking about returns in this business that low double-digit unlevered after tax, if it's that kind of a deal. We also know that because of our balance sheet, that we can do things that other floating infra providers cannot do. We have a long-term LNG portfolio. We are in a position to bundle that back to back, selling -- buying and selling in the same index, not taking commodity exposure.

And if we bundle it, we expect to get up into the mid-teens on the same basis. If somebody wants pull-through power, I mean, pull-through demand and wants us to invest in further power, we are up for it. We've already shown we want to go downstream last mile. They want trucks, we'll do that, too. We want to get gas to people who need it. We want to make it easy to get gas.

When we started this game, I don't know, company is 22 years old when we were first delivering. When we were first delivering, we were dealing with some very sophisticated NOCs, Kuwait Petroleum, Repsol, Petrobras, Dubai Petroleum and the like. This TAM is enormous. As you get further into this TAM, you need to integrate, and you need to make it simpler for NOCs and other actors who want a molecule or they want to spark and you need to make it easy for all of them to do that. So any kind of adjacency that allows us to do that, we're going to do it.

Okay. So with these growth prospects ahead of you, can you share a bit about your capital allocation strategy and how you balance these growth priorities while also returning cash to shareholders and maintaining a healthy balance sheet?

Nothing's changed. First priority is growth, always has been, always will be. At the same time, this is a great business, 90% take-or-pay, English law contracts, average offtake is investment grade. This is fantastic. We just increased our dividend 33% and we gave some indication to the market that we expect low double-digit increases in dividend the next 3 years. Why we do that? We can see the cash conversion from this business.

We can see the addition of the Caribbean and what that's going to do. We see what else is coming in line. We've got great line of sight, and we thought that was an appropriate signal to send to the market. So first priority is always going to be growth. But no one can doubt that we understand the importance of returning capital to shareholders. I mean we've had a share buyback program within the past 1.5 years. We've had 2 significant increases to dividend. The growth is going to be the primary objective.

Okay. So maybe double-clicking on these growth endeavors. No, no, no. I would just want to ask you on the progress on FSRU conversion candidates following your recent acquisition of Excelerate Shenandoah. How is the company at this point weighing new builds versus conversions now that you have this under your belt as well as Hull 3407? And how should we think about your long-term potential backlog?

Well, Theresa, I mean, the first thing that should be obvious is that I like U.S. National Parks because we must be the only company with a Sequoia and a Shenandoah. But all of that aside, you need different horses for different courses. Hull 3407 is quite simply the best asset in the global fleet. It has the best boil-off management. And if you all -- depending upon your familiarity with transport and importation of LNG, LNG is really cold, right, minus 158 Celsius. But it's boiling off every day, just like a tea kettle at 212 Fahrenheit. So that's expensive because somebody has bought that LNG and wants to sell it, and it's boiling off.

So 3407 best boil-off control management in the world can push 1 billion cubic feet a day crazy amounts of gas. That's suitable for some places. Shenandoah, we need -- we're using it to carry some volumes that we need to carry right now. But we've been spending time on the engineering for it. We're advanced on the design. We've already acquired long lead time assets that we need to convert that to an FSRU or if we get the right opportunity that as a floating storage unit, FSU, we'll do that, too, not hidebound about anything. So we're well along on engineering and procurement. And frankly, I can see Shenandoah hitting the water again in another form as an FSRU by late in '27. So we pay attention to this global market, this TAM. We know different types of assets are required for different locations, and we are taking the steps we need to take to execute.

Great. I do want to come back to 3407 in a second, but to follow up on the Shenandoah. So you've given us a sense of the time line and the process of commercializing this project. What is the all-in cost for the conversion as you see it today? And what are the risk factors that it may not elect to convert?

Well, we're going to elect to convert it. I don't...

That the conversion may not proceed?

Yes, it's not sanctioned. But as I said, depending upon what opportunities that come up first, we may elect to push it to FSU or FSRU. We're just going to see what works out there. Everybody is always sensitive about putting numbers out on the table. We have often told folks that in terms of the conversion, including the cost of the LNGC, the LNG carrier, that is your candidate to convert. Depending upon that asset, it can -- the all-in number could be anywhere between $150 million to $200 million. And if we elect to go FSU all-in, I don't know, $60 million to $70 million. I don't have that in front of me.

Got it.

And then the point of decision based upon that is just going to be read and react in terms of what we think the soonest, best opportunity for it is.

Got it. So on the new build, okay, can you walk us through the next steps for FSRU Hull 3407 following its launch and until its delivery in 2026? So what happens between now and then? And how are you thinking about potential customers and opportunities for this asset? Is there any more specificity as far as region or type of customers that could take advantage of, I think, what you've said previously is the [indiscernible] FSRUs.

I haven't said that, but I'm going to from now on, undoubtedly. What can I say? I think -- and this is going out on our website, so we can -- I can say whatever I want or disclose what I want. We are currently in negotiations in both Asia and the Middle East on 3407 and have teams actively negotiating in those 2 geographies. I think that's about enough of a hint that I'd like to give there. But we're very excited about it.

I need to find out if our website has the loading of the regas module on it. I mean it's -- what I can tell you is it's on track. It's on budget. We like Hyundai. They're doing a great job. We have 0 concerns about execution of that asset. And we know, I would say that the FSRU market is as tight as it ever has been. And we feel very good about what we're doing with it right now, and we'll be pleased with whichever outcome we elect to go with finally.

Great. And in terms of, again, touching on your earlier comments about cost savings and running efficiently in the realm of optimization, so with the recent agreement with Petrobras to install a reliquefaction unit on FSRU Experience, can you talk about Excelerate's sustainability and cost savings efforts in general and specifically relating to the integration of modular reliquefaction kits on your vessels as well?

Yes. And very pleased. We published our sustainability report in August, very happy with all the work from all the folks in our team on that, and we're proud of everything that we've outlined in that report. Reliquefaction, this is on our asset, the Experience in Guanabara Bay and Rio. What I love about this, this idea was really a joint idea between Petrobras and Excelerate.

We obviously have a long history in Brazil, now 2 locations with Petrobras. We are, in fact, the only global supplier for them. And Theresa, it's not -- it's like $30 million of CapEx, okay? It's more of what it signifies. And frankly, it's not just sustainability.

It's about who Excelerate is as a client. You have a long-term deal with a customer, do you just forget about that and cash checks? Or are you trying to think about how can you achieve a better outcome for the NOC you're working with. And in that case, people -- a lot of people forget about Brazil. It is 80% hydroelectric power. I mean just think about that for a moment. 80% hydroelectric power, maybe another 10% wind and solar. If it's raining, these nat gas assets aren't going to be used. If there's a drought, and we're talking old testament, the original intermittent renewable drought. If there's a drought, they have to have this. It has to be reliable.

But if you're waiting to come to the rescue, if that's how Petrobras uses these assets, it means it is boiling off every day. So we knew that. It didn't impact what we are paid, but that sparked a dialogue on how can we fix this? How can we find a win-win to give you incremental fuel savings year after year and frankly, will probably leave us in an advantaged competitive position there for a very long time? How do we do this? So I liked it as a case study in who the heck we are and how we interact with the NOCs and sovereigns that we deal with because we are focused or obsessed with delivering a more reliable, better outcome for them.

Okay. Understood. And Steven, at the top of our time together, you spent some time putting forward the value proposition of the company and what you do. I want to zoom out a little bit because you have a front row seat to the LNG industry at large. And clearly, this year has been a banner year for LNG with multiple facilities on the liquefaction side ramping to substantial completion, other facilities having FID-ed. I want to ask you how you see LNG fundamentals evolving from here? And specifically, are there challenges that you see that the market is -- the investing community is not observing right now? Is it trade? Is it tariffs, et cetera? Is it something else? If you can tell us your views on these topics.

Well, [ trust, in ] earnings calls, we're tariff-proof. So that's the point in the call where I say we're tariff-proof. I don't mean that lightly, but that's who the heck we are, and we're not going to equivocate on that. We're not importing anything in the United States. We're not. We're out there providing a service around the world. So tariff-proof, safe haven, enjoy. I'm very proud of all of my friends in the industry, and they're doing a great job. They really are.

And the support of the United States government that is helping U.S. LNG and showing support, the White House, Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum, I mean, there's been a tremendous support for LNG in the United States, and it's fantastic because ultimately, the world is a better place with a lot of reliable United States energy that people can depend upon. That's great, and we're happy to play a very small part of that. I called it a cornucopia, these amazing riches of U.S. LNG. There is a lot, I mean, together with what the Qataris are doing both at Ras Laffan and at Golden Pass. It's a lot of LNG.

And it's going to have to find a home. It is going to have to find a home. And I don't want to focus on that too much. I just want to tell everyone here and everyone listening, Excelerate remains obsessed about that. And we're going to continue with that obsession, and we're going to find as many homes and open as many markets. We opened up Bangladesh. We opened up Pakistan. We opened up Argentina. We have opened up Kuwait on their journey there. We opened up Finland. I mean we have opened up and increased the global demand for LNG already in a level that no one in this room or listening online fully comprehends. And we're going to keep doing that, and we are going to find a way to get ever better returns off of that.

Great. Thank you so much for the color and insight as always.

Thanks, Theresa...